HAWTHORNE, VOLUME I (OF 2)***


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Transcriber's note:

      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).





LOVE LETTERS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE






Privately Printed
The Society of the Dofobs
Chicago
1907

Copyright, 1907, by
William K. Bixby




INTRODUCTORY


In "Hawthorne and His Wife" and "Memories of Hawthorne" both Julian
Hawthorne and his sister, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, have given citations
from the letters written by Nathaniel Hawthorne to Miss Sophia Peabody
during their years of courtship. These excerpts were free and
irregular, often, and evidently with specific intent, taken out of
order and run together as if for the purpose of illustrating a point
or emphasizing a particular phase of character. While the extracts
were sufficiently numerous for the object desired, and while they gave
an agreeable glimpse of an interesting period of Hawthorne's life,
they were necessarily too fragmentary, too lacking in continuity, to
convey any adequate idea of the simplicity, beauty, humor and
tenderness of the letters, even considered in the matter of a literary
style.

The original letters were acquired by Mr. William K. Bixby of St.
Louis, and, at the urgent request of the Society of the Dofobs, of
which he is a highly esteemed and honored member, turned over to the
society with the understanding that they should be published for
presentation to members only. It was specified also that great care
should be exercised in going over the letters, that no apparent
confidences should be violated and that all private and personal
references, which might wound the feelings of the living or seem to
speak ill of the dead, should be eliminated. It is indeed remarkable
that in the large number of letters presented there was practically
nothing which called for elision, nothing in the lighter mood which
breathed a spirit beyond the innocent limits of good-natured banter.
The work of the editors was consequently easy and grateful, and the
task one of delight.

It is not claimed that these love letters, so-called, comprise the
entire correspondence on Hawthorne's part between Miss Peabody and
himself during the three-and-one-half years of courtship. Naturally
a series of letters begun sixty-eight years ago, with all the
vicissitudes of a shifting life, would not be preserved intact. But
while some letters have been lost or destroyed, and others may not
have been permitted for one reason or another to leave the possession
of the family, the continuity here preserved is practically as
complete as could be desired and fully illustrative of the qualities
which make them so worthy of publication. In giving these letters to
its members the society has conformed strictly to the exactions of the
manuscript save in a few cases perhaps where haste on the part of the
writer omitted a word, slightly obscuring the sense. It has been
deemed advisible also to omit all notes or paragraphs of explanation.
Happily the letters are sufficiently intelligible without such notes,
and the conclusion has been reached that no needed purpose can be
served by minor explanatory details relating to individuals mentioned
or incidents suggested. It has been thought best as well to add a few
letters extending beyond the period of courtship. No defence is
necessary, for to the last they are "love letters" in the purest and
truest sense of the words. This will be vindicated in the perusal.

In selecting two letters for facsimile reproduction the choice has
fallen upon the letter from Brook Farm under date of April 13, 1841,
and that from Salem written in the following year. Both illustrate the
quiet, quaint humor of Hawthorne. In the Brook Farm letter he sketches
drily his thinly veiled impressions of the community, and herein will
be found the famous reference to "Miss Fuller's transcendental heifer"
which has fallen little short of immortality. Writing from the old
home in Salem he makes his letter conspicuous by the fact that he
prophesies banteringly--doubtless he little knew how truly--his own
coming fame and the public craze to inspect his belongings. This
humorous tribute to himself, in its mock, self-satisfied strain,
suggests not so much the mental state of Horace predicting his
