The House of Hawthorne (25 page)

A
ll of these deaths have done something to Nathaniel that I would not have expected: They have forced him back into life.

The summer following our arrival at the little red house becomes a time of great abundance. We cannot drink enough of each other and of our healthy children, the fresh lake, the pure air, the fragrant flowers. We raise chickens, and ride horses, and take in feral cats. We climb mountains, and Nathaniel teaches the children to swim in our lake, honoring our unspoken understanding that none of ours will die by water. Nathaniel also becomes close with another young writer who has achieved success and acclaim with his published works, Herman Melville.

Nathaniel met Herman at a picnic and hike with friends in Pittsfield. They were apparently overtaken by a tempest that sent them all into a cave for shelter. There my forty-six-year-old
husband found an admirer in thirty-one-year-old Herman. To my surprise, Nathaniel liked Herman so much that he invited him to stay with us for a few days while Herman looks for a place to live nearby with his young family.

The children rush out the front door when they hear the galloping and barking that accompany Herman’s arrival. I cross to the window to see the man throw his strong leg over his horse before it has fully halted, and tie a massive dog to the post. He and Nathaniel embrace and slap each other on the back as if they have known each other for years instead of weeks, and Una and Julian run to Herman and beg for rides on the canine.

“Let him water his animals first,” says Nathaniel, which sends Una off to the well pump.

“Where are your wife and boys?” asks Nathaniel, as they walk to the house.

“I left them with friends,” says Herman. “I do not want anything to interfere with my time with the great Hawthorne.”

I watch my husband dismiss his comment with a wave and a bashful smile, and cannot take my eyes from the visitor, who cannot take his eyes from Nathaniel.

The men have been embarking upon mountain hikes over difficult terrain, and the children are disappointed to be left behind, as am I. I envisioned more picnics and leisure with our guest, but one so young as Herman cannot be expected to sit still for long. I wonder how his wife endures his restlessness.

At the dinner table in the evenings, Herman is polite to me,
but it is clear that he is here to worship Nathaniel. Herman is a strapping, bronzed man whose youth is a reminder of our own. Just being in his presence seems to revive my husband, as if Herman’s company is the antidote to the sad events that forced us from Salem. But Herman’s effusions are like the sun on a blazing summer day—a warm delight at first, followed by a hot discomfort.

“
Mosses
stirred a longing in me that I have not felt from fiction in some time,” says Herman, devouring the strawberries and cream placed before him. “It is as if you know my soul.”

Nathaniel’s face flushes. He has run out of ways to thank this young man, and shifts in his chair in what I recognize as a growing unease.

“Truly,” Herman continues, “it is as if you have burrowed some dark and beautiful seed in my heart’s dirt that produces the greatest abundance of growth.”

Nathaniel’s eyes seem to beg my assistance, so I attempt to speak with Herman. I know from our short acquaintance that trying to converse with Herman about matters of family, horses, or weather is fruitless, and the only subject he will engage in with enthusiasm is the magnificence of Nathaniel Hawthorne. While I would never tire of such a subject, after just three days my beloved is burdened by Herman’s admiration.

“What high praise,” I say. “It is gratifying to see that you perceive my husband’s depths, and what his writing inspires in the reader, the challenge he poses to view our fellow mortals with an eye not of judgment, but of deep understanding. Especially understanding of our own hearts, and how we all bear the capacity to produce great evil, but also great goodness.”

“Indeed,” says Herman, finishing his third glass of champagne. “His writing is as fine as that of the Bard himself!”

“I must stop you in your kind lunacy,” says Nathaniel. “While I am grateful for such praise, you cannot compare me to Shakespeare. It is a form of blasphemy.”

“Nonsense,” says Herman, his eyes growing wild and strange. “You underestimate your talent, and because I have such admiration for you, I will not hear a word spoken against you, even if it comes from your own lips.”

I see Herman clench his fist and feel an iciness creep into my blood. I watch him the way one would a tamed circus bear, with a mixture of awe and fear. This is a man who has lived below brig decks with sailors and in jungles with savages. His passions are as rich in color as the most striking tropical foliage, but like the jungle, his beauties seem to conceal danger, and he is not a man I would want to cross.

“Hear, hear,” I say, standing and lifting Julian from his chair, who protests because he has not finished his strawberries. I sit him back down, and Una reaches over to feed Julian the last bite and wipe his mouth with a napkin.

Una glances at Herman and then at me. “I will take him, Mama. We will read books before we go to bed.”

I am grateful for her assistance and praise her for it; secretly I am glad the children will not be here if Herman becomes drunker. We will all be relieved when he no longer resides with us.

But he has apparently enjoyed his time with us so greatly that he has found lodgings just six miles away. Nathaniel makes light of it, saying that it is good to have one’s admirers so close, but I
hear the uneasiness beneath his words, and wonder how long he will endure Herman’s attentions.

I instruct our African cook, Mrs. Peters, to set a place for Herman at dinner. He has been at our table with regularity throughout the autumn and now winter, and we never know which Herman to expect: the jovial young man or the brooding writer. Mrs. Peters has come to help us, since I am again with child, and Nathaniel will not have me exert myself in any way. He confessed to me one night that he’d had terrible visions that this babe would do me in, and while I assure him that I have never felt better with a pregnancy, I obey his wishes to rest to calm his heart.

When Herman comes into the house, he has already stomped his boots and shaken the fine coating of snow from his coat. He presents a basket of oranges to me that he procured from a ship on his visit to Boston, and tells me that he hopes they will remind me of pleasing times in Cuba, which, to my surprise, he has been interested to hear about. I can hardly believe that anyplace I have occupied without Nathaniel would hold the slightest draw for him, but I am relieved to see that he seems light in mood.

Mrs. Peters accepts the oranges with suspicion and commences a great scrubbing of their poor skins before agreeing to peel them for our meal. Mrs. Peters is as loyal to us as a Cuban house servant, but we can all rest easy knowing she is paid wages instead of living in servitude. She is imposing and moral, and the children mind her far better than they do me. She is a comfort to
me when Nathaniel is on his rambles or working on his new novel, though I cannot help but feel her reserve. Can true affection ever develop between our races, or will we ever be wary of one another? Our country simmers like a covered pot over the issue of slavery, and while Nathaniel and I do not approve of owning slaves, we cannot imagine what a division or even a war between the Northern and Southern states would do to our young nation.

Nathaniel, Herman, and I discuss these topics after the children have been put to bed, while Mrs. Peters cleans dishes in the kitchen. Nathaniel has wrapped my arms with a shawl, and we sit around the hearth. Winter has come without mercy, and as charming as our little red house is, an unwelcome wind from the mountains finds all the cracks in walls and window frames.

“My mother and sisters are violently opposed to slavery,” I say, “but they have no practical suggestions for how to phase it out.”

“I still find merit in the idea of sending the Africans back to their continent, though the idea is losing fashion,” says Nathaniel.

I hear a cabinet slam and wonder how much of our conversation Mrs. Peters overhears.

“But what of those blacks born in America?” says Herman, his voice deep and husky. He has become low during the evening, and his mood pulls at one like a current under the sea. “Africa is as foreign to them as it is to us. It does not seem fair.”

“No, there must be a better solution,” I say. “But when I think of the young men in the States at war over it, I cannot endorse it.”

“Nor I,” says Nathaniel.

“Nor I,” says Herman.

This silences us for many minutes. My sister Elizabeth would
call us cowards, and maybe we are, but I can think only of my children and my home, and the thousands of homes like ours, and how it would be a tragedy to open the crusted-over war wounds of a country such a short while after its independence.

The wind rattles the panes and whistles eerily out of doors. It is a prowling wolf, looking for a way into our house. I wrap the shawl more tightly around me and embrace my swollen stomach.

“I have the strangest feeling of Margaret Fuller in the air tonight,” says Nathaniel.

His observation causes the hair on my arms to rise. Why would he say such a thing? He turns to me and must sense my thought, for he addresses it.

“Talk of slavery makes me think of her,” he says. “She could not endorse the novels of a friend, but she could promote the
Narrative
by Frederick Douglass, and stir up the tempest of the antislavery movement, which prowls the civility and domestic tranquillity of our nation like the wind outside our doors.”

“Do not speak ill of the dead,” I say.

Herman shifts with apparent discomfort in his chair.

“Since her death, I have tried to forgive her,” says Nathaniel, “but I cannot. And my ire grows. She was a woman who lived however she wished without care for another, without putting the needs of those around her before her own selfish opinions. We are breeding a nation of such thinkers and individuals—intent on personal expression at all costs—and that will lead to war. I might be a more successful writer if I did not seek to address human truth, but rather spewed out my own limited opinions without care for reader or critic or any kind of propriety.”

I am shocked by Nathaniel’s outburst. He usually reserves his opinions for me, behind closed doors, and always with extreme reluctance to commit to an ideal. There are no simple answers, and he does not have the optimism to see around the struggle. The older I get, the more like him I become. We have lost so many through death that I cannot think it prudent or moral to stir up tempers that would lead to war. My sister Mary would tell me to think of the slave families and the futures of our children. She would say our salvation depends upon it.

Nathaniel paces the room, but stops before the painting
Isola San Giovanni
I made during our engagement. The piece he used to hide behind a black veil in the privacy of his rooms he now allows to adorn our parlor so any visitor may look upon it, though he still conceals
Endymion
. Has he become more comfortable in his love, or has he forgotten the intensity of feeling that inspired the work?