The House of Hawthorne (22 page)

“If you would not accept a post in the government,” says Franklin, “you know Longfellow would write you up a good review if you publish something. He greatly admires your work, and always wishes to promote it.”

“I do have some stories coming together. I will write to him once they are complete.”

“I have read some,” I say. “They are brilliant, though the loneliness and suffering of his characters never fail to startle me.”

“Nathaniel does have a penchant for anguish, but he writes it well, almost as if he is looking into the reader’s own dark heart.”

“Well, that is it,” says Nathaniel. “I am not writing from my own heart, but to reflect to the reader him- or herself.”

“You may try to convince yourself,” I say, “but you do not fool us.”

A splash in the river draws our attention down the hill, but the new moon does not allow us to see anything except shadows.

“It must be difficult to write dark fiction here,” says Franklin, “in such idyllic surroundings, with such a woman at your side.”

“Good Franklin,” I say, taking a long drink of wine. “Always so kind.”

“It is,” says Nathaniel, reaching for my hand. “She is very distracting.”

He gives my side a squeeze, which causes me to laugh. Nathaniel hushes me and points to Una, who has fallen asleep. I kiss her red curls and inhale her sweet scent. When I look up, they are both watching me. I feel a great closeness in our spheres, and wish to console Franklin, who clearly longs for this domestic tranquillity.

“I wish you and Jane peace,” I say.

“Thank you,” he replies.

“We cannot comprehend the depth of your suffering,” says Nathaniel. “We had a small suffering when Sophia miscarried our first child from a fall on the ice.”

“Oh, no,” says Franklin. “I am sorry; I did not know.”

“No, do not apologize,” says Nathaniel. “I only tell you so that in sharing our pain, we might somehow ease yours. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” he says. “There is comfort in knowing others have suffered similar pain, though I would not wish it on the worst of my enemies.”

When our glasses are empty, and my back aches from holding my sleeping girl, Franklin is kind enough to lift her from my arms while Nathaniel gathers our things. I follow Franklin into the house, making sure he does not stumble with Una, and I direct him where to lay her. He kisses my hand and hugs Nathaniel before walking on unsteady legs to his room.

The next day, we escort Franklin to town to catch the stagecoach, and are sad to see our friend go. As we return to the Old
Manse, walking with Una under the boughs of the ash trees, we are each silent, desperately trying to think of a way to keep our beloved home that we can no longer afford. Nathaniel retires to his study, and I let him write without distraction. I teach Una about her sister flowers in fields and forests. We let our cook go, because we cannot pay her.

Every night in bed, Nathaniel and I cling to each other, hanging on for dear life.

A
t first I think the banging on the door is in a dream.

Nathaniel and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary that day by writing all of our cares of poverty on paper that we folded into little boats and launched down the river. Then we took Una to Walden Pond for a picnic with Henry, eating sweet treats sent by Louisa. Finally, we reenacted our wedding night in the light of the moon, and were asleep in each other’s arms by nine o’clock. So it comes as a great shock to us, who have just crossed over into slumber, when the pounding begins and will not be ignored. I pull on my robe and peek at Una, who sleeps on, mercifully, and then follow Nathaniel to the front door, where Ellery stands breathless and trembling.

“What is it, for God’s sake?” says Nathaniel. “Is it Ellen?”

Ellery shakes his head, attempting to catch his breath before speaking.

“There has been a tragedy. On the Concord River.”

Nathaniel and I look at each other, and I feel something shrink inside of me. He puts his arm around me and turns back to Ellery. “Go on.”

“We need the
Pond Lily
. It is the schoolmistress, Martha Hunt. It would appear that . . .”

Ellery stops and stumbles while taking a seat on the steps, wiping his perspiring head with his handkerchief.

“Pardon, Sophia, but I do not know if you would like to hear this.”

I draw closer to my husband. “I am composed for anything you might say.”

He stares at me through the dark for a moment, and then continues. “It seems Miss Hunt is missing, and likely has . . . courted her death in the river.”

“Who told you this?” asks Nathaniel.

Ellery gestures out the door, where I now notice figures on horses and foot; among them I recognize General Joshua Buttrick, who lives near the Hunt family, and another person who appears to be a youth. I step away from Nathaniel in an attempt to better see, and the moonlight reveals William Hunt, the boy we saw ice-skating on the river the day of my miscarriage. Martha’s brother. He is pale and ghostly. I place my hand over my heart, stricken by thoughts of my dead brothers, George and Wellington.

As Ellery apprises us of the details, his voice sounds far away. “Her family did not see her this evening, and when they asked around the village, they realized she never made it to school this morning.”

“Oh, no,” says Nathaniel.

“Yes. And General Buttrick found her bonnet and shoes. It appears that she has taken her own life.”

I cover my mouth. The girl cannot yet be twenty years old.

Action resumes around me. Nathaniel kisses me and tells me to stay in the house. I am silent, because I know I will disobey him once he is out of sight. He joins Ellery and the men as they hurry through the orchard to the river. Once more I check Una, who sleeps soundly, and start out the back door.

The heat of this stifling July night presses around me. I look up to see the stars embedded like tiny diamonds on a great black cloth. The moon is a pearl. The peeping insects in the trees and the shush of the wind remind me of Cuba. In case I am seen by the clusters of men along the banks, searching for a sign of the girl, I wrap my robe tightly around my body, though I am hot enough to fling it off. I have knotted my hair, but the curls have escaped and are stuck in sweaty tendrils to the back of my neck.

I stay in the shadows and watch my husband and Ellery launch the
Lily
. I implore God to let this be a mistake, or let them find her soon; let it not be a suicide. Who can bear the thought of a young girl in such depths of melancholy that she takes her own life?

Oh! The dangers of solitude!

Something catches my eye—a movement on the bridge like a shadow that disappears as soon as I have seen it. Dread and terror fill me. First I think it is the beggar girl, but then I realize it must be the apparition of Martha herself, as we saw her all those months ago.

I never did visit her.

In spite of a sudden wish to run back to the house and hide away from this scene, I cannot leave. I weave my way along the secluded path and track my husband. From the whispers of men I learn that Martha was seen pacing the banks of the Concord for hours this morning.

“The poor thing must have agonized over whether to do the deed,” says one.

“She has been prone to melancholy,” says another. “She has tried this before, but was stopped by her sister.”

Yet another man—her father, perhaps—speaks. “It is that ghastly narrative by the slave Frederick Douglass. Reading it tortured her.”

Good heavens, what a tragedy!

Safely protected in the trees, I remove my robe and wipe the sweat from my neck. I have been out here no longer than twenty minutes, but Nathaniel has moved too far from me to see, and I cannot stray farther from Una. With reluctance, I make my way back to the house. Somewhere a hawk cries, and I hear shouts. I look back at the river but I can see no men at our bend. They are farther down the Concord. I stop and stare at the black surface of the river, where the moonlight makes strange lines like claw marks in the water. It is as still as death. Then I hear a terrible cry. They must have found her.

I find that I am running over the grass. My slippers are soaked from the saturated ground, and though my milk has almost ceased, my breasts are leaking through my nightdress. When I get closer to the house, I fling open the door and hear my poor Una
sobbing upstairs. Her screams suggest she has been crying for some time. Now I am weeping, too. I take the stairs two at once and scoop up my poor, sweaty babe, whose red curls are stuck to her face and neck; she blazes from her fear and anger.

“Poor thing,” I say, with visions of both Una and Martha in my mind.

I do not sit in the rocking chair, but tear open my chemise, popping the buttons in my haste, and press Una to me while I stand. Though she rarely nurses anymore, she latches on with such force that I grimace from the pain. There is a great searing burn as the milk lets down, followed by tremendous relief.

Once my nerves have calmed, I walk with her to Nathaniel’s study at the back of the house, and gaze at the river through my scrawled writing and the other notes we have scratched on the glass. I wonder when the terrible thing will be birthed from the Concord’s waters, and how my husband will bear seeing the consequence of a solitary life ended in tragedy.

1864
Massachusetts

N
athaniel was haunted by the recovery of the girl’s body—the grotesque birth of her stiff corpse from the river. They found her handkerchief along the banks and poked into the black water until they hooked their ungodly catch and dragged her to dry land, where she looked like a statue of agony in death. The way Nathaniel described her clenched hands raised above her head and her bent knees called to mind the Magdalene painting from Cuba. I pray now that God had mercy on the poor creature.

Years later, to free his mind of the tragedy, Nathaniel wrote of the nightmarish scene in
The Blithedale Romance
, but I wonder whether his soul was truly exorcised. What Nathaniel did not write was that two more Hunt sisters lost their lives in the Concord River; the first took her own life several years later, and the second accidentally drowned, or so they say. There would be
more drownings in the future of those we loved and knew best. I cannot think of them now.

“What troubles you, dove?”

Startled, I am unable to respond at first.

“I hope you are not filling your sweet head with worries of my old body,” he says.

“While your old body is always on my mind, the shadow comes from my remembrance of poor Martha Hunt and her sad family, and all the river took from us at that time. And of all that water has taken.”

His eyes darken. I know he sees their faces in his mind.

“I have not thought of them for some time,” he says, so quietly I almost do not hear him.

My mind returns to the months after the suicide, when we were evicted from the manse, and how my heart broke, both for our loss and for my burdened husband. There is a daguerreotype of Nathaniel from that time that brings tears to my eyes. His face is so gaunt and his eyes so haunted, one would never realize that we had lived in secluded bliss within the walls of our marriage house, with only the cares of the world at large to trouble our hearts.

But I did not allow myself to dwell on our shame. It was in Salem, where we returned for Nathaniel’s appointment at the custom house, that I learned to keep secrets that would save us. It was in Salem that our Una, increasingly spirited to the point of wildness, became a Pearl by her father’s pen, and where Nathaniel learned to expose his uncensored depths in a novel that would make him known throughout the new and old worlds.

Summer 1846
Salem, Massachusetts

I
read the words over and over again, but they still do not make sense. Nathaniel has handed me a copy of the
New-York Tribune
in which Margaret Fuller—our so-called friend—describes my husband’s story collection,
Mosses from an Old Manse
, as thin and lacking clear insight into the human condition. My indignation has me sputtering and boiling like a pot on the stove.

“How could she?” I manage to spit through gritted teeth. “After all of our troubles, our near destitution, our friendship! This is a betrayal. A jealous betrayal because she cannot stand that we are in love, and our family grows, and you are just beginning to make a name for yourself as a writer.”

“I too am surprised, but as a published author, I suppose I must prepare for critical reviews of my work.”

“But this is not scholarship. This is blindly personal.”

“It is not all bad. She has nice things to say about some of the stories.”

“She should praise all of them, for they are each brilliant. She is ruffled that her book on modern women was widely criticized, while all she has seen are good reviews of your work.”

My seat is still sore from our son’s birth weeks ago, and I have strained my exhausted head with my outburst. Una looks up at me with large eyes and stands like a little schoolmistress.

“Oo should no yell, Mama.”

Nathaniel and I cannot help but smile at our commanding little tot. I open my arms to her and she runs to my lap, injuring my body a bit in her jump, but not enough for me to flinch too awfully. The babe sleeps on in the nearby bassinet; we have not yet named him. If our daughter is the angel of light and passion, our son is the angel of tranquillity, praise God, but no name seems good enough for our little prince, so that is what we call him.

“I should not have shown you,” Nathaniel says, lifting Una from me. “Henceforth I shall only share the good reviews. In the meantime, I will burn this paper, and with it the last embers of our friendship with Queen Margaret.”

His voice has many layers. He pretends he does not suffer, but I hear the deep hurt, the bitterness and regret. I am angry with myself for stoking the fires of his frustration, and vow to emphasize what is good and positive.

“I should not have erupted,” I say. “You are correct, Una. Let us only speak of the light. Mr. Channing praised your book highly. Franklin Pierce and Mr. O’Sullivan adore it. You never
disappoint Mr. Longfellow. You will have a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year at the custom house, and our debts are nearly paid off.”

“And I am now the proud father of two perfect cherubs,” he says.

“What’s a terub?” asks Una.

“It is a spunky wee angel borrowed from heaven for earthly enjoyment, though it does have a streak of mischief, a dash of turbulence, and a force like a tempest at times.”

“I don’t know what oo say,” says Una, with all of the disgust of a haughty woman, and demands to be put down, much to her father’s amusement.

I remind my daughter that she must be polite and respectful, but the little prince stirs at my speech, taking my attention from Una, and from worry over the reception of my husband’s work.

The weeks and months of rearing young children blur together as if in a silvery dream, compounded by the beginnings of our gypsy life. I am content, but never settled, blessed with an abundance of sensual stimulation and closeness, but distracted by I know not what.

We finally named our boy Julian. Nathaniel is partial to Julian from Shelley’s work, because of Shelley’s frustrations with the so-called limitation of words, but I think of the nobility of Shelley’s character Julian, in his belief that man can make the world better. Either way, our friends and family think us strange
for giving our children unusual names, but we believe it makes them special.

I could never have anticipated that I would reside under the same roof with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters, but that is exactly where I find myself. We must economize, so it makes little sense for us to keep separate lodgings, and we start in a small house together in a fine Salem neighborhood. Soon, however, with so much time spent in such close quarters, we determine that a larger home in a less fashionable section will better serve, even if we cannot afford to furnish it.

Fourteen Mall Street is a great, slim, rectangular-shaped thing, long from one end to the other, but thin so that the sunlight will heat the rooms in the cold months. In our three-story abode, our family will have use of the first floor for our chamber, the nursery, the handmaiden’s room, and pantry. It will save us money to only have to use wood to heat one floor of stoves, and I will be able to see the children playing outdoors wherever I am in the house. Madame Hawthorne, Ebe, and Louisa will have rooms separate from ours on the second floor, and we will meet only if we choose to. Nathaniel has the luxury of the entire third floor for his study, where he may work without the noise of children or callers in the parlor to disturb him.

As taxing as the moves and cohabitations with his family have been, I am pleased with the energy of this time. Nathaniel has begun to put on weight, so he no longer has a gaunt, feral appearance, and has slowly settled our debts with his custom house pay. He has also been appointed secretary of the Salem Lyceum. He
invites our friends to lecture, and when they come, other friends do as well. Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, my sisters—we see them with some regularity, and Nathaniel is a bit more at ease because he has steady employment, and more of a name for himself through his contributions to journals and reviews. I do wish he would accept more of the invitations from society to speak and to dine, but he refuses, and tells me that his evenings are for me and the children, and not the wealthy and the intellectuals, who want to gawk at the man who writes the dark stories.

It is difficult for Nathaniel to find time to write, having to work all day and attend to his family in the evening, but he makes up for it by always having a journal at his fingertips. He jots notes to himself here and there, but the long passages mostly detail the observations he makes of Una and Julian.

The winter of 1848 is the first I can remember when Nathaniel is not miserable, but he is restless. I know by the way he stares out windows, does not hear me when I speak, and often seems startled by human company that stories are forming in his mind.

One night I awaken to find our bed cold. I wrap my shawl around my arms and check the children first, who sleep soundly, before creeping up to the third floor. There I see Nathaniel working at his desk by the light of a single candle. He has left the fireplace cold, either to conserve our wood or because he did not want the idea that took him from his sleep to slip away on the night wind. He wears his nightshirt, and has a blanket wrapped around his legs, a scarf around his neck, and fingerless gloves on his hands. His brown hair appears black, and the flickering candlelight changes the shadows on his face so that he looks like a
haunted man. I wish to go to him, but I cannot bear to disturb him; nor can I tear myself away. I will impress this moment upon my consciousness, for it would make a divine painting, if I were ever again to return to an easel.

Only the whistling winds outside and the scratch of his quill on the paper can be heard. When he pauses to dip the quill in the inkpot, he lets out his breath as if he has been holding it, and lifts his head to stare at the wall across from him. I slip back farther into the shadows so he does not see me, and watch until he places his quill on the desk and rubs his eyes with his fists. He turns a page in the journal lying next to his papers, and reads with great interest until he suddenly picks up the quill again, fills it with ink, and resumes his scribbling.

He has shared his journal with me, and it is full of observations of Una’s temper tantrums and comments. While I attribute her mercurial nature to her young age, he ascribes more sinister motives to it, and half jokes that she could be possessed. I wonder what Una can have to do with what he writes with such determination. Perhaps it will be a children’s story, one that will not reflect the darkness of the human heart, one that will not wake me in the middle of the night with fear for what my husband conceals under the veil of his soul.