On editing his observations on meeting Abraham Lincoln - photo 1
On editing his observations on meeting Abraham Lincoln - photo 2

On editing his observations on meeting Abraham Lincoln

Lot 105
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
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$ 3 780
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 967569
Lot 105 | On editing his observations on meeting Abraham Lincoln
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
On editing his observations on meeting Abraham Lincoln

Nathaniel Hawthorne, ca. 23 August 1862

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph manuscript signed ("A Peaceable Man") to "My Dear Editor [James T. Fields]," [West Gouldsborough, c. 23 August 1862].



207 x 127mm (contemporary ink smudges, mounting remnants along right margin on verso). Half green morocco folder.



Hawthorne on Lincoln—the original manuscript for his published tongue-and-cheek "letter" to his editor complaining of the removal of the author's passage on his interview with the sixteenth president: "a treasure to the future historian." On 13 March 1862, during a visit to Washington, Hawthorne joined a delegation from Massachusetts to visit Abraham Lincoln at The White House. Hawthorne recorded his impressions of the visit in his essay “Chiefly about War Matters,” which appeared in the July 1862 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The original draft included two passages about Lincoln that James T. Fields (his longtime friend and Atlantic editor) requested that Hawthorne remove including the observation that the president was “about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable” (CE 23:412), and “On the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies” (CE 23:413). Hawthorne obliged on 23 May 1862, though with the protest that the omitted lines were “the only part of the article really worth publishing” (CE 18:461-62). Fields, writing in his 1872 memoir, Yesterdays with Authors, thought that the passages "would not be wise or tasteful to print ... but he always though I was wrong in my decision" (p. 98).



Hawthorne's lighthearted letter of protest was published in The Atlantic Monthly of October 1862 as a headnote to “Leamington Spa” (p. 451) and eventually in the Hawthorne edition (CE 18:485). Headed with the instruction, "(Insert this at the beginning of the article)," it is worthy of quoting in large part: "My dear Editor, You can hardly have expected to hear from me again, (unless by invitation to the field of honor,) after those cruel and terrible notes upon my harmless article in the July Number. How could you find it in your heart (a soft one, as I have hitherto supposed) to treat an old friend and liege-contributor in that unheard-of way? Not that I should care a fig for any amount of vituperation, if you had only let my article come before the public as I wrote it, instead of suppressing precisely the passages with which I had taken most pains, and which I flattered myself were most cleverly done. The interview with the President, for example: it would have been a treasure to the future historian; and I hold you responsible to posterity for thrusting it into the fire." Published in Letters, Centennial Edition, 18:485-486.

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