On The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his daughter - photo 1
On The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his daughter - photo 2

On The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his daughter

Starting price
$ 40 000
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 967672
Lot 96 | On The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his daughter
On The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his daughter

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 21 May 1851

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph letter signed ("Nath. Hawthorne") to George S. Hillard, Esq., (1808-1879), Lenox, 21 May 1851.



One page, bifolium 246 x 198mm, with integral transmittal panel addressed in his hand with nearly intact wax seal (marginal loss from seal tear, mounting remnants along verso of left margin, early catalogue description affixed to interior blank page).



"I have no great faith in the public, nor do I think the better of myself when I find favor in its eyes."



An important letter of Hawthorne on The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and the birth of his third child, Rose. A fine letter—optimistic, relaxed and playful in tone, but subtly tinged with Hawthorne's ever-present fatalism—to Hillard, a successful attorney, Whig politician and amateur man of letters. The letter is from Hawthorne's most productive period as a writer. Here, he expresses pleasure that Hillard has enjoyed The House of the Seven Gables, comments on the book and compares it to The Scarlet Letter, confesses his ambivalence about the public reception of his work, and humorously announces a new addition to his family ("published" by his wife "in one small volume"):



"Dear Hillard, No man's praise could be sweeter to me than yours. I am truly glad that you like the Seven Gables so much, but am a little apprehensive that, if I have shot high enough to hit your taste, my arrow has struck above the bull's eye of the target. I myself feel that my last book [The House of the Seven Gables] is better than the preceding one [The Scarlet Letter]; if I am capable of doing anything well, there must be proof of it there. But I have no great faith in the public, nor do I think the better of myself when I find favor in its eyes."



Then, Hawthorne passes on news of the birth of the family's third child: "Yesterday morning, at three o'clock Sophie [Sophie Peabody, Hawthorne's wife] published a complete edition of Human Nature, in one small volume which I hope will live longer than any work of mine is likely to do. She called it, for the present, Rosebud; -when it expands it will be Rose Hawthorne - certainly a very pretty name. I think my heart warms to this little [illeg.] far more than to either of my other children - more, I mean, than it did at first. She is to be the daughter of my age, that is, if I live to be an old man - which, I think, is not to be my destiny. I am happy in my life - happier than most men - yet not unwilling to see the end of it; if I could leave my family without harm to them. Sometimes I think it better to sleep than to be at the trouble even of being happy."



"I wish very much to come to Boston, and hope to do so, in the course of the summer. These mountains and woods are good to live on [?] but there is a great weight and shadow in them, nevertheless. Don't you mean to come out and see me, sometime or other? Our house is of the smallest and humblest, but there will be a room for you, when this flurry of the new birth has a little subsided[?]. October would be a beautiful month to come, or you might come earlier, and spend a day or two on your way to, or return from, Saratoga. I wish very much indeed to see you. Your friend..."



While Hawthorne and his family remained in the relatively wild Berkshire countryside at Lenox, a number of other literary acquaintances settled or stayed in the area, including Herman Melville, James Russell Lowell, Henry James, Sr., Edwin P. Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and the publisher J. T. Fields. Hawthorne's description of the forbidding "great weight and shadow" of the Berkshire forests provocatively parallels his description of the thick forest in The Scarlet Letter. Letters of Hawthorne with literary content are uncommon. Not published in Works. Provenance: George Hillard, 1808-1879, the recipient – James T. Fields, 1817-1881, Hawthorne's publisher (per letter of George Bancroft, 6 January 1865, described below) – George Bancroft, 1800-1891 (ibid.) – Frederick Locker-Lampson, 1821-1895, English poet and bibliophile (ownership siganture on address panel) – sold Christie's New York, 8 April 2003, lot 150.



[With:] BANCROFT, George. Autograph letter signed to Frederick Locker-Lampson, New York 6 January 1865. 4pp. 8vo.: "…my friends dropped a hint that you are a great collector of autographs & had none of Hawthorne; so I made my friend who is Hawthorne's publisher [James T. Fields] rummage his chests of papers, for the best autograph of our lamented novelist; and I had better results than I dared to anticipate. I should not know where to find so good a specimen of the handwriting of the man who in the Scarlet Letter has reproduced the old Times of New England with a truth and vividness wholly unequalled." [Tipped together with:] FIELDS, James T. Autograph letter signed to George Bancroft, Boston, 21 September 1864, "I send you for your English friend Hawthorne's letter to Genl. Pierce...The envelope in which it came...has his autograph signature in a corner."

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