"I hold you responsible for the enclosed nonsense." - photo 1

"I hold you responsible for the enclosed nonsense."

Starting price
$ 4 000
Auction dateClassic
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
Auctioneer
CHRISTIE'S
Event location
USA, New York
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Archive
ID 967654
Lot 102 | "I hold you responsible for the enclosed nonsense."
"I hold you responsible for the enclosed nonsense."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, n.d.

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph letter signed ("Nathl Hawthorne") to Henry Bright, n.p., n.d.



One page, 124 x 98mm (mounted to a card).



Hawthorne submits a piece of "nonsense." A brief letter to his close friend: "I hold you responsible for the enclosed nonsense; for I never should have dreamed of writing it except at your instigation. Read it over, and do as you like about sending it to Mr. Theracly." Bright was a wealthy English merchant (he owned the largest ocean-going steamship of the time) who met Hawthorne when Emerson introduced them in Hawthorne's home in 1852. When Hawthorne later served as United States Consul in Liverpool, he and Bright became very close friends, with Hawthorne confiding his most personal thoughts to Bright, entrusting his manuscripts with him for safe-keeping, and endlessly arguing politics and philosophy while smoking cigars during their frequent visits.



It is uncertain to which of his writings Hawthorne refers in this letter, but it could have been one of the twelve essays on English topics that were written between 1857 and 1863, and collected together into Hawthorne's final book, Our Old Home. The identity of Mr. Theracly is unknown, but he was probably an editor at The Westminster Review or The Examiner where Bright had published his own writings over the years (including a mostly favorable review of Our Old Home), however, no bibliographic records any of those essays as appearing in either journal. Obviously, Bright had invited (or more likely challenged) Hawthorne to write an essay on a particular subject, and Hawthorne was complying with as much good humor as he could muster, making it very clear that he didn't think much of the final result of his labors, or its fate. The fact that Hawthorne refers to this piece as nonsense and says he wrote it only because Bright invited him to do so, reflects an attitude Hawthorne was unlikely to have had toward any of his fully-developed English essays, and it seems probable that this letter is evidence of some as yet unrecorded short piece of writing that Hawthorne did as a favor for his good friend—perhaps a book review or short sketch for one of the two journals with which Bright was associated. Not published in Letters, Centennial Edition.

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