Recounting a hearty English supper for his son - photo 1
Recounting a hearty English supper for his son - photo 2

Recounting a hearty English supper for his son

Lot 103
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 5 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 967597
Lot 103 | Recounting a hearty English supper for his son
Estimate value
$ 5 000 – 7 000
Recounting a hearty English supper for his son

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 16 August 1856

HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph letter signed ("Nathl Hawthorne") to Julian Hawthorne, Liverpool, 16 August 1856.



Four pages, bifolium, 126 x 103mm (mounting strip affixed to spinefold).



A charming, fatherly letter describing a feast to his son Julian (addressed as "Old Boy"), then ten years of age and at home in Blackheath where Sophia and Una also lived to escape the smoke and gloom of Liverpool. Hawthorne, staying at the Duke St. boarding house of Mrs. Mary Blodget during the work week, offers an extended description of the "very good dinners" there, noting "I think you would like very much to be there… There are so many people, that Charley sits at a side-table, and he lives upon the fat of the land; and so would you, if you sat at the side-table with him. Yesterday, he ate roast-beef and Yorkshire pudding; but if he had preferred it, he might have had some chicken-pie, with nice paste; or some roast duck, which looked very good; or some tripe fried in batter; or some boiled chicken, — or a great many other delectable things. And we had two kinds of fish — boiled salmon and fried soles. I myself ate salmon, but the soles seemed very nice too. And we had so many green peas that they were not half eaten, and string-beans besides — oh, how nice! When the puddings, and tarts, and custards, and Banbury cakes, and cheese-cakes, and green gages, and that kind of stuff was put on the table, I had hardly any appetite left; but I did manage to eat some currant pudding, and a Banbury cake, and a Victoria cake, and a slice of beautiful Spanish musk-melon and some plums. If you had been there, think you would have had a very good dinner, and there would not have been nearly so many nice things left on the table." Hawthorne also grants Julian's request for horse back riding lessons: "Tell mamma that, if she pleases, I have no objection to your['re] taking riding-lessons along with Una. Mamma says you have been a very good boy. l am glad to hear it, and hope you will keep good till I come back." A charming letter offering a glimpse of Hawthorne's warmer side.

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