Memories of a hostess : a chronicle of eminent friendships, drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs James T Fields . of the Augustanfriends in turn. Sometimes they appear as separatesubjects of record, sometimes in company with theirfellows. That majestic figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne,whose death in 1864 made the earliest gap in the circleof figures most memorable, shall be first to step forth,like one of his own personages of the Province House,from the shadows in which indeed he lived. The long chapter on Hawthorne in Yesterdays withAuthors, and that small volume about him which contr
Memories of a hostess : a chronicle of eminent friendships, drawn chiefly from the diaries of Mrs James T Fields . of the Augustanfriends in turn. Sometimes they appear as separatesubjects of record, sometimes in company with theirfellows. That majestic figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne,whose death in 1864 made the earliest gap in the circleof figures most memorable, shall be first to step forth,like one of his own personages of the Province House,from the shadows in which indeed he lived. The long chapter on Hawthorne in Yesterdays withAuthors, and that small volume about him which contributed in 1899 to the Beacon Biographies,constitute the more finished portraits of the man as hishost and hostess in Charles Street saw him. His lettersto Fields are quoted at length in Yesterdays withAuthors, and contribute an autobiographic element ofmuch importance to any study of Hawthorne. Butthere are illuminating passages that were left unpub-lished. In one of them, for example, Hawthorne, in aletter of September 21,1860, after lamenting the state ofhis daughters health, exclaimed: I am continually re-. HAWTHOHXE IX CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE ^s minded, nowadays, of a response which I once hearda drunken sailor make to a pious gentleman who asked him how he felt: Pretty d d miserable, thank God 1 It very well expresses my thorough discomfortand forced acquiescence. In another, of July 14, 1861, after the calamity that befell Longfellow in thetragic death of his wife through burning, Hawthornewrote to Fields : — How does Longfellow bear this terrible misfor-tune ? How are his own injuries ? Do write and tellme all about him. I cannot at all reconcile this calamityto my sense of fitness. One would think that thereought to have been no deep sorrow in the life of a manlike him; and now comes this blackest of shadows,which no sunshine hereafter can ever penetrate! Ishall be afraid ever to meet him again; he cannot againbe the man that I have known. In the words, I shall be
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Keywords: ., bookauthorhowemade, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookyear1922
