Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne Volume I Part 3

Dearest, I dare not give you permission to go out in the east winds.

The west wind will come very often I am sure, if it were only for the sake of my Dove. Have nothing to do with that hateful east wind.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody, Care of Dr. N. Peabody, Salem, Ma.s.s.

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, August 21st, 1839

My dearest will be glad to know that her husband has not had to endure the heavy suns.h.i.+ne this afternoon;--he came home at three o'clock or thereabout, and locking the door, betook himself to sleep--first ensuring himself sweet slumber and blissful dreams (if any dreams should come) by reperusing his sweet wife's letter. His wife was with him at the moment of falling asleep, and at the moment of awaking; but she stole away from him during the interval. Naughty wife!

Nevertheless, he has slept and is refreshed--slept how long he does not know; but the sun has made a far progress downward, since he closed his eyes.

Oh, my wife, if it were possible that you should vanish from me, I feel and know that my soul would be solitary forever and ever. I almost think that there would be no "forever" for me. I could not encounter such a desolate Eternity, were you to leave me. You are my first hope and my last. If you fail me (but there is no such if) I might toil onward through this life without much outward change, but I should sink down and die utterly upon the threshold of the dreary Future. Were _you_ to find yourself deceived, you would betake yourself at once to G.o.d and Heaven, in the certainty of there finding a thousand-fold recompense for all earthly disappointment; but with me, it seems as if hope and happiness would be torn up by the roots, and could never bloom again, neither in this soil nor the soil of Paradise.

August 22d. Five or six o'clock P.M. I was interrupted by the supper bell, while writing the foregoing sentence; and much that I might have added has now pa.s.sed out of my mind--or pa.s.sed into its depths. My beloved wife, let us make no question about our love, whether it be true. Were it otherwise, G.o.d would not have left your heart to wreck itself utterly--His angels keep watch over you--they would have given you early and continued warning of the approach of Evil in any shape.

Two letters has my Dove blessed me with, since that of Monday--both beautiful--all three, indeed, most beautiful. There is a great deal in all of them that should be especially answered; but how may this be effected in one little sheet?--moreover, it is my pleasure to write in a more desultory fas.h.i.+on.

Nevertheless, propound as many questions as you see fit, in your letters, but, dearest, let it be without expectation of a set response.

When I first looked at that shadow of the Pa.s.sing Hour, I thought her expression too sad; but the more I looked the sweeter and pleasanter it grew--and now I am inclined to think that few mortals are waited on by happier Hours than is my Dove, even in her pensive moods. My beloved, you make a Heaven round about you, and dwell in it continually; and as it is your Heaven, so is it mine. My heart has not been very heavy--not desperately heavy--any one time since I loved you; not even your illness and headaches, dearest wife, can make me desperately sad. My stock of suns.h.i.+ne is so infinitely increased by partaking of yours, that even when a cloud flits by, I incomparably prefer its gloom to the sullen, leaden tinge that used to overspread my sky. Were you to bring me, in outward appearance, nothing save a load of grief and pain, yet I do believe that happiness, in no stinted measure, would somehow or other be smuggled into the dismal burthen.

But you come to me with no grief--no pain--you come with flowers of Paradise; some in bloom, many in the bud, and all of them immortal.

August 23d--between 7 and 8 P.M. Dearest wife, when I think how soon this letter will greet you, it makes my heart yearn towards you so much the more. How much of life we waste! Oh, beloved, if we had but a cottage somewhere beyond the sway of the east wind, yet within the limits of New England, where we could be always together, and have a place to _be_ in--what could we desire more? Nothing--save daily bread, (or rather bread and milk, for I think I should adopt your diet) and clean white apparel every day for mine unspotted Dove. Then how happy I would be--and how good! I could not be other than good and happy, when your kiss would sanctify me at all my outgoings and incomings. And you should draw, and paint, and sculpture, and make music, and poetry too, and your husband would admire and criticise; and I, being pervaded with your spirit, would write beautifully and make myself famous for your sake, because perhaps you would like to have the world acknowledge me--but if the whole world glorified me with one voice, it would be a meed of little value in comparison with my wife's smile and kiss. For I shall always read my ma.n.u.scripts to you, in the summer afternoons or winter evenings; and if they please you I shall expect a smile and a kiss as my reward--and if they do not please, I must have a smile and kiss to comfort me.

Good bye--sweet, sweet, dear, dear, sweetest, dearest wife. I received the kiss you sent me and have treasured it up in my heart. Take one from your own husband.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody, Care of Dr. A. Peabody, Salem, Ma.s.s.

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, August 25th, 1839

_Dearest Wife_,

I did not write you yesterday, for several reasons--partly because I was interrupted by company; and also I had a difficult letter to project and execute in behalf of an office-seeker; and in the afternoon I fell asleep amid thoughts of my own Dove; and when I awoke, I took up Miss Martineau's Deerbrook, and became interested in it--because, being myself a lover, nothing that treats earnestly of love can be indifferent to me. Some truth in the book I recognised--but there seems to be too much of dismal fantasy.

Thus, one way or another, the Sabbath pa.s.sed away without my pouring out my heart to my sweet wife on paper; but I thought of you, dearest, all day long. Your letter came this forenoon, and I opened it on board of a salt-s.h.i.+p, and s.n.a.t.c.hed portions of it in the intervals of keeping tally. Every letter of yours is as fresh and new as if you had never written a preceding one--each is like a strain of music unheard before, yet all are in sweet accordance--all of them introduce me deeper and deeper into your being, yet there is no sense of surprise at what I see, and feel, and know, therein. I am familiar with your inner heart, as with my home; but yet there is a sense of revelation--or perhaps of recovered intimacy with a dearest friend long hidden from me. Were you not my wife in some past eternity?

Dearest, perhaps these speculations are not wise. We will not cast dreamy glances too far behind us or before us, but live our present life in simplicity; for methinks that is the way to realise it most intensely. Good night, most beloved. Your husband is presently going to bed; for the bell has just rung (those bells are always interrupting us, whether for dinner, or supper, or bed-time) and he rose early this morning, and must be abroad at sunrise tomorrow. Good night, my wife. Receive your husband's kiss upon your eyelids.

August 27th. past 7 o'clock. Very dearest, your husband has been stationed all day at the end of Long Wharf, and I rather think that he had the most eligible situation of anybody in Boston. I was aware that it must be intensely hot in the middle of the city; but there was only a very short s.p.a.ce of uncomfortable heat in my region, half-way towards the center of the harbour; and almost all the time there was a pure and delightful breeze, fluttering and palpitating, sometimes shyly kissing my brow, then dying away, and then rus.h.i.+ng upon me in livelier sport, so that I was fain to settle my straw hat tighter upon my head. Late in the afternoon, there was a sunny shower, which came down so like a benediction, that it seemed ungrateful to take shelter in the cabin, or to put up an umbrella. Then there was a rainbow, or a large segment of one, so exceedingly brilliant, and of such long endurance, that I almost fancied it was stained into the sky, and would continue there permanently. And there were clouds floating all about, great clouds and small, of all glorious and lovely hues (save that imperial crimson, which was never revealed save to our united gaze) so glorious, indeed, and so lovely, that I had a fantasy of Heaven's being broken into fleecy fragments, and dispersed throughout s.p.a.ce, with its blessed inhabitants yet dwelling blissfully upon those scattered islands. Oh, how I do wish that my sweet wife and I could dwell upon a cloud, and follow the sunset round about the earth! Perhaps she might; but my nature is too earthy to permit me to dwell there with her--and I know well that she would not leave me here. Dearest, how I longed for you to be with me, both in the shower and the suns.h.i.+ne. I did but half see what was to be seen, nor but half feel the emotions which the scene ought to have produced. Had you been there, I do think that we should have remembered this among our most wondrously beautiful sunsets. And the sea was very beautiful too.

Would it not be a pleasant life to--but I will not sketch out any more fantasies tonight.

Beloved, have not I been gone a great while? Truly it seems to me very long; and it [is] strange what an increase of apparent length is always added by two or three days of the second week. Do not you yearn to see me? I know you do, dearest. How do I know it? How should I, save by my own heart?

Dearest wife, I am tired now, and have scribbled this letter in such slovenly fas.h.i.+on that I fear you will hardly be able to read it--nevertheless, I have been happy in writing it. But now, though it is so early yet, I shall throw aside my pen, especially as the paper is so nearly covered.

My sweet Dove,

Good night.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody, Care of Dr. N. Peabody, Salem, Ma.s.s.

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, September 23d 1839. past 6 P.M.

Belovedest little wife--sweetest Sophie Hawthorne--what a delicious walk that was, last Thursday! It seems to me, now, as it I could really remember every footstep of it. It is almost as distinct as the recollection of those walks, in which my earthly form did really tread beside your own, and my arm upheld you; and, indeed, it has the same character as those heavenly ramblings;--for did we tread on earth ever then? Oh no--our souls went far away among the sunset clouds, and wherever there was ethereal beauty, there were we, our true selves; and it was there we grew into each other, and became a married pair.

Dearest, I love to date our marriage as far back as possible, and I feel sure that the tie had been formed, and our union had become indissoluble, even before we sat down together on the steps of the "house of spirits." How beautiful and blessed those hours appear to me! True; we are far more conscious of our relation, and therefore infinitely happier, now, than we were then; but still those remembrances are among the most precious treasures of my soul. It is not past happiness; it makes a portion of our present bliss. And thus, doubtless, even amid the joys of Heaven, we shall love to look back to our earthly bliss, and treasure it forever in the sum of an infinitely acc.u.mulating happiness. Perhaps not a single pressure of the hand, not a glance, not a sweet and tender tone, but will be repeated sometime or other in our memory.

Oh, dearest, blessedest Dove, I never felt sure of going to Heaven, till I knew that you loved me; but now I am conscious of G.o.d's love in your own. And now, good bye for a little while, mine own wife. I thought it was just on the verge of supper-time when I began to write--and there is the bell now. I was beginning to fear that it had rung unheard while I was communing with my Dove. Should we be the more ethereal, if we did not eat? I have a most human and earthly appet.i.te.

Mine own wife, since supper I have been reading over again (for the third time--the two first being aboard my salts.h.i.+p--the Marcia Cleaves) your letter of yesterday--and a dearest letter it is--and meeting with Sophie Hawthorne twice, I took the liberty to kiss her very fervently. Will she forgive me? Do know yourself by that name, dearest, and think of yourself as Sophie Hawthorne? It thrills my heart to write it, and still more, I think, to read it in the fairy letters of your own hand. Oh, you are my wife, my dearest, truest, tenderest, most beloved wife. I would not be disjoined from you for a moment, for all the world. And how strong, while I write, is the consciousness that I am truly your husband!

My little Dove. I have observed that b.u.t.terflies--very broad-winged and magnificent b.u.t.terflies--frequently come on board of the salt s.h.i.+p when I am at work. What have these bright strangers to do on Long Wharf, where there are no flowers or any green thing--nothing but brick stores, stone piles, black s.h.i.+ps, and the bustle of toilsome men, who neither look up to the blue sky, nor take note of these wandering gems of air. I cannot account for them, unless, dearest, they are the lovely fantasies of your mind, which you send thither in search of me. There is the supper-bell. Good-bye, darling.

Sept. 25th. Morning.--Dove, I have but a single moment to embrace you.

Tell Sophie Hawthorne I love her. Has she a partiality for her own, own

HUSBAND.

TO MISS PEABODY

_Custom House_, October 10th, 1839-- past 2 P.M.

Belovedest, your two precious letters have arrived--the first yesterday forenoon, the second today. In regard to the first, there was a little circ.u.mstance that affected me so pleasantly, that I cannot help telling my sweetest wife of it. I had read it over three times, I believe, and was reading it again, towards evening in my room; when I discovered, in a remote region of the sheet, two or three lines which I had not before seen, and which Sophie Hawthorne had signed with her own name. It is the strangest thing in the world that I had not read them before--but certainly it was a happy accident; for, finding them so unexpectedly, when I supposed that I already had the whole letter by heart, it seemed as if there had been a sudden revelation of my Dove--as if she had stolen into my room (as, in her last epistle, she dreams of doing) and made me sensible of her presence at that very moment. Dearest, since writing the above, I have been interrupted by some official business; for I am at present filling the place of Colonel Hall as head of the measurers'

department--which may account for my writing to you from the Custom House. It is the most ungenial place in the whole world to write a love-letter in:--not but what my heart is full of love, here as elsewhere: but it closes up, and will not give forth its treasure now.

I do wish mine own Dove had been with me, on my last pa.s.sage to Boston. We should a.s.suredly have thought that a miracle had been wrought in our favor--that Providence had put angelic sentinels round about us, to ensure us the quiet enjoyment of our affection--for, as far as Lynn, I was actually the sole occupant of the car in which I had seated myself. What a blissful solitude would that have been, had my whole self been there! Then would we have flown through s.p.a.ce like two disembodied spirits--two or one. Are we singular or plural, dearest? Has not each of us a right to use the first person singular, when speaking in behalf of our united being? Does not "I," whether spoken by Sophie Hawthorne's lips or mine, express the one spirit of myself and that darlingest Sophie Hawthorne? But what a wilful little person she is! Does she still refuse my Dove's proffer to kiss her cheek? Well--I shall contrive some suitable punishment: and if my Dove cannot kiss her, I must undertake the task in person. What a painful duty it will be!

October 11th-- past 4 P.M. Did my Dove fly in with me in my chamber when I entered just now? If so, let her make herself manifest to me this very moment, for my heart needs her presence.--You are not here dearest. I sit writing in the middle of the chamber, opposite the looking-gla.s.s; and as soon as I finish this sentence, I shall look therein--and really I have something like a shadowy notion, that I shall behold mine own white Dove peeping over my shoulder. One moment more--I defer the experiment as long as possible, because there is a pleasure in the slight tremor of the heart that this fantasy has awakened. Dearest, if you can make me sensible of your presence, do it now!--Oh, naughty, naughty Dove! I have looked, and saw nothing but my own dark face and beetle-brow. How could you disappoint me so? Or is it merely the defect in my own eyes, which cannot behold the spiritual? My inward eye can behold you, though but dimly. Perhaps, beloved wife, you did not come when I called, because you mistook the locality whence the call proceeded. You are to know, then, that I have removed from my old apartment, which was wanted as a parlor by Mr. and Mrs. Devens, and am now established in a back chamber--a pleasant enough and comfortable little room. The windows have a better prospect than those of my former chamber, for I can see the summit of the hill on which Gardner Greene's estate was situated; it is the highest point of the city, and the boys at play on it are painted strongly against the sky. No roof ascends as high as this--nothing but the steeple of the Park-street church, which points upward behind it.

It is singular that such a hill should have been suffered to remain so long, in the very heart of the city; it affects me somewhat as if a portion of the original forest were still growing here. But they are fast digging it away now; and if they continue their labors, I shall soon be able to see the Park-street steeple as far downward as the dial. Moreover, in another direction, I can see the top of the dome of the State-House; and if my Dove were to take wing and alight there (the easiest thing in the world for a dove to do) she might look directly into my window, and see me writing this letter. I glance thither as I write, but can see no Dove there.