27

Summer 1846
Salem, Massachusetts

I read the words over and over again, but they still do not make sense. Nathaniel has handed me a copy of the New-York Tribune in which Margaret Fuller—our so-called friend—describes my husband’s story collection, Mosses from an Old Manse, as thin and lacking clear insight into the human condition. My indignation has me sputtering and boiling like a pot on the stove.

“How could she?” I manage to spit through gritted teeth. “After all of our troubles, our near destitution, our friendship! This is a betrayal. A jealous betrayal because she cannot stand that we are in love, and our family grows, and you are just beginning to make a name for yourself as a writer.”

“I too am surprised, but as a published author, I suppose I must prepare for critical reviews of my work.”

“But this is not scholarship. This is blindly personal.”

“It is not all bad. She has nice things to say about some of the stories.”

“She should praise all of them, for they are each brilliant. She is ruffled that her book on modern women was widely criticized, while all she has seen are good reviews of your work.”

My seat is still sore from our son’s birth weeks ago, and I have strained my exhausted head with my outburst. Una looks up at me with large eyes and stands like a little schoolmistress.

“Oo should no yell, Mama.”

Nathaniel and I cannot help but smile at our commanding little tot. I open my arms to her and she runs to my lap, injuring my body a bit in her jump, but not enough for me to flinch too awfully. The babe sleeps on in the nearby bassinet; we have not yet named him. If our daughter is the angel of light and passion, our son is the angel of tranquillity, praise God, but no name seems good enough for our little prince, so that is what we call him.

“I should not have shown you,” Nathaniel says, lifting Una from me. “Henceforth I shall only share the good reviews. In the meantime, I will burn this paper, and with it the last embers of our friendship with Queen Margaret.”

His voice has many layers. He pretends he does not suffer, but I hear the deep hurt, the bitterness and regret. I am angry with myself for stoking the fires of his frustration, and vow to emphasize what is good and positive.

“I should not have erupted,” I say. “You are correct, Una. Let us only speak of the light. Mr. Channing praised your book highly. Franklin Pierce and Mr. O’Sullivan adore it. You never disappoint Mr. Longfellow. You will have a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year at the custom house, and our debts are nearly paid off.”

“And I am now the proud father of two perfect cherubs,” he says.

“What’s a terub?” asks Una.

“It is a spunky wee angel borrowed from heaven for earthly enjoyment, though it does have a streak of mischief, a dash of turbulence, and a force like a tempest at times.”

“I don’t know what oo say,” says Una, with all of the disgust of a haughty woman, and demands to be put down, much to her father’s amusement.

I remind my daughter that she must be polite and respectful, but the little prince stirs at my speech, taking my attention from Una, and from worry over the reception of my husband’s work.

The weeks and months of rearing young children blur together as if in a silvery dream, compounded by the beginnings of our gypsy life. I am content, but never settled, blessed with an abundance of sensual stimulation and closeness, but distracted by I know not what.

We finally named our boy Julian. Nathaniel is partial to Julian from Shelley’s work, because of Shelley’s frustrations with the so-called limitation of words, but I think of the nobility of Shelley’s character Julian, in his belief that man can make the world better. Either way, our friends and family think us strange for giving our children unusual names, but we believe it makes them special.

I could never have anticipated that I would reside under the same roof with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters, but that is exactly where I find myself. We must economize, so it makes little sense for us to keep separate lodgings, and we start in a small house together in a fine Salem neighborhood. Soon, however, with so much time spent in such close quarters, we determine that a larger home in a less fashionable section will better serve, even if we cannot afford to furnish it.

Fourteen Mall Street is a great, slim, rectangular-shaped thing, long from one end to the other, but thin so that the sunlight will heat the rooms in the cold months. In our three-story abode, our family will have use of the first floor for our chamber, the nursery, the handmaiden’s room, and pantry. It will save us money to only have to use wood to heat one floor of stoves, and I will be able to see the children playing outdoors wherever I am in the house. Madame Hawthorne, Ebe, and Louisa will have rooms separate from ours on the second floor, and we will meet only if we choose to. Nathaniel has the luxury of the entire third floor for his study, where he may work without the noise of children or callers in the parlor to disturb him.

As taxing as the moves and cohabitations with his family have been, I am pleased with the energy of this time. Nathaniel has begun to put on weight, so he no longer has a gaunt, feral appearance, and has slowly settled our debts with his custom house pay. He has also been appointed secretary of the Salem Lyceum. He invites our friends to lecture, and when they come, other friends do as well. Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, my sisters—we see them with some regularity, and Nathaniel is a bit more at ease because he has steady employment, and more of a name for himself through his contributions to journals and reviews. I do wish he would accept more of the invitations from society to speak and to dine, but he refuses, and tells me that his evenings are for me and the children, and not the wealthy and the intellectuals, who want to gawk at the man who writes the dark stories.

It is difficult for Nathaniel to find time to write, having to work all day and attend to his family in the evening, but he makes up for it by always having a journal at his fingertips. He jots notes to himself here and there, but the long passages mostly detail the observations he makes of Una and Julian.

The winter of 1848 is the first I can remember when Nathaniel is not miserable, but he is restless. I know by the way he stares out windows, does not hear me when I speak, and often seems startled by human company that stories are forming in his mind.

One night I awaken to find our bed cold. I wrap my shawl around my arms and check the children first, who sleep soundly, before creeping up to the third floor. There I see Nathaniel working at his desk by the light of a single candle. He has left the fireplace cold, either to conserve our wood or because he did not want the idea that took him from his sleep to slip away on the night wind. He wears his nightshirt, and has a blanket wrapped around his legs, a scarf around his neck, and fingerless gloves on his hands. His brown hair appears black, and the flickering candlelight changes the shadows on his face so that he looks like a haunted man. I wish to go to him, but I cannot bear to disturb him; nor can I tear myself away. I will impress this moment upon my consciousness, for it would make a divine painting, if I were ever again to return to an easel.

Only the whistling winds outside and the scratch of his quill on the paper can be heard. When he pauses to dip the quill in the inkpot, he lets out his breath as if he has been holding it, and lifts his head to stare at the wall across from him. I slip back farther into the shadows so he does not see me, and watch until he places his quill on the desk and rubs his eyes with his fists. He turns a page in the journal lying next to his papers, and reads with great interest until he suddenly picks up the quill again, fills it with ink, and resumes his scribbling.

He has shared his journal with me, and it is full of observations of Una’s temper tantrums and comments. While I attribute her mercurial nature to her young age, he ascribes more sinister motives to it, and half jokes that she could be possessed. I wonder what Una can have to do with what he writes with such determination. Perhaps it will be a children’s story, one that will not reflect the darkness of the human heart, one that will not wake me in the middle of the night with fear for what my husband conceals under the veil of his soul.