30

All of these deaths have done something to Nathaniel that I would not have expected: They have forced him back into life.

The summer following our arrival at the little red house becomes a time of great abundance. We cannot drink enough of each other and of our healthy children, the fresh lake, the pure air, the fragrant flowers. We raise chickens, and ride horses, and take in feral cats. We climb mountains, and Nathaniel teaches the children to swim in our lake, honoring our unspoken understanding that none of ours will die by water. Nathaniel also becomes close with another young writer who has achieved success and acclaim with his published works, Herman Melville.

Nathaniel met Herman at a picnic and hike with friends in Pittsfield. They were apparently overtaken by a tempest that sent them all into a cave for shelter. There my forty-six-year-old husband found an admirer in thirty-one-year-old Herman. To my surprise, Nathaniel liked Herman so much that he invited him to stay with us for a few days while Herman looks for a place to live nearby with his young family.

The children rush out the front door when they hear the galloping and barking that accompany Herman’s arrival. I cross to the window to see the man throw his strong leg over his horse before it has fully halted, and tie a massive dog to the post. He and Nathaniel embrace and slap each other on the back as if they have known each other for years instead of weeks, and Una and Julian run to Herman and beg for rides on the canine.

“Let him water his animals first,” says Nathaniel, which sends Una off to the well pump.

“Where are your wife and boys?” asks Nathaniel, as they walk to the house.

“I left them with friends,” says Herman. “I do not want anything to interfere with my time with the great Hawthorne.”

I watch my husband dismiss his comment with a wave and a bashful smile, and cannot take my eyes from the visitor, who cannot take his eyes from Nathaniel.

The men have been embarking upon mountain hikes over difficult terrain, and the children are disappointed to be left behind, as am I. I envisioned more picnics and leisure with our guest, but one so young as Herman cannot be expected to sit still for long. I wonder how his wife endures his restlessness.

At the dinner table in the evenings, Herman is polite to me, but it is clear that he is here to worship Nathaniel. Herman is a strapping, bronzed man whose youth is a reminder of our own. Just being in his presence seems to revive my husband, as if Herman’s company is the antidote to the sad events that forced us from Salem. But Herman’s effusions are like the sun on a blazing summer day—a warm delight at first, followed by a hot discomfort.

“Mosses stirred a longing in me that I have not felt from fiction in some time,” says Herman, devouring the strawberries and cream placed before him. “It is as if you know my soul.”

Nathaniel’s face flushes. He has run out of ways to thank this young man, and shifts in his chair in what I recognize as a growing unease.

“Truly,” Herman continues, “it is as if you have burrowed some dark and beautiful seed in my heart’s dirt that produces the greatest abundance of growth.”

Nathaniel’s eyes seem to beg my assistance, so I attempt to speak with Herman. I know from our short acquaintance that trying to converse with Herman about matters of family, horses, or weather is fruitless, and the only subject he will engage in with enthusiasm is the magnificence of Nathaniel Hawthorne. While I would never tire of such a subject, after just three days my beloved is burdened by Herman’s admiration.

“What high praise,” I say. “It is gratifying to see that you perceive my husband’s depths, and what his writing inspires in the reader, the challenge he poses to view our fellow mortals with an eye not of judgment, but of deep understanding. Especially understanding of our own hearts, and how we all bear the capacity to produce great evil, but also great goodness.”

“Indeed,” says Herman, finishing his third glass of champagne. “His writing is as fine as that of the Bard himself!”

“I must stop you in your kind lunacy,” says Nathaniel. “While I am grateful for such praise, you cannot compare me to Shakespeare. It is a form of blasphemy.”

“Nonsense,” says Herman, his eyes growing wild and strange. “You underestimate your talent, and because I have such admiration for you, I will not hear a word spoken against you, even if it comes from your own lips.”

I see Herman clench his fist and feel an iciness creep into my blood. I watch him the way one would a tamed circus bear, with a mixture of awe and fear. This is a man who has lived below brig decks with sailors and in jungles with savages. His passions are as rich in color as the most striking tropical foliage, but like the jungle, his beauties seem to conceal danger, and he is not a man I would want to cross.

“Hear, hear,” I say, standing and lifting Julian from his chair, who protests because he has not finished his strawberries. I sit him back down, and Una reaches over to feed Julian the last bite and wipe his mouth with a napkin.

Una glances at Herman and then at me. “I will take him, Mama. We will read books before we go to bed.”

I am grateful for her assistance and praise her for it; secretly I am glad the children will not be here if Herman becomes drunker. We will all be relieved when he no longer resides with us.

But he has apparently enjoyed his time with us so greatly that he has found lodgings just six miles away. Nathaniel makes light of it, saying that it is good to have one’s admirers so close, but I hear the uneasiness beneath his words, and wonder how long he will endure Herman’s attentions.

I instruct our African cook, Mrs. Peters, to set a place for Herman at dinner. He has been at our table with regularity throughout the autumn and now winter, and we never know which Herman to expect: the jovial young man or the brooding writer. Mrs. Peters has come to help us, since I am again with child, and Nathaniel will not have me exert myself in any way. He confessed to me one night that he’d had terrible visions that this babe would do me in, and while I assure him that I have never felt better with a pregnancy, I obey his wishes to rest to calm his heart.

When Herman comes into the house, he has already stomped his boots and shaken the fine coating of snow from his coat. He presents a basket of oranges to me that he procured from a ship on his visit to Boston, and tells me that he hopes they will remind me of pleasing times in Cuba, which, to my surprise, he has been interested to hear about. I can hardly believe that anyplace I have occupied without Nathaniel would hold the slightest draw for him, but I am relieved to see that he seems light in mood.

Mrs. Peters accepts the oranges with suspicion and commences a great scrubbing of their poor skins before agreeing to peel them for our meal. Mrs. Peters is as loyal to us as a Cuban house servant, but we can all rest easy knowing she is paid wages instead of living in servitude. She is imposing and moral, and the children mind her far better than they do me. She is a comfort to me when Nathaniel is on his rambles or working on his new novel, though I cannot help but feel her reserve. Can true affection ever develop between our races, or will we ever be wary of one another? Our country simmers like a covered pot over the issue of slavery, and while Nathaniel and I do not approve of owning slaves, we cannot imagine what a division or even a war between the Northern and Southern states would do to our young nation.

Nathaniel, Herman, and I discuss these topics after the children have been put to bed, while Mrs. Peters cleans dishes in the kitchen. Nathaniel has wrapped my arms with a shawl, and we sit around the hearth. Winter has come without mercy, and as charming as our little red house is, an unwelcome wind from the mountains finds all the cracks in walls and window frames.

“My mother and sisters are violently opposed to slavery,” I say, “but they have no practical suggestions for how to phase it out.”

“I still find merit in the idea of sending the Africans back to their continent, though the idea is losing fashion,” says Nathaniel.

I hear a cabinet slam and wonder how much of our conversation Mrs. Peters overhears.

“But what of those blacks born in America?” says Herman, his voice deep and husky. He has become low during the evening, and his mood pulls at one like a current under the sea. “Africa is as foreign to them as it is to us. It does not seem fair.”

“No, there must be a better solution,” I say. “But when I think of the young men in the States at war over it, I cannot endorse it.”

“Nor I,” says Nathaniel.

“Nor I,” says Herman.

This silences us for many minutes. My sister Elizabeth would call us cowards, and maybe we are, but I can think only of my children and my home, and the thousands of homes like ours, and how it would be a tragedy to open the crusted-over war wounds of a country such a short while after its independence.

The wind rattles the panes and whistles eerily out of doors. It is a prowling wolf, looking for a way into our house. I wrap the shawl more tightly around me and embrace my swollen stomach.

“I have the strangest feeling of Margaret Fuller in the air tonight,” says Nathaniel.

His observation causes the hair on my arms to rise. Why would he say such a thing? He turns to me and must sense my thought, for he addresses it.

“Talk of slavery makes me think of her,” he says. “She could not endorse the novels of a friend, but she could promote the Narrative by Frederick Douglass, and stir up the tempest of the antislavery movement, which prowls the civility and domestic tranquillity of our nation like the wind outside our doors.”

“Do not speak ill of the dead,” I say.

Herman shifts with apparent discomfort in his chair.

“Since her death, I have tried to forgive her,” says Nathaniel, “but I cannot. And my ire grows. She was a woman who lived however she wished without care for another, without putting the needs of those around her before her own selfish opinions. We are breeding a nation of such thinkers and individuals—intent on personal expression at all costs—and that will lead to war. I might be a more successful writer if I did not seek to address human truth, but rather spewed out my own limited opinions without care for reader or critic or any kind of propriety.”

I am shocked by Nathaniel’s outburst. He usually reserves his opinions for me, behind closed doors, and always with extreme reluctance to commit to an ideal. There are no simple answers, and he does not have the optimism to see around the struggle. The older I get, the more like him I become. We have lost so many through death that I cannot think it prudent or moral to stir up tempers that would lead to war. My sister Mary would tell me to think of the slave families and the futures of our children. She would say our salvation depends upon it.

Nathaniel paces the room, but stops before the painting Isola San Giovanni I made during our engagement. The piece he used to hide behind a black veil in the privacy of his rooms he now allows to adorn our parlor so any visitor may look upon it, though he still conceals Endymion. Has he become more comfortable in his love, or has he forgotten the intensity of feeling that inspired the work?

“Forgive me,” he says. “I am unwound from politics. Franklin Pierce needs me to write his biography, to establish himself firmly as a Democrat. He believes we cannot have war at any cost. Slavery will gradually disappear, family by family. Blacks will be freed a generation at a time and become employed, like our Mrs. Peters. Laws can be made prohibiting any new transactions involving human property, while allowing the old owners to finish what they have started, though they be damned. If we shed blood for this cause, there will be a curse on future generations. The races will never reconcile. Pierce will keep our nation from a war that would only bring about the swifter resolution of something that would otherwise work itself out eventually. But I am reluctant to write about such matters in a biography.”

“Such a book will lose you more than one friend,” says Herman.

My stomach quakes at the thought of such a loss for a man who has so few intimates. I watched how the troubles in Salem before his removal from the custom house pained and aged him.

“But what about The House of the Seven Gables?” I ask. “You must finish it before you move on to another work, especially one so controversial.”

“Gables is complete,” he says. “I will commence reading it aloud to you tomorrow night, and it will be published in the spring. My writing Franklin’s biography is not a project set in stone. We just started discussing the idea.”

“But does Franklin not understand that you are a fiction writer?” I say.

Nathaniel meets my gaze.

“What could be more fictional than biography?”

Just after The House of the Seven Gables enters the world in the spring of 1851, so does our little Rose. Cheered as we are by the new babe, sales of the novel, about the generational stain of sin, lag, so Nathaniel writes a storybook of myths for children, A Wonder Book for Boys and Girls, and it meets with surprising success.

While I sit feeding my tiny Rose, I spend my days watching Nathaniel through the windows at play with our children. No task is beneath him, and he approaches every act with such tender attention. He lies in the glowing sun while Una and Julian cover him with grass. As soon as they finish, he jumps up, pretending to be a monster, scaring them into thrilling shrieks and chasing them around the yard. Then they visit the henhouse and the nearby barns. Once the sun becomes too hot, they make for the lake and forest with baskets for collecting flowers and other natural treasures. They deliver them to me fresh every day, and our tiny home is grandly decorated from the abundance of flora. Una must be careful in the sun, but Julian is so brown, Nathaniel jokes that he could belong to Mrs. Peters. She does not acknowledge the joke as amusing, but I can tell it charms her, because of how the corners of her lips lift when she turns away.

Herman continues to visit often—very often. While Nathaniel loves his friend, Herman’s incessant intensity, his probing matters of publishing and politics, God and life’s meaning, and his inclination to melancholy burden Nathaniel. Herman writes his whale book but is plagued with insecurity about it. I have read his earlier work and assure him of his talent, but I am well acquainted with the doubts that dwell so near the hand that is impelled to create.

My artistic power is a snuffed candle. It is impossible for me to conceive of lifting my paintbrushes for anything but color time with the children. I have tried to keep my hand active through sketches for Una and Julian, or to send to Mary’s three children—yes, she now has three—but there is no heat in my ventures. I suppose I am glad not to be plagued with the delicacy of brain from such activity, but sometimes, especially at night, I miss it like an old love, and wonder whether we will ever meet again.

Mother wrote to me in her last letter on the subject, offering much comfort. The woman who was so adamant that I never marry or compromise my artistic gifts seems to have come around to another way of thought entirely, for she believes that in a partnership like mine with Nathaniel, one must support the other instead of both being consumed. She reinforces my belief in Nathaniel’s genius and the necessity that his work be shared with the world. I must keep our home and spirits up if he is to be productive, and it is a worthy sacrifice to make for posterity. It is strange to see such words from my mother’s pen, so altered are her views. Despite her advice, I hope my own artistry does not dry up completely.

My loves are now returning from a sojourn, but I see that Nathaniel’s face is flushed, and the children are hot and exhausted. Rose has been inconsolable today, and I know her cries reach them outside when Nathaniel lifts his head and wrinkles his brow. He will not be able to write due to the heat and the noise, and as they enter with their complaints and requests for nourishment, the walls of our little house press closer.

I do not know the exact moment we feel compelled to leave Lenox, but we seem to arrive at the idea simultaneously. Perhaps it is when I knock my knee on the hobbyhorse and almost fall with Rose, or after gasping through an entire summer without the relief of sea breezes, or when Herman sends a letter that embarrasses Nathaniel.

I recline in our bed, giving Rose a good feeding before tucking her in for the night, as Nathaniel washes his face and hands. It is as hot as a Cuban kitchen house, which suits us far more than the misery of winter on the mountain, but we must open a window to allow the wind to bring us oxygen. I hear the leaves outside shiver, and delight in the sound.

“If the signature on that letter was not that of a man, one would think I had a mistress,” says Nathaniel.

“Please do not say such things.”

“I do not mean to be vulgar, but I cannot help but recoil at such a display of emotion.”

“You know Herman regards you with the greatest affection. He dedicated his book to you. He never hides his feelings. Why are you now so aggrieved?”

“It was my letter praising Moby-Dick. That I would write to him of enjoying it so affected him that he went on to proclaim that our hearts beat under the same ribs, and our souls are in direct communion.”

“Oh, my!” I say. “But you feel grateful when a fellow writer praises you, especially one more advanced and well regarded than yourself. Surely you understand Herman’s rush of feeling. He has been so long at his novel, and so worried about its reception.”

“I know, but he goes too far.”

Nathaniel has removed his shirt and I cannot help but feel a fire at seeing my husband, still in such fine physical bearing, so near to me. I give him an impish look and he shakes his head.

“No, dove. Please. Though our babes are fine and perfect, Rose is the last. Let us at least get her out of booties before we even think of such a thing.”

He blows out the candle on the night table and removes his pants in the dark before crawling into bed. He does not cuddle into me as usual, but pulls over to the far edge. The noise he makes awakens Rose, who fusses but is too full to drink more. I cannot get her to stop, so I am forced to climb out of bed.

Nathaniel turns over. “Do you want me to walk her?”

“No,” I snap, and leave behind a chilly wind in my exit.