Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis

me there, and kept a school for small children. On the third return of the Curtises to Concord, in the summer of 1846, they found a home in the house of Minott Pratt, who was living at the

from the Old Manse. Pratt's cottage was in a quiet, delightful loc

ng perfect gentlemen. His article on Emerson, in the "Homes of American Authors," gave much offence in the town, and by Mrs. Alcott, as well as others, was warmly resented. He was exact enough as to facts, but he drew from them wrong inferences. He a

of Crawford, in Rome? I shall never forget that, nor any smallest token of her frequent courtesy in the Concord days." In another letter to Hawthorne he speaks of Concord as "our old home, which is very p

be only that touch of twilight which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the few chance visitors there were city friends occasionally, figures quite unknown to

stream of talk, this person, who sat silent as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a poet-a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and stood quietly there for a long time, watching the dead, white landscape. No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him, the conversation flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to be respected. It was the same at table. In vain the silent man imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at his lips. But there was a li

to live in Concord. Every day I passed his house, but when the villagers, thinking that perhaps I ha

l coat of paint, and golden-tinted paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment; while the shadow of a willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the ch

cken, snow-

talian vineyards, which st

ence and preternatural vigor with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle to counteract the bad rowing of a friend who conscientiously considered it his duty to do something and not let Hawthorne work alone, but who, with every stroke, neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he would have struggled until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, be

melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately, and there the thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that only needed the setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole visit was a vague ghost of the Monday Evening Club at Mr. Emerson's-it was a great failure. Had they all been

always morning. But Hawthorne's black-a

h it seemed alw

he house, its inmates, and its life lay dream-like upon the edge of the little village. You fancy that they all came together and belonged together, and w

eauty, lay looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired Una was the living and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our a

l, which is printed by Julian Hawthorne in his biography of "Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife." No mention is made of Curtis, who took part in the search, and who gave his own account of the affair in his paper on Hawthorne. When Thoreau went to New York,

nature and dreams, were doubly beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed this life to the full, while her timidity kept her only a spectator; and she ornamented it with a fresher grace, suggestive of the woods and fields, when she ventured to engage in the airy game. It was a sphere for her capacities and talents. She shone in it, and the consciousness of a true position and genial appreciation gave her the full use of all her powers. She admired and was admired. She was surr

gland, and the fact that it was so alluring is a fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no companions or any sympathy-for the family

drove her from the very society which alone was agreeable to her. This was all genuine. There was not the slightest strain of the femme incomprise in her demeanor. She was always shy and silent, with a touching reserve which won interest and confidence, but left also a vague sadness in the mind of the observer. After a few months she made another effort to rend the cloud which was gradually darkening around her, and opened a school for young children. But although the interest of friends secured her a partial success, her gravity and sadness failed to excite the sympathy of her pupils, who missed in her

iftness of certainty all friends far and near were roused, and thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in the boats that put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse, was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night, to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats drifted slowly down the stream, the torches flashed strangely upon the black repose of the waters, and upon the long slim grasses that weeping fringed the marge. Upon both banks silent and awe-stri

the 'Blithedale Romance,' and learn anew that dark as is the thread with which Hawthorne weaves his spells

Farm life. For instance, his Zenobia was in every sense an original creation, and not a description of any person he had known. Three persons he knew at Brook Farm gave him hints, traits of character, and points of departure for the activity of his imagination. The stately elements in Zenobia resembled those of Mrs. George Ripley, her luxurious tastes were like those of Mrs. Almira Barlow, while her genius and brilliancy had a few similarities to Margaret Fuller. His habit seems to have been to take a single incident in the life of a person, and to make that the ch

n a small party of us helped him raise it-a bit of life as Arcadian as any at Brook Farm. Elsewhere in the village he turns up arrow-heads abundantly, and Hawthorne mentions that Thoreau initiated him into the mystery of finding

ng the blackberry pastures of Walden Pond; Plato Skimpole [Margaret Fuller's name for Alcott], then sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses in a little house on the Boston Road; the enthusiastic agriculturist and Brook Farmer [George Bradford], then an inmate of Mr. Emerson's house, who added the genial cultivation of a scholar to the amenities of the natural gentleman; a sturdy farmer-neighbor [Edmund Hosmer], who had bravely fought his weary way through inherited embarrassm

was a congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious listeners upon the other. I vaguely remember that the Orphic Alcott invaded the Sahara of silence with a solemn 'Saying,' to which, after due pause, the honorable member for Blackberry Pastures responded by some keen and graphic observations, while the Olympian host, anxious that so much material should be spun into something, beamed smiling encouragement upon all parties

th the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a whole of clear, sweet sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed saccharine element; and every chemist knows how much else goes to practical food-how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, and disappearing in the da