Jack London - "The Little Lady of the Big House"

G. K. Chesterton - "A Miscellany of Men"

Azel Ames - "The Mayflower and Her Log, v2"

P.G. Wodehouse - "The Little Nugget"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Memories of Hawthorne

R >> Rose Hawthorne Lathrop >> Memories of Hawthorne




Literally and carefully I speak of the light of pearls, with the
opaline changes. I am quite happy that I have seized the image. The
effect is of a roundness with the confused yet clear outline of a
pearl, an outline which also is not one, and the light looks living
and absorbing. One evening, after the sun went down, rays of blue and
rose came from it in a half-wheel shape, so ineffably delicate that if
we looked too pryingly they were not there, but if we glanced unawares
there they were. It was more like the thought of them than the
realities. This summer we have our first sight of Italian sunsets, for
we were assured we should have fever if we were out at the hour in
Rome. We began by watching them from the bridges over the Arno, which
are perhaps the finest points of view, because the river is added. It
flows east and west, and so we have all the glory by standing on
either of the bridges. The arches, the reflections in the waters, the
city's palaces and churches, the distant hills, all come in for a part
of the pomp and splendor,--all that man can do, all that God has done,
for this lovely land.

Una's chamber is in the tower [but approached from the house], a
large, lofty, vaulted chamber, with an oratory attached, full of
Madonnas, pyxes, "and all sorts," as Mr. Browning says. There is a
regular chapel besides. Mr. Hawthorne has a delightful suite of study,
saloon, dressing-room, and chamber, away from all the rest of the
family.

August 25. Last evening Miss Ada Shepard and I went to a neighboring
villa to see some table-turning, which I have never seen, nor anything
appertaining to spirits. Mr. Frank Boott was there and a Fleming,
Una's drawing-master. We tried patiently for two hours with the
table, but though it trembled and wavered, nothing came of it; so Miss
Shepard then took a pencil and paper for the spirits to write, if they
would. [The attempt on Miss Shepard's part was now, and always
afterwards, successful. My mother speaks of several somewhat vulgar
spirits who caused great merriment.] Then Ada felt quite a different
and new power seize her hand, rapidly writing: "Who?" "Mother." "Whose
mother?" "Mrs. Hawthorne's. My dear child, I am with you. I wish to
speak to you. My dearest child, I am near you. I am oftener with you
than with any one." Ada's hand was carried forcibly back to make a
strong underline beneath "near," and it was all written with the most
eager haste, so that it agitated the medium very much, and me too; for
I had kept aloof in mind, because Mr. Hawthorne has such a repugnance
to the whole thing. Mrs. Browning is a spiritualist. Mr. Browning
opposes and protests with all his might, but he says he is ready to be
convinced. Mrs. Browning is wonderfully interesting. She is the most
delicate sheath for a soul I ever saw. One evening at Casa Guidi
there was a conversation about spirits, and a marvelous story was told
of two hands that crowned Mrs. Browning with a wreath through the
mediumship of Mr. Hume. Mr. Browning declared that he believed the
two hands were made by Mr. Hume and fastened to Mr. Hume's toes, and
that he made them move by moving his feet. Mrs. Browning kept trying
to stem his flow of eager, funny talk with her slender voice, but,
like an arrowy river, he rushed and foamed and leaped over her slight
tones, and she could not succeed in explaining how she knew they were
spirit hands. She will certainly be in Rome next winter, unless she
goes to Egypt. You would be infinitely charmed with Mrs. Browning,
and with Mr. Browning as well. The latter is very mobile, and flings
himself about just as he flings his thoughts on paper, and his wife is
still and contemplative. Love, evidently, has saved her life. I think
with you that "'Aurora Leigh' overflows with well-considered thought;"
and I think all literature does not contain such a sweet baby, so
dewy, so soft, so tender, so fresh. Mr. Hawthorne read me the book in
Southport, but I have read it now again, sitting in our loggia, with
Aurora's tower full in view. . . .

This loggia opened widely to the air on two sides, so that the
opalescent views were framed in oblong borders of stone that rested
our rejoicing eyes. Under the stone shade, in the centre of the
Raphaelesque distances, many mornings were passed ideally. Visitors
often joined us here. Among them was Miss Elizabeth Boott, afterwards
Mrs. Duveneck, who came with her little sketch-book. She made a
water-color portrait of my father, which, as the young artist was then
but a girl, looked like a cherub of pug-nosed, pink good nature, with
its head loose. I can see that little sketch now, and I feel still a
wave of the dizziness of my indignation at its strange depiction of a
strong man reduced to dollhood. Miss Boott being a true artist in the
bud, there was, of course, the eerie likeness of some unlike
portraits. It became famous with us all as the most startling
semblance we had ever witnessed. I sincerely wish that the ardor with
which the young girl made her sketch could have been used later on a
portrait, which certainly would have been superbly honest and
vigorous, like all the work that has come from her wonderfully noble
nature and her skillful perception. Another young lady appeared
against the Raphaelesque landscape. She was very pretty in every way,
and my mother was delighted to have her present, and showered
endearing epithets upon her. Her large brown eyes were alluring beyond
words, and her features pathetically piquant and expressive. Her face
was rather round, pale, and emphatically saddened by the great
sculptor Regret. She sat in picturesque attitudes, her cheek leaning
against her hand, and her elbow somewhere on the back or arm of her
chair; yet her positions were never excessive, but eminently gentle.
She had been disappointed in love, and one was sure it was not in the
love of the young man. She was too pretty to die, but she could look
sad, and we all liked to have her with us, and preferred her charming
misery to any other mood.

The roads going to and fro between the cream-colored stone walls of
the surrounding country were unsparingly hot. I can feel now the flash
of sunbeams that made me expect to curl up and die like a bit of
vegetation in a flame. I tried to feel cooler when I saw the peasant
women approaching, bent under their loads of wheat or of brush. If
they had no shading load, it made me gasp to observe that their Tuscan
hats, as large as cart-wheels and ostensibly meant to shadow their
faces, were either dangling in their hands or flapping backward
uselessly. It seemed to be no end of a walk to Florence, and the drive
thither was also detestable,--all from the heat and dust, and probably
only at that time of year. The views of many-colored landscape, hazy
with steaming fields, were lovely if you could once muster the energy
to gaze across the high road-walls when the thoroughfare sank clown a
declivity. After a while there were cottages, outside of which ancient
crones sat knitting like the wind, or spinning as smoothly as
machines, by the aid of a distaff. Little girls, who were
full-fledged peasant women in everything but size, pecked away at
their knitting of blue socks, proud of their lately won skill and
patient of the undesired toil. They were so small and comely and
conformable, and yet conveyed such an idea of volcanic force ready to
rebel, that they entranced me. Further inside the heart of the city
upstarted the intoxications of sin and the terrible beggars with their
maimed children. I never lost the impressions of human wrong there
gathered into a telling argument. The crowded hurry and the dirty
creatures that attend commercial greed and selfish enjoyment in cities
everywhere weltered along the sidewalks and unhesitatingly plunged
into the mud of the streets. It seemed to me even then that something
should be done for the children maimed by inhuman fathers, and for
their weeping mothers too. My father did not forget in his art the
note he found in beautiful Florence, though it was too sad to
introduce by a definite exposition, and falls upon the ear, in "Monte
Beni," like a wordless minor chord.

I sometimes went with my mother when she called at Casa Guidi, where
the Brownings lived. I had a fixed idea that Galileo belonged to
their family circle; and I had a vision of him in my mind which was
quite as clear as Mrs. Browning ever was (although I sat upon her
lap), representing him as holding the sun captive in his back yard,
while he blinked down upon it from a high prison of his own. The
house, as I recall it, seemed to have a network of second-story
piazzas, and the rooms were very much shadowed and delightfully cool.
Mr. Browning was shining in the shadow, by the temperate brightness of
mind alone, and ever talking merrily. Cultivated English folk are
endowed with sounding gayety of voice, but he surpassed them all, as
the medley of his rushing thought and the glorious cheer of his
perception would suggest. Mrs. Browning was there: so you knew by her
heavy dark curls and white cheeks, but doubted, nevertheless, when you
came to meet her great eyes, so dreamy that you wondered which was
alive, you or she. Her hand, usually held up to her cheek, was
absolutely ghostlike. Her form was so small, and deeply imbedded in a
reclining-chair or couch-corner, that it amounted to nothing. The dead
Galileo could not possibly have had a wiser or more doubtfully
attested being as a neighbor. If the poor scientist had been there to
assert that Mrs. Browning breathed, he would probably have been
imprisoned forthwith by another incredulous generation. My mother
speaks, on her second visit to Rome, of the refreshment of Mr.
Browning's calls, and says that the sudden meetings with him gave her
weary nerves rest during the strain of my sister's illness. She could
not have rejoiced in his spirited loveliness more than the little girl
by her side, who sometimes languished for direct personal intercourse
in all the panorama of pictures and statues, and friends absorbed in
sight-seeing. I had learned to be grateful for art and ruins, if only
they were superlative of their kind. I put away a store of such in my
fancy. But Mr. Browning was a perfection which looked at me, and
moved vigorously! For many years he associated himself in my mind with
the blessed visions that had enriched my soul in Italy, and continued
to give it sustenance in the loneliness of my days when we again threw
ourselves upon the inartistic mercies of a New England village. He
grouped himself with a lovely Diana at the Vatican, with some of
Raphael's Madonnas and the statue of Perseus, with Beatrice Cenci and
the wildflowers of our journeys by vettura, besides a few other
faultless treasures deeply appreciated by me. We all noticed Mr.
Browning's capacity for springing through substances and covering
space without the assistance of time.

My mother says in her little diary of Rome, "I met Mr. Browning; or
rather, he rushed at me from a distance, and seemed to come through a
carriage in his way." It was as if he longed to teach people how to
follow his thoughts in poetry, as they flash electrically from one
spot to another, thinking nothing of leaping to a mountain-top from an
inspection of "callow nestlings," or any other tender fact of smallest
interest. Not one of all the cherubs of the great masters had a
sunnier face, more dancing curls, or a sweeter smile than he. The most
present personality was his; the most distant, even when near, was the
personality he married. I have wondered whether the Faun would have
sprung with such untainted jollity into the sorrows of to-day if Mr.
Browning had not leaped so blithely before my father's eyes.
"Browning's nonsense," he writes, "is of a very genuine and excellent
quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful
mind; and he lets it play 'among his friends with the faith and
simplicity of a child."

I think I must be right in tracing one of the chief enchantments of
the story of Dr. Grimshawe to these months upon the hill of
Bellosguardo. For at Montauto one of the terrors was the cohort of
great spiders. There is no word in the dictionary so large or so
menacing as a large spider of the Dr. Grimshawe kind. Such appear,
like exclamations, all over the world. I saw one as huge and thrilling
as these Italian monsters on the Larch Path at the Wayside, a few
years later; but at Montauto they really swaggered and remained. We
perceive such things from a great distance, as all disaster may be
perceived if we are not more usefully employed. A presentiment
whispers, "There he is!" and looking unswervingly in the right
direction, there he is, to be sure. I could easily have written a poor
story, though not a good novel, upon the effectiveness of these
spiders, glaring in the chinks of bed-curtains, or moving like shadows
upon the chamber wall or around the windows, and I can guess my
father's amusement over them. They were as large as plums, with
numerous legs that spread and brought their personality out to the
verge of impossibility. I suppose they stopped there, but I am not
sure. No wonder the romancer humorously added a touch that made a
spider of the doctor himself, with his vast web of pipe-smoke!

The great romance of "Monte Beni" is thus referred to by Mr. Motley
and his wife; I give a few sentences written by the latter, a friend
of many years' standing, and I insert Mr. Motley's letter entire:--


WALTON-ON-THAMES, April 13, 1860.

DEAREST SOPHIA,--My pen continues to be the same instrument of torture
to me that you remember it always was in my youth, when I used to read
your letters with such wonder and delight. This spell is still upon
me, for I appreciate the magic of your mind now as much as I did then,
and have treasured up every little bit of a note that you wrote me in
Rome. I like your fresh feminine enthusiasm, and always feel better
and happier under its influence. . . . I am glad that you were so much
pleased with Lothrop's letter of praise and thanksgiving; a poor
return at best for the happiness we had derived from reading Mr.
Hawthorne's exquisite romance. . . . I shall not now attempt to add any
poor words of mine to his expressive ones, except to assure you of my
deep sympathy for the infinite content and joy you must feel in this
new expression of your husband's genius. We were so much pleased to
find that he was willing to come to us in London, which we hardly
dared to hope for. . . . At least I can promise to attend to him as
little as possible. . . . We have taken for the season a small house
in Hertford Street, 31, which belongs to Lady Byron, who has fitted it
up for her grand-daughter, Lady Annabella King. . . . The eldest
brother, Lord Ockham, is a mechanic, and is now working in a
machine-shop in Blackwall Island, where he lives. This eccentric
course is rather, I fear, the development of a propensity for low
company and pursuits than from anything Peter the Greatish there is
about him. His father, who is the quintessence of aristocracy, has
cast him off. . . . Lothrop was very much gratified by all the fine
things you said about him, and so was I; for praise from you means
something and is worth having, because it comes from the heart. There
is another volume written, . . . but another must be written before
either is published.

Ever your affectionate M. E. M.

The "letter of praise and thanksgiving" referred to above is as
follows:--

WALTON-ON-THAMES.

MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,--I can't resist the impulse to write a line to you,
in order to thank you for the exquisite pleasure I have derived from
your new romance. Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I
have read many times; and I am particularly vain of having admired
"Lights from a Steeple," when I first read it in the "Boston Token,"
several hundred years ago, when we were both younger than we are now;
and of having detected and cherished, at a later day, an "Old Apple
Dealer," whom I believe that you have unhandsomely thrust out of your
presence, now you are grown so great. But the romance of "Monte Beni"
has the additional charm for me that it is the first book of yours
that I have read since I had the privilege of making your personal
acquaintance. My memory goes back at once to those (alas, not too
frequent, but that was never my fault) walks we used to take along the
Tiber or in the Campagna, during that dark period when your Una was
the cause of such anxiety to your household and to all your friends;
and it is delightful to get hold of the book now, and know that it is
impossible for you any longer, after waving your wand, as you
occasionally did then, indicating where the treasure was hidden, to
sink it again beyond the plummet's sound. I admire the book
exceedingly. I don't suppose that it is a matter of much consequence
to you whether I do or not, but I feel as much disposition to say so
as if it were quite an original and peculiar idea of my own, and as if
the whole world were not just now saying the same thing. I suppose
that your ears are somewhat stunned with your praises, appearing as
you do after so long an interval; but I hope that, amid the din, you
will not disdain the whisper from such sincere admirers as I am
myself, and my wife and daughter are. I don't know which of the trio
is the warmest one, and we have been fighting over the book, as it is
one which, for the first reading at least, I did not like to hear
aloud. I am only writing in a vague, maundering, uncritical way, to
express sincere sympathy and gratitude, not to exhibit any dissenting
powers, if I have any. If I were composing an article for a review, of
course I should feel obliged to show cause for my admiration, but I am
now only obeying an impulse. Permit me to say, however, that your
style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever. Where, oh where is
the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and diamonds? How easy it
seems till anybody else tries! Believe me, I don't say to you half
what I say behind your back; and I have said a dozen times that nobody
can write English but you. With regard to the story, which has been
slightly criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite
satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Hawthornesque
shapes flitting through the golden gloom which is the atmosphere of
the book. I like the misty way in which the story is indicated rather
than revealed. The outlines are quite definite enough, from the
beginning to the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow
you in your airy flights; and to those who complain, I suppose nothing
less than an illustrated edition, with a large gallows on the last
page, with Donatello in the most pensive of attitudes, his ears
revealed at last through a white nightcap, would be satisfactory.

I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen
that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your
romance to the level of an every-day novel. It is exactly the romantic
atmosphere of the book in which I revel. You who could cast a glamour
over the black scenery and personalities of ancient and of modern
Massachusetts could hardly fail to throw the tenderest and most
magical hues over Italy, and you have done so. I don't know that I am
especially in love with Miriam or Hilda, or that I care very much what
is the fate of Donatello; but what I do like is the air of unreality
with which you have clothed familiar scenes without making them less
familiar. The way in which the two victims dance through the Carnival
on the last day is very striking. It is like a Greek tragedy in its
effect, without being in the least Greek. As I said before, I can't
single out any special scene, description, or personage by which to
justify or illustrate my feeling about the book. That I could do
better after a second reading, when it would be easy to be coldly
critical. I write now just after having swallowed the three volumes
almost at a draught; and if my tone is one of undue exhilaration, I
can only say it was you gave me the wine. It is the book--as a
whole--that I admire, and I hope you will forgive my saying so in four
pages instead of four words.

Is there any chance of our seeing you this summer? We expect to be in
London next month. It will be very shabby of you not to let us have a
glimpse of you; but I know you to be capable of any meanness in that
line. At any rate, you can have little doubt how much pleasure it will
give us. Pray don't answer this if it is in the least a bore to you to
do so. I know that you are getting notes of admiration by the bushel,
and I have no right to expect to hear from you. At the same time it
would be a great pleasure to me to hear from you, for old (alas,
no,--new) acquaintance' sake.

I remain very sincerely yours,

J. L. MOTLEY.

Of the discussions about "Monte Beni" I remember hearing a good deal,
as my mother laughingly rehearsed passages in letters and reviews
which scolded about Hawthorne's tantalizing vagueness and
conscienceless Catholicity. My parents tried to be lenient towards
the public, whose excitement was so complimentary, if its usually
heavy inability to analyze its best intellectual wine was fatiguing.
My father never for a moment expected to be widely understood,
although he no doubt hoped to be so in certain cases. He must have
easily deduced something in the way of chances for appreciative
analysis from prevalent literature. He struck me as a good deal like
an innocent prisoner at the bar, and if I had not been a member of his
family I might have been sorry for him. As it was, I felt convinced
that he could afford to be silent, patient, indifferent, now that his
work was perfected. My mother put into words all that was necessary of
indignation at people's desire for a romance or a "penny dreadful"
that would have been temporary and ineffective. Meantime, such rewards
as Mr. Motley offered weighed down the already laden scales on the
side of artistic wealth.

Perhaps it will not be impertinent for me to remark, in reference to
this admirable and delightful letter, that its writer here exemplifies
the best feelings about Hawthorne's art without quite knowing it. We
see him bubbling glad ejaculations in the true style of an Omar
Khayyam who has drained the magic cup handed to him. It is delicious
to hear that he was not sure he cared about the personages of a story
that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little
with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he
cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his
meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew
so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the
spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in
both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every
precious hour by sinking to the realities of bricks and common clay.
Miriam and Donatello may seem at first glance like visions; but I have
always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they
were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first
the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer.




CHAPTER XIV

THE WAYSIDE


In order to give an idea of how it happened that our family could
return from Europe to Concord with a few great expectations, I will
rehearse somewhat of the charm which had been found in the illustrious
village when my father and mother first knew it. There a group of
people conversed together who have left an echo that is still heard.
There also is still heard "the shot fired round the world," which of
course returned to Concord on completing its circuit. But even the
endless concourse of visitors, making the claims of any region
wearisomely familiar, cannot diminish the simple solemnity of the
town's historical as well as literary importance; and indeed it has so
many medals for various merit that it is no wonder its residents have
a way of speaking about it which some of us would call Bostonian.
Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, and Alcott dispersed a fragrance that
attracted at once, and all they said was resonant with charity and
courage.

The first flash of individuality from Emerson could hardly fail to
suggest that he resembled the American eagle; and he presided over
Concord in a way not unlike our glorious symbol, the Friend of Light.
It must have been exhilarating to look forward to many years in
Emerson's hamlet. My earliest remembered glimpse of him was when he
appeared--tall, side-slanting, peering with almost undue questioning
into my face, but with a smile so constant as to seem like an added
feature, dressed in a solemn, slender, dark overcoat, and a dark,
shadowing hat--upon the Concord highroad; the same yellow thoroughfare
which reaches out to. Lexington its papyrus-strip of history. At the
onset of Emerson--for psychic men do attack one with their
superiority--awe took possession of me; and, as we passed (a great
force and a small girl) I wondered if I should survive. I not only did
so, but felt better than before. It then became one of my happiest
experiences to pass Emerson upon the street. A distinct exaltation
followed my glance into his splendid face. Yet I caviled at his
self-consciousness, his perpetual smile. I complained that he ought to
wait for something to smile at. I could not be sure that he was
privately enjoying some joke from Greek fun-makers, remembered under a
Concord elm. After a time, I realized that he always had something to
smile for, if not to smile at; and that a cheerful countenance is
heroic. By and by I learned that he always could find something to
smile at, also; for he tells us, "The best of all jokes is the
sympathetic contemplation of things by the understanding, from the
philosopher's point of view." But, in my unenlightened state, when I
saw him begin to answer some question, however trivial, with this
smile, slowly, very slowly growing, until it lit up his whole
countenance with a refulgent beam before he answered (the whole
performance dominated by a deliberation as great and brilliant as the
dawn), I argued that this good cheer was out of proportion; that
Emerson should keep back a smile so striking and circumstantial for
rare occasions, such as enormous surprise; or, he should make it the
precursor to a tremendous roar of laughter. I have yet to learn that
any one heard him laugh aloud,--which pastime he has called, with
certainly a familiar precision that indicates personal experience, a
"pleasant spasm," a "muscular irritation."