Robert Louis Stevenson - "Moral Emblems"

Durant Drake - "Problems of Conduct"

Samuel P. Orth - "The Armies of Labor"

Amy Prentice - "Mouser Cats' Story"

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




Might I say (like Moliere's old woman) how earnestly I desire, that
for a second edition, a few more openings of the door should be added
to the story--towards its close?

You have been so kind in bearing with me,--in coming to me when in
London,--and in remembering the nothing I could do here to make you
welcome, as I fancied you might like best to be welcomed,--that I
venture to send you this letter out of my heart,--and if there be
nonsense in it, or what may seem spectacled critical pedantry, I must
trust to your good nature to allow for them.

Won't you come to town again? and wont you eat another cosy dinner at
my table?--And pray, dear friend Hawthorne, don't be so long
again:--and pray, once for all, recollect that you have no more
faithful nor real literary friend (perhaps, too, in other ways might I
show it) Than yours as always,

HENRY N. CHORLEY.

P. S. This is a sort of salad note, written both to "He" and "She" (as
they said in old duetts)--once again, excuse every incoherence. I am
still very ill--and have all the day been interrupted.


13 EATON PLACE, WEST, March 10, '60.

DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I assure you I feel the good nature not to be on
my side of the treaty. It is not common for a critic to get any kind
construction, or to be credited with anything save a desire to show
ingenuity, no matter whether just or unjust.--Most deeply, too, do I
feel the honor of having a suggestion such as mine adopted,--I thought
when my letter had gone that I had written in a strange, random humor,
and that had I got a "Mind your own business" sort of answer, it was
no more than such unasked-for meddling might expect. I am glad with
all my heart at what you tell me about the success of the tale. But
we really will not wait so long for number five?

To-day's train takes you my Italian story:--I had every trouble in the
world to find a publisher for it: having the gift of no-success in a
very remarkable degree. The dedication tells its own story. It was
begun in 1848:--and ended not before the Italian war broke out.--Some
of my few readers (within a dozen) are aggrieved at my having only
told part of the story of Italian patriotism.--I meant it merely as a
picture of manners: and have seen too much of the class "refugee," not
to have felt how they have as a class retarded, not aided, the cause
of real freedom and high morals. I should have sent it before, but I
always feel, like Teresa Panza, when she sent acorns to the Duchess.

You will come to town, and eat in my quiet corner before you go, I
know:--Perhaps, I may call on you at Easter: as there is just a chance
of my being at Birmingham.

There is an old house, Compton Wingates, that I very much want to see.
Has Hawthorne seen it?

Once more thank you affectionately,--these sort of passages are among
the very few set-offs to the difficulties of a harsh life and all
ungracious career. My seeing you face to face was, I assure you, one
of my best pleasures in 1859. Ever yours faithfully,

HENRY N. CHORLEY.

Hawthorne had returned, for the purpose of cherishing American loyalty
in his children, from a scene that was after his own heart, even to
the actors in it. He had hoped for quietude and the inimitable flavor
of home, of course; but this hope was chiefly a self-persuasion. The
title of his first book after returning, "Our Old Home," was a concise
confession. He would have considered it a base resource to live abroad
during the war, bringing up his son in an alien land, however dear and
related it might be to our bone and sinew; and if his children did not
enjoy the American phase of the universe in its crude stage, he, at
any rate, had done his best to make them love it. His loyalty was
always something flawless. A friend might treat him with the grossest
dishonor, but he would let you think he was himself deficient in
perception or in a proper regard for his money before he would let you
guess that his friend should be denounced. With loyal love, he had,
for his part, wound about New England the purple haze of which Dr.
Holmes spoke in ecstasy, because he had found his country standing
only half appreciated, though with a wealth of virtue and meaning that
makes her fairer every year. With love, also, he came home, after
having barely tasted the delights of London and Oxford completeness.

In Concord he entered upon a long renunciation. Of necessity this was
beneficial to his art. He was now fully primed with observation, and
"The Dolliver Romance," hammered out from several beginnings that he
successively cast aside, appeared so exquisitely pure and fine because
of the hush of fasting and reflection which environed the worker. It
is the unfailing history of great souls that they seem to destroy
themselves most in relation to the world's happiness when they most
deserve and acquire a better reward. He was starving, but he steadily
wrote. He was weary of the pinched and unpromising condition of our
daily life, but he smiled, and entertained us and guided us with
unflagging manliness, though with longer and longer intervals of
wordless reserve. I was never afraid to run to him for his sympathy,
as he sat reading in an easy-chair, in some one of those positions of
his which looked as if he could so sit and peruse till the end of
time. I knew that his response would be so cordially given that it
would brim over me, and so melodiously that it would echo in my heart
for a great while; yet it would be as brief as the single murmurous
stroke of one from a cathedral tower, half startling by its intensity,
but which attracts the birds, who wing by preference to that lofty
spot. A source of deep enjoyment to my father was a long visit from
his sister, Ebie Hawthorne (he having given her that pretty title
instead of any other abbreviation of Elizabeth). I came to know her
very well in after-years, and was astonished at her magic resemblance
to my father in many ways. I always felt her unmistakable power. She
was chock-full of worldly wisdom, though living in the utmost monastic
retirement, only allowing herself to browse in two wide regions,--the
woods and literature. She knew the latest news from the papers, and
the oldest classics alongside of them. She was potentially, we
thought, rather hazardous, or perverse. But language refuses to
explain her. Her brother seemed not to dream of this, yet no doubt
relished the fact that a nature as unique as any he had drawn sparkled
in his sister. She was a good deal unspiritual in everything; but all
besides in her was fine mind, wisdom, and loving-kindness of a lazy,
artistic sort. That is to say, she was unregenerate, but excellent;
and she fascinated like a wood-creature seldom seen and observant,
refined and untrained. My sister was devoted to her, and says, for
the hundredth time, in a passage among many pages of their
correspondence bequeathed to me:--

My OWN DEAR AUNTIE,--I was made very happy by your letter this week.
What perfectly charming letters you write! Now, don't laugh and say I
am talking nonsense; it is really true. You make the simplest things
interesting by your way of telling them; and your observations and
humor are so keen that I often feel sorry the world does not know
something of them. I never remember you to have told me anything
twice, and that can be said of very few people; but there are few
enough people in the least like you, my dearest auntie. . . .

Aunt Ebie did not look romantic, or, exactly mysterious, as I first
saw her. But she puzzled me splendidly nevertheless. She was knitting
some very heavy blue socks in our library, and her needles were
extremely large and shining. I do not know why she had undertaken this
prosaic occupation. Everybody was, to be sure, knitting socks for the
soldiers at that time; but somehow aunt Ebie did not strike me as
absolutely benevolent, and I doubt if she would have labored very
eagerly for a soldier whom she had never seen. She desired to teach
me to knit; and, as I was really afraid of her, I pretended to be
anxious to learn.

I had been told that it was almost an impossibility to get her to
travel even a few miles; that the excitement of change and crowds, and
danger from steam and horse, made her extremely tremulous and
wretched. I was the more impressed by these quavers in her because I
also knew that she had sufficient strength of character to upset a
kingdom, if she chose; that she could use a sceptre of keen sarcasm
which made heads roll off on all sides; that there was nothing which
her large, lustrous eyes could not see, and nothing they could not
conceal. To think, then, that she trembled beside a steam-engine made
her a problem.

She wore a quaintly round dress of lightish-brown mohair, which would
not fall into graceful folds. So there she sat in the little library,
knitting Titanically; and I sat alone with her, learning to round
Hatteras at the heel in a swirl of contradictory impressions. I felt
that she ought to have been dressed in soft dark silks, with a large,
half-idle fan before her lips.

She quickly saw that I was a miniature mystery/ myself, and presently
got me out into the woods. Here I came into contact with her for the
first time.

She stepped along under the trees with great deliberation, holding up
the inflexible mohair skirt as if it could tear on brambles or in
gales, and looking around quickly and ardently at the sound of a
bird-note or the glance of a squirrel-leap; her great eyes peering for
a moment from their widely opened lids, and then disappearing utterly
again under those white veils. Her dark brown, long lashes and broadly
sweeping eyebrows were distinct against the pallor of her skin, which
was so delicately clear, yet vigorous, that I felt its gleam as one
feels the moon, even if I were not looking directly at her. By and by
her cheeks took on a dawn-flush of beautiful pink. The perfection of
her health was shown, until her last sickness, by this girlish glow of
color in her wood-rambles.

Long before we had arrived at a particularly nice flower or species of
moss, she knew it was to be found, and gathered it up as Fate makes a
clean sweep of all its opportunities. I was almost as happy when out
of doors with her as when I was with my father. She had the same
eloquence in her silences; and when she spoke, it was with a sympathy
that played upon one's whole perception, as a harp is swept
inclusively of every string by an eager hurry of music. Still, aunt
Ebie seemed to love moss and leaves as much as some people love souls,
and I thought she had chosen them as the least dangerous objects of
affection; whereas my father seemed most to love souls, and would have
saved mine or another's at the expense of all the forests and vines of
Eden.

To Miss Peabody I wrote of this visit in a manner which shows its
reviving effect upon me:--

MY DEAR AUNT LIZZIE,--I like to get your letters, as they tell about
everything which everybody does not do. What a pleasant time I did
have with aunt Ebie Hawthorne last summer! It was last summer; and all
the lovely flowers were nodding, and the sun shone with all its might,
and we each took a basket and a book and stayed all the afternoon. We
brought home heaps of flowers and greens. I never had such a pleasant
time here in the woods. In England my nurse Fanny and I used to take
long walks on Sunday through the lanes, or into the parks; and take
baskets and pick baskets full of daisies, pink-and-white. Then we
went into the endless lanes, long, without a single sign of house or
cottage (until we came to walk so far as to come to a little village).
Nobody came along in rattling gigs or carriages; on Sunday you would
not meet a person. With great ditches on each side, filled with tall
grass as high as yourself, if you chose to get down into it. But I
used to jump across, to get wild hawthorn and rose and honeysuckle and
wall-flowers, and make great bunches of them. And then the buttercups
and daisies and violets in the green grass! For in the lanes there was
not a sign of earth,--all high, green grass. The sun shining so hot
that you could go in your house-dress but for the properness of it.
But I cannot explain and you cannot imagine; you must go to the place
and look for yourself, and then you will know all about it. The parks
are not level at all, but are nothing but high hills all
together,--dear!--so lovely to run down and roll over on, and skip
rope and jump!

My father began to express his wishes in regard to provision for our
aunt in case of his death; to burn old letters; and to impart to my
mother and Una all that he particularly desired to say to them, among
other things his dislike of biographies, and that he forbade any such
matter in connection with himself in any distance of the future. This
command, respected for a number of years, has been, like all such
forcible and prophetic demurs, most signally set aside. It would take
long to explain my own modifications of opinion from arguments of
fierce resistance to the request for a biographical handling of him;
and it matters, no doubt, very little. Such a man must be thoroughly
known, as great saints are always sooner or later known, though
endeavoring to hide their victories of holiness and charity. Certainly
my father did not like to die, though he now wished to do so. My
mother, later, often spoke, in consolation for us and for herself, of
his dread of helpless old age; and she tried to be glad that his
desire to disappear before decrepitude had been fulfilled. But such
wise wishes are not carried out as we might choose. The sudden
transformation which took place in my father after his coming to
America was like an instant's change in the atmosphere from sunshine
to dusky cold. I have never had the least difficulty in explaining it
to myself.

One large item in the sum of his regrets was his unexpectedly narrowed
means. It would have required a generous amount of money to put The
Wayside and its grounds into the delectable order at first
contemplated, to bring them into any sort of English perfection, and
my parents found that they could not afford it; and so all resulted in
semi-comfort and rough appearances. This narrowing of means was caused
not a little by the want of veracity of a person whom my father had
trusted with entire affection and a very considerable loan, about
which we none of us ever heard again. A crust becomes more than
proverbially dry under these circumstances.

My mother bore every reverse nobly. She writes, after her husband's
death: "I have 'enjoyed life,' and 'its hard pinches' have not too
deeply bitten into my heart. But this has been because I am not only
hopeful and of indomitable credence by nature, but because this
temperament, together with the silent ministry of pain, has helped me
to the perfect, the unshadowed belief in the instant providence of
God; in his eternal love, patience, sweetness; in his shining face,
never averted. It is because I cannot be disappointed on account of
this belief. To stand and wait after doing all that is legitimate is
my instinct, my best wisdom, my inspiration; and I always hear the
still, small voice at last. If man would not babble so much, we could
much oftener hear God. The lesson of my life has been patience. It
has only made me feel the more humble that God has been so beyond
count benignant to me. I have been cushioned and pillowed with tender
love from the cradle. Such a mother seldom falls to the lot of
mortals. She was the angel of my life. Her looks and tones and her
acts of high-bred womanhood were the light and music and model of my
childhood. Then God joined my destiny with him who was to be all
relations in one. Pain passed away when my husband came. Poverty was
lighter than a thistle-down with such a power of felicity to uphold
it. With 'lowering clouds' I have never been long darkened, because
the sun above has been so penetrating that their tissue has directly
become silvered and goldened. Our own closed eyelids are too often the
only clouds between us and the ever-shining sun. I hold all as if it
were not mine, but God's, and ready to resign it."

It seemed to me a terrible thing that one so peculiarly strong,
sentient, luminous, as my father should grow feebler and fainter, and
finally ghostly still and white. Yet when his step was tottering and
his frame that of a wraith, he was as dignified as in the days of
greater pride, holding himself, in military self-command, even more
erect than before. He did not omit to come in his very best black coat
to the dinner-table, where the extremely prosaic fare had no effect
upon the distinction of the meal. He hated failure, dependence, and
disorder, broken rules and weariness of discipline, as he hated
cowardice. I cannot express how brave he seemed to me. The last time I
saw him, he was leaving the house to take the journey for his health
which led suddenly to the next world. My mother was to go to the
station with him,--she who, at the moment when it was said that he
died, staggered and groaned, though so far from him, telling us that
something seemed to be sapping all her strength; I could hardly bear
to let my eyes rest upon her shrunken, suffering form on this day of
farewell. My father certainly knew, what she vaguely felt, that he
would never return.

Like a snow image of an unbending but an old, old man, he stood for a
moment gazing at me. My mother sobbed, as she walked beside him to the
carriage. We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the
twilight, ever since.



INDEX OF PERSONS
[online ed: page numbers have been omitted.]

Aikens, Mr.

Ainsworth, Mrs.

Alcott, A. Bronson

Alcott, Mrs. A, B.

Alcott, Louisa M.

Alderson, Baron

Allston, Washington

Appleton, Thomas G.

Atherton, Mr.

Bacon, Miss Delia

Bancroft, George

Barber, Mr.

Barstow, B.

Barstow, Ellen

Bartol, Mr.

Bartol, Mrs.

Bennoch, Francis

Birch, Sir Thomas

Blodget, Mrs.

Boott, Miss Elizabeth

Boott, Frank

Bradford, George

Bremer, Miss Frederika

Bridge, Horatio

Bridge, Mrs. Horatio

Bright, Henry

Browne, William

Browning, Mr.

Browning, Mrs.

Brownson, Orestes

Bryant, Mr. and Miss

Buchanan, President

Burchmore, Captain Stephen

Burchmore, T.

Burley, Miss

Burns, Colonel, 244.

Burns, Major

Capen, Dr.

Cecil, Mr.

Channing, Dr.

Channing, Dr. W. E.

Channing, Edward

Channing, Ellery

Chorley, Henry N,

Clarke, Sarah

Cleveland, Henry

Clough, A. H.

Cochran, Misses

Colton, Mr.

Crampton, Mr.

Cranch, Christopher P.

Crauch, Judge

Crawford, Mr.

Crittendon, Mr.

Curtis, Burrill

Curtis, George W.

Cushman, Charlotte

De Quincey, Thomas

Dike, Mr.

Doughty, Mr.

Duffcrin, Lord

Dysie, Mr.

Ely, Mrs. R. S.

Emerson, Charles

Emerson, Mrs. R. W.

Emerson, R. W.

Fields, James T.

Fields, Mrs. James T.

Fleming, Lady le

Foote, Mrs. Caleb

Fuller, Margaret

Gardiner, Miss Sally

Gaskell, Mrs.

Goodrich, S. G.

Greene, Mrs. Anna

Greenough, Mr,

H., Mrs.

Hawthorne, Mrs.

Hawthorne, Elizabeth M.

Hawthorne, Louisa

Hillard, George S,

Hiliard, Mrs, Susan

Hoar, E. Rockwood

Hoar, Miss Elizabeth

Holden, George H.

Holland, Mr. and Mrs. Charles

Holmes, Dr. O. W.

Hooper, Ellen

Hooper, Samuel

Hosmer, Harriet

Hosmer, Mr.

Houghton, Lord

Howes, Mr.

Hughes, Thomas

Jackson, Miss

James, G. P. R.

Jerdan, William

Jones, George

King, John

Lane, Miss Harriet

Leitch, Captain

Lincoln, President

Lindsay, Richard

Littledale, Mr.

Liverpool, Mayor of

Longfellow, Henry W.

Loring, Dr. George

Loring, Mrs. George B.

Lowell, James R.

Lowell, Mrs. James R.

Lynch, Miss

Mann, Horace

Mann, Mrs. Horace

Manning, Miss Mary

Manning, Richard

Manning, Samuel

Mansfield, L. W.

Martineau, Miss Harriet

Martineau, Mrs. James

Melville, Herman

Meredith, Mr.

Miller, Colonel

Miller, Mr.

Miller, Mrs.

Mills, Mr.

Mitchell, Miss Maria

Moore, Bramley

Motley, John Lothrop

Motley, Mrs. J. L.

Mullet, George W.

Nurse, Rebecca

Ogden, Mr.

O'Sullivan, John

Palmer, General

Palmer, Mrs. General

Parker, Theodore

Peabody, Dr.

Peabody, Elizabeth P.

Peabody, George

Peabody, Mary T.

Peabody, Mrs.

Phillebrown, Mr.

Phillips, Jonathan

Pierce, President

Pike, William B.

Porter, Mary A.

Powers, Hiram

Prescott, Mrs.

Procter, It. W.

Putnam, Captain

Rathbone, Mrs. Richard

Rathbone, Mrs. William

Sanders, Mrs.

Sedgwick, Mrs.

Seymour, Governor, 364.

Shaw, Miss Anna

Shaw, Frank

Shaw, Sarah

Shepard, Miss Ada

Silsbee, Mr.

Squarey, Mr.

Squarey, Mrs.

Stevens, Paran

Stoddard, Mrs. Elizabeth

Story, William W.

Sturgis, M. L.

Sturgis, Mrs. Russell

Sumner, Charles

Synge, W. W.

Tabley, Lord Warremore de

Talfourd, Field

Talfourd, Sir Thomas

Tappan, Mr.

Tappan, Mrs.

Tennyson, Lord

Thompson, C. G.

Thoreau, Henry D.

Ticknor, George

Thaxter, Mr. and Mrs.

Upham, C. W.

Very, Jones

Ward, Mr. Samuel G.

Ward, Mrs. S. G.

Warren, Samuel,

Webster, Daniel,

Whipple, Colonel,

White, William,

Wordsworth, Mrs.