Hawthorne could barely support himself with his writing, let alone a wife. He persuaded his uncle to let them rent the Old Manse in Concord, Mass. He hired Henry David Thoreau to plant a garden for them. Emerson made gifts and loans to them during the first three years they lived together in Concord. We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.
New England Historical Society. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne. Elizabeth Peabody. Mary Peabody Mann. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Related Items: Boston , bowdoin college , Concord Mass. Recommended for you. The Daring, Headlong Escape of Gen. For the Hawthornes, journal keeping was a family affair. Both Nathaniel and Sophia kept private records periodically throughout their lives, and when they married in July they began to keep a journal together, each making entries in turn.
They wrote in the same notebook—a small blank volume with marbled-paper covers and a leather spine—read each other's entries, and built a joint narrative of their intimate life as partners in their new home, the Old Manse in Concord. When spring came, she compared nature's rebirth to her own awakening. I myself am Spring with all its birds, its rivers, its buds, singing, rushing, blooming in his arms. I feel new as the Earth which is just born again—I rejoice that I am, because I am his, wholly, unreservedly his.
The Hawthornes were still living at the Old Manse in Concord when their first child, a girl they named Una, was born March 3, , after a difficult hour delivery. Sophia gave up her art after the children were born.
Sophia seems to have been devoted to Hawthorne but also faced the limitations that women of all eras have faced who try to fulfill their own desires to paint, write or pursue a profession while running a household and caring for children. In March , Sophia moved to 77 Carver Street in Boston to be to be near her family and her doctor while pregnant with their second child. After son Julian was born on May 22, This was the last house in Salem in which Hawthorne lived.
After losing his job at the Salem Custom House in June because of a change in political administrations, Hawthorne began writing full-time, and his famous novel The Scarlet Letter was published in March This is the only house the Hawthornes ever owned.
Hawthorne was not known for socializing with his neighbors, and he often used the hilltop in his backyard as a means of escaping social interactions. On June 14, , friend and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow held a farewell dinner party at his Cambridge home.
While the Hawthornes were abroad they leased The Wayside to family members. In July the family moved to Liverpool, and Hawthorne assumed his position as Consul on August 1, In October of , in an attempt to improve her health, Sophia took Rose and Una to Portugal for nine months; Julian remained with his father.
Early the following year, the Hawthornes traveled to France and to Italy, where they lived both in Rome and in Florence. In Una became ill with malaria, and she was very sick for several months.
Sophia spent long hours caring for her daughter and offering comfort to her distraught husband. Una eventually recovered, but never completely regained her health. Hawthorne had recorded his experiences in Italy in his notebooks, and he wrote his last completed novel, The Marble Faun, which was published in America the following year.
Image: Nathaniel Hawthorne by Charles Osgood, Una continued to have bouts of bad health, her malaria returning, and lived on and off with her aunt, Mary Peabody Mann. Julian left to attend Harvard College, away from home for the first time, visiting sometimes on weekends. Nathaniel struggled unsuccessfully with several novels. When the journal was purchased by publisher James Thomas Fields, he invited both Nathaniel and Sophia to write.
He agreed; she declined. Sophia wrote:. You forget that Mr. Hawthorne is the Belleslettres portion of my being, and besides that I have a repugnance to female authoresses in general. I have far more distaste for myself as a female authoress in particular. He and U.
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