of shadowed cavity in which they were seen under the high and massive forehead.
[4] Hawthorne and his friends: Harper's Magazine, vol. 63 (July, 1881).
[5] Vol. 45 (July, 1837), p. 59.
[6] Transcendentalism in New England.
[7] She died, unmarried, in September, 1877.
[8] The allusion to a baby-boy is confusing, because Mr. Julian Hawthorne was not born at Concord, and when the family returned thither to occupy The Wayside, he was about six years old.
[9] This is the first intimation of the story of Septimius Felton, so far as local setting is concerned. The scenery of that romance was obviously taken from The Wayside and its hill.
[10] French and Italian Note-Books, May 30, 1858. A contributor to Appletons' Journal, writing in 1875, describes a surviving specimen of the old contrivances which then gave Salem its water-supply. "The presumption is that a description of this particular one answers for Hawthorne's pump, seeing that they were all alike. It is large enough for a mausoleum and looks not unlike one, made of slabs of dingy stone, like stained, gray gravestones set up on one end, in a square at the foundation, but all inclining inward at the top, where they are kept in position by a band of iron. A decaying segment of log appears, in which the pump-handle works in vain, now, however, since, being long out of use, it has no connection with the water below; on the front side are two circular holes, like a pair of great eyes, made for the insertion of the spouts; and, finally, a long-handled iron dish, like a saucepan or warming-pan on a smaller scale, is attached by an iron chain to the stone, by way of drinking-vessel. Altogether, though it may not strike an old Salem resident in that way, it seems to the stranger a very unique, antiquated, and remarkable structure."
[11] Atlantic Monthly, September, 1870, vol. 26, p. 257.
[12] Papyrus Leaves, pp. 261, 262.
[13] A Study of Hawthorne: Chapter, xi., 291, 292.
The House of the Seven Gables
Introductory Note
IN September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had completed “The Scarlet Letter,” he began “The House of the Seven Gables.” Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house, still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl.
“I sha’n’t have the new story ready by November,” he explained to his publisher, on the 1st of October, “for I am never good for anything in the literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about me-multiplying and brightening its hues.” But by vigorous application he was able to complete the new work about the middle of the January following.
Since research has disclosed the manner in which the romance is interwoven with incidents from the history of the Hawthorne family, “The House of the Seven Gables” has acquired an interest apart from that by which it first appealed to the public. John Hathorne (as the name was then spelled), the great-grandfather of Nathaniel
