The Blithedale Romance

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE AFTER the publication of The Scarlet Letter, the Hawthornes moved from Satem to Lenox, where they stayed for a year and a half, the cottage which they occupied being familiarly called the Red House. The house was burned in 1890, but by that time had become a spot to which literary pilgrimages were made. The scene was thus described by a Stockbridge paper not long after the fire - Drive along a lonely winding road through a homely New England district several hundred yards west of the pretentious mansions of Stockbridge, pass through a breezy open patch of pines, and one comes to a characteristic hillside New England orchard, the branches of whose trees just now are bright with ripening red apples. On the hill-slope in the middle of the orchard and overlooking the famous Stockbridge Bowl - a round deep tarn among the hills - are the brick cellar walls and brick underpinning of what was a very humble dwelling - the Hawthorne Cottage. About the ruins is a quiet, modest, New England neighborhood. There is not much to see at the site of the Hawthorne Cottage, yet every day fashionable folk from New York and Boston and a score of western cities drive thither with fine equipages and jingling harness, halt, and look curiously for a minute or two at the green turf of the dooryard and the crumbling brick walls of the cottage site. Mrs. Lathrop reports her father as saying that it was difficult for him to write in the presence of such a view as the littIe Red House commanded but certainly the conditions under which he wrote otherwise were most favorable. Fame had come to him, and with it the sense of stability in fortune. Here his youngest child was born, and all his children led a free, joyous life. Health reigned in the household, and the country society was of a high order, whiIe the author of repute was now drawing to himself friends in the guild. Mrs. Hawthorne writes to her mother Just now, Dr. Holmes and Mr. Uphams son Charles drove up. They came in, a few -moments. First came Dr. Holmes, to peep at the Lake through the boudoir window, - for he was afraid to leave the horse, even tied then he went out for Charles to come in and Mr. Hawthorne insisted upon holding the horse, and having them both come in. When Dr. Holmes went back, he Iaughed to see Mr...