The House of Hawthorne (30 page)

TO NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, LIVERPOOL

Madeira, January 1856

My Splendor, My Sun,

O’Sullivan—or rather John, as we call our friend—may be second to you, but if first is at the feet of the god himself, second would be in the darkness of a cave at the foot of Mount Olympus. No god has ever been jealous of a mortal, and I do not recommend starting a new tradition.

(See—I nearly blaspheme to offer my assurances!)

You are my one and only, and I should never have to make that clear, because it is the very center of my being. But if I must say it, sing it, write it, play it, or paint it so you understand, then I will be glad to do so at the start and end of all of our correspondence.

We write to you from Madeira—the most gloriously splendid island I have seen since Cuba—where we travel to further help my lungs, and see to the health of John’s mother. John did not think you would mind his taking us on a further voyage, and I report to you that our journey was safe and has dropped us in Eden.

Promise Julian I will paint him a picture with words of the shiny, fat green leaves, the shocking pink vegetation, the rustling palms, and the sapphire and topaz waters. The peak of Pico Ruivo is always shrouded in mists, but looms mightily in the
way of the mountains of Cuba. There is a peace about the people here, which one could attribute to living in paradise (or the wine!), and all is calm and ease. The only shadow is the vacancy of you and Julian. We will have to return as a whole in the future.

In your next letter, please include a note for your naughty Rose. She has become quite thorny, slapping and scratching her sister, and having fits and tantrums unbecoming a lady. Perhaps hearing her father’s thoughts on her behavior will improve it, for she can be quite the little savage! Just when I am at my wits’ end with her, she throws her little arms around my neck and says, “I’m sorry, Angel Mama!” and so covers me with kisses, I cannot help but laugh and grant forgiveness.

Tell Julian that I am glad he is feeling better and growing so much he must have new clothes every other month. Tell him not to leave his childhood behind too quickly, because Una has already abandoned hers, and we will all grieve heartily to lose two children to maturity during our separation.

I have included a separate, sealed note (written by Naughty Sophy) that speaks of my passions for you and how it will be when we are once again in our nuptial embrace, and I have even illustrated the missive in the margins. Read it quickly and burn it so I am not humiliated for generations to come at the hands of scholars wishing to understand Nathaniel Hawthorne’s creative process. I did not even sign it.

Most Affectionately,

Thy Dove

TO SOPHIA HAWTHORNE, MADEIRA

Liverpool, March 1856

Dear Sophia,

I cannot help but express my anger at O’Sullivan for dragging my beloved girls on a journey when they are supposed to be safely situated in Lisbon, and would appreciate notice preceding instead of after such travels in the future. I am grateful to providence that you are happy and safe, but I am agitated that my loves are even farther from my cold bosom. Will you ever be close to me again?

Thank God for the coming spring, to end this winter of misery. Your letters alone have kept me from throwing myself off the cliffs, and I allow reports of your joy and health to seep into my soul and nourish it. Pray, do not worry over Julian being negatively affected by my sullenness. He is the most jovial and remarkable boy, and does well to lift his gloomy father’s spirits. He might look like me, but his good nature comes solely from his mother. He is sometimes naughty—also like his mother—which has led to my tossing him over my leg to administer a sound spanking, but I know that soon he will be large enough to do so with me, so I must find a new means of discipline.

I am happy to hear that Rose is behaving better. I told her in my last letter that I would gobble her up if she did not mind
her mama. Please enact the pretend gobbling on her to show her I am not one to be trifled with.

I wrote a separate letter to Una, praising her talent at correspondence and to show her that I understand she is no longer a child. Her letters are very much enjoyed by Julian and me, and I can hardly wait to see the young lady she has become, though it fills my heart with something like grief, and not a little dread.

You need to know that I am ill. I have had a cold, but it is more than that. It feels like a sickness of the mind and heart that will not be made right until I am again at your side. When I am not with you, it is as if I am drawn of pencil and erased—a faint outline on a paper. Without your touch I have no color. I am but a shadow—a weary ghost wandering in search of resurrection that he cannot find. Our reunion cannot come fast enough. June cannot arrive soon enough.

We will come together and join ourselves, never again to be separated. I will leave the consulate and we will travel throughout the continent, ending up in Italy—the land of our courtship dreams—to live the very essence of the art you painted for me as an engagement gift. We will become that art, and I will again know what it is to live life in color.

Thy most loving husband

Winter 1858
Italy

R
ome turns her back to us when we arrive. It is a painful thing to enter the city of your imagination, where you have always told your artist’s heart that it would be at home, and find no welcome. I have the feeling she does not want us, though we want her. Every statue is faced away; every fountain stands frozen in time. I wish to take a flaming torch to the ice hanging from places that should be bubbling and splashing like brooks, whispering ancient secrets to us. Rome in winter is a sarcophagus of marblelike bone—dark and dead, sterile, rigid. Even the ghosts have abandoned this place.

The journey was difficult. After Nathaniel resigned the consulship, we settled our affairs in England, which took longer than we expected, as such things tend to do, and moved on to France, dragging bags and children with us, impatient at every stop for Italy, our self-proclaimed promised land. We met new
friends and old, including Herman Melville, whose brief, awkward visits with us in England marked the end of his relationship with Nathaniel. Through Elizabeth’s correspondence, we were saddened to learn that Ellen Channing had left Ellery for cruelty, had been persuaded back to him, and then died following the birth of their fifth child. Our trunks became more weighted, as did our souls, burdened with memories of those we had lost, and the losses of others.

We exist, however, in a kind of panicked reverence to God. In spite of our travels, illnesses, and sufferings, our Hawthorne bush has not lost any branches. We are together and know that we will never part again. This is the joy of our frozen winter. This is what my eyes will see and my heart will feel, and I will radiate it to Nathaniel and the children until they believe it as I am beginning to do.

A flock of doves on the wing wakes me before the church bells have begun their serenade, drawing me out of bed and to the window of our apartment in the Palazzo Laranzani. My bare feet are cold on the tile, and my worn white nightgown is too thin to afford any warmth, but I am compelled to know what the birds want me to see. I move my gaze over the dome of St. Peter’s, the elevated saints, the clay-tiled roofs where smoke ascends like incense to the gray marble sky. I watch and wait, and I do not have to wait long. A shaft of light, such as one Julian calls a ray from heaven, reaches down to the rooftops and is guided by the travels of clouds until it rests on the dome. Then, almost all at once, more light begins to beam down, a ray here, a line there:
an illumination. In the space of mere minutes, all of Rome is in benediction from the blazing pink-and-orange sunrise.

This is God’s assurance.

I hear a noise on the bed behind me, and turn with the light warming my hair to see Nathaniel awake and staring at me with the most tender look of adoration. I move toward him and the light reaches my love, turning his pale skin pink, as if the Great Artist has touched a marble statue with paint and breathed life into him.

Nathaniel does not fall in love with Rome with the speed that I do.

His puritan soul is shocked to its inmost core at the nudity depicted in sculpture and paint. He cannot identify with the grandeur of the robustly healthy body because he is too busy shielding the eyes of our children and averting his own from the abundance of breasts, bottoms, and male genitalia, which all give me the profoundest delight.

My health has never been better, and in spite of the chill and my reluctant and gloomy husband, I drag him and the children from gallery to gallery, basking in the rapture of beholding the art and architecture I have so long studied and imagined. Nathaniel has begun insisting we leave the children with their nurse, Ada, a charming young American woman we all love, so we can explore the galleries without compromising their innocence, and I consent, not because I agree, but to enjoy my husband alone. My
return to health and these stimulating surroundings have awakened me, and I enjoy exchanging squeezes and pats with Nathaniel as he professes his endless shock.

Today we visit the Capitoline Museum sculpture gallery, where the massive
Dying Gladiator
is the focus, but whose
Resting Satyr
draws our attention. This charming likeness of a faun—a creature that looks human at first glance until the pointed ears and tail are observed—seems to have such a youthful air of relaxation and exquisite comfort about it that even Nathaniel resists commenting on the dangling manhood at his eye level.

“Here is something I can appreciate,” he says.

Our arms are linked, and I pull him closer to me so our sides are touching, warming me from head to foot.

“Does he not offend your ancestral prudery?” I say.

“Strangely, no.”

“Why not?”

“Perhaps my mind is expanding to allow an appreciation of form. This faun is pleasant. Unsexual. He conveys ease like that of Eden and shows the lighter side of the animal nature of humanity.”

I shiver when Nathaniel speaks of sexuality, and he steals a glance around the room before touching a kiss on the side of my neck.

“Rome is thawing you,” I say.

“And the spring,” he adds. “And my relief from the dreadful cold that was my companion all winter.”

“I will further the thaw in our chamber this evening,” I whisper in his ear.

“Then I will wish away the twilight and urge the hastening of the night.”

I am light-headed and must separate from Nathaniel. His low laugh follows me, and I think how pleasing it is to hear his high spirits. How young I feel! We could be in Concord at the Old Manse during our Edenic days.

That night we dine alfresco on cheese, fruit, and nuts purchased from street vendors, and follow it with wine. We grow a little stupid, and whisper silly things to each other as we stroll the city streets, all the way to the Fountain of Trevi. The moonlight winks at us on the frothy waters and illuminates the impressive and imposing figure of Neptune, god of the sea. We stand before it, arms entwined, feeling the chill of the spray, smelling the fresh water, and listening to the hypnotic cascades. It seems a great reward for the trials we have endured to stand here in Rome together before this magnificence. It is early spring, so there is still a nip in the night air, and we are eager to return home to our bed. Nathaniel leads me away, but not before a figure standing near the fountain catches my eye. It is a solitary woman whose face is so white in the moonlight she could be a statue. I feel a bone-deep shiver as the image of the beggar girl assaults me, and becomes the face of Margaret Fuller. I halt my step, and Nathaniel turns to me.

“Are you all right?” he asks when he sees my face.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, and then dare to look back at the woman. She is clearly not Margaret, but there is a sorrow and a longing about her that remind me of our old friend. I do not want to bring her memory between us, though, so I arrange my face into a smile.

“Of course,” I say.

We continue for home, and I am able to suppress the past and enjoy my husband. Time seems to hold its breath. His hands travel over me like a sculptor’s, molding, kneading, bringing me to new life. We are one as we have not been in many moons, and when we finish, we cling to each other, and he falls asleep in my arms.

But sleep will not come. I am haunted, and fear what always follows my visions. I sense there is something coiled in the darkness, waiting to steal our perfect happiness.