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The Old Manse and the Wayside, Concord, Massachusetts: Hawthorne

Hawthorne's own charming description of the house and grounds is so attractive that the reader wishes to visit them: "Between two tall gateposts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch), we beheld the grey front of the old parsonage terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, the last inhabitant, had turned from that gateway toward the village burying ground. "Nor, in truth, had the old manse ever been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly owners from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in the chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful to recollect how many sermons must have been written there. The latest inhabitant IN THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS • • there he by whose translation to paradise the dwelling was left vacant-had penned nearly three thousand discourses. How often, no doubt, had he paced along the avenue, attuning his meditations to sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep and solemn peals of the wind among the leafy tops of the trees!... I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the autumn, and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old Manse well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses."

Two years after their marriage, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to her mother: "I have no time, as you may imagine. I am baby's tire-woman, hand-maiden, and tender, as well as nursing mother. My husband relieves me with her constantly, and gets her to sleep beautifully.... The other day, when my husband saw me contemplating an appalling vacuum in his dressing-gown, he said he was a man of the largest rents in the country, and it was strange he had not more ready money. But, somehow or other, I do not care much, because we are so happy." • • • Hawthorne did much of his work in the rear room where Emerson wrote. In the introduction to "Mosses from an Old Manse" he said of this apartment: "When I first saw the room, the walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan ministers, that hung around.

The rain pattered upon the roof and the sky gloomed through the dirty garret windows while I burrowed among the venerable books in search of any living thought." • • • From his writing Hawthorne turned easily to wandering in the garden or rowing on the river or helping his wife about the house. "We had a most enchanting time during Mary the cook's holiday sojourn in Boston," Mrs. Hawthorne wrote at one time. "We remained in our bower undisturbed by mortal creature. Mr. Hawthorne took the new phases of housekeeper, and, with that marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances that he possesses, made everything go easily and well. He rose betimes in the mornings and kindled fires in the kitchen and breakfast room, and by the time I came down the tea-kettle boiled and potatoes were baked and rice cooked, and my lord sat with a book superintending." Poverty put an untimely end to life at the Old Manse. The years from 1846 to 1852 were spent in Boston and Salem. In 1852 Hawthorne was able to buy a dilapidated old house at Concord, which he called The Wayside. Here he remained until his appointment in 1853 as American Consul at Liverpool, and to it he returned after long wandering.