Theodore Sedgwick LL. D.
In the museum at Pittsfield, as one of its most valued treasures, stands an old mahogany desk, plain, solid, time-worn, conspicuous in its abundance of drawers and of ink-stains. Its former home was Lenox. On the northern shore of Lake Mahkeenac —or Stockbridge Bowl, as it is now called— in a little red house guarded by a tumble-down gate and shaky paling, through which in their season the blossoms of the syringa and the rose, tiger-lilies and stately peonies, were accustomed to peep, lived for a time the author of the "Scarlet Letter," who had come thither from Salem to regain his health in the invigorating atmosphere of the Berkshire Hills. He did not enter Berkshire, like Bryant, a stranger to fame. It was rather in the flush of success, while on every hand gentle applause united in approval of a book which mature judgment has often ranked as the first American novel. The make-up of the man is shown in his life at Lenox. He cared little for society and less for ease. His greatest luxury, his most congenial society, was the company of his own thoughts. These thoughts were a wealth in themselves. Even his children understood this. When one afternoon, as was his custom, he was lying at full length under the trees, down by the lake, and his children Julian and Una were playing about him, the former chanced to trespass too near her father's head. Thereupon, Una said, "Take care, Julian, do not run upon papa's head. His is a real head, for it is full of thoughts." "Yes," retorted the boy, "it is thought that makes his head." Hawthorne's fondness for his children was marked. Morning and evening the pen was constantly in his hand, but the afternoons were devoted to them. It was all their splendid holiday when out in the orchard he whittled them a boat, or constructed them a kite, adding at last its big mysterious tail, or went flower gathering, or wandered down by the lake to sail the children's boat and let Julian angle with his formidable beanpole and bent pin. Mornings, taking a pail, they used to accompany him to a neighbor's house "upon his milky way," as he was accustomed to style it, and then back to the little red house, "his Scarlet Letter," where a grim old negro cook, Mrs. Peters— "housekeeper by the wrath of God" —would relieve him of his burden. During his stay here he wrote "The House of Seven Gables," "Tanglewood Tales," and "The Wonder Book," and planned his "Blithedale Romance." In this little red cottage, Rose Hawthorne, the present Mrs. Lathrop, was born.
Hawthorne, as has been said, was not social by nature. His acquaintances in Lenox and thereabouts were few, and even among these he seldom took the part of visitor. Among those who came to see him was the stately Mr. James,
The Sedgwick House, Stockbridge.
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