Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (With Illustrations)

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This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices.
Contents:
Novels:
Fanshawe
The Scarlet Letter
The House of the Seven Gables
The Blithedale Romance
The Marble Faun
The Dolliver Romance
Septimius Felton
Doctor Grimshawe's Secret
Collections of Short Stories:
Twice-Told Tales
The Whole History of Grandfather's Chair
Biographical Stories
Mosses from an Old Manse
Wonder Book For Girls and Boys
The Snow Image and Other Twice Told Tales
Tanglewood Tales For Girls and Boys
The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces, Tales and Sketches
The Story Teller
Sketches in Magazines
Poems:
Address to the Moon
The Darken'd Veil
Earthly Pomp
Forms of Heroes
Go to the Grave
My Low and Humble Home
The Ocean
Essays:
The British Matron: A Satire
The Ancestral Footstep: Outlines of an English Romance
Life Of Franklin Pierce
Chiefly About War Matters
Our Old Home
Autobiographical Writings:
Browne's Folly
Love Letters (To Miss Sophia Peabody)
Letter to the Editor of the Literary Review
American Notebooks
English Notebooks
French and Italian Notebooks
Biographies and Reminiscences of Hawthorne:
Biography
The Life and Genius of Hawthorne by Frank Preston Stearns
Hawthorne and His Circle by Julian Hawthorne
Memories of Hawthorne by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
Hawthorne and His Moses by Herman Melville
Fifty Years of Hawthorne
My Literary Passions by W. D. Howell
Life of Great Authors by H. T. Griswold
Yesterday With Authors by J. T. Field
Hawthorne and Brook Farm by G. W. Curtis
Short Biography
Essays and Criticisms on Hawthorne and His Works:
Hawthorne by Henry James Jr.
Nathaniel Hawthorne by Andrew Lang
Nathaniel Hawthorne by G. E. Woodberry
A Study of Hawthorne by G. P. Lathrop
'Hawthorne' and 'The Works of Hawthorne' by G. W. Curtis

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Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. At old Roger Chillingworth’s decease, (which took place within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which Governor Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.

So Pearl — the elf child — the demon offspring, as some people up to that epoch persisted in considering her — became the richest heiress of her day in the New World. Not improbably this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after the physician’s death, the wearer of the scarlet letter disappeared, and Pearl along with her. For many years, though a vague report would now and then find its way across the sea — like a shapeless piece of driftwood tossed ashore with the initials of a name upon it — yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the seashore where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman in a gray robe approach the cottage-door. In all those years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments — and, at all events, went in.

On the threshold she paused — turned partly round — for perchance the idea of entering alone and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet letter on her breast.

And Hester Prynne had returned and taken up her longforsaken shame But where - фото 67

And Hester Prynne had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame! But where was little Pearl? If still alive she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew — nor ever learned with the fulness of perfect certainty — whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued and made capable of a woman’s gentle happiness. But through the remainder of Hester’s life there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased and affection have imagined for her. There were trifles too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers at the impulse of a fond heart. And once Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult had any infant thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.

In fine, the gossips of that day believed — and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed — and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes — that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother; and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside.

But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne, here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed — of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it — resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Hester’s life, the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Hester Prynne had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially — in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion — or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognised the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a lifelong sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful, and wise; moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end.

So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate — as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport — there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow: —

“ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES”

The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance (1851)

Table of Contents

Introductory Note

Preface

I. The Old Pyncheon Family

II. The Little Shop-Window

III. The First Customer

IV. A Day Behind the Counter

V. May and November

VI. Maule’s Well

VII. The Guest

VIII. The Pyncheon of To-day

IX. Clifford and Phoebe

X. The Pyncheon Garden

XI. The Arched Window

XII. The Daguerreotypist

XIII. Alice Pyncheon

XIV. Phoebe’s Good-Bye

XV. The Scowl and Smile

XVI. Clifford’s Chamber

XVII. The Flight of Two Owls

XVIII. Governor Pyncheon

XIX. Alice’s Posies

XX. The Flower of Eden

XXI. The Departure

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Table of Contents

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.

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