The House of the Seven Gables | Page 4

introduced as
Clifford Pyncheon. In all probability Hawthorne connected with this, in
his mind, the murder of Mr. White, a wealthy gentleman of Salem,
killed by a man whom his nephew had hired. This took place a few
years after Hawthorne's gradation from college, and was one of the
celebrated cases of the day, Daniel Webster taking part prominently in

the trial. But it should be observed here that such resemblances as these
between sundry elements in the work of Hawthorne's fancy and details
of reality are only fragmentary, and are rearranged to suit the author's
purposes.
In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah Pyncheon's
seven-gabled mansion conform so nearly to several old dwellings
formerly or still extant in Salem, that strenuous efforts have been made
to fix upon some one of them as the veritable edifice of the romance. A
paragraph in The opening chapter has perhaps assisted this delusion
that there must have been a single original House of the Seven Gables,
framed by flesh-and-blood carpenters; for it runs thus:-
"Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection--for it has been an
object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the
best and stateliest architecture of a long-past epoch, and as the scene of
events more full of interest perhaps than those of a gray feudal
castle--familiar as it stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the
more difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught
the sunshine."
Hundreds of pilgrims annually visit a house in Salem, belonging to one
branch of the Ingersoll family of that place, which is stoutly maintained
to have been The model for Hawthorne's visionary dwelling. Others
have supposed that the now vanished house of The identical Philip
English, whose blood, as we have already noticed, became mingled
with that of the Hawthornes, supplied the pattern; and still a third
building, known as the Curwen mansion, has been declared the only
genuine establishment. Notwithstanding persistent popular belief, The
authenticity of all these must positively be denied; although it is
possible that isolated reminiscences of all three may have blended with
the ideal image in the mind of Hawthorne. He, it will be seen, remarks
in the Preface, alluding to himself in the third person, that he trusts not
to be condemned for "laying out a street that infringes upon nobody's
private rights... and building a house of materials long in use for
constructing castles in the air." More than this, he stated to persons still
living that the house of the romance was not copied from any actual

edifice, but was simply a general reproduction of a style of architecture
belonging to colonial days, examples of which survived into the period
of his youth, but have since been radically modified or destroyed. Here,
as elsewhere, he exercised the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the
probability of his pictures without confining himself to a literal
description of something he had seen.
While Hawthorne remained at Lenox, and during the composition of
this romance, various other literary personages settled or stayed for a
time in the vicinity; among them, Herman Melville, whose intercourse
Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry James, Sr., Doctor Holmes, J. T.
Headley, James Russell Lowell, Edwin P. Whipple, Frederika Bremer,
and J. T. Fields; so that there was no lack of intellectual society in the
midst of the beautiful and inspiring mountain scenery of the place. "In
the afternoons, nowadays," he records, shortly before beginning the
work, "this valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with
golden Sunshine as with wine;" and, happy in the companionship of his
wife and their three children, he led a simple, refined, idyllic life,
despite the restrictions of a scanty and uncertain income. A letter
written by Mrs. Hawthorne, at this time, to a member of her family,
gives incidentally a glimpse of the scene, which may properly find a
place here. She says: "I delight to think that you also can look forth, as
I do now, upon a broad valley and a fine amphitheater of hills, and are
about to watch the stately ceremony of the sunset from your piazza. But
you have not this lovely lake, nor, I suppose, the delicate purple mist
which folds these slumbering mountains in airy veils. Mr. Hawthorne
has been lying down in the sun shine, slightly fleckered with the
shadows of a tree, and Una and Julian have been making him look like
the mighty Pan, by covering his chin and breast with long grass-blades,
that looked like a verdant and venerable beard." The pleasantness and
peace of his surroundings and of his modest home, in Lenox, may be
taken into account as harmonizing with the mellow serenity of the