The first time Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Peabody home on Charter Street, Sophia was too ill to meet him.
He was there to call on Elizabeth Peabody (Sophia's oldest sister), the brilliant educator and editor who moved in high literary circles in Boston and Salem. Elizabeth had taken an interest in the young writer and hoped to further his career. Nathaniel presented her with a complementary copy of his new book, "Twice-told Tales".
"He is handsomer than Lord Byron!" Elizabeth exclaimed to Sophia, running upstairs to her sister's bedchamber. "You must get up and dress and come down."
According to Hawthorne biographer Brenda Wineapple, "Sophia, an invalid, laughed. 'If he has come once he will come again,' she said." And he did — many times.
Hawthorne has been linked romantically with Elizabeth Peabody and Mary Silsbee. But while the 33-year-old author had spent his earlier years as a withdrawn, brooding, insecure young man, by 1837 he was ready to emerge from that gloomy place, and his growing friendship with Sophia was the key.
As he wrote to her in 1841:
"Whenever I return to Salem, I feel how dark my life would be, without the light that thou shedst upon it — how cold, without the warmth of thy love. Sitting in this chamber, where my youth wasted itself in vain, I can partly estimate the change that has been wrought. It seems as if the better part of me had been born, since then. I had walked those many years in darkness, and might so have walked through life, with only a dreamy notion that there was any light in the universe, if thou hadst not kissed mine eye-lids, and given me to see."
It is unclear when the two friends began writing to each other, as not all their letters survive. Hawthorne had taken a position as a "measurer" of coal and salt at Boston's custom house where he struggled with the drudgery of his work and the distance between them, once writing to Sophia:
"My Dove is at home — not, indeed, in her home of homes," meaning, not with him, "but still in the midst of true affections; and she can live a spiritual life, spiritual and intellectual. Now, my intellect, and my heart and soul, have no share in my present mode of life — they find neither labor nor food in it; everything that I do might be better done by a machine. I am a machine, and am surrounded by hundreds of similar machines ... Oh, my Dove, I have really thought sometimes, that God gave you to me to be the salvation of my soul."
Hawthorne not only called her his "Dove," but also his "ownest," "Sophie," and "naughty Sophie" when they flirted. As he explained to her, "Other dear ones may call you 'daughter,' 'sister,' 'Sophia,' but when, at your entrance into Heaven, or after you have been a little while there, you hear a voice say 'Dove!' then you will know that your kindred spirit has been admitted (perhaps for your sake) to the mansions of rest."
The author and Sophia Peabody kept their relationship to themselves at first, but in July 1839, long before they were married, Hawthorne adopted another private name for her: Wife.
"I am tired this evening, as usual, with my long day's toil; and my head wants its pillow — and my soul yearns for the friend whom God has given it — whose soul he has married to my soul. Oh my dearest, how that thought thrills me! We are married! I felt it long ago; and sometimes, when I was seeking for some fondest word, it has been on my lips to call you — 'Wife'! I hardly know what restrained me from speaking it — unless a dread (for that would have been an infinite pang to me) of feeling you shrink back, and therefore by discovering that there was yet a deep place in your soul which did not know me. Mine own Dove, need I fear it now? Are we not married? God knows we are. Often, I have silently given myself to you, and received you for my portion of human love and happiness, and have prayed Him to consecrate and bless the union. Yes — we are married; and as God Himself has joined us, we may trust never to be separated, neither in Heaven nor on Earth. We will wait patiently and quietly, and He will lead us onward hand in hand (as He has done all along) like little children, and will guide us to our perfect happiness — and will teach us when our union is to be revealed to the world. My beloved, why should we be silent to one another — why should our lips be silent — any longer on this subject? The world might, as yet, misjudge us; and therefore we will not speak to the world; by why should we not commune together about all our hopes of earthly and external as well our faith of inward and eternal union? Farewell for tonight, my dearest — my soul's bride."
Peabody's letters kept Hawthorne sane. He respected her thoughts, he respected her as an artist (she had provided a sketch for his story, "The Gentle Boy"), and he "yearned for her" constantly. In one lonely moment at Boston's custom house, he confessed:
"This forenoon I could not wait as I generally do, to be in solitude before opening your letter; for I expected to be busy all afternoon, and was already tired with working yesterday and today; and my heart longed to drink your thoughts and feelings, as a parched throat for cold water. So I pressed my Dove to my lips (turning my head away, so that nobody saw me) and then broke the seal. I do think it is the dearest letter you have ever written, but I think so of each successive one."
In the same letter he added:
"How did I live before I knew you — before I possessed your affection! I reckon upon your love as something that is to endure when everything that can perish has perished — though my trust is sometimes mingled with fear, because I feel myself unworthy of your love. But if I am worthy of it, you will always love me; and if there be anything good and pure in me, it will be proved by my always loving you. I kiss you my dearest — did you feel it?"
Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody were finally married in 1842, raised three children, and enjoyed a remarkable life together in New England and Europe. Hawthorne died at the age of 60 and was buried in Concord, Mass. Peabody died seven years later in London where she was buried, some 3,200 miles distant from her beloved "king, playmate, lover, subject, knight, or all in one word husband" — words she had written to Hawthorne years earlier.
In a poetic tribute to their marriage, Hawthorne's descendants moved Peabody's remains to Concord in 2006 where the two lovers are now reunited in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
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Bonnie Hurd Smith of Salem has written previously for Viewpoint.
