--Some
of my few readers (within a dozen) are aggrieved at my having only
told part of the story of Italian patriotism.--I meant it merely as a
picture of manners: and have seen too much of the class "refugee," not
to have felt how they have as a class retarded, not aided, the cause
of real freedom and high morals. I should have sent it before, but I
always feel, like Teresa Panza, when she sent acorns to the Duchess.
You will come to town, and eat in my quiet corner before you go, I
know:--Perhaps, I may call on you at Easter: as there is just a chance
of my being at Birmingham.
There is an old house, Compton Wingates, that I very much want to see.
Has Hawthorne seen it?
Once more thank you affectionately,--these sort of passages are among
the very few set-offs to the difficulties of a harsh life and all
ungracious career. My seeing you face to face was, I assure you, one
of my best pleasures in 1859. Ever yours faithfully,
HENRY N. CHORLEY.
Hawthorne had returned, for the purpose of cherishing American loyalty
in his children, from a scene that was after his own heart, even to
the actors in it. He had hoped for quietude and the inimitable flavor
of home, of course; but this hope was chiefly a self-persuasion. The
title of his first book after returning, "Our Old Home," was a concise
confession. He would have considered it a base resource to live abroad
during the war, bringing up his son in an alien land, however dear and
related it might be to our bone and sinew; and if his children did not
enjoy the American phase of the universe in its crude stage, he, at
any rate, had done his best to make them love it.
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