It has been
thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at
Brook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that he
traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well to
remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote with
any one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one of
his most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of
composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he was
describing resembled in some point one or more persons of his
acquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla had
developed itself in his imagination, he found he could give her a
greater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; and
that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figure
to prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history of
Zenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds of
all readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down
and describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises to
make the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons the
character becomes quite a different thing to them from the actual
prototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no
doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that and
the atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that,
without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meeting
might have the effect of _suggesting_ it.
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