No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter'
than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no one
else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, and
found my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicable
embroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token of
her order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hidden
by the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon
it at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as
was possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever
came to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freak
of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, the
Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please."
A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it be
trustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it has
been verified.
The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The name
Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an original
and isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story."
In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice-told series printed
many years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with no
mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the
breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children.
Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had
embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the
nicest art of needlework.
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