[Footnote: This recalls an
allusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking of
Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own
pathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of
The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,--tried to read it,
rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down
on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous
state, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion while
writing it, for many months."] It broke her heart, and sent her to bed
with a grievous headache,--which I look upon as a triumphant success.
Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate on
what bowlers calls a 'ten-strike.' But I do not make any such
calculation."
Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangible
and terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The Scarlet
Letter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of five
thousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salem
and in the region of New England history where he had won his first
triumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, received
the applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, and
speedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum," received
"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at the
same time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on the
author which it is quite worth while to record here.
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