I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really
moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile
figures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance.... The way
in which the two victims dance through the Carnival on the last day is
very striking. It is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without being
in the least Greek."
To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley has
kindly sent me a copy of the letter.
MY DEAR MOTLEY:--You are certainly that Gentle Reader for whom all my
books were exclusively written. Nobody else (my wife excepted, who
speaks so near me that I cannot tell her voice from my own) has ever
said exactly what I loved to hear. It is most satisfactory to be hit
upon the raw, to be shot straight through the heart. It is not the
quantity of your praise that I care so much about (though I gather it
all up most carefully, lavish as you are of it), but the kind, for you
take the book precisely as I meant it; and if your note had come a few
days sooner, I believe I would have printed it in a postscript which I
have added to the second edition, because it explains better than I
found possible to do the way in which my romance ought to be taken....
Now don't suppose that I fancy the book to be a tenth part as good as
you say it is. You work out my imperfect efforts, and half make the book
with your warm imagination; and see what I myself saw, but could only
hint at. Well, the romance is a success, even if it never finds another
reader.
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