XXI. THE DEPARTURE



INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES.



IN September of the year during the February of which Hawthorne had
completed "The Scarlet Letter," he began "The House of the Seven Gables."
Meanwhile, he had removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire County,
Massachusetts, where he occupied with his family a small red wooden house,
still standing at the date of this edition, near the Stockbridge Bowl.

"I sha'n't have the new story ready by November," he explained
to his publisher, on the 1st of October, "for I am never good for
anything in the literary way till after the first autumnal frost,
which has somewhat such an effect on my imagination that it does
on the foliage here about me-multiplying and brightening its hues."
But by vigorous application he was able to complete the new work
about the middle of the January following.

Since research has disclosed the manner in which the romance is
interwoven with incidents from the history of the Hawthorne family,
"The House of the Seven Gables" has acquired an interest apart
from that by which it first appealed to the public. John Hathorne
(as the name was then spelled), the great-grandfather of Nathaniel
Hawthorne, was a magistrate at Salem in the latter part of the