the romance was not copied from any actual edifice, but was simply a
general reproduction of a style of architecture belonging to colonial days,
examples of which survived into the period of his youth, but have since
been radically modified or destroyed. Here, as elsewhere, he exercised
the liberty of a creative mind to heighten the probability of his pictures
without confining himself to a literal description of something he had seen.

While Hawthorne remained at Lenox, and during the composition
of this romance, various other literary personages settled or
stayed for a time in the vicinity; among them, Herman Melville,
whose intercourse Hawthorne greatly enjoyed, Henry James, Sr.,
Doctor Holmes, J. T. Headley, James Russell Lowell, Edwin P.
Whipple, Frederika Bremer, and J. T. Fields; so that there was
no lack of intellectual society in the midst of the beautiful
and inspiring mountain scenery of the place. "In the afternoons,
nowadays," he records, shortly before beginning the work, "this
valley in which I dwell seems like a vast basin filled with golden
Sunshine as with wine;" and, happy in the companionship of his
wife and their three children, he led a simple, refined, idyllic
life, despite the restrictions of a scanty and uncertain income.
A letter written by Mrs. Hawthorne, at this time, to a member of
her family, gives incidentally a glimpse of the scene, which may
properly find a place here. She says: "I delight to think that
you also can look forth, as I do now, upon a broad valley and a
fine amphitheater of hills, and are about to watch the stately
ceremony of the sunset from your piazza. But you have not this
lovely lake, nor, I suppose, the delicate purple mist which folds
these slumbering mountains in airy veils. Mr. Hawthorne has
been lying down in the sun shine, slightly fleckered with the
shadows of a tree, and Una and Julian have been making him look