University of Virginia Library

Hawthorne's Income from the Token
by
Seymour L. Gross

Hawthorne published more of his tales and sketches in Samuel Griswold Goodrich's gift-book, The Token, than in any other single magazine or annual. In the years 1831-1838 no less than twenty-seven of Hawthorne's pieces, including some of the finest he ever wrote, appeared amongst a welter of sentimental engravings, incredibly puerile verses, and fantastic fictions in this the most popular "painted bladder" of its time.

A knowledge of how meager Hawthorne's income from The Token was, gives us, I believe, an insight into at least one of the causes of Hawthorne's depression during "the solitary years," a depression that became so profound in 1836, that Horatio Bridge sincerely feared that Hawthorne was "too good a subject for suicide."[1] Even allowing for that kind friend's tendency toward the hysterical, there is little question that Hawthorne's emotional nadir was reached in the months before the publication of the Twice Told Tales, and that the meagerness of his remunerations was no small contributing factor to his depression. Bridge, obviously echoing Hawthorne's recent letter, writes: "I coincide perfectly with you touching the disparity between a writer's labor and a publisher's. It is hard that you should do so much and receive so little for [from?] the "Token" (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 149. Letter dated Feb. 1, 1837).

Robert Cantwell has estimated that Hawthorne's work for The Token brought him an income of $100 a year.[2] Small as that sum is, even by nineteenth-century standards, it is still too high an estimate. Hawthorne contributed tales or sketches to The Token in each year between 1831 and 1838, with the exception of 1834, so that by Cantwell's figure Hawthorne would have earned $700 from his writing for that annual. Because we have positive evidence for the amount paid Hawthorne for only nine of the twenty-seven published pieces, any estimate of the total income must, of course, be hypothetical; but, for reasons I shall briefly outline, an estimate of about half of Cantwell's would seem more nearly to approximate the truth.

We know that Goodrich paid Hawthorne $35, or about 75 cents a page for "The Gentle Boy" (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 132). It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the other three stories which appeared along with "The Gentle Boy" in the 1832 Token, "The Wives of the Dead," "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," were purchased at the same rate. If this is so, then all four brought Hawthorne $84. There is no certain way of telling what Goodrich paid Hawthorne for "Sights from a Steeple," which was published

the year before, but if Goodrich offered $35 for a forty-six page story, chances are that he would not have given over $10 for a ten page sketch. Hawthorne might justifiably have expected a higher rate of pay for the three pieces he published in the 1833 Token from an editor who wrote him of his 1832 stories, "they are as good, if not better, than anything else I get" (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 132), and who admitted that he was "gratified to find that all whose opinions I have heard agree with me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen."[3] But if Goodrich did give Hawthorne a raise, it was probably to no more than a dollar a page, for a dollar a page in 1837 was the most Hawthorne ever was paid for his work for The Token. It is more than likely, however, that Goodrich, who, on the whole, had the predatory ethics of most commercialists, paid Hawthorne at the same rate as for the 1832 pieces. Hawthorne, then, probably received either $36 or $45 for his three pieces in the 1833 Token, depending on whether the rate was 75 cents or a dollar a page.

The only fact we have to go on in ascertaining the payment for the six pieces which appeared in the 1835 and 1836 Tokens is an irritatingly enigmatic remark dropped by Hawthorne's son-in-law, George Parsons Lathrop, in his introduction to the Riverside edition of the Twice Told Tales. After asserting the fact that Goodrich skimmed off parts of the defunct Story Teller for his annual (a fact substantiated by Elizabeth Peabody[4]), he says, "It is worth recording as a curious fact in literary history that for the accompanying stories which Goodrich used in his annual he gave Hawthorne about three dollars apiece."[5] Which stories or how many were so meagerly paid for, Lathrop does not say. We do know, however, that the manuscript of The Story Teller was sent to Goodrich early in 1834 (Conway, p. 22), and since no work by Hawthorne appeared in the 1834 issue, any parts of The Story Teller which Goodrich wished to use would have had to wait until at least the 1835 volume. Moreover, we know for a certainty that Goodrich paid Hawthorne $108, or about a dollar a page, for the eight pieces in the 1837 Token (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 138), and that the five pieces in the 1838 volume, the last Hawthorne ever submitted to the annual, were solicited by Goodrich in February, 1837: "If you have any articles written for the 'Token,' I should be glad to get them soon, as I am putting the work into the hands of the printers" (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 150). Therefore, by a process of elimination, the stories referred to by Lathrop must be among the six published in the 1835 and/or 1836 Tokens. We can, however, exclude "Alice Doane's Appeal." This tale, we know, was originally a part of Seven Tales of My Native Land (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 124), and was then carried over to Provincial Tales.[6] The version which appeared in the 1835 Token was almost certainly a revision in which the incest and other sexual elements of the original version have

been deleted or toned down.[7] My own feeling is that all five of the remaining pieces were part of The Story Teller, for everything else published by Hawthorne during this period was part of The Story Teller, except two hack pieces for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, a magazine he edited for six months in 1836. There is no reason to believe that Hawthorne wrote special pieces for The Token during this period: he seemed willing to ride along on the strength of the segments of this the third of his ill-fated projects. If my surmise is correct, then these five pieces (which, by the way, included "The Maypole of Merry Mount" and "The Minister's Black Veil") earned Hawthorne $15, or about 22 cents a page! The figure seems incredible, but we have no reason to believe that Lathrop is lying. What probably happened was that Hawthorne, disheartened by the unforeseen decision to break up The Story Teller,[8] despondently allowed the opportunistic Goodrich to take the five pieces for the criminally low price of $3 apiece. In speaking of the fracturing of his project into unrelated fragments, Hawthorne told his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, that "he cared little for the stories afterwards, which had in their original place in The Story Teller a great deal of significance . . ." (Conway, p. 32). Since "Alice Doane's Appeal" was contracted for along with the four 1832 tales, perhaps Goodrich paid for it at the same rate (75 cents a page), or about $13.

As we have already said, Goodrich paid Hawthorne $108 for the eight pieces in the 1837 Token. The five pieces in the 1838 Token were probably paid for at the same rate as those of the previous year. Goodrich's letter requesting material for the 1838 Token seems tacitly to accept the fact that Hawthorne would submit his material at the same rate (about a dollar a page): "The 'Token' is out; the publisher owes you $108 for what you have written,—shall it be sent to you? I shall want three or four sketches from you for the next volume, if you can finish them." (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 138). The last five pieces in The Token, then, probably earned Hawthorne $68.

When we add the figures we come out with a rather dismal total. As I estimate it, Hawthorne's income from The Token was somewhere in the vicinity of between $334 and $343. Certainly more ought to have been given the man who, if he did not quite "save" The Token with his writing, as Bridge once angrily exclaimed (Hawthorne and His Wife, I, 143), did adorn its otherwise pallid pages with some of the most notable short stories in the language.

Notes