Notes on the Destruction of The
Scarlet Letter Manuscript
by
Matthew J. Bruccoli
All that survives of The Scarlet Letter manuscript is the title leaf with the table of contents on its verso.[1] There are two explanations of how
the manuscript was destroyed: Hawthorne's obscure — in both senses
—
statement, and his son Julian's commonly-accepted but apparently untrue
account.
On 3 November, 1850, Hawthorne added this postscript to a letter to
his bibliophilic publisher James T. Fields: "The MS. of the Scarlet Letter
was burnt long ago."[2] Although the
part of this letter dealing with
The House of the Seven Gables — then in progress
— has
been printed, the postscript has remained unpublished.
[3]
Julian Hawthorne's version first appeared in print in
Hawthorne
and his Circle (1903): "I have seen the manuscripts of all his tales
except The Scarlet Letter, which was destroyed by James T.
Fields's printers — Fields having at that time no notion of the fame
the
romance was to achieve, or of the value that would attach to every scrap of
Hawthorne's writing" (p.52). Julian does not absolutely contradict his
father, for Hawthorne did not say who did the burning, himself or the
printers; nevertheless it seems unlikely that Fields would have asked
Hawthorne for a manuscript that had been destroyed by the publisher's own
workmen. It does, however, appear that Julian was right in stating that
Fields came to a late acquisitive appreciation of The Scarlet
Letter, for the manuscript went through the press early in
1850.
Yet, it is unwise to place total faith in Julian's testimony, for he was
a confirmed feuder and something of a con-man; and there had been bad
feeling between Fields and him. Indeed, his statement about The
Scarlet Letter manuscript merits less than complete belief because
of
its curious tone of personal injury. Julian seems, somehow, to feel that he
had been deprived of a manuscript he could have sold. He did, in fact,
make a good thing of selling his father's papers.
The publication of Hawthorne and his Circle brought
a
protest from Fields's widow, Annie, in a letter to Julian which has not
previously been printed:
There is one passage which I think it would be well for you to omit
in the reprinting of your last book.
I refer to the one in which you speak of Mr. Fields as inappreciative
of the "Scarlet Letter," and for that reason having burned the manuscript.
If you will re-read what your father himself published upon the subject of
being appreciated and helped by his publisher I think you will cross out of
your mind as well as off the printed page any such thought or
remark.
Your father told me one day, after saying that he was glad to have me
accept and treasure the manuscript of "The House of The Seven Gables",
— "I wish I had the manuscript of "The Scarlet Letter" to give you
also,
but I put it up the chimney"
You may imagine, having heard this from his own lips, how the
passage in your book amazed me.
Nothing is of much moment now, except the truth for your own sake,
therefore you will, I am sure, cross off the passage in question and publish
this brief note wherever and whenever it shall seem to you
appropriate.[4]
In fairness to Julian, it should be noted that he had not charged Fields
with "having burned the manuscript." What reply he made to Mrs. Fields
is not known; and since Hawthorne and his Circle was not
reprinted, he did not have the opportunity to revise it. Mrs. Fields,
meanwhile, repeated her claim — and her defense of Fields —
later in
the year in a letter to Robert S. Rantoul.[5]
It is unlikely, though, that Julian would have changed his story, for
he repeated it — with embellishments — as late as 1931 in
what has
become the best-known account of the destruction of the manuscript:
By the way, I was lately in contact with a gentleman who, in the
fervour of the moment, said he would pay Twenty Thousand Dollars, cash
or certified check, for the original manuscript of The Scarlet
Letter, to him in hand delivered. I was obliged to decline; not from
any foolish pride of possession, nor because no such manuscript ever
existed; but because my father, after he had written the thing, delivered it
to young Mr. James T. Fields, who, not to be too late for the Spring Book
Market, promptly passed it on to the printers; and they, after they had set
it up, dropped the sheets into the waste-basket, or used them for
pipe-lighters. I have heard Fields, in later and wiser years, bitterly lament
this indiscretion. But the rash deed was committed four-score-and-one years
ago, and is irrevocable.
Possibly the eager virtuoso mentioned above, before making his
proposition, may have been aware of its futility. Nevertheless, it was a
gallant and eloquent gesture, and helps the trade.[6]
And again one is struck by Julian Hawthorne's irrational sense of
outraged wallet.[7]
Notes