Diamond Writing

"The Old Manse" Concord, Massachusetts (this photo taken last October)

My brother is visiting from upstate New York. We are having a great time together :- )

Yesterday we went to the Old North Bridge in Concord to visit "The Old Manse". The day was bright and golden, as the best September days are. The meadow was filled with monarch butterflies. The blue sky shone on the surface of the Concord River and from the deck of the bridge we could see fish swimming in the water below.  Along the stone wall chipmunks scampered about collecting nuts for the winter.

The house was built in 1770 for William Emerson, who was Ralph Waldo Emerson's grandfather.. The house stayed in the Emerson family until it was purchased by the National Trustees  in 1939.

When we entered the house for our tour, I was struck by a sense of sadness--can a house be sad?

In 1842 great American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the house with his new bride Sophia (pronounced Suh-FIE-uh, like the name Mariah) Peabody. They married when she was 32 and he was 36, and lived at The Old Manse for three years, which they considered the happiest of their lives. The house is 242 years old.  At the time when the Hawthornes rented it it was already nearly a century old.

I love house tours, but this was not a good one. The Old Manse is sparsely furnished and shabby, with not many artifacts remaining from its historical occupants, and our interpreter struggled to bring the house to life for us. Nevertheless, this house does have stories to tell--in its window glass.

Sophia Peabody Hawthorne has captured my imagination. Although she and her husband rented the house, it did not stop her from taking her diamond wedding ring and writing with it upon the window panes of her husband's study and the dining parlor. In the study she wrote (and Nathaniel responded):

Man's accidents are God's purposes.
Sophia A. Hawthorne, 1843.
Nath'l Hawthorne.
This is his study.
1843
The smallest twig
leans clear against the sky.

Composed by my wife,
and written with her dia-
mond.

Inscribed by my
husband at sunset,
April 3, 1843
On the gold light. S. A. H.

Historians have guessed that Sophia wrote the first line to express her grief when she miscarried their fist baby after falling on the ice during a skating party.

Two years later, on a window pane in the dining parlor, she wrote:

Una Hawthorne stood on this window sill
January 22d 1845
while the trees were all glass chandeliers--
a goodly show which she like much
tho' only ten months old.

Una was their first living child. Sophia's etching captures the joy and intimacy of a sweet moment  with her baby daughter.

What drives a woman from that time period to take off her diamond ring and write upon the window panes of her rented home?  I wonder if the Emersons approved?  I also wonder if other people from the time period have etched thoughts into their windows, too. I asked our interpreter, and he said that he hadn't heard of any others.

Sophia's diamond writing is finer and more delicate than the loveliest frost pattern. But, whereas frost vanishes when touched by the sun, these tiny silver etchings have survived 167 years. It was the only aspect of the The Old Manse that still felt alive.