When, at the close
of the first year, Hawthorne had decided to withdraw from the
association, he naturally hoped to regain a portion of his capital. Mr.
Ripley was too deeply involved to accommodate him in that way, and
offered instead the rent of the old Ripley mansion in Concord, which
then happened to be vacant. So Hawthorne and Miss Peabody were happily
married, with no immediate fund save the rent of an ancient house in the
country, and no better expectations than the uncertain income from his
pen.
It was a hazardous undertaking, but he was now nearly forty years old,
his _fiancee_ more than thirty, nor could the sharpest foresight
discover any advantage from waiting longer. Emerson, in his lecture on
heroism, has signalled especially the heroism of the scholar, and
selected as an example the Frenchman Anquetil Duperron, who worked his
passage on a vessel to India, and then worked his way, mostly on foot,
through Afghanistan and Persia, learning languages as he went, in order
to obtain copies of the sacred books of the Persians, which were then
unknown in Europe. Were it not for fear of giving offence he might have
found a finer heroism in literary genius, and selected an example from
his own village.
For fifteen years Hawthorne had been like a ship detained from port by
adverse winds. The handsomest and most gifted man in America had nearly
reached to forty years without being married or finding a home of his
own.
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