Collected Prose

one can only surmise that he was deeply moved. Moved enough, in any case, to begin reading the book immediately upon returning home, surrounded by the chaos of boxes and packing crates as his family prepared for their departure. He must have read the book quickly and intensely, for his letter of response reached Melville on the sixteenth. All but one of Hawthorne’s letters to Melville have been lost, but numerous letters from Melville to Hawthorne have survived, and his answer to this one is among the most memorable and frequently quoted letters in all of American literature: “… A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome’s Pantheon…. Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from the flagon of my life? And when I put it to my lips—lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling…. I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.”
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    Melville makes a couple of appearances in Twenty Days with Julian & Little Bunny , but the gist of the piece is the little boy himself, the daily activities of father and son, the ephemeral nothings of domestic life. No dramas are reported, the routine is fairly monotonous, and in terms of content, one can hardly imagine a duller or more pedestrian undertaking. Hawthorne kept the diary for Sophia. It was written in a separate family notebook which they both used to record material about the children (and which the children had access to as well, sometimes adding drawings and infant scribbles of their own—and, in a few instances, even tracing their pencils directly over texts written by their parents). Hawthorne intended his wife to read the little work after her return from West Newton, and it appears that she did so at the earliest opportunity. Describing the trip home to Lenox in a letter to her mother three days later (August 19, 1851), Sophia wrote, “… Una was very tired, and her eyes looked as cavernous as Daniel Webster’s till she saw the red house; and then she began to shout, and clap her hands for joy. Mr. Hawthorne came forth with a thousand welcomes in his eyes, and Julian leaped like a fountain, and was as impossible to hold fast…. I found that Mr. Hawthorne had written a minute account of his and Julian’s life from the hour of our departure. He had a tea-party of New York gentlemen one day, and they took him and Julian a long drive; and they all had a picnic together, and did not get home till eight o’clock. Mr. Melville came with these gentlemen, and once before in my absence. Mr. Hawthorne also had a visit from a Quaker lady of Philadelphia, Elizabeth Lloyd, who came to see the author of “The Scarlet Letter.” He said that it was a very pleasant call. Mr. [G.P.R.] James also came twice, once with a great part of his family, once in a storm. Julian’s talk flowed like a babbling brook, he writes, the whole three weeks, through all his meditations and reading. They spent a great deal of time at the lakes, and put Nat’s ship out to sea…. Sometimes Julian pensively yearned for mama, but was not once out of temper or unhappy. There is a charming history of poor little Bunny, who died the morning of the day we returned. It did not appear why he should die, unless he lapped water off the bathing-room floor. But he was found stark and stiff. Mrs. Peters was very smiling, and grimly glad to see me …”
    After Hawthorne’s death in 1864, Sophia was prevailed upon by James T. Fields, Hawthorne’s publisher and also the editor of the Atlantic Monthly , to choose excerpts from her husband’s notebooks for publication in the magazine. Passages appeared in twelve successive issues in 1866, but when it came to Twenty Days with Julian & Little   Bunny , which Fields was hoping to include, she hesitated, claiming that Julian would have to be consulted first. Her son apparently had no objections, but still Sophia was reluctant to give her consent, and after some further reflection she decided against printing the material, explaining to Fields that Hawthorne “would never have wished such an intimate