Newport, Rhode Island. - Success of The Scarlet Letter etc in England; Hawthorne has enhanced unpoetic life of New England with a romance of its past; Hawthorne's reclusive habits; encloses an autograph [no longer present]; is sending Hawthorne's last volume, and a pamphlet of his own, via Chapman in the Strand. Report of poor American display at the Great Exhibition will be a timely blow to national vanity, but it does demonstrate America's lack of an underclass 'to produce luxuries for others, while they starve themselves'; hopes the same can be said in 1951 or 2051. Would like to revisit London. Has read Mrs Browning's noble new poem [Casa Guidi Windows] and Companions of My Solitude [by Arthur Helps]. Postscript: letters should always be addressed to Cambridge, Mass.
Sends Pollock his 'little tractate on the Italian translation of Benvenuto da Imola['s commentary on Dante]
2/2: Extract from letter from Charles Eliot Norton to H. A. Bright, 21 Apr. 1862, copied by Bright.
Welcombe, Stratford on Avon. - Sends Robert an American "Nation", having marked three articles: "Understanding the Orient", "Interpreting India to the West", and "The London Lincoln", which is a 'charming piece ' of 'American humour, classicised and cultured'. Has just been re-reading letters from Goldwin Smith to Charles Norton from the 1860s, in which Smith - 'a man far greater than his works' - speaks of the "New Nation" as 'the first earnest of American moral renaissance since the Civil [War]'.
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. - Hears from Norton that Wright is preparing a new edition of FitzGerald's letters, and sends those that he has. Anxiety about the British army in South Africa.
Norton to Carlyle, 13 Apr. 1873, 33 Cleveland Square W. - Regrets not being able to see Carlyle, and hopes for better weather. Encloses a note written by Ruskin and addressed to 'the Translator of Omar Khayyam'. Ruskin 'took a fancy to the productions of the reprobate poet, and he left this note with an acquaintance of mine to be forwarded to the translator if ever his name should be discovered'. Norton asks Carlyle to send it on,
Note, dated 14 Apr. 1873, from Carlyle to FitzGerald added at bottom of Norton's letter. Describes Norton as 'a distinguished American... an extremely amiable, intelligent & worthy man' with whom he has recently spent time. Norton has 'brought to my knowledge, for the first time, your notable Omar Khayyam, & insisted on giving me a Copy from the third edition, which I now possess & duly prize'. Carlyle has, from talking to him 'identified, beyond dispute, the hidden 'Fitzgerald', the Translator, & indeed found that his complete silence & unique modesty in regard to said meritorious & successful performance was simply a feaure of my own Edward F! - The translation is excellent; the Book itself, a kind of jewell in its own way'.
The papers consist of over 2000 letters written to Henry Arthur Bright from friends, colleagues, and family members arranged in alphabetical order. Principal correspondents include Robert Brook Aspland, William Robert Brownlow, William Henry Channing, Lord Charlemont, William George Clark, Sir Reginald John Cust, Charles Milnes Gaskell, Lord Houghton (130 letters), Charles Eliot Norton, and Spencer Perceval (b 1828). There are also letters from Hungerford Crewe, and the Hawthorne family, but not Nathaniel himself: Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife Sophia, and children Una and Julian. Letters to Bright's family consist mainly of photocopies.
The last box contains a few miscellaneous items: notes, an essay on ''The Characteristic Difference between Ancient and Modern Civilization' which was awarded the English prize at Trinity College, and a bound volume containing proofs of Lord Houghton's 'Notes on "Endymion"' and Houghton's introduction to the works of Walter Savage Landor in Thomas Humphry Ward's 'The English Poets 1880-1918, Vol. IV, The Nineteenth Centry: Wordsworth to Rossetti', accompanied by a letter and a note from Lord Houghton.
Bright, Henry Arthur (1830-1884), author and merchant