Free The House of Hawthorne by Erika Robuck

meet every man of learning Elizabeth wrote to in praise and invited to our parlor, I would never cease climbing up and down the stairs. Wordsworth, Emerson, Channing, Alcott—Elizabeth’s adoration of these men borders on idolatry, though when she finds out they are just men, she is always disappointed. I suppose she needs a replacement for Alcott, now that they have had a falling-out.
    “He would be very intrigued by you, Sophy,” she continues. “He would see you as a kindred soul, an artist of high sensitivity who must withdraw from society.”
    Elizabeth’s flattery piques my interest, but for practical reasons I cannot meet this so-called “kindred soul,” for I am already in my sleeping gown, and my hair is unpinned. I am stabbed with a sudden remembrance of Don Fernando outside mydoorway at La Recompensa before our morning ride, and I fall back in my hammock and insist that Elizabeth leave me in peace.
    “Give him my apologies and promises of a future liaison,” I say, “but I am not fit for visitors tonight.”
    Elizabeth stares at me for a moment before nodding in agreement, and taking care to close the door before returning to Lord Byron’s handsomer peer.
    I blow out my candle and attempt to sleep, but there is no ignoring the low timbre of the man’s voice just below me, climbing the staircase and reaching around the door into my room. When sleep finally finds me, his voice is my escort in my dreams, and I think it is the very voice of Endymion himself. It is as if not five minutes passes when I awaken, and feel a longing to meet this writer. I alight from my hammock so swiftly I see stars, and hurry to the top of the stairs, where I listen for his voice. All that meets me is the silence of a slumbering house.

    Since returning from Cuba two years ago, I have the disembodied sensation of having left my soul in a foreign land, and I fear she will never again find me.
    I lift my pencils and brushes a dozen times a day, but I am soon trembling so that I cannot make a straight line, let alone an original piece inspired by a place I am trying to forget. I have cried many tears over Don Fernando and the wretched state of the slaves in Cuba, and as much as I try to outrun my memories, my letters—bound and published by Elizabeth as the
Cuba Journal
—have been read so widely that I must recount the scenes over and over again. I attempt to steer the conversation to the foliage, the mountains, the magical aroma of the blooms, and the moonlit horseback rides, but people want to hear of only two topics: slavery and romance.
    In addition to that frustration, Wellington’s loss to our family, particularly to Mother, has darkened our spirits. My youngest brother was my little pet. It is true that he struggled to find discipline, but just as he discovered his calling—working like Father in medicine—his life was stolen from him. The yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans needed physicians, and Wellington felt called to study there and minister to patients. My brother George had visited him, and wrote that Welly worked tirelessly with the sick, thinking he was somehow immune because of his certainty that he had realized his vocation, and the many patients he had seen back to health. George wrote that it appeared an autopsy Welly had performed led to his infection. Four days after he stuck his gloveless hands in an infected corpse, Wellington was dead.
    George—my fellow invalid—calls to me from across the hall, as I am about to make a rare descent to sit at the breakfast table. I am feeling well this morning, even after such a poor sleep, and want to give Mother the comfort of the company of her healthy, living children. Before I join her downstairs, I stop at George’s room and lean in the doorway. I force a smile, but it is difficult to look at my ailing brother. George is just twenty-four and the most promising of my three younger brothers, but fate has played a cruel joke on him by inflicting him with