January 9, 1888
Do pay proper attention to
William Austin, of whom
Duyckinck has some account.
I think his “
Peter Rugg” had marked influence on
Hawthorne.
At any rate, he anticipated
Hawthorne in what may be called the
penumbra of his style-passing out of a purely imaginative creation through a medium neither real nor unreal and so getting back to common earth.
Brockden Brown could not do this, but always had to come back with a slump upon somnambulism or ventriloquism; and
Edward Bellamy, who has I think more of the pure
Hawthorne invention than any of our men, fails always in the same way.
Austin's “English travels,” which I have, are racy and remarkable, especially for the period (1804). I knew his daughter and granddaughters, all uncommonly fine women.
It is a great pleasure to hear from you again, and all the more since you are seventy, as you allege, and so practically coeval with me, since I, please note, am only seventy-nine and a half and so still among the septuagenarians.
I have just been answering, with some difficulty, an authoress who had spoken of me,
