HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph letter signed ("Nathl Hawthorne") to Henry Bright, [London], "Tuesday," 15 May [1860].

One page, bifolium, 179 x 111mm (mild mounting remnants and two minor marginal chips to blank leaf).

An introvert out on the town in London. Following a two-year stay in Italy, Hawthorne and his family returned to England in late June 1859 with the intention of booking passage to America in August. But work on The Marble Faun compelled him to remain there until autumn so he could complete the manuscript so it could be typeset—precluding a safe ocean passage until the following spring. He spent the winter at Leamington Spa and returned to London in spring. Here, Hawthorne cites a "dinner engagement," the previous evening as his reason as to not responding to his friend's own invitations for company, and begrudgingly accepts: "As for this breakfast at Milnes, I suppose I must go, but really with no great zeal for this sort of thing. My courage does not arouse itself so early in the day." Yet Bright's invitation to "dinner is quite a different affair, & I shall be delighted to come." Hawthorne remarked in a letter to Sophia two days later (17 May) that "The stir of this London Life … has done me a wonderful deal of good, and I feel better than for months past. This is queer; for, if I had my choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do." (CE, 18:286) Richard Monkton Milnes, Baron Houghton (1809-1885) one of Bright's relatives, was a prominent politician, poet, biographer, and friend of Tennyson, Swinburne, the Brownings. Not published in Letters, Centenary Edition.