The Hawthorne Cottage

Went Missing for Sixty Years

In this post, I am proud to mention both of my grandmothers.

When I was a young schoolboy, in the 1950s, I would often visit my Grandmother Wilcox after my school day was done. She worked in the Stockbridge Library, in her basement office, managing the collection of historical documents and artifacts known as The Historical Room.

She started that collection, and over the years it has grown, and the space has morphed. A few months ago, the current Curator, Talya Leodari, posted a picture from that archive in the Stockbridge Library newsletter.

That, and another recent event, got me to thinking about my Grandmother Forbes.

This building burned down in 1890 or 1891 — different sources disagree. According to the Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce:

Hawthorne Cottage (The Little Red House), home of writer Nathanial Hawthorne from 1850 – 1851. Here he collected material for Tanglewood Tales and The Wonder Book, wrote The House of the Seven Gables, and crafted names that were later used by two famous sites – Shadowbrook, the largest of the cottages (now the site of Kripalu), and Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Note: In 1891, the Hawthorne Cottage was destroyed by fire. Today’s exact replica was built by the Federated Music Clubs of America in 1948.

Notice that in the picture, the road (now known as [West] Hawthorne Road) was unpaved. There don't appear to be many trees nearby, so it probably had a clear view to the south, including Lake Mahkeenac (Algonkian for "Place of the Beaver").

My mother spend her teenage years living next door to where that cottage had been (and would later be recreated).

I am the eldest of the five offspring of Annie Ellen Jenny Forbes. She was born in 1915, in Fitchburg, where her father (Stewart Archibald Forbes) was an estate caretaker. Her family moved to Augusta Maine when she was very young, so her early schooling was there. Coincidentally, Nathaniel Hawthorne was an alumnus of Bowdoin College, about 30 miles to the north of Augusta.

I don't know exactly when her family moved to Stockbridge, but it must have been around 1925. They lived in the house east of the Hawthorne Cottage site, a stucco house that was the caretaker's dwelling for the Highwood Estate. My mother said that her father's job included, in the summer, when the owners were in residence, keeping fresh vegetables in the kitchen. He also grew award-winning flowers, and placed some every day in each room of Highwood. During the winter, he collected eggs each morning, and put them in metal boxes designed for that purpose He then transported them to the Lenox railroad station to be shipped to the family in Boston so they could have fresh eggs every day.

Our mother had a younger brother, Milliage. They lived in the northern part of Stockbridge. Travel was more difficult in those days than it is today, so the two siblings attended Lenox schools, being easier to get there than to the school in the center of Stockbridge.

The other “recent event” that I mentioned will be covered in another post. Our Uncle Milliage is being honored for his service in World War II.

My mother once told me that when she was living in that caretaker’s house, more people traveled by horse and buggy than by automobile. That was rapidly changing, which created problems along Hawthorne Street. The road wound along the side of a hill that led down to the lake. In the Spring, the road became so muddy that cars were often getting stuck in the deep mud.

Our grandmother (Jenny Forbes) was widely known as a great cook. She was determined to do something about the mud. So, in the middle of mud season, she invited an eminent trio to a dinner at her house: the Selectmen of the town.

No doubt licking their chops, the Selectmen piled into an automobile in the center of town and headed toward Highwood. Sure enough, their car got mired in the mud, and they had to call in a team of horses to pull the car to a dry portion of the road. I'm sure they eventually got to enjoy a wonderful dinner. But they also took the hint.

That summer, the road was paved.