Our friends at the Morgan Library & Museum have made available hi-res images of writer Nathanial Hawthorne and artist Sophia Peabody’s marriage journal. After the two artists got married they kept a journal together that they would trade back and forth, addressing love letters to each other over several years. Upon completing a full notebook they would just start another. Entries can be found on everything from their Thanksgiving holiday to their one-year-anniversary to the birth of their first child.
The first entry of their first journal is depicted in the below image. It’s dated August 5th, 1842 and begins with the following romantic sentence by Hawthorne:
“A rainy day—a rainy day—and I do verily believe there is no sunshine in this world, except what beams from my wife’s eyes.”
