The House of the Seven Gables and “The Daughters of Dr. Byles“: A Probable Source

Abstract

The House of the Seven Gables may owe a considerable debt to Eliza Leslie's “The Daughters of Dr. Byles,” a sketch of the two spinster great-granddaughters of Increase Mather in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (Jan., Feb., 1842). Both Hepzibah Pyncheon and the Misses Mary and Catherine Byles reside in black ancestral homes shaded by giant trees and furnished with portraits, chairs, and tables from another age. Hepzibah, who physically resembles Catherine, lives, like the aged sisters, under the imprint of the past, seldom venturing into the world; she simply awaits the return of her brother, whose miniature she cherishes and whose prison sentence has kept him away for thirty years, as the Misses Byles await the return of their nephew, whose portrait hangs prominently in the parlor and whose self-imposed exile has lasted forty years. Hawthorne closes his romance as Leslie closes her essay, with the exchange of a temporal home for one of eternity.