diff options
Diffstat (limited to '40529-0.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | 40529-0.txt | 3731 |
1 files changed, 3731 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/40529-0.txt b/40529-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f3db7d7 --- /dev/null +++ b/40529-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3731 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40529 *** + +Transcriber's note + +This text is an appendix to volume 12 of a 13-volume set of the complete +works of Nathaniel Hawthorne entitled: + + The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, with Introductory Notes + by George Parsons Lathrop and illustrated with Etchings by Blum, + Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw, and Turner in Thirteen Volumes, + Volume XII. + + Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a + Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop. + + BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11 East Seventeenth + Street The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1883. + +Some illustrations of this work have been moved from the original +sequence to enable the contents to continue without interruption. +Punctuation inconsistencies have been silently corrected. A list of +other corrections made can be found at the end of the book. + + Mark up: _italics_ + +bold+ + + + + + +Riverside Edition+ + + THE COMPLETE WORKS OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, WITH INTRODUCTORY NOTES BY + GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP + + AND ILLUSTRATED WITH + + _Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw, and Turner_ + + IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES + + VOLUME XII. + + [Illustration] + + + + + TALES, SKETCHES, AND OTHER PAPERS + + BY + + NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE + + _WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH_ BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP + + [Illustration] + + BOSTON HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY New York: 11 East Seventeenth + Street +The Riverside Press, Cambridge+ 1883 + + + + + Copyright, 1850, 1852, 1862, 1864, and 1876, BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, + TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. + + Copyright, 1878, BY ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP. + + Copyright, 1883, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. + + _All rights reserved._ + + + _The Riverside Press, Cambridge:_ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. + Houghton & Co. + + + + +BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. + +I. + + +THE lives of great men are written gradually. It often takes as long to +construct a true biography as it took the person who is the subject of +it to complete his career; and when the work is done, it is found to +consist of many volumes, produced by a variety of authors. We receive +views from different observers, and by putting them together are able to +form our own estimate. What the man really was not even himself could +know; much less can we. Hence all that we accomplish, in any case, is to +approximate to the reality. While we flatter ourselves that we have +imprinted on our minds an exact image of the individual, we actually +secure nothing but a typical likeness. This likeness, however, is +amplified and strengthened by successive efforts to paint a correct +portrait. If the faces of people belonging to several generations of a +family be photographed upon one plate, they combine to form a single +distinct countenance, which shows a general resemblance to them all: in +somewhat the same way, every sketch of a distinguished man helps to fix +the lines of that typical semblance of him which is all that the world +can hope to preserve. + +This principle applies to the case of Hawthorne, notwithstanding that +the details of his career are comparatively few, and must be marshalled +in much the same way each time that it is attempted to review them. The +veritable history of his life would be the history of his mental +development, recording, like Wordsworth's "Prelude," the growth of a +poet's mind; and on glancing back over it he too might have said, in +Wordsworth's phrases:-- + + "Wisdom and spirit of the universe! + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . + By day or star-light thus from my first dawn + Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me + The passions that build up the human soul; + Not with the mean and vulgar works of man, + But with high objects, with enduring things-- + With life and nature, purifying thus + The elements of feeling and of thought, + And sanctifying by such discipline + Both pain and fear, until we recognize + A grandeur in the beatings of the heart." + +But a record of that kind, except where an autobiography exists, can be +had only by indirect means. We must resort to tracing the outward facts +of the life, and must try to infer the interior relations. + +Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on the Fourth of July, 1804, at Salem, +Massachusetts, in a house numbered twenty-one, Union Street. The house +is still standing, although somewhat reduced in size and still more +reduced in circumstances. The character of the neighborhood has declined +very much since the period when Hawthorne involuntarily became a +resident there. As the building stands to-day it makes the impression +simply of an exceedingly plain, exceedingly old-fashioned, solid, +comfortable abode, which in its prime must have been regarded as proof +of a sufficient but modest prosperity on the part of the occupant. It is +clapboarded, is two stories high, and has a gambrel roof, immediately +beneath which is a large garret that doubtless served the boy-child well +as a place for play and a stimulant for the sense of mystery. A single +massive chimney, rising from the centre, emphasizes by its style the +antiquity of the building, and has the air of holding it together. The +cobble-stoned street in front is narrow, and although it runs from the +house towards the water-side, where once an extensive commerce was +carried on, and debouches not far from the Custom House where Hawthorne +in middle life found plenty of occupation as Surveyor, it is now silent +and deserted. + +He was the second of three children born to Nathaniel Hathorne, +sea-captain, and Elizabeth Clarke Manning. The eldest was Elizabeth +Manning Hathorne, who came into the world March 7, 1802; the last was +Maria Louisa, born January 9, 1808, and lost in the steamer Henry Clay, +which was burned on the Hudson River, July 27, 1852. Elizabeth survived +all the members of the family, dying on the 1st of January, 1883, when +almost eighty-one years old, at Montserrat, a hamlet in the township of +Beverly, near Salem. In early manhood, certainly at about the time when +he began to publish, the young Nathaniel changed the spelling of his +surname to Hawthorne; an alteration also adopted by his sisters. This is +believed to have been merely a return to a mode of spelling practised by +the English progenitors of the line, although none of the American +ancestors had sanctioned it. + +"The fact that he was born in Salem," writes Dr. George B. Loring, who +knew him as a fellow-townsman, "may not amount to much to other people, +but it amounted to a great deal to him. The sturdy and defiant spirit of +his progenitor, who first landed on these shores, found a congenial +abode among the people of Naumkeag, after having vainly endeavored to +accommodate itself to the more imposing ecclesiasticism of Winthrop and +his colony at Trimountain, and of Endicott at his new home. He was a +stern Separatist ... but he was also a warrior, a politician, a legal +adviser, a merchant, an orator with persuasive speech.... He had great +powers of mind and body, and forms a conspicuous figure in that imposing +and heroic group which stands around the cradle of New England. The +generations of the family that followed took active and prominent part +in the manly adventures which marked our entire colonial period.... It +was among the family traditions gathered from the Indian wars, the +tragic and awful spectre of the witchcraft delusion, the wild life of +the privateer, that he [Nathaniel] first saw the light." + +The progenitor here referred to is William Hathorne, who came to America +with John Winthrop in 1630. He had grants of land in Dorchester, but was +considered so desirable a citizen that the town of Salem offered him +other lands if he would settle there; which he did. It has not been +ascertained from what place William Hathorne originally came. His elder +brother Robert is known to have written to him in 1653 from the village +of Bray, in Berkshire, England; but Nathaniel Hawthorne says in the +"American Note-Books" that William was a younger brother of a family +having for its seat a place called Wigcastle, in Wiltshire. He became, +however, a person of note and of great usefulness in the community with +which he cast his lot, in the new England. Hathorne Street in Salem +perpetuates his name to-day, as Lathrop Street does that of Captain +Thomas Lathrop, who commanded one of the companies of Essex militia, +when John Hathorne was quartermaster of the forces; Thomas Lathrop, who +marched his men to Deerfield in 1675, to protect frontier inhabitants +from the Indians, and perished with his whole troop, in the massacre at +Bloody Brook. The year after that, William Hathorne also took the field +against the Indians, in Maine, and conducted a highly successful +campaign there, under great hardships. He had been the captain of the +first military organization in Salem, and rose to be major. He served +for a number of years as deputy in the Great and General Court; was a +tax-collector, a magistrate, and a bold advocate of colonial +self-government. Although opposed to religious persecution, as a +magistrate he inflicted cruelties on the Quakers, causing a woman on one +occasion to be whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham. "The figure of +that first ancestor," Hawthorne wrote in "The Custom House," "invested +by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my +boyish imagination as far back as I can remember;" so that it is by no +means idle to reckon the history of his own family as among the +important elements influencing the bent of his genius. John, the son of +William, was likewise a public character; he, too, became a +representative, a member of the Governor's council, a magistrate and a +military officer, and saw active service as a soldier in the expedition +which he headed against St. John, in 1696. But he is chiefly remembered +as the judge who presided over the witchcraft trials and displayed great +harshness and bigotry in his treatment of the prisoners. His +descendants did not retain the position in public affairs which had been +held by his father and himself; and for the most part they were +sea-faring men. One of them, indeed, Daniel--the grandfather of +Nathaniel--figured as a privateer captain in the Revolution, fighting +one battle with a British troop-ship off the coast of Portugal, in which +he was wounded; but the rest led the obscure though hardy and +semi-romantic lives of maritime traders sailing to Africa, India, or +Brazil. The privateersman had among his eight children three boys, one +of whom, Nathaniel, was the father of the author, and died of fever in +Surinam, in the spring of 1808, at the age of thirty-three. + + + HATHORNE FAMILY OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS. + + Hathorne = + | + +-------------------+-------------+---------+-----+ + | | | | + Robert Hathorne William, came in the = Anne | John Hathorne of = Sarah + writes to his Arbella, with John | | Salem and Lynn, | + brother, William, Winthrop 1630; first | | died in Lynn | + from Bray (Berks), of Dorchester; | | 12 Dec. 1676. | + 1 April, 1653. afterwards of Salem; | | Will sworn to | + deputy, speaker of | | 25-1-1677. | + the House, | | | + Assistant, Major | | | + commanding in | | | + Indian Wars; ob. | | | + 1681 in 74th year of | | | + his age. Will proved | | | + 28 June, 1681. | | | + | | | + +--------------------------------------+ | | + | | | + | +-------------------+ | + | | | + | Elizabeth = Capt. Richard Davenport | + | (?) killed by lightning | + | 15 July, 1665. | + | | + | +-------+-----------+---+--------------+-+---+---------------+ + | | | | | | | | | + | | John | William b. in | | Phebe b. in Lynn | + | | bapt. at Salem | Lynn ---- Nov. | | 22 March, 1665. | + | | 18 Oct. 1646. | 1651; d. 14 Sept.| | | + | | | 1676. | | | + | | | | | | + | | | | | | + | Sarah bapt. at Salem | | Ebenezer b. in Lynn | + | 2 June, 1644. | | ---- March, 1656. | + | Priscilla | | + | bapt. at Salem | | + | 22 July, 1649; Mary b. in Lynn | + | m. 15 Jan. 1669 ---- July 1653; | + | to Jonathan Shore. d. 31 Dec. 1676. | + | | + | Nathaniel + | named in his + | father's will. + +-+--------------+--+------+---------------+-+-----+-----------+ + | | | | | | | | + ---- = ---- | | Nathaniel | | William = Sarah | + (dau.) | Helwise | | b. 11 Aug. 1639. | | b. 1 Apr. | + | | | | | 1645; | + Gervice Helwise | | | | d. 14 July, | + in "Urop" | | | | 1676. Captain. | + according | | | | | + to his gr. | | | | | + father's will. | | | | | + | | | Anna born | + | | | 12 Dec. 1643; | + | | | m. 27 Jan. 1664-5 | + | | | to Joseph Porter. | + | Eleazer b. 1 Aug. 1637; | +-----------+ + | m. 28-6-1663, Abigail, | | + | dau. of Capt. George | Elizabeth + | Curwen, of Salem. | b. 22 July, 1649; + | | m. 20-9-1672 + Sarah born 11 March, 1644-5; | to Israel Porter. + m. 13 April, 1665, to Joseph | + Coker of Newbury, and died | + 3 Feb'y, 1688. | + +-------------------------+ + | + John b. 4 Aug. 1641 = Ruth dau. of Lieut. + representative; Assistant; | George Gardner; + Judge in Witchcraft cases; | married 22-1-1674-5. + Judge Sup. Court 1702-15; | + Colonel; died 10 May, | + 1717; will proved 27 June, | + 1717. | + | + +--------------------+--------+-------+----+--+-------------------+ + | | | | | | + John b. 10 Jan'y 1675. | | | | | + | | | Ruth, = James Pitman | + Nathaniel = Ebenezer | bapt. | + b. 25 Nov.| bapt. Mch. 1685. | Sept. 1694. | + 1678. | | Benjamin + +--------+ | (named in his + | | father's will). + John mentioned | + in his gr. father's will. | + +-------------------+ + | + Joseph bapt. June, 1691. = Sara dau. of Capt. W. + Will proved 15 July, 1762. | Bowditch b. 10 Jan'y, + | 1695-6. + | + +---------------------+-------+---+-------------------+---------+--+ + | | | | | | | + William = Mary dau. of | | Sarah = Daniel Chever | | | + born 20 John Touzell | | bapt. | | | + Feb'y, m. 29 March, | | 27 Jan. 1722. | | | + 1715-1716. 1741. | | Ebenezer | | + Joseph | bapt. 26 Dec. 1725. | | + bapt. 4th | +-----------------+ | + May, 1718. | | +---------------+ + | | | + | | Ruth = David Ropes + | | m. 30 Sept. + +---------------------+ | 1752. + | | + John bapt. = Susanna Touzell | + 22 May, 1719, | will pro. 7 Sept. | + d. 6 Feb'y, 1750. | 1802. | + | | + +--John } | + | } ment. in will | + +--Susanna} of gr. father. | + | + Daniel, a mariner; = Rachel Phelps + adm. gr. to wid. | + 4 May, 1796. | + | + +----------------+----+--------+---------+---+------+---+ + | | | | | | | | + Daniel | Eunice | | | Ruth b. | + b. 23 June, 1759; | b. 4 Oct. | | | 20 Jan. | + d. 13 Mar. 1763. | 1766. | | | 1778; d. | + +----------------+ Ob. s. p. | | | 26 July, | + | Daniel | | 1847. | + Sarah = John Crowninshield. b. 25 July, | | | + b. 11 May 1763. 1768. | | Rachel = Simon + +-------------------------------+ | | Forrester. + | | | + Judith = George Archer | -- + b. 17 Apr. 1770. m. 2 March, 1792. | + | + +-------------------------------------------+ + | + Nathaniel, Sea Captain; b. 19 May, 1775; = Elizabeth Clarke Manning + adm. gr. to his wid. 19 Apr. 1808; | b. 6 Sept. 1780; + died in Surinam. | died 31 July, 1849. + | + +-----------------+-----------------+------------------+ + | | | + Elizabeth Manning | Maria Louisa + born 7 March, 1802; | b. 9 Jan'y, 1808; + died 1 Jan'y, 1883. | lost in the steamer + | Henry Clay, burned + | on the Hudson River + | 27 July, 1852. + | + +NATHANIEL+ b. 4 July, 1804; = Sophia, dau. of Doc. Nathl. Peabody, + d. at Plymouth, N. H. of Salem; b. 21 Sept. 1809; mar. in + 19 May, 1864. Boston July, 1842. + Buried at Concord, Mass. + 23 May, 1864. + He changed his surname to + Hawthorne. + +The founders of the American branch were men of independent character, +proud, active, energetic, capable of extreme sternness and endowed with +passionate natures, no doubt. But they were men of affairs; they touched +the world on the practical side, and, even during the decline of the +family fortunes, continued to do so. All at once, in the personality of +the younger Nathaniel Hawthorne, this energy which persisted in them +reversed its direction, and found a new outlet through the channel of +literary expression. We must suppose that he included among his own +characteristics all those of his predecessors; their innate force, their +endurance, their capacity for impassioned feeling; but in him these +elements were fused by a finer prevailing quality, and held in firm +balance by his rare temperament. This must be borne in mind, if we would +understand the conjunction of opposite traits in him. It was one of his +principles to guard against being run away with by his imagination, and +to cultivate in practical affairs what he called "a morose common +sense." There has been attributed to him by some of those who knew him +a certain good-humored gruffness, which might be explained as a heritage +from the self-assertive vitality of his ancestors. While at Liverpool he +wrote to one of his intimates in this country, and in doing so made +reference to another acquaintance as a "wretch," to be away from whom +made exile endurable. The letter passed into the hands of the +acquaintance thus stigmatized long after Hawthorne was in his grave; but +he declared himself to be in no wise disturbed by it, because he knew +that the remark was not meant seriously, being only one of the +occasional explosions of a "sea-dog" forcefulness, which had come into +the writer's blood from his skipper forefathers. Hawthorne had, in fact, +parted on friendly terms from the gentleman of whom he thus wrote. On +the other hand we have the traits of sensitiveness, great delicacy, +reserve and reverie, drawn from both his father and his mother. Captain +Hathorne had been a man of fine presence, handsome, kindly, and rather +silent; a reader, likewise; and his son's resemblance to him was so +marked that a strange sailor stopped Hawthorne on the steps of the Salem +Custom House, many years afterward, to ask him if he were not a son or +nephew of the Captain, whom he had known. + +His mother belonged to an excellent family, the Mannings, of English +stock, settled in Salem and Ipswich ever since 1680, and still well +represented in the former place. She, too, was a very reserved person; +had a stately, aristocratic manner; is remembered as possessing a +peculiar and striking beauty. Her education was of that simple, austere, +but judicious and perfected kind that--without taking any very wide +range--gave to New England women in the earlier part of this century a +sedate freedom and a cultivated judgment, which all the assumed +improvements in pedagogy and the general relations of men and women +since then have hardly surpassed. She was a pious woman, a sincere and +devoted wife, a mother whose teachings could not fail to impress upon +her children a bias towards the best things in life. Nathaniel's sister +Elizabeth, although a recluse to the end of her days, and wholly unknown +to the public, gave in her own case evidence indisputable of the fine +influences which had moulded her own childhood and that of her brother. +She showed a quiet, unspoiled, and ardent love of Nature, and was to the +last not only an assiduous reader of books but also a very discriminating +one. The range of her reading was very wide, but she never made any more +display of it than Hawthorne did of his. An intuitive judgment of +character was hers, which was really startling at times: merely from the +perusal of a book or the inspection of a portrait, she would arrive at +accurate estimates of character which revealed a power of facile and +comprehensive insight; and her letters, even in old age, flowed +spontaneously into utterance of the same finished kind that distinguished +Nathaniel Hawthorne's epistolary style. How fresh and various, too, was +her interest in the affairs of the world! For many years she had not +gone farther from her secluded abode in a farm-house at Montserrat, than +to Beverly or Salem; yet I remember that, only six months before her +death, she wrote a letter to her niece, a large part of which was +devoted to the campaign of the English in Egypt, then progressing: with +a lively and clear comprehension she discussed the difficulties of the +situation, and expressed the utmost concern for the success of the +English army, at the same time that she laughed at herself for +displaying, as an old woman, so much anxiety about the matter. Now, a +mother who could bring up her daughter in such a way as to make all this +possible and natural, must be given much credit for her share in +developing an illustrious son. Let us not forget that it was to his +mother that Goethe owed in good measure the foundation of his greatness. +Mrs. Hathorne had large, very luminous gray eyes, which were reproduced +in her son's; so that, on both sides, his parentage entitled him to the +impressive personal appearance which distinguished him. In mature life +he became somewhat estranged from her, but their mutual love was +presumably suspended only for a time, and he was with her at her death, +in 1849. She lived long enough to see him famous as the author of +"Twice-Told Tales"; but "The Scarlet Letter" had not been written when +she died. + +She, as well as her husband, was one of a family of eight brothers and +sisters; these were the children of Richard Manning. Two of the +brothers, Richard and Robert, were living in Salem when she was left a +widow; Robert being eminent in New England at that time as a +horticulturist. She was without resources, other than her husband's +earnings, and Robert undertook to provide for her. Accordingly, she +removed with her young family to the Manning homestead on Herbert +Street, the next street east of Union Street, where Nathaniel was born. +This homestead stood upon a piece of land running through to Union +Street, and adjoining the garden attached to Hawthorne's birthplace. At +that time Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, a physician, occupied a house in a +brick block on the opposite side of Union Street; and there in 1809, +September 21st, was born his daughter, Sophia A. Peabody, who afterwards +became Hawthorne's wife. Her birthplace, therefore, was but a few rods +distant from that of her future husband. Sophia Peabody's eldest sister, +Mary, who married Horace Mann, noted as an educator and an abolitionist, +remembers the child Nathaniel, who was then about five years old. He +used to make his appearance in the garden of the Herbert Street mansion, +running and dancing about there at play, a vivacious, golden-haired boy. +The next oldest sister, who was the first of this family to make the +acquaintance of the young author some thirty years later on, was Miss +Elizabeth P. Peabody, who has taken an important part in developing the +Kindergarten in America. There were plenty of books in the Manning +house, and Nathaniel very soon got at them. Among the authors whom he +earliest came to know were Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Thomson, and +Rousseau. The "Castle of Indolence" was one of his favorite volumes. +Subsequently, he read the whole of the "Newgate Calendar," and became +intensely absorbed in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," which undoubtedly +left very deep impressions upon him, traceable in the various allusions +to it scattered through his works. He also made himself familiar with +Spenser's "Faërie Queen," Froissart's "Chronicles," and Clarendon's +"History of the Rebellion." + +"Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him +by inheritance from his sea-faring sire, it might have been that he +would not have been brought so early to an intimacy with books, but for +an accident similar to that which played a part in the boyhoods of +Scott and Dickens. When he was nine years old, he was struck on the foot +by a ball, and made seriously lame. The earliest fragment of his writing +now extant is a letter to his uncle Robert Manning, at that time in +Raymond, Maine, written from Salem, December 9, 1813. It announces that +the foot is no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. 'Maybe,' +the boy writes, 'he will do me some good, for Dr. B---- has not, and I +don't know as Dr. K---- will.' He adds that it is now four weeks since +he has been to school, 'and I don't know but it will be four weeks +longer.'... But the trouble was destined to last much longer than even +the young seer had projected his gaze. There was some threat of +deformity, and it was not until he was nearly twelve that he became +quite well. Meantime, his kind schoolmaster, Dr. Worcester, ... came to +hear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure after +this in Hawthorne's history; but a copy of Worcester's Dictionary still +exists and is in present use, which bears in a tremulous writing on the +fly-leaf the legend: 'Nathaniel Hawthorne Esq., with the respects of J. +E. Worcester.' For a long time, in the worst of his lameness, the gentle +boy was forced to lie prostrate, and choosing the floor for his couch, +he would read there all day long. He was extremely fond of cats--a taste +which he kept through life; and during this illness, forced to odd +resorts for amusement, he knitted a pair of socks for the cat who +reigned in the household at the time. When tired of reading, he +constructed houses of books for the same feline pet, building walls for +her to leap, and perhaps erecting triumphal arches for her to pass +under."[1] + +The lexicographer, Dr. Worcester, was then living at Salem in charge of +a school, which he kept for a few years; and it was with him that +Hawthorne was carrying on his primary studies. He also went to +dancing-school, was fond of fishing as well as of taking long walks, and +doubtless engaged in the sundry occupations and sports, neither more nor +less extraordinary than these, common to lads of his age. He already +displayed a tendency towards dry humor. As he brought home from school +frequent reports of having had a bout at fisticuffs with another pupil +named John Knights, his sister Elizabeth asked him: "Why do you fight +with John Knights so often?" "I can't help it," he answered: "John +Knights is a boy of very quarrelsome disposition." + +But all this time an interior growth, of which we can have no direct +account, was proceeding in his mind. The loss of the father whom he had +had so little chance to see and know and be fondled by, no doubt +produced a profound effect upon him. While still a very young child he +would rouse himself from long broodings, to exclaim with an impressive +shaking of the head: "There, mother! I is going away to sea some time; +and I'll never come back again!" The thought of that absent one, whose +barque had glided out of Salem harbor bound upon a terrestrial voyage, +but had carried him softly away to the unseen world, must have been +incessantly with the boy; and it would naturally melt into what he heard +of the strange, shadowy history of his ancestors, and mix itself with +the ever-present hush of settled grief in his mother's dwelling, and +blend with his unconscious observations of the old town in which he +lived. Salem then was much younger in time, but much older to the eye, +than it is now. In "Alice Doane's Appeal" he has sketched a rapid +bird's-eye view of it as it appeared to him when he was a young man. +Describing his approach with his sisters to Witch Hill, he says: "We ... +began to ascend a hill which at a distance, by its dark slope and the +even line of its summit, resembled a green rampart along the road; ... +but, strange to tell, though the whole slope and summit were of a +peculiarly deep green, scarce a blade of grass was visible from the base +upward. This deceitful verdure was occasioned by a plentiful crop of +'wood-wax,' which wears the same dark and gloomy green throughout the +summer, except at one short period, when it puts forth a profusion of +yellow blossoms. At that season, to a distant spectator the hill appears +absolutely overlaid with gold, or covered with a glory of sunshine even +under a clouded sky." This wood-wax, it may be said, is a weed which +grows nowhere but in Essex County, and, having been native in England, +was undoubtedly brought over by the Pilgrims. He goes on: "There are few +such prospects of town and village, woodland and cultivated field, +steeples and country-seats, as we beheld from this unhappy spot.... +Before us lay our native town, extending from the foot of the hill to +the harbor, level as a chess-board, embraced by two arms of the sea, and +filling the whole peninsula with a close assemblage of wooden roofs, +overtopped by many a spire and intermixed with frequent heaps of +verdure.... Retaining these portions of the scene, and also the peaceful +glory and tender gloom of the declining sun, we threw in imagination a +deep veil of forest over the land, and pictured a few scattered villages +here and there and this old town itself a village, as when the prince of +Hell bore sway there. The idea thus gained of its former aspect, its +quaint edifices standing far apart with peaked roofs and projecting +stories, and its single meeting-house pointing up a tall spire in the +midst; the vision, in short, of the town in 1692, served to introduce a +wondrous tale." There were in fact several old houses of the kind here +described still extant during Hawthorne's boyhood, and he went every +Sunday to service in the First Church, in whose congregation his +forefathers had held a pew for a hundred and seventy years. It is easy +to see how some of the materials for "The House of the Seven Gables" and +"The Scarlet Letter" were already depositing themselves in the form of +indelible recollections and suggestions taken from his surroundings. + +Oppressed by her great sorrow, his mother had shut herself away, after +her husband's death, from all society except that of her immediate +relatives. This was perhaps not a very extraordinary circumstance, nor +one that need be construed as denoting a morbid disposition; but it was +one which must have distinctly affected the tone of her son's +meditations. In 1818, when he was fourteen years old, she retired to a +still deeper seclusion, in Maine; but the occasion of this was simply +that her brother Robert, having purchased the seven-mile-square township +of Raymond, in that State, had built a house there, intending to found a +new home. The year that Hawthorne passed in that spot, amid the breezy +life of the forest, fishing and shooting, watching the traits and +customs of lumber-men and country-folk, and drinking in the tonic of a +companionship with untamed nature, was to him a happy and profitable +one. "We are all very well," he wrote thence to his Uncle Robert, in +May, 1819: "The fences are all finished, and the garden is laid out and +planted.... I have shot a partridge and a henhawk, and caught eighteen +large trout out of our brook. I am sorry you intend to send me to school +again." He had been to the place before, probably for short visits, when +his Uncle Richard was staying there, and his memories of it were always +agreeable ones. To Mr. James T. Fields, he said in 1863: "I lived in +Maine like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed. But +it was there I first got my cursed habits of solitude." "During the +moonlight nights of winter he would skate until midnight all alone upon +Sebago Lake, with the deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. When +he found himself far away from his home and weary with the exercise of +skating, he would sometimes take refuge in a log-cabin, where half a +tree would be burning on the broad hearth. He would sit in the ample +chimney, and look at the stars through the great aperture through which +the flames went roaring up. 'Ah,' he said, 'how well I recall the summer +days, also, when with my gun I roamed through the woods of Maine!'"[2] + +Hawthorne at this time had an intention of following the example of his +father and grandfather, and going to sea; but this was frustrated by the +course of events. His mother, it is probable, would strongly have +objected to it. In a boyish journal kept while he was at Raymond he +mentions a gentleman having come with a boat to take one or two persons +out on "the Great Pond," and adds: "He was kind enough to say that I +might go (with my mother's consent), which she gave after much coaxing. +Since the loss of my father she dreads to have any one belonging to her +go upon the water." And again: "A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., +was drowned two days ago, up in Crooked River.... I read one of the +Psalms to my mother this morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six +times that 'God's mercy endureth forever.'... Mother is sad; says she +shall not consent any more to my swimming in the mill-pond with the +boys, fearing that in sport my mouth might get kicked open, and then +sorrow for a dead son be added to that for a dead father, which she says +would break her heart. I love to swim, but I shall not disobey my +mother." This same journal, which seems to have laid the basis of his +life-long habit of keeping note-books, was begun at the suggestion of +Mr. Richard Manning, who gave him a blank-book, with advice that he +should use it for recording his thoughts, "as the best means of his +securing for mature years command of thought and language." In it were +made a number of entries which testify plainly to his keenness of +observation both of people and scenery, to his sense of humor and his +shrewdness. Here are a few:-- + +"Swapped pocket-knives with Robinson Cook yesterday. Jacob Dingley says +that he cheated me, but I think not, for I cut a fishing-pole this +morning and did it well; besides, he is a Quaker, and they never cheat." + +"This morning the bucket got off the chain, and dropped back into the +well. I wanted to go down on the stones and get it. Mother would not +consent, for fear the well might cave in, but hired Samuel Shaw to go +down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. Shaw +not quite so good as the son of the Widow Hathorne." + +Of a trout that he saw caught by some men:--"This trout had a +droll-looking hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe that, if +the line had been in my hands, I should have been obliged to let go, or +have been pulled out of the boat. They are men, and have a right to say +so. I am a boy, and have a right to think differently." + +"We could see the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said +they were eighty miles away; and grand old Rattlesnake to the northeast, +in its immense jacket of green oak, looked more inviting than I had ever +seen it; while Frye's Island, with its close growth of great trees +growing to the very edge of the water, looked like a monstrous green +raft, floating to the southeastward. Whichever way the eye turned, +something charming appeared." + +The mental clearness, the sharpness of vision, and the competence of the +language in this early note-book are remarkable, considering the youth +and inexperience of the writer; and there is one sketch of "a +solemn-faced old horse" at the grist-mill, which exhibits a delightful +boyish humor with a dash of pathos in it, and at the same time is the +first instance on record of a mild approach by Hawthorne to the writing +of fiction:-- + +"He had brought for his owner some bags of corn to be ground, who, after +carrying them into the mill, walked up to Uncle Richard's store, leaving +his half-starved animal in the cold wind with nothing to eat, while the +corn was being turned into meal. I felt sorry, and, nobody being near, +thought it best to have a talk with the old nag, and said, 'Good +morning, Mr. Horse, how are you to-day?' 'Good morning, youngster,' said +he, just as plain as a horse can speak; and then said, 'I am almost +dead, and I wish I was quite. I am hungry, have had no breakfast, and +must stand here tied by the head while they are grinding the corn, and +until master drinks two or three glasses of rum at the store, then drag +the meal and him up the Ben Ham Hill home, and am now so weak that I can +hardly stand. Oh dear, I am in a bad way;' and the old creature cried. I +almost cried myself. Just then the miller went down-stairs to the +meal-trough; I heard his feet on the steps, and not thinking much what I +was doing, ran into the mill, and, taking the four-quart toll-dish +nearly full of corn out of the hopper, carried it out, and poured it +into the trough before the horse, and placed the dish back before the +miller came up from below. When I got out, the horse was laughing, but +he had to eat slowly, because the bits were in his mouth. I told him +that I was sorry, but did not know how to take them out, and should not +dare to if I did.... At last the horse winked and stuck out his lip ever +so far, and then said, 'The last kernel is gone;' then he laughed a +little, then shook one ear, then the other; then he shut his eyes. I +jumped up and said: 'How do you feel, old fellow; any better?' He opened +his eyes, and looking at me kindly answered, 'Very much,' and then blew +his nose exceedingly loud, but he did not wipe it. Perhaps he had no +wiper. I then asked him if his master whipped him much. He answered, +'Not much lately. He used to till my hide got hardened, but now he has a +white-oak goad-stick with an iron brad in its end, with which he jabs my +hind-quarters and hurts me awfully.'... The goad with the iron brad was +in the wagon, and snatching it out I struck the end against a stone, and +the stabber flew into the mill-pond. 'There,' says I, 'old colt,' as I +threw the goad back into the wagon, 'he won't harpoon you again with +_that_ iron.' The poor old brute understood well enough what I said, +for I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language." + +Mother and uncles could hardly have missed observing in him many tokens +of a gifted intelligence and an uncommon individuality. The perception +of these, added to Mrs. Hawthorne's dread of the sea, may have led to +the decision which was taken to send him to college. In 1819 he went +back to Salem, to continue his schooling; and one year later, March 7, +1820, wrote to his mother, who was still at Raymond: "I have left +school, and have begun to fit for College, under Benjamin L. Oliver, +Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in your +family.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A +minister I will not be." Miss E. P. Peabody remembers another letter of +his, in which he touched the same problem, thus: "I do not want to be a +doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister to live by their sins, +nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So I don't see that there is +anything left but for me to be an author. How would you like some day to +see a whole shelf full of books written by your son, with 'Hathorne's +Works' printed on the backs?" There appears to have been but little +difficulty for him in settling the problem of his future occupation. +During part of August and September he amused himself by writing three +numbers of a miniature weekly paper called "The Spectator;" and in +October we find that he had been composing poetry and sending it to his +sister Elizabeth, who was also exercising herself in verse. At this time +he was employed as a clerk, for a part of each day, in the office of +another uncle, William Manning, proprietor of a great line of stages +which then had extensive connections throughout New England; but he did +not find the task congenial. "No man," he informed his sister, "can be a +poet and a book-keeper at the same time;" from which one infers his +distinct belief that literature was his natural vocation. The idea of +remaining dependent for four years more on the bounty of his Uncle +Robert, who had so generously taken the place of a father in giving him +a support and education, oppressed him, and he even contemplated not +going to college; but go he finally did, taking up his residence at +Bowdoin with the class of 1821. + +The village of Brunswick, where Bowdoin College is situated, some thirty +miles from Raymond, stands on high ground beside the Androscoggin River, +which is there crossed by a bridge running zig-zag from bank to bank, +resting on various rocky ledges and producing a picturesque effect. The +village itself is ranged on two sides of a broad street, which meets the +river at right angles, and has a mall in the centre that, in Hawthorne's +time, was little more than a swamp. This street, then known as +"sixteen-rod road," from its width, continues in a straight line to +Casco Bay, only a few miles off; so that the new student was still near +the sea and had a good course for his walks. If Harvard fifty and even +twenty-five years ago had the look of a rural college, Bowdoin was by +comparison an academy in a wilderness. "If this institution," says +Hawthorne in "Fanshawe," where he describes it under the name of Harley +College, "did not offer all the advantages of elder and prouder +seminaries, its deficiencies were compensated to its students by the +inculcation of regular habits, and of a deep and awful sense of +religion, which seldom deserted them in their course through life. The +mild and gentle rule ... was more destructive to vice than a sterner +sway; and though youth is never without its follies, they have seldom +been more harmless than they were here." The local resources for +amusement or dissipation must have been very limited, and the demands of +the curriculum not very severe. Details of Hawthorne's four years' stay +at college are not forthcoming, otherwise than in small quantity. His +comrades who survived him never have been able to give any very vivid +picture of the life there, or to recall any anecdotes of Hawthorne: the +whole episode has slipped away, like a dream from which fragmentary +glimpses alone remain. By one of those unaccountable associations with +trifles, which outlast more important memories, Professor Calvin Stowe +(to whom the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was afterwards married) +remembers seeing Hawthorne, then a member of the class below him, +crossing the college-yard one stormy day, attired in a brass-buttoned +blue coat, with an umbrella over his head. The wind caught the umbrella +and turned it inside out; and what stamped the incident on Professor +Stowe's mind was the silent but terrible and consuming wrath with which +Hawthorne regarded the implement in its utterly subverted and useless +state, as he tried to rearrange it. Incidents of no greater moment and +the general effect of his presence seem to have created the belief among +his fellows that, beneath the bashful quietude of his exterior, was +stored a capability of exerting tremendous force in some form or other. +He was seventeen when he entered college,--tall, broad-chested, with +clear, lustrous gray eyes,[3] a fresh complexion, and long hair: his +classmates were so impressed with his masculine beauty, and perhaps with +a sense of occult power in him, that they nicknamed him Oberon. Although +unusually calm-tempered, however, he was quick to resent disrespectful +treatment (as he had been with John Knights), and his vigorous, athletic +frame made him a formidable adversary. In the same class with him were +Henry W. Longfellow; George Barrell Cheever, since famous as a divine, +and destined to make a great stir in Salem by a satire in verse called +"Deacon Giles's Distillery," which cost him a thirty days' imprisonment, +together with the loss of his pastorate; also John S. C. Abbott, the +writer of popular histories; and Horatio Bridge, afterwards Lieutenant +in the United States Navy, and now Commander. Bridge and Franklin +Pierce, who studied in the class above him, were his most intimate +friends. He boarded in a house which had a stairway on the outside, +ascending to the second story; he took part, I suppose, in the +"rope-pulls" and "hold-ins" between Freshmen and Sophomores, if those +customs were practised then; he was fined for card-playing and for +neglect of theme; entered the Athenæan Society, which had a library of +eight hundred volumes; tried to read Hume's "History of England," but +found it "abominably dull," and postponed the attempt; was fond of +whittling, and destroyed some of his furniture in gratifying that taste. +Such are the insignificant particulars to which we are confined in +attempting to form an idea of the externals of his college-life. Pierce +was chairman of the Athenæan Society, and also organized a military +company, which Hawthorne joined. In the Preface to "The Snow-Image" we +are given a glimpse of the simple amusements which occupied his leisure: +"While we were lads together at a country college, gathering blueberries +in study hours under those tall academic pines; or watching the great +logs as they tumbled along the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting +pigeons and gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the +summer-twilight; or catching trouts in that shadowy little stream which, +I suppose, is still wandering riverward through the forest." He became +proficient in Latin. Longfellow was wont to recall how he would rise at +recitation, standing slightly sidewise--attitude indicative of his +ingrained shyness--and read from the Roman classics translations which +had a peculiar elegance and charm. In writing English, too, he won a +reputation, and Professor Newman was often so struck with the beauty of +his work in this kind that he would read them in the evening to his own +family. Professor Packard says: "His themes were written in the +sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an +inimitable charm. The recollection is very distinct of Hawthorne's +reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself at the +professor's study and submitted a composition which no man in his class +could equal." + +Hawthorne always looked back with satisfaction to those simple and +placid days. In 1852 he revisited the scene where they were passed, in +order to be present at the semi-centennial anniversary of the founding +of the college. A letter, from Concord (October 13, 1852), to Lieutenant +Bridge, now for the first time published, contains the following +reference to that event:-- + +"I meant to have told you about my visit to Brunswick.... Only eight of +our classmates were present, and they were a set of dismal old fellows, +whose heads looked as if they had been out in a pretty copious shower of +snow. The whole intermediate quarter of a century vanished, and it +seemed to me as if they had undergone the miserable transformation in +the course of a single night--especially as I myself felt just about as +young as when I graduated. They flattered me with the assurance that +time had touched me tenderly; but alas! they were each a mirror in which +I beheld the reflection of my own age. I did not arrive till after the +public exercises were nearly over--and very luckily, too, for my praises +had been sounded by orator and poet, and of course my blushes would have +been quite oppressive." + +Hawthorne's rank in his class entitled him to a "part" at Commencement, +but the fact that he had not cultivated declamation debarred him from +that honor; and so he passed quietly away from the life of Bowdoin and +settled down to his career. "I have thought much upon the subject," he +wrote to his sister, just before graduation, "and have come to the +conclusion that I shall never make a distinguished figure in the world, +and all I hope or wish is to plod along with the multitude." But +declamation was not essential to his success, which was to be achieved +in anything but a declamatory fashion. + + + + +II. + + +In one sense it was all very simple, this childhood and youth and early +training of Hawthorne. We can see that the conditions were not +complicated and were quite homely. But the influence of good literature +had been at work upon the excellent mental substance derived from a +father who was fond of reading and a mother who had the plain elementary +virtues on which so much depends, and great purity of soul. The +composure and finish of style which he already had at command on going +to college were ripened amid the homely conditions aforesaid: there must +have been an atmosphere of culture in his home, unpretentious though the +mode of life there was. His sister, as I have mentioned, showed much the +same tone, the same commanding ease, in her writing. There existed a +dignity, a reserve, an instinctive refinement in this old-fashioned +household, which moved its members to appropriate the best means of +expression as by natural right. They appear to have treated the most +ordinary affairs of life with a quiet stateliness, as if human existence +were really a thing to be considered with respect, and with a frank +interest that might occasionally even admit of enthusiasm or strong +feeling with regard to an experience, although thousands of beings might +have passed through it before. Our new horizons, physically enlarged by +rapid travel, our omnifarious culture, our passion for obtaining a glaze +of cosmopolitanism to cover the common clay from which we are all +moulded, do not often yield us anything essentially better than the +narrow limits of the little world in which Hawthorne grew up. He was now +to go back to Salem, which he once spoke of as being apparently for him +"the inevitable centre of the universe;" and the conditions there were +not radically altered from what they had been before. We can form an +outline of him as he was then, or at most a water-color sketch +presenting the fresh hues of youth, the strong manly frame of the young +graduate, his fine deep-lighted eyes, and sensitively retiring ways. But +we have now to imagine the change that took place in him from the recent +college Senior to the maturing man; change that gradually transforms him +from the visionary outline of that earlier period to a solid reality of +flesh and blood, a virile and efficient person who still, while +developing, did not lose the delicate sensibility of his young prime. + +His family having reëstablished themselves in Salem, at the old Herbert +Street house, he settled himself with them, and stayed there until +December, 1828, meanwhile publishing "Fanshawe" anonymously. They then +moved to a smaller house on Dearborn Street, North Salem; but after four +years they again took up their abode in the Herbert Street homestead. +Hawthorne wrote industriously; first the "Seven Tales of my Native +Land," which he burned, and subsequently the sketches and stories which, +after appearing in current periodicals, were collected as "Twice-Told +Tales." In 1830 he took a carriage trip through parts of Connecticut. "I +meet with many marvellous adventures," was a part of his news on this +occasion, but they were in reality adventures of a very tame +description. He visited New York and New Hampshire and Nantucket, thus +extending slightly his knowledge of men and places. A great deal of +discursive reading was also accomplished. In 1836 he went to Boston to +edit for Mr. S. G. Goodrich "The American Magazine of Useful and +Entertaining Knowledge." It did not turn out to be either useful or +entertaining for the editor, who was to be paid but $500 a year for his +drudgery, and in fact received only a small part of that sum. Through +Goodrich, he became a copious contributor to "The Token," in the pages +of which his tales first came to be generally known; but he gave up the +magazine after a four months' misery of editorship, and sought refuge +once more in his native town. + +Salem was an isolated place, was not even joined to the outer world by +its present link of railroad with Boston, and afforded no very generous +diet for a young, vigorous, hungry intellect like that of Hawthorne. +Surroundings, however, cannot make a mind, though they may color its +processes. He proceeded to extract what he could from the material at +hand. "His mode of life at this period was fitted to nurture his +imagination, but must have put the endurance of his nerves to the +severest test. The statement that for several years 'he never saw the +sun' is entirely an error. In summer he was up shortly after sunrise, +and would go down to bathe in the sea; but it is true that he seldom +chose to walk in the town except at night, and it is said that he was +extremely fond of going to fires if they occurred after dark. The +morning was chiefly given to study, the afternoon to writing, and in the +evening he would take long walks, exploring the coast from Gloucester to +Marblehead and Lynn--a range of many miles.... Sometimes he took the day +for his rambles, wandering perhaps over Endicott's ancient Orchard Farm +and among the antique houses and grassy cellars of old Salem Village, +the witchcraft ground; or losing himself among the pines of Montserrat +and in the silence of the Great Pastures, or strolling along the beaches +to talk with old sailors and fishermen." "He had little communication +with even the members of his family. Frequently his meals were brought +and left at his locked door, and it was not often that the four inmates +of the old Herbert Street mansion met in family circle. He never read +his stories aloud to his mother and sisters, as might be imagined from +the picture which Mr. Fields draws of the young author reciting his new +productions to his listening family; though, when they met, he sometimes +read older literature to them. It was the custom in this household for +the members to remain very much by themselves: the three ladies were +perhaps nearly as rigorous recluses as himself; and, speaking of the +isolation which reigned among them, Hawthorne once said, 'We do not even +_live_ at our house!' But still the presence of this near and gentle +element is not to be underrated, as forming a very great compensation in +the cold and difficult morning of his life." Of self-reliant mind, +accustomed to solitude and fond of reading, it was not strange that they +should have fallen into these habits, which, however peculiarly they may +strike others, did not necessarily spring from a morbid disposition, and +never prevented the Hawthornes from according a kindly reception to +their friends. + +Nathaniel Hawthorne's own associates were not numerous. There was a good +society in the town, for Salem was not, strictly speaking, provincial, +but--aided in a degree by the separateness of its situation--retained +very much its old independence as a commercial capital. There were +people of wealth and cultivation, of good lineage in our simple domestic +kind, who made considerable display in their entertainments and were +addicted to impressive absences in Paris and London. Among these +Hawthorne did not show himself at all. His preference was for +individuals who had no pretensions whatever in the social way. Among his +friends was one William B. Pike, a carpenter's son, who, after +acquiring an ordinary public-school education without passing through +the higher grades, adopted his father's trade, became a Methodist +class-leader, secondly a disciple of Swedenborg, and at length a +successful politician, being appointed Collector of the port of Salem by +President Pierce. He is described as having "a strongly marked, +benignant face, indicative of intelligence and individuality. He was +gray at twenty, and always looked older than his years.... He had a keen +sense of the ludicrous, a vivid recollection of localities and +incidents, a quick apprehension of peculiarities and traits, and was a +most graphic and entertaining narrator."[4] As Mr. James has said: +"Hawthorne had a democratic strain in his composition, a relish for the +common stuff of human nature. He liked to fraternize with plain people, +to take them on their own terms." It was the most natural thing in the +world for him to fancy such a man as Pike is represented to have been. +His Society in college was the one which displayed a democratic +tendency; and, in addition to making friends with persons of this stamp, +men of some education and much innate "go," he had a taste for loitering +in taverns where he could observe character in the rough, without being +called upon to take an active share in talk. "Men," we are told, "who +did not meddle with him he loved, men who made no demands on him, who +offered him the repose of genial companionship. His life-long friends +were of this description, and his loyalty to them was chivalrous and +fearless, and so generous that when they differed from him on matters of +opinion he rose at once above the difference and adhered to them for +what they really were." Inevitably, such a basis for the selection of +companions, coupled with his extreme reserve, subjected him to +criticism; but when, in 1835, his former classmate, the Rev. George B. +Cheever, was thrown into jail on account of the satirical temperance +pamphlet which has already been referred to in this sketch, Hawthorne +emerged from his strict privacy, and daily visited the imprisoned +clergyman. He showed no especial love for his native place, and in +return it never made of him a popular idol. At this initial epoch of his +career as an author there probably did not exist that active ill-will +which his chapter on the Custom House afterwards engendered; he was in +fact too little known to be an object of malice or envy, and his humble +friendships could not be made the ground of unfavorable insinuations. +The town, however, was not congenial to him, and the profound retirement +in which he dwelt, the slow toil with scanty meed of praise or gold, and +the long waiting for recognition, doubtless weighed upon and preyed upon +him. + +To stop at that would be to make a superficial summary. His seclusion +was also of the highest utility to him, nay, almost indispensable to his +development; for his mind, which seemed to be only creeping, was making +long strides of growth in an original direction, unhindered by arbitrary +necessities or by factitious influences. + +Nevertheless, the process had gone on long enough; and it was well that +circumstances now occurred to bring it to a close, to establish new +relations, and draw him somewhat farther into the general circle of +human movement. Dr. Peabody, who has been spoken of on a preceding page +as living on the opposite side of Union Street from Hawthorne's +birthplace, had, during the vicissitudes of the young author's education +and journeys to and fro, changed his residence and gone to Boston. No +acquaintance had as yet sprung up between the two families which had +been domiciled so near together, but in 1832 the Peabodys returned to +Salem; and Miss Elizabeth, who followed in 1836, having been greatly +struck by the story of "The Gentle Boy," and excited as to the +authorship, set on foot an investigation which resulted in her meeting +Hawthorne. It is an evidence of the approachableness, after all, of his +secluded family, that Miss Louisa Hawthorne should have received her +readily and with graciousness. Miss Peabody, having formerly seen one of +Miss Hawthorne's letters, had supposed that she must be the writer of +the stories, under shelter of a masculine name. She now learned her +mistake. Months passed without any response being made to her advance. +But when the first volume of "Twice-Told Tales" was issued, Hawthorne +sent it to her with his compliments. Up to this time she had not +obtained even a glimpse of him anywhere; and, in acknowledging his gift, +she proposed that he should call at her father's house; but although +matters had proceeded thus far, and Dr. Peabody lived within three +minutes' walk of Herbert Street, Hawthorne still did not come. It was +more than a year afterward that she addressed an inquiry to him about a +new magazine, and in closing asked him to bring his sisters to call in +the evening of the same day. This time he made his appearance, was +induced to accept an invitation to another house, and thus was led into +beginning a social intercourse which, though not extensive, was +unequalled in his previous experience. + +About a week after the first call, he came again. Miss Sophia Peabody, +who was an invalid, had been unable to appear before, but this time she +entered the room; and it was thus that Hawthorne met the lady whom he +was to make his wife some two or three years later. She was now about +twenty-nine, and younger by five years than Hawthorne. In childhood her +health had received a serious shock from the heroic treatment then +upheld by physicians, which favored a free use of mercury, so that it +became necessary from that time on to nurse her with the utmost care. +Many years of invalidism had she suffered, being compelled to stay in a +darkened room through long spaces of time, and although a sojourn in +Cuba had greatly benefited her, it was believed she could never be quite +restored to a normal state of well-being. Despite such serious +obstacles, she had gently persisted in reading and study; she drew and +painted, and no fear of flippant remark deterred her from attempting +even to learn Hebrew. At the same time she was a woman of the most +exquisitely natural cultivation conceivable. A temperament inclined like +hers, from the beginning, to a sweet equanimity, may have been assisted +towards its proper culmination by the habit of patience likely enough to +result from the continued endurance of pain; but a serenity so benign +and so purely feminine and trustful as that which she not displayed, but +spontaneously exhaled, must have rested on a primary and plenary +inspiration of goodness. All that she knew or saw sank into her mind and +took a place in the interior harmony of it, without ruffling the +surface; and all that she thought or uttered seemed to gain a fragrance +and a flower-like quality from having sprung thence. Neither were +strength of character and practical good sense absent from the company +of her calm wisdom and refinement. In brief, no fitter mate for +Hawthorne could have existed. + +Soon after their acquaintance began, she showed him, one evening, a +large outline drawing which she had made, to illustrate "The Gentle +Boy," and asked him: "Does that look like Ilbrahim?" + +Hawthorne, without other demonstration, replied quietly: "Ilbrahim will +never look otherwise to me." + +The drawing was shown to Washington Allston, who accorded it his praise; +and a Miss Burleigh, who was among the earliest admirers of Hawthorne's +genius, having offered to pay the cost of an engraving from it, the +design was reproduced and printed with a new special edition of the +story, accompanied by a Preface, and a Dedication to Miss Sophia +Peabody. The three sisters and two brothers who composed the family of +Dr. Peabody were strongly imbued with intellectual tastes: nothing of +importance in literature, art, or the philosophy of education escaped +them, when once it was brought to their notice by the facilities of the +time. Miss Sophia was not only well read and a very graceful amateur in +the practice of drawing and painting, but evinced furthermore a somewhat +remarkable skill in sculpture. About the year 1831, she modelled a bust +of Laura Bridgman, the blind girl, who was then a child of twelve years. +This portrait not only was said to be a very good likeness, +but--although it is marred by a representation of the peculiar band used +to protect the eyes of the patient--has considerable artistic value, and +attains very nearly to a classic purity of form and treatment. Miss +Peabody also executed a medallion portrait, in relief, of Charles +Emerson, the brilliant brother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose great +promise was frustrated by his premature death. This medallion was done +from memory. The artist had once seen Mr. Emerson while he was +lecturing, and was so strongly impressed by his eloquent profile that, +on going home, she made a memory-sketch of it in pencil, which supplied +a germ for the portrait in clay which she attempted after his death. + +The appearance of the "Twice-Told Tales" in book-form had, like that of +the "Gentle Boy" design, been due to the kindness of a friend. In this +case it was Lieutenant Bridge who became responsible for the expense; +and the volume met with, if not much pecuniary success, a gratifying +literary renown. The author sent a copy to Longfellow, who acknowledged +it cordially; and then Hawthorne wrote him as follows:-- + +"By some witchcraft or other--for I really cannot assign any reasonable +cause--I have been carried apart from the main current of life, and find +it impossible to get back again. Since we last met, which you remember +was in Sawtell's room, where you read a farewell poem to the relics of +the class--ever since that time I have secluded myself from society; and +yet I never meant any such thing nor dreamed what sort of life I was +going to lead.... For the last ten years I have not lived, but only +dreamed of living.... + +"As to my literary efforts, I do not think much of them, neither is it +worth while to be ashamed of them. They would have been better, I trust, +if written under more favorable circumstances." + +But Longfellow broke out, as it were, into an exulting cry over them, +which echoed from the pages of the next "North American Review."[5] His +notice was hardly a criticism; it was a eulogy, bristling with the +adornment of frequent references to European literature; but it is worth +while to recall a few of its sentences. + +"When a star rises in the heavens," said Longfellow, "people gaze after +it for a season with the naked eye, and with such telescopes as they may +find. In the stream of thought, which flows so peacefully deep and clear +through this book, we see the bright reflection of a spiritual star, +after which men will be prone to gaze 'with the naked eye and with the +spy-glasses of criticism.'... To this little work we would say, 'Live +ever, sweet, sweet book.' It comes from the hand of a man of genius. +Everything about it has the freshness of morning and of May.... The +book, though in prose, is nevertheless written by a poet. He looks upon +all things in a spirit of love and with lively sympathies. A calm, +thoughtful face seems to be looking at you from every page; with now and +then a pleasant smile, and now a shade of sadness stealing over its +features. Sometimes, though not often, it glares wildly at you, with a +strange and painful expression, as, in the German romance, the bronze +knocker of the Archivarius Lindhorst makes up faces at the student +Anselm.... One of the prominent characteristics of these tales is that +they are national in their character. The author has wisely chosen his +themes among the traditions of New England.... This is the right +material for story. It seems as natural to make tales out of old +tumble-down traditions as canes and snuff-boxes out of old steeples, or +trees planted by great men." + +This hearty utterance of Longfellow's not only was of advantage to the +young author publicly, but also doubtless threw a bright ray of +encouragement into the morning-dusk which was then the pervading +atmosphere of his little study, which he termed his "owl's nest." "I +have to-day," he wrote back, "received and read with huge delight, your +review of 'Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.' I frankly own that I was not +without hopes that you would do this kind office for the book; though I +could not have anticipated how very kindly it would be done. Whether or +no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow on me, there are +at least five persons who think you the most sagacious critic on earth, +viz., my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the +strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If I doubt the +sincerity and earnestness of any of my critics, it shall be of those who +censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not +have this privilege." + +His pleasant intimacy with the Peabodys went on; the dawn of his new +epoch broadened, and he began to see in Miss Sophia Peabody the figure +upon which his hopes, his plans for the future converged. Her father's +house stood on the edge of the Charter Street Burying-Ground, oldest of +the Salem cemeteries. "A three-story wooden house"--thus he has +described it--"perhaps a century old, low-studded, with a square front, +standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing +the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an +oval window on each side: its characteristic was decent respectability, +not sinking below the level of the genteel." In his "Note-Books" (July +4, 1837) he speaks of the old graveyard. "A slate gravestone round the +borders, to the memory of 'Col. John Hathorne Esq.,' who died in 1717. +This was the witch-judge. The stone is sunk deep into the earth, and +leans forward, and the grass grows very long around it.... Other +Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side.... It gives +strange ideas, to think how convenient to Dr. P----'s family this +burial-ground is,--the monuments standing almost within arm's reach of +the side-windows of the parlor--and there being a little gate from the +back-yard through which we step forth upon those old graves aforesaid. +And the tomb of the P---- family is right in front, and close to the +gate." Among the other Hathornes interred there are Captain Daniel, the +privateersman, and a Mr. John Hathorne, "grandson of the Hon. John +Hathorne," who died in 1758. The specification of his grandfather's +name, with the prefix, shows that the relentless condemner of witches +was still held in honor at Salem, in the middle of the eighteenth +century. Dr. Peabody's house and this adjoining burial-ground form the +scene of the unfinished "Dolliver Romance," and also supply the setting +for the first part of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In the latter we find it +pictured with a Rembrandtesque depth of tone:-- + +"It stood in a shabby by-street and cornered on a graveyard.... Here +were old brick tombs with curious sculpture on them, and quaint +gravestones, some of which bore puffy little cherubs, and one or two +others the effigies of eminent Puritans, wrought out to a button, a fold +of the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap.... Here used to be some +specimens of English garden flowers, which could not be accounted +for--unless, perhaps, they had sprung from some English maiden's heart, +where the intense love of those homely things and regret of them in the +foreign land, had conspired together to keep their vivifying +principle.... Thus rippled and surged with its hundreds of little +billows the old graveyard about the house which cornered upon it; it +made the street gloomy so that people did not altogether like to pass +along the high wooden fence that shut it in; and the old house itself, +covering ground which else had been thickly sown with bodies, partook of +its dreariness, because it hardly seemed possible that the dead people +should not get up out of their graves and steal in to warm themselves at +this convenient fireside." + +This was the place in which Hawthorne conducted his courtship; but we +ought not to lose sight of the fact that, in the account above quoted, +he was writing imaginatively, indulging his fancy, and dwelling on +particular points for the sake of heightening the effect. It is not +probable that he associated gloomy fantasies with his own experience as +it progressed in these surroundings. Here as elsewhere it is important +to bear in mind the distinction which Dr. Loring has made: "Throughout +life," he declares, "Hawthorne led a twofold existence--a real and a +supernatural. As a man, he was the realest of men. From childhood to old +age, he had great physical powers. His massive head sat upon a strong +and muscular neck, and his chest was broad and capacious. His strength +was great; his hand and foot were large and well made.... In walking, he +had a firm step and a great stride without effort. In early manhood he +had abounding health, a good digestion, a hearty enjoyment of food. His +excellent physical condition gave him a placid and even temper, a +cheerful spirit. He was a silent man and often a moody one, but never +irritable or morose; his organization was too grand for that. He was a +most delightful companion. In conversation he was never controversial, +never authoritative, and never absorbing. In a multitude his silence was +oppressive; but with a single companion his talk flowed on sensibly, +quietly, and full of wisdom and shrewdness. He discussed books with +wonderful acuteness, sometimes with startling power, and with an +unexpected verdict, as if Shakespeare were discussing Ben Jonson. He +analyzed men, their characters and motives and capacity, with great +penetration, impartially if a stranger or an enemy, with the tenderest +and most touching justice if a friend. He was fond of the companionship +of all who were in sympathy with this real and human side of his life." +But there was another side of his being, for which we may adopt the name +that Dr. Loring has given it, the "supernatural." It was this which gave +him his high distinction. "When he entered upon his work as a writer, he +left behind him his other and accustomed personality by which he was +known in general intercourse. In this work he allowed no interference, +he asked for no aid. He was shy of those whose intellectual power and +literary fame might seem to give them a right to enter his sanctuary. In +an assembly of illustrious authors and thinkers, he floated, reserved +and silent, around the margin in the twilight of the room, and at last +vanished into the outer darkness; and when he was gone, Mr. Emerson said +of him: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.' The working of +his mind was so sacred and mysterious to him that he was impatient of +any attempt at familiarity or even intimacy with the divine power within +him. His love of personal solitude was a ruling passion, his +intellectual solitude was an overpowering necessity.... Hawthorne said +himself that his work grew in his brain as it went on, and was beyond +his control or direction, for nature was his guide.... I have often +thought that he understood his own greatness so imperfectly, that he +dared not expose the mystery to others, and that the sacredness of his +genius was to him like the sacredness of his love." + +And did not Hawthorne write to his betrothed wife?--"Lights and shadows +are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know not whence +they come nor whither they go; nor do I inquire too closely into them. +It is dangerous to look too minutely into such phenomena." What we may +collect and set down of mere fact about his surroundings and his acts +relates itself, therefore, mainly to his outwardly real existence, to +the mere shell or mask of him, which was all that anybody could behold +with the eyes; and as for the interior and ideal existence, it is not +likely that we shall securely penetrate very far, where his own +impartial and introverted gaze stopped short. It is but a rough method +to infer with brusque self-confidence that we may judge from a few words +here and there the whole of his thought and feeling. A fair enough +notion may be formed as to the status of his post-collegiate life in +Salem, from the data we have, but we can do no more than guess at its +formative influence upon his genius. And I should be sorry to give an +impression that because his courtship went on in the old house by the +graveyard, of which he has written so soberly, there was any shadow of +melancholy upon that initiatory period of a new happiness. His +reflections concerning the spot had to do with his imaginative, or if +one choose, his "supernatural," existence; what actually passed there +had to do with the real and the personal, and with the life of the +affections. We may be sure that the meeting of two such perfected +spirits, so in harmony one with another, was attended with no qualified +degree of joy. If it was calm and reticent, without rush of excitement +or exuberant utterance, this was because movement at its acme becomes +akin to rest. Let us leave his love in that sanctity which, in his own +mind, it shared with his genius. + +Picturesquely considered, however,--and the picturesque never goes very +deep,--it is certainly interesting to observe that Hawthorne and his +wife, both of Salem families, should have been born on opposite sides of +the same street, within the sound of a voice; should have gone in +separate directions, remaining unaware of each other's existence; and +then should finally have met, when well beyond their first youth, in an +old house on the borders of the ancient burial-ground in which the +ancestors of both reposed, within hail of the spot where both had first +seen the light. + +When they became engaged, there was opposition to the match on the part +of Hawthorne's family, who regarded the seemingly confirmed invalidism +of Miss Peabody as an insuperable objection; but this could not be +allowed to stand in the way of a union so evidently pointed out by +providential circumstance and inherent adaptability in those who were to +be the parties to it. The engagement was a long one; but in the interval +before her marriage Miss Peabody's health materially improved. + + + + +III. + + +The new turn of affairs of course made Hawthorne impatient to find some +employment more immediately productive than that with the pen. He was +profoundly dissatisfied, also, with his elimination from the active life +of the world. "I am tired of being an ornament!" he said with great +emphasis, to a friend. "I want a little piece of land of my own, big +enough to stand upon, big enough to be buried in. I want to have +something to do with this material world." And, striking his hand +vigorously upon a table that stood by: "If I could only make tables," he +declared, "I should feel myself more of a man." + +President Van Buren had entered on the second year of his term, and Mr. +Bancroft, the historian, was Collector of the port of Boston. One +evening the latter was speaking, in a circle of whig friends, of the +splendid things which the democratic administration was doing for +literary men. + +"But there's Hawthorne," suggested Miss Elizabeth Peabody, who was +present. "You've done nothing for him." + +"He won't take anything," was the answer: "he has been offered places." + +In fact, Hawthorne's friends in political life, Pierce and Jonathan +Cilley, had urged him to enter politics; and at one time he had been +offered a post in the West Indies, but refused it because he would not +live in a slaveholding community. + +"I happen to know," said Miss Peabody, "that he would be very glad of +employment." + +The result was that a small position in the Boston Custom House was +soon awarded to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire +about it, he received another and better appointment as weigher and +gauger. His friend Pike was installed there at the same time. To +Longfellow, Hawthorne wrote in good spirits:-- + +"I have no reason to doubt my capacity to fulfil the duties; for I don't +know what they are. They tell me that a considerable portion of my time +will be unoccupied, the which I mean to employ in sketches of my new +experience, under some such titles as follows: 'Scenes In Dock,' +'Voyages at Anchor,' 'Nibblings of a Wharf Rat,' 'Trials of a +Tide-Waiter,' 'Romance of the Revenue Service,' together with an ethical +work in two volumes on the subject of Duties; the first volume to treat +of moral duties and the second of duties imposed by the revenue laws, +which I begin to consider the most important." + +His hopes regarding unoccupied time were not fulfilled; he was unable to +write with freedom during his term of service in Boston, and the best +result of it for us is contained in those letters, extracts from which +Mrs. Hawthorne published in the first volume of the "American +Note-Books." The benefit to him lay in the moderate salary of $1,200, +from which the cheapness of living at that time and his habitual economy +enabled him to lay up something; and in the contact with others which +his work involved. He might have saved time for writing if he had +chosen; but the wages of the wharf laborers depended on the number of +hours they worked, and Hawthorne--true to his instinct of democratic +sympathy and of justice--made it a point to reach the wharf at the +earliest hour, no matter what the weather might be, solely for the +convenience of the men. "It pleased me," he says in one of his letters, +"to think that I also had a part to act in the material and tangible +business of life, and that a portion of all this industry could not have +gone on without my presence." + +But when he had had two years of this sort of toil the Whigs elected a +President, and Hawthorne was dropped from the civil service. The project +of an ideal community just then presented itself, and from Boston he +went to Brook Farm, close by in Roxbury. The era of Transcendentalism +had arrived, and Dr. George Ripley, an enthusiastic student of +philosophy and a man of wide information, sought to give the new +tendencies a practical turn in the establishment of a modified +socialistic community. The Industrial Association which he proposed to +plant at West Roxbury was wisely planned with reference to the +conditions of American life; it had no affinity with the erratic views +of Enfantin or St. Simon, nor did it in the least partake of the errors +of Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; although it agreed +with Fourier and Owen both, if I understand the aim rightly, in respect +of labor. Dr. Ripley's simple object was to distribute labor in such a +way as to give all men time for culture, and to free their minds from +the debasing influence of a merely selfish competition. "A few men of +like views and feelings," one of his sympathizers has said, "grouped +themselves around him, not as their master, but as their friend and +brother, and the community at Brook Farm was instituted." Charles A. +Dana and Minot Pratt were leading spirits in the enterprise; the young +Brownson, George William Curtis, and Horace Sumner (a younger brother of +Charles) were also engaged in it, at various times. The place was a +kind of granary of true grit. Hawthorne has characterized the community +in that remark which he applied to Blithedale: "They were mostly +individuals who had gone through such an experience as to disgust them +with ordinary pursuits, but who were not yet so old, nor had suffered so +deeply, as to lose their faith in the better time to come." Miss E. P. +Peabody had at that time left Salem and begun a publishing business in +Boston, being one of the first women of our time to embark in an +occupation thought to appertain exclusively to men; and at her rooms +some of the preliminary meetings of the new association were held. Thus +it happened that the scheme was speedily brought to Hawthorne's notice. +When his accession to the ranks was announced, Dr. Ripley, as he said to +the present writer, felt as if a miracle had occurred, "or as if the +heavens would presently be opened and we should see Jacob's Ladder +before us. But we never came any nearer to having _that_, than our old +ladder in the barn, from floor to hayloft." Besides his belief in the +theory of an improved condition of society, and his desire to forward +its accomplishment, Hawthorne had two objects in joining the community: +one of which was to secure a suitable and economical home after +marriage; the other, to hit upon a mode of life which should equalize +the sum of his exertions between body and brain. Many persons went +thither in just the same frame of mind. + +From a distance, the life that was led there has a very pretty and +idyllic look. There was teaching, and there was intellectual talk; there +was hard domestic and farming work in pleasant companionship, and a +general effort to be disinterested. The various buildings in which the +associators found shelter were baptized with cheerful and sentimental +names; The Hive, The Pilgrim House, The Nest, The Eyrie, and The +Cottage. The young women sang as they washed the dishes, and the more +prepossessing and eligible of the yeomen sometimes volunteered to help +them with their unpoetic and saponaceous task. The costume of the men +included a blouse of checked or plaided stuff, belted at the waist, and +a rough straw hat; and the women also wore hats, in defiance of the +fashion then ruling, and chose calico for their gowns. In the evenings, +poems and essays composed by the members, or else a play of Shakespeare, +would be read aloud in the principal gathering held at one of the +houses. A great deal of individual liberty was allowed, and Hawthorne +probably availed himself of this to keep as much as possible out of +sight. One might fancy, on a casual glance, that Brook Farm was the +scene of a prolonged picnic. But it was not so at all. Hawthorne had +hoped that by devoting six hours a day to mechanical employments, he +could earn the time he needed for writing; but, as it proved, the manual +labor more nearly consumed sixteen hours, according to Dr. Ripley, who +declared of Hawthorne that "he worked like a dragon!" + +Sundry of Hawthorne's common sense observations and conclusions upon the +advisability of his remaining at the farm are to be found in his +"Note-Books," and have often been quoted and criticised. They show that, +as might be expected in a person of candor and good judgment, he was +considering the whole phenomenon upon the practical side. There is an +instructive passage also in "The Blithedale Romance," which undoubtedly +refers to his own experience:-- + +"Though fond of society, I was so constituted as to need these +occasional retirements, even in a life like that of Blithedale, which +was itself characterized by a remoteness from the world. Unless renewed +by a yet further withdrawal towards the inner circle of self-communion, +I lost the better part of my individuality. My thoughts became of little +worth, and my sensibilities grew as arid as a tuft of moss ... crumbling +in the sunshine, after long expectance of a shower." + +The whole thing was an experiment for everybody concerned, and Hawthorne +found it best to withdraw from a further prosecution thereof, as persons +were constantly doing who had come to see if the life would suit them. +He had contributed a thousand dollars (the chief part of his savings in +the Custom House) to the funds of the establishment; and, some time +after he quitted the place, an effort was made among the most +influential gentlemen of Brook Farm to restore this sum to him, although +they were not, I believe, bound to do so. Whether or not they ever +carried out this purpose has not been learned. The community flourished +for four years and was financially sound, but in 1844 it entered into +bonds of brotherhood with a Fourieristic organization in New York, began +to build a Phalanstery, attempted to enlarge its range of industry, and +came to grief. No one of its chief adherents has ever written its +history; but perhaps Mr. Frothingham is right in saying that +"Aspirations have no history."[6] At all events Hawthorne, in "The +Blithedale Romance," which explicitly disclaims any close adherence to +facts or any criticism on the experiment, has furnished the best +chronicle it has had, so far as the spirit of the scheme is concerned. + +Having tried the utmost isolation for ten years in Salem, and finding +it unsatisfactory; and having made a venture in an opposite extreme at +Brook Farm, which was scarcely more to his liking, Hawthorne had +unconsciously passed through the best of preparation for that family +life of comparative freedom, and of solitude alternating with a gentle +and perfect companionship, on which he was about to enter. In July, +1842, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, of Boston, received the following note, +dated from 54 Pinckney Street, which was the residence of Hawthorne's +friend, George S. Hillard:-- + + MY DEAR SIR,--Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to + request of you the greatest favor which I can receive from any man. + I am to be married to Miss Sophia Peabody; and it is our mutual + desire that you should perform the ceremony. Unless it should be + decidedly a rainy day, a carriage will call for you at half past + eleven o'clock in the forenoon. + + Very respectfully yours, + NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. + +The wedding took place quietly, and Hawthorne carried his bride to the +Manse at Concord, the old parsonage of that town. It belonged to the +descendants of Dr. Ezra Ripley, who had been pastor there at the close +of the last century; they were relatives of the George Ripley with whom +Hawthorne had so recently been associated at Brook Farm. Hawthorne had +succeeded in hiring the place for a time, and was happy in beginning his +married life in a house so well in keeping with his tastes. The best +account of this, his first sojourn in Concord, is to be found in the +"American Note-Books," and in the Introduction to the "Mosses from an +Old Manse." Here his first child was born, a daughter, to whom the name +of Una[7] was given, from "The Faërie Queen"; and here he saw something +of Emerson and of Margaret Fuller. Among his visitors, who were never +many, was George Stillman Hillard, a Democrat, a lawyer, an editor, an +orator in high favor with the Bostonians, and the author of several +works both of travel and of an educational kind. Mr. George P. Bradford, +with whom Hawthorne had talked and toiled at Brook Farm, was a cousin of +the Ripleys, and also came hither as a friend. Another Brook Farmer +appeared at the Manse, in the person of one Frank Farley, a man of some +originality, who had written a little book on natural scenery and had +been a frontiersman, but was subject to a mild, loquacious form of +insanity. (Mention of him as "Mr. F----" is made in the "American +Note-Books," under date of June 6 and June 10, 1844.) A writer in one of +the magazines has recorded the impression which Hawthorne left on the +minds of others who saw him during this period, but did not know him. +Among the villagers "a report was current that this man Hawthorne was +somewhat uncanny--in point of fact, not altogether sane. My friend, the +son of a Concord farmer and at that time a raw college youth, had heard +these bucolic whisperings as to the sanity of the recluse dweller at the +ancient parsonage; but he knew nothing of the man, had read none of his +productions, and of course took no interest in what was said or surmised +about him. And one day, casting his eye toward the Manse as he was +passing, he saw Hawthorne up the pathway, standing with folded arms in +motionless attitude, and with eyes fixed upon the ground. 'Poor +fellow,' was his unspoken comment: 'he does look as if he might be +daft.' And when, on his return a full hour afterward, Hawthorne was +still standing in the same place and attitude, the lad's very natural +conclusion was, 'The man _is_ daft, sure enough!'" Mr. Thomas Wentworth +Higginson has presented quite a different view, in his "Short Studies of +American Authors." He says:-- + +"The self-contained purpose of Hawthorne, the large resources, the +waiting power,--these seem to the imagination to imply an ample basis of +physical life; and certainly his stately and noble port is inseparable, +in my memory, from these characteristics. Vivid as this impression is, I +yet saw him but twice, and never spoke to him. I first met him on a +summer morning, in Concord, as he was walking along the road near the +Old Manse, with his wife by his side and a noble looking baby-boy in a +little wagon which the father was pushing. I remember him as tall, firm, +and strong in bearing.... When I passed, Hawthorne lifted upon me his +great gray eyes with a look too keen to seem indifferent, too shy to be +sympathetic--and that was all."[8] + +Hawthorne's plan of life was settled; he was happily married, and the +problems of his youth were solved: his character and his genius were +formed. From this point on, therefore, his works and his "Note-Books" +impart the essentials of his career. The main business of the biographer +is, after this, to put together that which will help to make real the +picture of the author grappling with those transient emergencies that +constitute the tangible part of his history. A few extracts from +letters written to Horatio Bridge, heretofore unpublished, come under +this head. + +_Concord, March_ 25, 1843.--"I did not come to see you, because I was +very short of cash--having been disappointed in money that I had +expected from three or four sources. My difficulties of this kind +sometimes make me sigh for the regular monthly payments of the Custom +House. The system of slack payments in this country is most +abominable.... I find no difference in anybody in this respect, for all +do wrong alike. ---- is just as certain to disappoint me in money +matters as any little pitiful scoundrel among the booksellers. For my +part, I am compelled to disappoint those who put faith in my +engagements; and so it goes round." + +The following piece of advice with regard to notes for the "Journal of +an African Cruiser," by Mr. Bridge, which Hawthorne was to edit, is +worth observing and has never before been given to the public:-- + +"I would advise you not to stick too accurately to the bare facts, +either in your descriptions or your narratives; else your hand will be +cramped, and the result will be a want of freedom that will deprive you +of a higher truth than that which you strive to attain. Allow your fancy +pretty free license, and omit no heightening touches merely because they +did not chance to happen before your eyes. If they did not happen, they +at least ought--which is all that concerns you. This is the secret of +all entertaining travellers.... Begin to write always before the +impression of novelty has worn off from your mind; else you will soon +begin to think that the peculiarities which at first interested you are +not worth recording; yet these slight peculiarities are the very things +that make the most vivid impression upon the reader." In this same +letter (May 3, 1843) he reverts to the financial difficulty, and speaks +of a desire to obtain office again, but adds: "It is rather singular +that I should need an office; for nobody's scribblings seem to be more +acceptable to the public than mine; and yet I still find it a tough +match to gain a respectable living by my pen." + +By November of 1844 he had put things seriously in train for procuring +another government position; Polk having been elected to the Presidency. +There was a rumor that Tyler had actually fixed upon Hawthorne for the +postmastership of Salem, but had been induced to withdraw the name; and +this was the office upon which he fixed his hope; but a hostile party +made itself felt in Salem, which raised all possible obstacles, and +apparently Hawthorne's former chief, Mr. Bancroft,--it may have been for +some reason connected with political management,--opposed his +nomination. Early in October, 1845, Hawthorne made his farewell to the +Old Manse, never to return to the shelter of its venerable and +high-shouldered roof. Once more he went to Salem, and halted in Herbert +Street. The postmastership had proved unattainable, but there was a +prospect of his becoming Naval Officer or Surveyor. The latter position +was given him at length; but not until the spring of 1846. On first +arriving at Salem, he wrote to Bridge: "Here I am, again established--in +the old chamber where I wasted so many years of my life. I find it +rather favorable to my literary duties; for I have already begun to +sketch out the story for Wiley & Putnam," an allusion to something +intended to fill out a volume of the "Mosses," already negotiated for. +After his installation as Surveyor he wrote, speaking of his "moderate +prosperity," and said further: "I have written nothing for the press +since my entrance into office, but intend to begin soon. My 'Mosses' +seem to have met with good acceptance." Time went on, however, and he +remained, so far as literary production was concerned, inert. He had +left the Manning homestead and hired a house in Chestnut Street, which +he kept for a year and a half. During this period Mrs. Hawthorne went to +Boston for a time, and in Carver Street, Boston, was born their second +child and only son, Mr. Julian Hawthorne, who has since made a +reputation for himself as a novelist. From Chestnut Street he went to +another house, in Mall Street; and it was there that "The Scarlet +Letter" was finished, in 1850, four years after he had announced to +Bridge that he intended soon to begin composition. The Custom House +routine disturbed his creative moods and caused a gradual postponement +of literary effort. Of the figure that he made while fulfilling the +functions assigned to him, slight traces have been left. We are told, +for example, that two Shakers, leaders in their community, visited the +Custom House one day, and were conducted through its several +departments. On the way out, they passed Hawthorne, and no sooner had +they left his room than, the door being shut behind them, the elder +brother asked with great interest who that man was. After referring to +the strong face, "and those eyes, the most wonderful he had ever +beheld," he said: "Mark my words, that man will in some way make a deep +impression upon the world." It is also remembered that a rough and +overbearing sea-captain attempted to interfere with Hawthorne's exercise +of his duty as an inspector of the customs, in charge of the ship. His +attempt "was met with such a terrific uprising of spiritual and physical +wrath that the dismayed captain fled up the wharf" and took refuge with +the Collector, "inquiring with a sailor's emotion and a sailor's tongue: +'What in God's name have you sent on board my ship for an inspector?'" +Unexpectedly, in the winter of 1849, he was deprived of his +surveyorship; a great surprise to him, because he had understood certain +of his fellow-citizens of Salem to have given a pledge that they would +not seek his removal, and it appeared that they had, notwithstanding, +gone to work to oust him. + +On finding himself superseded, he walked away from the Custom House, +returned home, and entering sat down in the nearest chair, without +uttering a word. Mrs. Hawthorne asked him if he was well. + +"Well enough," was the answer. + +"What is the matter, then?" said she. "Are you 'decapitated?'" + +He replied with gloom that he was, and that the occurrence was no joke. + +"Oh," said his wife, gayly, "now you can write your Romance!" For he had +told her several times that he had a romance "growling" in him. + +"Write my Romance!" he exclaimed. "But what are we to do for bread and +rice, next week?" + +"I will take care of that," she answered. "And I will tell Ann to put a +fire in your study, now." + +Hawthorne was oppressed with anxiety as to means of support for his wife +and children; the necessity of writing for immediate returns always had +a deterrent and paralyzing effect on his genius; and he was amazed that +Mrs. Hawthorne should take his calamity with so much lightness. He +questioned her again regarding the wherewithal to meet their current +needs, knowing well that he himself had no fund in reserve. His habit +had been to hand her the instalments of salary as they came to him from +the office; and when he was in need of money for himself he drew again +upon her for it. He therefore supposed that everything had been used up +from week to week. But Mrs. Hawthorne now disclosed the fact that she +had about a hundred and fifty dollars, a sum which for them was a +considerable one, their manner of living being extremely plain. Greatly +astonished, he asked her where she had obtained so much. + +"You earned it," she replied, cheerily. + +Mrs. Hawthorne was in fact overjoyed, on his account, that he had lost +his place; feeling as she did that he would now resume his proper +employment. The fire was built in the study, and Hawthorne, stimulated +by his wife's good spirits, set at once about writing "The Scarlet +Letter." + +Some six months of time were required for its completion, and Mrs. +Hawthorne, who was aware that her savings would be consumed in a third +of that space, applied herself to increasing the small stock of cash, so +that her husband's mind might remain free and buoyant for his writing. +She began making little cambric lamp-shades, which she decorated with +delicate outline drawings and sent to Boston for sale. They were readily +purchased, and, by continuing their manufacture, this devoted wife +contrived to defray the expenses of the household until the book was +finished. + +Mr. James T. Fields, the publisher, who was already an acquaintance, +and eventually became a friend, of Hawthorne's had been told of the +work, and went down to Salem to suggest bringing it out. This was before +the story had been fully elaborated into its present form. Hawthorne had +written steadily all day, and every day, from the start, but, +remembering in what small quantity his books sold, he had come to +consider this new attempt a forlorn hope. Mr. Fields found him +despondent, and thus narrates the close of the interview:-- + +"I looked at my watch and found that the train would soon be starting +for Boston, and I knew there was not much time to lose in trying to +discover what had been his literary work during these last few years in +Salem. I remember that I pressed him to reveal to me what he had been +writing. He shook his head, and gave me to understand that he had +produced nothing. At that moment I caught sight of a bureau or set of +drawers near where we were sitting; and immediately it occurred to me +that, hidden away somewhere in that article of furniture, was a story or +stories by the author of the 'Twice-Told Tales,' and I became so +confident that I charged him vehemently with the fact. He seemed +surprised, I thought, but shook his head again; and I rose to take my +leave, begging him not to come into the cold entry, saying I would come +back and see him again in a few days. I was hurrying down the stairs +when he called after me from the chamber, asking me to stop a moment. +Then, quickly stepping into the entry with a roll of manuscript in his +hands, he said: 'How in Heaven's name did you know this thing was here? +As you have found me out, take what I have written, and tell me, after +you get home and have time to read it, if it is good for anything. It +is either very good or very bad--I don't know which.' On my way up to +Boston I read the germ of 'The Scarlet Letter;' before I slept that +night I wrote him a note all aglow with admiration of the marvellous +story he had put into my hands." + +In a letter to Bridge (April 10, 1850), the author said: "'The Scarlet +Letter' has sold well, the first edition having been exhausted in ten +days, and the second (5,000 in all) promising to go off rapidly." +Speaking of the excitement created among his townspeople by the +introductory account of the Custom House, he continued: "As to the Salem +people, I really thought I had been exceedingly good-natured in my +treatment of them. They certainly do not deserve good usage at my hands, +after permitting me ... to be deliberately lied down, not merely once +but at two separate attacks, on two false indictments, without hardly a +voice being raised on my behalf; and then sending one of their false +witnesses to Congress and choosing another as their Mayor. I feel an +infinite contempt for them, and probably have expressed more of it than +I intended; for my preliminary chapter has caused the greatest uproar +that ever happened here since witch-times. If I escape from town without +being tarred and feathered, I shall consider it good luck. I wish they +_would_ tar and feather me--it would be such an entirely new distinction +for a literary man! And from such judges as my fellow-citizens, I should +look upon it as a higher honor than a laurel-crown." In the same letter +he states that he has taken a house in Lenox, and shall move to it on +the 1st of May: "I thank Mrs. Bridge for her good wishes as respects my +future removals from office; but I should be sorry to anticipate such +bad fortune as ever again being appointed to me." + +Previous to this, he had written: "I long to get into the country, for +my health latterly is not quite what it has been for many years past. I +should not long stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental +exertion as I have led for the last few months. An hour or two of daily +labor in a garden, and a daily ramble in country air or on the +sea-shore, would keep me all right. Here I hardly go out once a week.... +I detest this town so much, that I hate to go into the streets, or to +have the people see me. Anywhere else I should at once be another man." + +It was not a very comfortable home, that small red wooden house at +Lenox, overlooking the beautiful valley of the Housatonic and surrounded +by mountains; but both Hawthorne and his wife bravely made the best of +it. Mrs. Hawthorne ornamented an entire set of plain furniture, painted +a dull yellow, with copies from Flaxman's outlines, executed with great +perfection; and, poor as the place was, it soon became invested by its +occupants with something of a poetic atmosphere. After a summer's rest, +Hawthorne began "The House of the Seven Gables;" writing to Bridge in +October:-- + +"I am getting so deep into my own book, that I am afraid it will be +impossible for me to attend properly to my editorial duties" (connected +with a new edition of Lieutenant Bridge's "Journal of an African +Cruiser").... "Una and Julian grow apace, and so do our chickens, of +which we have two broods. There is one difficulty about these chickens, +as well as about the older fowls. We have become so intimately +acquainted with every individual of them, that it really seems like +cannibalism to think of eating them. What is to be done?" + +[Illustration: Letter to Mr. Fields. + + Lenox, January 27. 1851 + + Dear Fields, + + I intend to put the House of the Seven Gables into the express + man's hands to-day; so that, if you do not soon receive it, you may + conclude that it has miscarried--in which case, I shall not consent + to the Universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, + except the wildest scribble of a first draught; so that it could + never be restored. + + It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the + public to whose judgement it has been submitted, viz. from my wife. + I likewise prefer it to the Scarlet Letter; but an author's opinion + of his book, just after completing it, is worth little or nothing; + he being then in the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to + rate it too high or too low. + + * * * * * + + I had something else to say, but have forgotten what. + + Truly Yours, + Nath. Hawthorne.] + +His task occupied him all winter. To Mr. Fields at length, on the 27th +of January, 1851, he sent the following message:-- + +"I intend to put 'The House of the Seven Gables' into the expressman's +hands to-day; so that, if you do not soon receive it, you may conclude +that it has miscarried--in which case, I shall not consent to the +universe existing a moment longer. I have no copy of it, except the +wildest scribble of a first draught; so that it could never be restored. + +"It has met with extraordinary success from that portion of the public +to whose judgment it has been submitted: viz. from my wife. I likewise +prefer it to 'The Scarlet Letter;' but an author's opinion of his book, +just after completing it, is worth little or nothing; he being then in +the hot or cold fit of a fever, and certain to rate it too high or too +low. It has undoubtedly one disadvantage in being brought so close to +the present time, whereby its romantic improbabilities become more +glaring." + +The fac simile of a part of the above letter which is reproduced here +serves as a fairly good specimen of Hawthorne's handwriting. At the time +when it was written, he was not very well, and the fatigue of his long +labor upon the book rendered the chirography somewhat less clear in this +case than it often was. The lettering in his manuscripts was somewhat +larger, and was still more distinct than that in his correspondence. + +After the new romance had come out and had met with a flattering +reception, he inquired of Bridge (July 22, 1851): "Why did you not write +and tell me how you liked (or how you did not like) 'The House of the +Seven Gables?' Did you feel shy about expressing an unfavorable opinion? +It would not have hurt me in the least, though I am always glad to +please you; but I rather think I have reached the stage when I do not +care very essentially one way or the other for anybody's opinion on any +one production. On this last romance, for instance, I have heard and +seen such diversity of judgment that I should be altogether bewildered +if I attempted to strike a balance;--so I take nobody's estimate but my +own. I think it is a work more characteristic of my mind, and more +natural and proper for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter'--but for +that very reason less likely to interest the public.... As long as +people will buy, I shall keep at work, and I find that my facility of +labor increases with the demand for it." + +In the May of 1851 another daughter was added to his family. Hawthorne, +like his father, had one son and two daughters. Of this youngest one he +wrote to Pike, two months after her birth: "She is a very bright and +healthy child.... I think I feel more interest in her than I did in the +other children at the same age, from the consideration that she is to be +the daughter of my age--the comfort (so it is to be hoped) of my +declining years." There are some other interesting points in this +communication. "What a sad account you give of your solitude, in your +letter! I am not likely ever to have that feeling of loneliness which +you express; and I most heartily wish you would take measures to remedy +it in your own case, by marrying.... Whenever you find it quite +intolerable (and I can hardly help wishing that it may become so soon), +do come to me. By the way, if I continue to prosper as hitherto in the +literary line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a place; and if +you should hear of one, say worth from $1,500 to $2,000, I wish you +would keep your eye on it for me. I should wish it to be on the +sea-coast, or at all events within easy access to the sea. Very little +land would suit my purpose, but I want a good house, with space +inside.... I find that I do not feel at home among these hills, and +should not consider myself permanently settled here. I do not get +acclimated to the peculiar state of the atmosphere; and, except in +mid-winter, I am continually catching cold, and am never so vigorous as +I used to be on the sea-coast.... Why did you not express your opinion +of 'The House of the Seven Gables?'... I should receive friendly +censure with just as much equanimity as if it were praise; though +certainly I had rather you would like the book than not. At any rate, it +has sold finely, and seems to have pleased a good many people better +than the other; and I must confess that I myself am among the number.... +When I write another romance I shall take the Community for a subject, +and shall give some of my experiences at Brook Farm." + +On the first day of December, 1851, he left Lenox with his wife and +children, betaking himself for the winter to West Newton, a suburban +village a few miles west of Boston, on the Charles River; there to +remain until he could effect the purchase of a house which could serve +him as a settled home. The house that he finally selected was an old one +in the town of Concord, about a mile easterly from the centre of the +village on the road to Lexington, and was then the property of Mrs. +Bronson Alcott. During the winter at West Newton he wrote "The +Blithedale Romance," which was published early in 1852. In the brief +term of two years and a half from the moment of his leaving the Custom +House at Salem, he had thus produced four books,--"The Scarlet Letter," +"The House of the Seven Gables," "A Wonder-Book for Boys and Girls," and +"The Blithedale Romance,"--three of them being the principal works of +his lifetime, with which "The Marble Faun" alone stands in the same +category. Early in the summer of 1852 he took up his residence in his +new home, The Wayside, of which he thus discoursed to Mr. George William +Curtis, on the 14th of July, 1852:-- + + MY DEAR HOWADJI,--I think (and am glad to think) that you will find + it necessary to come hither in order to write your Concord + Sketches; and as for my old house, you will understand it better + after spending a day or two in it. Before Mr. Alcott took it in + hand, it was a mean-looking affair, with two peaked gables; no + suggestiveness about it and no venerableness, although from the + style of its construction it seems to have survived beyond its + first century. He added a porch in front, and a central peak, and a + piazza at each end, and painted it a rusty olive hue, and invested + the whole with a modest picturesqueness; all which improvements, + together with its situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a + place that one notices and remembers for a few moments after + passing it. Mr. Alcott expended a good deal of taste and some money + (to no great purpose) in forming the hill-side behind the house + into terraces, and building arbors and summer-houses of rough stems + and branches and trees, on a system of his own. They must have been + very pretty in their day, and are so still, although much decayed, + and shattered more and more by every breeze that blows. The + hill-side is covered chiefly with locust-trees, which come into + luxuriant blossom in the month of June, and look and smell very + sweetly, intermixed with a few young elms and some white-pines and + infant oaks,--the whole forming rather a thicket than a wood. + Nevertheless, there is some very good shade to be found there. I + spend delectable hours there in the hottest part of the day, + stretched out at my lazy length, with a book in my hand or an + unwritten book in my thoughts. There is almost always a breeze + stirring along the sides or brow of the hill. + + From the hill-top there is a good view along the extensive level + surfaces and gentle, hilly outlines, covered with wood, that + characterize the scenery of Concord. We have not so much as a gleam + of lake or river in the prospect; if there were, it would add + greatly to the value of the place in my estimation. + + The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston road + (along which the British marched and retreated), divided from it by + a fence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Alcott's setting out. + Whereupon I have called it "The Wayside," which I think a better + name and more morally suggestive than that which, as Mr. Alcott has + since told me, he bestowed on it,--"The Hill-Side." In front of the + house, on the opposite side of the road, I have eight acres of + land,--the only valuable portion of the place in a farmer's eye, + and which are capable of being made very fertile. On the hither + side, my territory extends some little distance over the brow of + the hill, and is absolutely good for nothing, in a productive point + of view, though very good for many other purposes. + + I know nothing of the history of the house, except Thoreau's + telling me that it was inhabited a generation or two ago by a man + who believed he should never die.[9] I believe, however, he is + dead; at least, I hope so; else he may probably appear and dispute + my title to his residence.... + + I asked Ticknor to send a copy of "The Blithedale Romance" to you. + Do not read it as if it had anything to do with Brook Farm (which + essentially it has not), but merely for its own story and + character. + + Truly yours, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. + +Quite possibly the name of The Wayside recommended itself to him by some +association of thought like that which comes to light in the Preface to +"The Snow-Image," where, speaking of the years immediately following his +college course, he says: "I sat down by the wayside of life like a man +under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprung up around me, and the bushes +grew to be saplings, and the saplings became trees, until no exit +appeared possible through the entangling depths of my obscurity." If so, +the simile held good as to his home; for there, too, the shrubbery has +sprung up and has grown to saplings and trees, until the house is +embosomed in a wood, except for the opening along the road and a small +amphitheatre of lawn overlooked by the evergreen-clad hill. + +Hawthorne's old college friend, Franklin Pierce, after having been to +Congress and having risen to the rank of general in the Mexican War, was +nominated by the democratic party for the presidency of the United +States, at the time when the romancer had established himself in this +humble but charming old abode; and it became manifest that the +candidate wanted Hawthorne to write a life of him, for use in the +campaign. Hawthorne, on being pressed, consented to do so, and a letter +which he addressed to Bridge, October 13, 1852, contains some extremely +interesting confidences on the subject, which will be entirely new to +readers. As they do Hawthorne credit, if considered fairly, and give a +striking presentment of the impartiality with which he viewed all +subjects, it seems to be proper to print them here. + +He begins by speaking of "The Blithedale Romance," regarding which he +says: "I doubt whether you will like it very well; but it has met with +good success, and has brought me (besides its American circulation) a +thousand dollars from England, whence likewise have come many favorable +notices. Just at this time, I rather think your friend stands foremost +there as an American fiction-monger. In a day or two I intend to begin a +new romance, which, if possible, I intend to make more genial than the +last. + +"I did not send you the Life of Pierce, not considering it fairly one of +my literary productions.... I was terribly reluctant to undertake this +work, and tried to persuade Pierce, both by letter and vivâ voce, that I +could not perform it as well as many others; but he thought differently, +and of course after a friendship of thirty years it was impossible to +refuse my best efforts in his behalf, at the great pinch of his life. It +was a bad book to write, for the gist of the matter lay in explaining +how it happened, that with such extraordinary opportunities for eminent +distinction, civil and military, as he has enjoyed, this crisis should +have found him so obscure as he certainly was, in a national point of +view. My heart absolutely sank at the dearth of available material. +However, I have done the business, greatly to Frank's satisfaction; and, +though I say it myself, it is judiciously done; and, without any +sacrifice of truth, it puts him in as good a light as circumstances +would admit. Other writers might have made larger claims for him, and +have eulogized him more highly; but I doubt whether any other could have +bestowed a better aspect of sincerity and reality on the narrative, and +have secured all the credit possible for him without spoiling all by +asserting too much. And though the story is true, yet it took a romancer +to do it. + +"Before undertaking it, I made an inward resolution that I would accept +no office from him; but to say the truth, I doubt whether it would not +be rather folly than heroism to adhere to this purpose, in case he +should offer me anything particularly good. We shall see. A foreign +mission I could not afford to take;--the consulship at Liverpool I +might.... I have several invitations from English celebrities to come +over there; and this office would make all straight. He certainly owes +me something; for the biography has cost me hundreds of friends here at +the North, who had a purer regard for me than Frank Pierce or any other +politician ever gained, and who drop off from me like autumn leaves, in +consequence of what I say on the slavery question. But they were my real +sentiments, and I do not now regret that they are on record." + +After discussing other topics, he observes further of Pierce: "I have +come seriously to the conclusion that he has in him many of the chief +elements of a great man; and that if he wins the election he may run a +great career. His talents are administrative; he has a subtle faculty +of making affairs roll around according to his will, and of influencing +their course without showing any trace of his action." Hawthorne did not +feel very confident of his friend's election. "I love him," he adds, +"and, oddly enough, there is a kind of pitying sentiment mixed with my +affection for him just now." + + * * * * * + +Mr. Richard Henry Stoddard has set down his reminiscences of two visits +paid to Hawthorne at the beginning and after the end of the campaign. In +the summer of 1852, Mr. Stoddard was making a short stay in Boston, and +dropped in at the Old Corner Bookstore to call upon Mr. Fields, who then +had his headquarters there. He found Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, the lecturer +and critic, sitting with the publisher. + +"'We are going to see Hawthorne,' Mr. Fields remarked, in an off-hand +way, as if such a visit was the commonest thing in the world. 'Won't you +come along?' He knew my admiration for Hawthorne, and that I desired to +meet him, if I could do so without being considered an infliction. 'To +be sure I will,' I replied.... When we were fairly seated in the train +we met a friend of Hawthorne, whom Mr. Fields knew--a Colonel T. I. +Whipple--who, like ourselves, was _en route_ for Concord, ... and as +General Pierce was then the democratic candidate for the presidency, he +was going to see Hawthorne, in order to furnish materials for that work. + +"We reached The Wayside, where Hawthorne, who had no doubt been +expecting visitors, met us at the door. I was introduced to him as being +the only stranger of the party, and was greeted warmly, more so than I +had dared to hope, remembering the stories I had heard of his +unconquerable shyness. He threw open the door of the room on the left, +and, telling us to make ourselves at home, disappeared with Colonel +Whipple and his budget of biographical memoranda. We made ourselves at +home, as he had desired, in what I suppose was the parlor--a cosy but +plainly furnished room, with nothing to distinguish it from a thousand +other "best rooms" in New England, except a fine engraving on the wall +of one of Raphael's Madonnas. We chatted a few moments, and then, as he +did not return, we took a stroll over the grounds, under the direction +of Mr. Fields. + +"We had ascended the hill, and from its outlook were taking in the +historic country about, when we were rejoined by Hawthorne in the old +rustic summer-house. As I was the stranger, he talked with me more than +with the others, largely about myself and my verse-work, which he seemed +to have followed with considerable attention; and he mentioned an +architectural poem of mine and compared it with his own modest mansion. + +"'If I could build like you,' he said, 'I, too, would have a castle in +the air.' + +"'Give me The Wayside,' I replied, 'and you shall have all the air +castles I can build.' + +"As we rambled and talked, my heart went out towards this famous man, +who did not look down upon me, as he might well have done, but took me +up to himself as an equal and a friend. Dinner was announced and eaten, +a plain country dinner, with a bottle or two of _vin ordinaire_, and we +started back to Boston." + +Pierce having become President-Elect, Mr. Stoddard made another trip to +Concord, in the winter of 1852-3, to ask Hawthorne's advice about +getting a place in the Custom House. He was taken into the study (at +that time in the southeast corner, on the ground-floor and facing the +road), where there was a blazing wood-fire. The announcement of dinner +cut short their conversation, but after dinner they again retired to the +study, where, as Mr. Stoddard says, Hawthorne brought out some cigars, +"which we smoked with a will and which I found stronger than I liked. +Custom House matters were scarcely touched upon, and I was not sorry, +for while they were my ostensible errand there, they were not half so +interesting as the discursive talk of Hawthorne. He manifested a good +deal of curiosity in regard to some old Brook Farmers whom I knew in a +literary way, and I told him what they were doing, and gave him my +impressions of the individuality of each. He listened, with an +occasional twinkle of the eye, and I can see now that he was amused by +my out-spoken detestation of certain literary Philistines. He was +out-spoken, too, for he told me plainly that a volume of fairy stories I +had just published was not simple enough for the young. + +"What impressed me most at the time was not the drift of the +conversation, but the graciousness of Hawthorne. He expressed the +warmest interest in my affairs, and a willingness to serve me in every +possible way. In a word, he was the soul of kindness, and when I forget +him I shall have forgotten everything else." + +When Mr. Stoddard got back to New York, he received this letter:-- + + CONCORD, _March_ 16_th_, 1853. + + DEAR STODDARD: + + I beg your pardon for not writing before; but I have been very busy + and not particularly well. I enclose a letter to Atherton. Roll up + and pile up as much of a snow-ball as you can in the way of + political interest; for there never was a fiercer time than this + among the office-seekers.... + + Atherton is a man of rather cold exterior; but has a good heart--at + least for a politician of a quarter of a century's standing. If it + be certain that he cannot help you, he will probably tell you so. + Perhaps it would be as well for you to apply for some place that + has a literary fragrance about it--librarian to some + department--the office that Lanman held. I don't know whether there + is any other such office. Are you fond of brandy? Your strength of + head (which you tell me you possess) may stand you in good stead in + Washington; for most of these public men are inveterate guzzlers, + and love a man that can stand up to them in that particular. It + would never do to let them see you corned, however. But I must + leave you to find your way among them. If you have never associated + with them heretofore, you will find them a new class, and very + unlike poets. + + I have finished the "Tanglewood Tales," and they will make a volume + about the size of the "Wonder-Book," consisting of six myths--"The + Minotaur," "The Golden Fleece," "The Story of Proserpine," etc., + etc., etc., done up in excellent style, purified from all moral + stain, re-created good as new, or better--and fully equal, in their + way, to "Mother Goose." I never did anything so good as those old + baby-stories. + + In haste, + + Truly yours, + NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +Nothing could more succinctly illustrate the readiness of Hawthorne's +sympathies, and the companionable, cordial ease with which he treated a +new friend who approached him in the right way, one who caught his fancy +by a frank and simple independence, than this letter to Mr. Stoddard, +whom he had spoken with only twice. At that very time his old +disinclination to be intruded upon was as strong as ever; for Mr. Fields +relates how, just before Hawthorne sailed for England, they walked +together near the Old Manse and lay down in a secluded, grassy spot +beside the Concord River, to watch the clouds and hear the birds sing. +Suddenly, footsteps were heard approaching, and Hawthorne whispered in +haste, with much solemnity: "Duck! or we shall be interrupted by +somebody." So they were both obliged to prostrate themselves in the +grass until the saunterer had passed out of sight. + +The proposition to accept an office from Pierce was made to him as soon +as the new President was inaugurated. Although Hawthorne had considered +the possibility, as we have seen, and had decided what he could +advantageously take if it were offered, he also had grave doubts with +regard to taking any post whatever. When, therefore, the Liverpool +consulate was tendered to him, he at first positively declined it. +President Pierce, however, was much troubled by his refusal, and the +intervention of Hawthorne's publisher, Mr. Ticknor, was sought. Mr. +Ticknor urged him to reconsider, on the ground that it was a duty to his +family; and Hawthorne, who also naturally felt a strong desire to see +England, finally consented. His appointment was confirmed, March 26, +1853; but his predecessor was allowed, by resigning prospectively, to +hold over for five months; so that the departure for England was not +effected until the midsummer of 1853. + + + + +IV. + + +The twofold character of Hawthorne's mind is strongly manifested in the +diverse nature of the interests which occupied him in Europe, and the +tone with which he discussed them, alike in his journals, in his +letters, in "Our Old Home," and "The Marble Faun." On the one side, we +find the business-like official, attending methodically to the duties of +his place, the careful father of a family looking out for his personal +interests and the material welfare of his children in the future, the +keen and cool-headed observer who is determined to contemplate all the +novelties of strange scenes through no one's eyes but his own. On the +other side, he presents himself to us as the man of reverie, whose +observation of the actual constantly stimulates and brings into play a +faculty that perceives more than the actual; the delicate artist, whose +sympathies are ready and true in the appreciation of whatever is +picturesque or suggestive, or beautiful, whether in nature or in art. + +Some of the letters which he wrote from Liverpool to his classmate, +Horatio Bridge, throw light upon his own affairs and the deliberate way +in which he considered them. For instance, under date of March 30, 1854, +he wrote:-- + +"I like my office well enough, but my official duties and obligations +are irksome to me beyond expression. Nevertheless, the emoluments will +be a sufficient inducement to keep me here for four years, though they +are not a quarter part what people suppose them. The value of the office +varied between ten and fifteen thousand dollars during my predecessor's +term, and it promises about the same now. Secretary Guthrie, however, +has just cut off a large slice, by a circular.... Ask ---- to show you a +letter of mine, which I send by this steamer, for possible publication +in the newspapers. It contains a statement of my doings in reference to +the San Francisco [steamship] sufferers. The "Portsmouth Journal," it +appears, published an attack on me, accusing me of refusing all +assistance until compelled to act by Mr. Buchanan's orders; whereas I +acted extra-officially on my own responsibility, throughout the whole +affair. Buchanan refused to have anything to do with it. Alas! How we +public men are calumniated. But I trust there will be no necessity for +publishing my letter; for I desire only to glide noiselessly through my +present phase of life. + +"It sickens me to look back to America. I am sick to death of the +continual fuss and tumult, and excitement and bad blood, which we keep +up about political topics. If it were not for my children, I should +probably never return, but, after quitting office, should go to Italy, +to live and die there. If you and Mrs. Bridge would go, too, we might +form a little colony amongst ourselves, and see our children grow up +together. But it will never do to deprive them of their native land, +which, I hope, will be a more comfortable and happy residence in their +day than it has been in ours. In my opinion we are the most miserable +people on earth." It appears, further, that the appointment of a consul +for Manchester was contemplated, which, Hawthorne says, by withdrawing +some of the Liverpool perquisites, "would go far towards knocking this +consulate in the head." + +On April 17th, hearing that a bill had been introduced in Congress to +put consuls upon salary, instead of granting them fees, he wrote:-- + +"I trust to Heaven no change whatever will be made in regard to the +emoluments of the Liverpool consulate, unless indeed a salary is to be +given in addition to the fees, in which case I should receive it very +thankfully. This, however, is not to be expected.... A fixed salary +(even if it should be larger than any salary now paid by government, +with the exception of the President's own) will render the office not +worth any man's holding. It is impossible (especially for a man with a +family and keeping any kind of an establishment) not to spend a vast +deal of money here. The office, unfortunately, is regarded as one of +great dignity, and puts the holder on a level with the highest society, +and compels him to associate on equal terms with men who spend more than +my whole income on the mere entertainments and other trimmings and +embroideries of their lives. Then I am bound to exercise some +hospitality toward my own countrymen. I keep out of society as much as I +decently can, and really practise as stern an economy as ever I did in +my life; but nevertheless I have spent many thousands of dollars in the +few months of my residence here, and cannot reasonably hope to spend +less than $6,000 per annum, even after the expense of setting up an +establishment is defrayed. All this is for the merely indispensable part +of my living; and unless I make a hermit of myself and deprive my wife +and children of all the pleasures and advantages of an English +residence, I must inevitably exceed the sum named above.... It would be +the easiest thing in the world for me to run in debt, even taking my +income at $15,000" (out of which all the clerks and certain other office +expenses had to be paid), ... "the largest sum that it ever reached in +Crittenden's time. He had no family but a wife, and lived constantly at +a boarding-house, and, nevertheless, went away (as he assured me) with +an aggregate of only $25,000 derived from his savings. + +"Now the American public can never be made to understand such a +statement as the above; and they would grumble awfully if more than +$6,000 per annum were allowed for a consul's salary." But Hawthorne +concludes that it would not compensate him to retain the place with a +salary even of $10,000; and that if the emoluments should be reduced +from their then proportions, "the incumbent must be compelled to turn +his official position to account by engaging in commerce--a course which +ought not to be permitted, and which no Liverpool consul has ever +adopted." + +There are some references to President Pierce, in the Bridge +correspondence, which possess exceptional interest; but I cite only one +of them. The great honor of the immense publicity into which Pierce had +come as the executive head of the nation, and the centre upon which many +conflicting movements and machinations turned, created a danger of +misunderstandings with some of his early and intimate friends. In +discussing one such case Hawthorne writes (May 1, 1854), with regard to +maintaining a friendship for the President:-- + +"You will say that it is easy for me to feel thus towards him, since he +has done his very best on my behalf; but the truth is (alas for poor +human nature!) I should probably have loved him better if I had never +received any favor at his hands. But all this will come right again, +after both he and I shall have returned into private life. It is some +satisfaction, at any rate, that no one of his appointments was so +favorably criticized as my own; and he should have my resignation by the +very next mail, if it would really do him any good." + +Mr. Pike, who still held a post in the Salem Custom House, had written +to Hawthorne not long after his arrival in England, inquiring about the +prospect of obtaining some employment in the consular service there; and +Hawthorne replied, in a manner that leaves no doubt of his sagacity in +perceiving the exact situation of affairs, with its bearings for both +Pike and himself, nor of his determination neither to deceive himself +nor to give his friend any but the real reasons why he discouraged the +inquiry. + + "LIVERPOOL, _September_ 15, 1853. + + DEAR PIKE,--I have been intending to write to you this some time, + but wished to get some tolerably clear idea of the state of things + here before communicating with you. I find that I have three + persons in my office: the head-clerk, or vice-consul, at £200, the + second clerk at £150, and the messenger, who does some writing, at + £80. They are all honest and capable men, and do their duty to + perfection. No American would take either of these places for twice + the sums which they receive; and no American, without some months' + practice, would undertake the duty. Of the two I would rather + displace the vice-consul than the second clerk, who does a great + amount of labor, and has a remarkable variety of talent,--whereas + the old gentleman, though perfect in his own track, is nothing + outside of it. I will not part with either of these men unless + compelled to do so; and I don't think Secretary Marcy can compel + me. + + Now as to the Manchester branch, it brings me in only about £200. + There is a consular agent there, all the business being transacted + here in Liverpool. The only reason for appointing an agent would be + that it might shut off all attempts to get a separate consulate + there. There is no danger, I presume, of such an attempt for some + time to come; for Pierce made a direct promise that the place + should be kept open for my benefit. Nevertheless efforts will be + made to fill it, and very possibly representations may be made from + the business men of Manchester that there is necessity for a consul + there. In a pecuniary point of view, it would make very little + difference to me whether the place were filled by an independent + consul or by a vice-consul of my own appointment, for the latter + would of course not be satisfied with less than the whole £200. + What I should like would be to keep the place vacant and receive + the proceeds as long as possible, and at last, when I could do no + better, to give the office to you. No great generosity in that to + be sure. Thus I have put the matter fairly before you. Do you tell + me as frankly how your own affairs stand, and whether you can live + any longer in that cursed old Custom House without hanging + yourself. Rather than that you should do so I would let you have + the place to-morrow, although it would pay you about £100 less than + your present office. I suppose as a single man you might live + within your income in Manchester; but judging from my own + experience as a married man, it would be a very tight fit. With all + the economy I could use I have already got rid of $2,000 since + landing in England. Hereafter I hope to spend less and save more. + + In point of emolument, my office will turn out about what I + expected. If I have ordinary luck I shall bag from $5,000 to $7,000 + clear per annum: but to effect this I shall have to deny myself + many things which I would gladly have. Colonel Crittenden told me + that it cost him $4,000 to live with only his wife at a + boarding-house, including a journey to London now and then. I am + determined not to spend more than this, keeping house with my wife + and children. I have hired a good house furnished at £160, on the + other side of the River Mersey, at Rock Park, where there is good + air and play-ground for the children; and I can come over to the + city by steamboat every morning. I like the situation all the + better because it will render it impossible for me to go to + parties, or to give parties myself, and will keep me out of a good + deal of nonsense. + + Liverpool is the most detestable place as a residence that ever my + lot was cast in,--smoky, noisy, dirty, pestilential; and the + consulate is situated in the most detestable part of the city. The + streets swarm with beggars by day and by night. You never saw the + like; and I pray that you may never see it in America. It is worth + while coming across the sea in order to feel one's heart warm + towards his own country; and I feel it all the more because it is + plain to be seen that a great many of the Englishmen whom I meet + here dislike us, whatever they may pretend to the contrary. + + My family and myself have suffered very much from the elements; + there has not been what we should call a fair day since our + arrival, nor a single day when a fire would not be agreeable. I + long for one of our sunny days, and one of our good hearty rains. + It always threatens to rain, but seldom rains in good earnest. It + never _does_ rain, and it never _don't_ rain; but you are pretty + sure to get a sprinkling if you go out without an umbrella. Except + by the fireside, I have not once been as warm as I should like to + be: but the Englishmen call it a sultry day whenever the + thermometer rises above 60°. There has not been heat enough in + England this season to ripen an apple. + + My wife and children often talk of you. Even the baby has not + forgotten you. Write often, and say as much as you can about + yourself, and as little as you please about A----, N----, and + B----, and all the rest of those wretches of whom my soul was weary + to death before I made my escape. + + Your friend ever, + NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +Writing to Bridge again, November 28, 1854, he continues, with regard to +his consular prospects, by a comparison between the pay received by +English consuls and that allowed by the new bill to Americans. Only +$7,500 were to be paid the consul at Liverpool. "Now I employ three +clerks constantly," says Hawthorne "and sometimes more. The bill +provides that these clerks should be Americans; and the whole sum +allowed would not do much more than pay competent Americans, whose +salaries must be much higher than would content Englishmen of equal +qualifications. No consul can keep the office at this rate, without +engaging in business--which the bill forbids." He adds that the notion +that, by the proposed measure, a fund would be gained from the larger +consulates towards paying the salaries of the smaller ones, was +mistaken, since "a large part of the income of this consulate arises +from business which might just as well be transacted by a notary public +as by a consul, and which a consul is therefore not officially bound to +do. All such business as this the consul will cease to transact, the +moment the avails of it go into the public treasury, instead of his own +purse; and thus there will be an immediate falling off of the office to +a very considerable extent." + +Later on, he says: "I should really be ashamed to tell you how much my +income is taxed by the assistance which I find it absolutely necessary +to render to American citizens, who come to me in difficulty or +distress. Every day there is some new claimant, for whom the government +makes no provision, and whom the consul must assist, if at all, out of +his own pocket. It is impossible (or at any rate very disagreeable) to +leave a countryman to starve in the streets, or to hand him over to the +charities of an English work-house; so I do my best for these poor +devils. But I doubt whether they will meet with quite so good treatment +after the passage of the consular bill. If the government chooses to +starve the consul, a good many will starve with him." + +The bill, nevertheless, was passed. Lieutenant Bridge, who was then +stationed at Washington, had done all that he could to rouse an +effectual opposition to its enactment; and his friend wrote to him from +Liverpool (March 23, 1855) thus:-- + +"I thank you for your efforts against this bill; but Providence is wiser +than we are, and doubtless it will all turn out for the best. All +through my life, I have had occasion to observe that what seemed to be +misfortunes have proved, in the end, to be the best things that could +possibly have happened to me; and so it will be with this--even though +the mode in which it benefits me may never be made clear to my +apprehension. It would seem to be a desirable thing enough that I should +have had a sufficient income to live comfortably upon for the rest of my +life, without the necessity of labor; but, on the other hand, I might +have sunk prematurely into intellectual sluggishness--which now there +will be no danger of my doing; though with a house and land of my own, +and a good little sum at interest besides, I need not be under any very +great anxiety about the future. When I contrast my present situation +with what it was five years ago, I see a vast deal to be thankful for; +and I still hope to thrive by my legitimate instrument--the pen. One +consideration which goes very far towards reconciling me to quitting the +office is my wife's health, with which the climate of England does not +agree.... In short, we have wholly ceased to regret the action of +Congress (which, nevertheless, was most unjust and absurd), and are +looking at matters on the bright side. However, I shall be glad to get +what advantage I can out of the office, and therefore I hope Pierce will +give me as long a line as his conscience will let him." + +Believing that the office of consul with a salary reduced to $7,500, +which was only half the sum it had previously yielded in good years, +would not be worth the sacrifice involved in giving himself up to its +duties, he purposed resigning within a few months, taking a trip to +Italy, and then going home. But, fortunately for his pecuniary welfare, +the act of Congress had been so loosely framed (in harmony with the +general ignorance on which it was based), that it was left to the +President to reappoint old incumbents under the new system or not, as +he pleased. Pierce accordingly let Hawthorne's commission run on without +interruption, and the consul stayed through the rest of the +administration's term. + +While the matter was still in abeyance, however, the suggestion came +from Bridge that he allow himself to be transferred to Lisbon as +minister. The prospect was, in one way, seductive. Hawthorne was growing +anxious about his wife's health, and felt that nothing could be more +delightful than to take her to a warmer climate, which she needed, and +thus avoid the temporary separation which might have to be undergone if +he remained at Liverpool. The objections were, that he had no +acquaintance with diplomacy, did not know Portuguese, and disliked forms +and ceremonies. "You will observe," he wrote, "that the higher rank and +position of a minister, as compared with a consul, have no weight with +me. This is not the kind of honor of which I am ambitious." With a good +deal of hesitation he came to the belief that it would be wise for him +not to make the change. "But," he remarked, "it was a most kind and +generous thing on the part of the President to entertain the idea." His +friend, Mr. John O'Sullivan, who had been the founder and editor of the +"Democratic Review," to which Hawthorne had contributed copiously during +his residence at the Manse, was at this time accredited to the Court of +Lisbon, and would doubtless have been provided for in some other way had +Hawthorne been promoted to the place. The latter decided to stay at +Liverpool, but to send Mrs. Hawthorne to Lisbon, where she would find +not only milder air, but also friends in the minister and his wife. She +sailed with her daughters in October, 1855, and returned in the +following June. + +Wearisome as the details of his office duty were to him, Hawthorne gave +them more than a perfunctory attention. He became greatly aroused by the +wrongs and cruelties endured by sailors on the high seas, and sent a +long despatch on that subject to the Secretary of State, suggesting +action for their relief. He even investigated such minutiæ as the +candles used in the British navy, and sent samples of them to Bridge, +thinking that it might be desirable to compare them with those in use on +American war-ships. Opportunities, however, had occurred for several +trips in various directions, to Wales, Furness Abbey, and the Lakes. +London was visited just before Mrs. Hawthorne sailed; and during her +absence he again went to the capital, and made a tour which included +Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Newcastle, and Salisbury. A few days before +her expected return, he said in a letter to Bridge that unless she +should prove to be perfectly free from the cough which had troubled her, +"I shall make arrangements to give up the consulate in the latter part +of autumn, and we will be off for Italy. I wish I were a little richer; +but when I compare my situation with what it was before I wrote 'The +Scarlet Letter,' I have reason to be satisfied with my run of luck. And, +to say the truth, I had rather not be _too_ prosperous: it may be a +superstition, but it seems to me that the bitter is very apt to come +with the sweet, and bright sunshine casts a dark shadow; so I content +myself with a moderate portion of sugar, and about as much sunshine as +that of an English summer's day. In this view of the matter, I am +disposed to thank God for the gloom and chill of my early life, in the +hope that my share of adversity came then, when I bore it alone; and +that therefore it need not come now, when the cloud would involve those +whom I love. + +"I make my plans to return to America in about two years from this time. +For my own part, I should be willing to stay abroad much longer, and +perhaps even to settle in Italy; but the children must not be kept away +so long as to lose their American characteristics; otherwise they will +be exiles and outcasts through life." + +The presidential convention of the democratic party was held early in +the summer of 1856, and Buchanan, then minister at the Court of St. +James, became the candidate. Pierce had also been in the field, but was +defeated, and concerning this circumstance Hawthorne wrote, +characteristically: "I am sorry Frank has not the nomination, if he +wished it. Otherwise, I am glad he is out of the scrape." + +During the earlier part of his consulship, Hawthorne leased a pleasant +dwelling at Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the Mersey from +Liverpool, where he was able to live without going much into society; +and while Mrs. Hawthorne was in Portugal, he occupied simple quarters at +a boarding-house. Afterwards he settled at Southport for a number of +months, in a furnished house. He formed but one intimate friendship, +that which attached him to Mr. Henry Bright, a gentleman engaged in +business, but gifted with a quick and sympathetic mind and a taste for +literature. In London his chief friend was Mr. Francis Bennoch, also a +merchant, who consorted much with people of creative genius, and +delighted to gather them at his table, where they were entertained with +a cordial and charming hospitality. Mr. Bright and Mr. Bennoch have each +published a book since then; but although Hawthorne met many persons +eminent in literature, and enjoyed meeting them, it was not with any of +their number that he formed the closest ties. + +With relief he heard in April, 1857, that his resignation had been +accepted. "Dear Bridge," he wrote, "I have received your letter, and the +not unwelcome intelligence that there is another Liverpool consul now in +existence.... I am going to Paris in a day or two, with my wife and +children, and shall leave them there while I return here to await my +successor." He then thanked Bridge for a newspaper paragraph which the +latter had caused to be printed, explaining Hawthorne's position in +resigning. "I was somewhat apprehensive that my resignation would have +been misunderstood," he proceeded, "in consequence of a letter of +General Cass to Lord Napier, in which he intimated that any consul found +delinquent in certain matters should be compelled to retire.... But for +your paragraph, I should have thought it necessary to enlighten the +public on the true state of the case as regards the treatment of seamen +on our merchant vessels, and I do not know but I may do it yet; in which +case I shall prove that General Cass made a most deplorable mistake in +the above-mentioned letter to Lord Napier. I shall send the despatch to +Ticknor, at any rate, for publication if necessary. I expect great +pleasure during my stay on the Continent, and shall come home at last +somewhat reluctantly. Your pledge on my behalf of a book shall be +honored in good time, if God pleases." + +The intention of taking his family at once to Paris was given up, and +instead Hawthorne went with them to Manchester, the Lakes, and Scotland, +and made a pilgrimage to Warwick and Coventry, besides visiting many +other places. The new consul, however, postponed his coming until near +the end of 1857. Not before January, 1858, did Hawthorne break away from +the fascinations of England and cross to the Continent. When, after +spending more than a year and a half in Italy, he again set foot in +England, it was to establish himself at Redcar, a sea-side town in +Yorkshire, where he finished "The Marble Faun" in October, 1859; and +thence he betook himself to Leamington, which had greatly pleased him on +a previous visit. Here his old friend, Mr. Hillard, called upon him; and +in an article printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," in 1870, he says: "The +writer of this notice, who confesses to an insatiable passion for the +possession of books, and an omnivorous appetite for their contents, was +invited by him into his study, the invitation being accompanied with one +of his peculiar and indescribable smiles, in which there lurked a +consciousness of his (the writer's) weakness. The study was a small +square room, with a table and chair, but absolutely not a single book. +He liked writing better than reading." Mr. Hillard's implication, +however, is a misleading one. "Hawthorne," says Mr. Fields, "was a +hearty devourer of books, and in certain moods of mind it made very +little difference what the volume before him happened to be.... He once +told me that he found such delight in old advertisements in the +newspaper files at the Boston Athenæum, that he had passed delicious +hours among them. At other times he was very fastidious, and threw aside +book after book, until he found the right one. De Quincey was a favorite +with him, and the sermons of Laurence Sterne he once commended to me as +the best sermons ever written." His correspondence was not "literary," +to be sure; but in his letters to Mr. Fields, who had to do so +especially with books, occasional references to literature escape him, +which did not ordinarily find their way into his letters to other +people. From England, in 1854, he wrote to that gentleman: "I thank you +for the books you sent me, and more especially for Mrs. Mowatt's +'Autobiography,' which seems to me an admirable book. Of all things I +delight in autobiographies; and I hardly ever read one that interested +me so much." He did not read for erudition or for criticism, but he +certainly read much, and books were companions to him. I have seen +several catalogues of libraries which Hawthorne had marked carefully, +proving that, although he made no annotations, he had studied the titles +with a natural reader's loving fondness. His stay at Leamington was but +a brief one, and for that reason he may well have been without books in +his study at the moment; he never crowded them about himself, in the +rooms where he worked, but his tower-study at The Wayside always +contained a few volumes, and a few small pictures and ornaments--enough +to relieve his eye or suggest a refreshment to his mind, without +distracting him from composition or weakening the absorbed intensity of +his thought. + +The only approach to literary exertion made at Liverpool seems to have +been the revision of the "Mosses from an Old Manse," for a reissue at +the hands of Ticknor & Fields; employment which led to some reflections +upon his own earlier works. + +"I am very glad that the 'Mosses' have come into the hands of our firm; +and I return the copy sent me, after a careful revision. When I wrote +those dreamy sketches, I little thought I should ever preface an edition +for the press amid the bustling life of a Liverpool consulate. Upon my +honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning, +in some of those blasted allegories; but I remember that I always had a +meaning, or at least thought I had. I am a good deal changed since those +times; and, to tell you the truth, my past self is not very much to my +taste, as I see myself in this book. Yet certainly there is more in it +than the public generally gave me credit for at the time it was written. + +"But I don't think myself worthy of very much more credit than I got. It +has been a very disagreeable task to read the book." + +He was inveigled, however, into giving encouragement to that unfortunate +woman, Miss Delia Bacon, who was engaged in the task of proving that +Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. He corresponded with her on the +subject, and finally agreed, although not assenting to her theory, to +write a preface for her book, which he did. She was dissatisfied because +he did not accept her views entirely, grew very angry, and even broke +off all relations with him, notwithstanding that he had paid the +expenses of publication for her. + +Arriving at Rome in February, 1858, Hawthorne lingered there until late +in May, when he retired to Florence, and hired there the Villa Montauto, +in the suburb of Bellosguardo. October found him again in Rome, where he +spent the winter; leaving the Continent, finally, in June, 1859, for +England and Redcar. + +"I am afraid I have stayed away too long," he wrote from Bellosguardo, +to Mr. Fields, in September, 1858, "and am forgotten by everybody. You +have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, I suppose, in that +chamber over the shop, where you once took me to smoke a cigar, and have +crossed my name out of your list of authors, without so much as asking +whether I am dead or alive. But I like it well enough, nevertheless. It +is pleasant to feel that at last I am away from America,--a satisfaction +that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed +to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was +continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way +outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen +there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. But here in Florence, and +in the summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I have escaped from all +my old tracks and am really remote. + +"I like my present residence immensely. The house stands on a hill, +overlooking Florence, and is big enough to quarter a regiment; insomuch +that each member of the family, including servants, has a separate suite +of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of upper rooms, into +which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions. + +"At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower haunted by the +ghost of a monk, who was confined there in the thirteenth century, +previous to being burned at the stake in the principal square of +Florence. I hire this villa, tower and all, at twenty-eight dollars a +month; but I mean to take it away bodily and clap it into a romance +which I have in my head ready to be written out." Turning to the topic +of home, he went on: "After so long an absence (more than five years +already, which will be six before you see me at the Old Corner), it is +not altogether delightful to think of returning. Everybody will be +changed, and I, myself, no doubt, as much as anybody.... It won't do. I +shall be forced to come back again and take refuge in a London lodging. +London is like the grave in one respect,--any man can make himself at +home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had +better either die or go to London. + +"Speaking of the grave reminds me of old age and other disagreeable +matters, and I would remark that one grows old in Italy twice or three +times as fast as in other countries. I have three gray hairs now for one +that I brought from England, and I shall look venerable indeed by the +time I return next summer." + +The "French and Italian Note-Books" are more prolific in literary hints +than the English. At Rome and Florence the practical self, which was +necessarily brought forward in the daily round at the consulate and left +its impress on the letters to Lieutenant Bridge, retired into the +background under the influence of scenes more purely picturesque and +poetic than those of England; and the idealizing, imaginative faculty of +Hawthorne, being freed from the restraint which had so long cramped it, +gained in elasticity from day to day. Four years of confinement to +business, broken only at intervals by short episodes of travel, had done +no more than impede the current of fancy; had not dried it, nor choked +the source. Mr. Fields assures us that, in England, Hawthorne told him +he had no less than five romances in his mind, so well planned that he +could write any one of them at short notice. But it is significant that, +however favorable Italy might be for drawing out and giving free course +to this current, he could do little there in the way of embodying his +conceptions. He wrote out an extensive first draft of "The Marble Faun" +while moving from place to place on the actual ground where the story is +laid; but the work itself was written at Redcar, and in the +communication last quoted from he had said: "I find this Italian +atmosphere not favorable to the close toil of composition, although it +is a very good air to dream in. I must breathe the fogs of old England, +or the east-winds of Massachusetts, in order to put me into +working-trim." Conditions other than physical were most probably +responsible, in part, for this state of things. Strong as Hawthorne's +nature was on the side of the real, the ideal force within him was so +much more puissant, that when circumstances were all propitious--as they +were in Italy--it obtained too commanding a sway over him. His dreams, +in such case, would be apt to overcome him, to exist simply for their +own sake instead of being subordinated to his will; and, in fine, to +expend their witchery upon the air, instead of being imprisoned in the +enduring form of a book. Being compounded in such singular wise of +opposing qualities: the customary, prudential, common sensible ones, and +the wise and visionary ones--the outward reticence, and (if we may say +so) the inward eloquence--of which we now have a clearer view; being so +compounded, he positively needed something stern and adverse in his +surroundings, it should seem, both as a satisfaction to the sturdier +part of him, and as a healthful check which, by exciting reaction, would +stimulate his imaginative mood. He must have precisely the right +proportion between these counter influences, or else creation could not +proceed. In the Salem Custom House and at the Liverpool consulate there +had been too much of the hard commonplace: instead of serving as a +convenient foil to the more expansive and lightsome tendencies of his +genius, it had weighed them down. But in Italy there was too much +freedom, not enough framework of the severe, the roughly real and +unpicturesque. Hawthorne's intellectual and poetic nature presents a +spectacle somewhat like that of a granite rock upon which delicate vines +flourish at their best; but he was himself both rock and vine. The +delicate, aspiring tendrils and the rich leafage of the plant, however, +required a particular combination of soil and climate, in order to grow +well. When he was not hemmed in by the round of official details, +England afforded him that combination in bounteous measure. + +On the publication of "The Marble Faun," the author's friend, John +Lothrop Motley, with whom he had talked, of the contemplated romance, in +Rome, wrote to him from Walton-on-Thames (March 29, 1860):-- + +"Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I have read many +times, and I am particularly vain of having admired 'Sights from a +Steeple,' when I first read it in the Boston 'Token,' several hundred +years ago, when we were both younger than we are now; of having detected +and cherished, at a later day, an old Apple-Dealer, whom I believe you +have unhandsomely thrust out of your presence now that you are grown so +great. But the 'Romance of Monte Beni' has the additional charm for me, +that it is the first book of yours that I have read since I had the +privilege of making your personal acquaintance. My memory goes back at +once to those walks (alas, not too frequent) we used to take along the +Tiber, or in the Campagna ... and it is delightful to get hold of the +book now, and know that it is impossible for you any longer, after +waving your wand as you occasionally did then, indicating where the +treasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond plummet's sound. + +"I admire the book exceedingly.... It is one which, for the first +reading at least, I didn't like to hear aloud.... If I were composing an +article for a review, of course I should feel obliged to show cause for +my admiration; but I am only obeying an impulse. Permit me to say, +however, that your style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever.... +Believe me, I don't say to you half what I say behind your back; and I +have said a dozen times that nobody can write English but you. With +regard to the story, which has been somewhat criticized, I can only say +that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, +fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom, which +is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which the story +is indicated rather than revealed; the outlines are quite definite +enough from the beginning to the end, to those who have imagination +enough to follow you in your airy flights.... The way in which the two +victims dance through the Carnival on the last day is very striking. It +is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without being in the least +Greek." + +In this last sentence Mr. Motley struck out an apt distinction; for it +is perhaps the foremost characteristic of Hawthorne as a writer that his +fictions possessed a plastic repose, a perfection of form, which made +them akin to classic models, at the same time that the spirit was +throughout eminently that belonging to the mystic, capricious, irregular +fantasy of the North. + +Hawthorne thus made answer from Bath (April 1, 1860):-- + + MY DEAR MOTLEY,--You are certainly that Gentle Reader for whom all + my books were exclusively written. Nobody else (my wife excepted, + who speaks so near me that I cannot tell her voice from my own) has + ever said exactly what I love to hear. It is most satisfactory to + be hit upon the raw, to be shot straight through the heart. It is + not the quantity of your praise that I care so much about (though I + gather it all up carefully, lavish as you are of it), but the kind, + for you take the book precisely as I meant it; and if your note had + come a few days sooner, I believe I would have printed it in a + postscript which I have added to the second edition, because it + explains better than I found possible to do the way in which my + romance ought to be taken.... Now don't suppose that I fancy the + book to be a tenth part as good as you say it is. You work out my + imperfect efforts, and half make the book with your warm + imagination, and see what I myself saw but could only hint at. + Well, the romance is a success, even if it never finds another + reader. + + We spent the winter in Leamington, whither we had come from the + sea-coast in October. I am sorry to say that it was another winter + of sorrow and anxiety.... I have engaged our passages for June + 16th.... Mrs. Hawthorne and the children will probably remain in + Bath till the eve of our departure; but I intend to pay one more + visit of a week or two to London, and shall certainly come and see + you. I wonder at your lack of recognition of my social + propensities. I take so much delight in my friends, that a little + intercourse goes a great way, and illuminates my life before and + after.... + + Your friend, + NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. + +One may well linger here, for an instant, over the calm, confident, but +deeply vibrating happiness from which those words sprang, concerning his +wife, "who speaks so near me that I cannot tell her voice from my own;" +and one may profitably lay away, for instruction, the closing lines,--"I +take so much delight in my friends, that a little intercourse goes a +great way." The allusion to "another winter of sorrow and anxiety" +carries us back to the previous winter, passed in Rome, during which +Hawthorne's elder daughter underwent a prolonged attack of Roman fever. +Illness again developed itself in his family while they were staying at +Leamington. + +In February of 1860 he wrote to Mr. Fields, who was then in Italy:-- + +"I thank you most heartily for your kind wishes in favor of the +forthcoming work ['The Marble Faun'], and sincerely join my own prayers +to yours in its behalf, without much confidence of a good result. My own +opinion is, that I am not really a popular writer, and that what +popularity I have gained is chiefly accidental, and owing to other +causes than my own kind or degree of merit. Possibly I may (or may not) +deserve something better than popularity; but looking at all my +productions, and especially this latter one, with a cold or critical +eye, I can see that they do not make their appeal to the popular mind. +It is odd enough, moreover, that my own individual taste is for quite +another class of works than those which I myself am able to write. If I +were to meet with such books as mine by another writer, I don't believe +I should be able to get through them." At another time he had written of +Anthony Trollope's novels: "They precisely suit my taste; solid and +substantial, written on the strength of beef and through the +inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had hewn a great +lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its +inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting that +they were made a show of." + +Before leaving England for the last time, Hawthorne went up alone to +London, and spent a week or two among his friends there, staying with +Motley, and meeting Lord Dufferin, the Honorable Mrs. Norton, Leigh +Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and many other agreeable and noted persons. "You +would be stricken dumb," he wrote to his wife, who remained at Bath, "to +see how quietly I accept a whole string of invitations, and, what is +more, perform my engagements without a murmur.... The stir of this +London life, somehow or other, has done me a wonderful deal of good, and +I feel better than for months past. This is strange, for if I had my +choice, I should leave undone almost all the things I do." In the midst +of these social occupations he gave sittings to a young German-American +sculptor named Kuntze, who modelled a profile portrait of him in +bas-relief. A farewell dinner was given him at Barry Cornwall's; and in +June, 1860, he sailed for America, from which he had been absent seven +years. + +There was not yet any serious sign of a failure in his health; but the +illness in his family, lasting through two winters, had worn severely +upon him; his spirits had begun to droop. "I would gladly journalize +some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the +same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to +England:" thus he had written in his Note-Book, while making that final +London visit. In Italy, however, he had already shown symptoms of +fatigue, saying to Mr. Fields: "I have had so many interruptions from +things to see and things to suffer, that the story ['The Marble Faun'] +has developed itself in a very imperfect way.... I could finish it in +the time that I am to remain here, but my brain is tired of it just +now." The voyage put fresh vigor into him, apparently. Mrs. Harriet +Beecher Stowe and Professor Stowe were on board, with their daughters, +and Mr. Fields, who was also a passenger, has said: "Hawthorne's love +for the sea amounted to a passionate worship, and while I (the worst +sailor probably on this planet) was longing, spite of the good company +on board, to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was constantly +saying in his quiet, earnest way, 'I should like to sail on and on +forever, and never touch the shore again.'" His inherited susceptibility +to the fascination of the sea no doubt intensified his enjoyment, and he +is reported to have talked in a strain of delightful humor while on +shipboard. + +For nearly a year after his return to The Wayside, there is an +uneventful gap in his history, concerning which we have very few +details. He set about improving his house, and added to it a wing at the +back, which, having three stories, rose above the rest of the building, +and thus supplied him with a study in the top room, which had the effect +of a tower. Meanwhile the political quarrel between the North and the +South was rapidly culminating; in a few months the Slave States began +their secession, and the Civil War broke out. This affected Hawthorne so +deeply that for some time he was unable to engage in imaginative work, +and he now relinquished the custom he had maintained for so many years, +of keeping a journal. But there are letters which define his state of +mind, which make his position clear with regard to the question of the +Union, and show the change in his feeling brought on by the course of +events. + +Several years before, while he was still consul, he thus confided to +Bridge (January 9, 1857) his general opinion respecting the crisis which +even then impended:-- + +"I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of the Union; +for I should like well enough to hold on to the old thing. And yet I +must confess that I sympathize to a large extent with the Northern +feeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelled +to choose, I go for the North. At present, we have no country--at least, +none in the sense in which an Englishman has a country. I never +conceived, in reality, what a true and warm love of country is, till I +witnessed it in the breasts of Englishmen. The States are too various +and too extended to form really one country. New England is quite as +large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.... However, I have +no kindred with nor leaning toward the Abolitionists." + +When hostilities had begun, he wrote to the same friend, May 26, 1861:-- + +"The war, strange to say, has had a beneficial effect upon my spirits, +which were flagging woefully before it broke out. But it was delightful +to share in the heroic sentiment of the time, and to feel that I had a +country, a consciousness which seemed to make me young again. One thing +as regards this matter I regret, and one thing I am glad of. The +regrettable thing is that I am too old to shoulder a musket myself, and +the joyful thing is that Julian is too young. He drills constantly with +a company of lads, and means to enlist as soon as he reaches the minimum +age. But I trust we shall either be victorious or vanquished by that +time. Meantime, though I approve the war as much as any man, I don't +quite see what we are fighting for or what definite result can be +expected. If we pommel the South ever so hard, they will love us none +the better for it; and even if we subjugate them, our next step should +be to cut them adrift, if we are fighting for the annihilation of +slavery. To be sure, it may be a wise object, and offers a tangible +result and the only one which is consistent with a future union between +North and South. A continuance of the war would soon make this plain to +us, and we should see the expediency of preparing our black brethren for +future citizenship, by allowing them to fight for their own liberties +and educating them through heroic influences. Whatever happens next, I +must say that I rejoice that the old Union is smashed. We never were one +people, and never really had a country since the Constitution was +formed." + +Thus, then, Hawthorne, who had been brought up politically within the +democratic party and thrice held office under its _régime_, had reached +the conclusion, four years in advance of the event, that it was time for +the North to "make a stand"; and now, while muskets rattled their grim +prelude to a long and deadly conflict, he planted himself firmly on the +side of the government--was among the first, moreover, to resolve upon +that policy of arming the negroes, which was so bitterly opposed and so +slow of adoption among even progressive reformers at the North. In his +solitude, out of the current of affairs, trying to pursue his own +peaceful, artistic calling, and little used to making utterances on +public questions, it was not incumbent upon him nor proper to his +character to blazon his beliefs where every one could see them. But, +these private expressions being unknown, his silence was construed +against him. One more reference to the war, occurring in a letter of +October 12, 1861, to Lieutenant Bridge, should be recorded in this +place:-- + +"I am glad you take such a hopeful view of our national prospects, so +far as regards the war.... For my part, I don't hope (nor indeed wish) +to see the Union restored as it was; amputation seems to me much the +better plan, and all we ought to fight for is the liberty of selecting +the point where our diseased members shall be lopped off. I would fight +to the death for the Northern Slave-States, and let the rest go.... I +have not found it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash and +nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I find +myself sitting down to my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper, +as of yore. Very likely I may have something ready for the public long +before the public is ready to receive it." + +It will be seen that he was not hopeful as to the restoration of the +entire Union, adhered to his first view indeed, that the scission of a +part would be preferable. In declining a cordial invitation from Bridge +to come to Washington, in February, 1862, he gave renewed emphasis to +this opinion. "I am not very well," he said, "being mentally and +physically languid; but I suppose there is an even chance that the trip +and change of scene might supply the energy which I lack." He announced +that he had begun a new romance, and then turning to the questions of +the day, remarked that he "should not much regret an ultimate +separation," and that soon; adding that if a strong Union sentiment +should not set in at the South, we ought to resolve ourselves into two +nations at once. He was evidently growing despondent; a fact which may +have been due in part to the physical and mental languor of which he +told his friend. Misfortune had once more entered his household; for one +of his children was suffering from a peculiarly distressing malady, +which imposed a heavy strain upon his nerves and troubled his heart. +More than this, he mourned over the multitude of private griefs which he +saw or apprehended on every side--griefs resulting from the slaughter +that was going on at the seat of war--as acutely as if they had been his +own losses. He could not shut out, by any wall of patriotic fire, the +terrible shapes of fierce passion and the pathetic apparitions of those +whose lives had been blasted by the tragedies of the field. His health, +we have already noticed, had begun to falter while he was still abroad. +Neither was he free from pecuniary anxieties. He had laid up a modest +accumulation from his earnings in the consulate; but the additions to +his house, unambitious though they were, had cost a sum which was large +in proportion to his resources; the expense of living was increased by +the war, and his pen was for the time being not productive. His income +from his books was always scanty. He was too scrupulous to be willing to +draw upon the principal which had been invested for the future support +of his family; and there were times when he was harassed by the need of +money. All these causes conspired to reduce his strength; but the +omnipresent misery of the war, and the destruction of the Union, which +he believed to be inevitable, were perhaps the chief adverse factors in +the case. "Hawthorne's life," Mr. Lowell has said to me, "was shortened +by the war." + +The romance mentioned as having been begun during this winter of +1861-62, was probably "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret," the first scheme of +which appears as "The Ancestral Footstep;" and it was afterwards merged +in "Septimius Felton." Hawthorne, however, did not make satisfactory +progress with this work; and throughout the summer of 1862 he seems to +have given such energies as he could command to the preparation of the +chapters of travel subsequently collected under the title, "Our Old +Home." The latter volume appeared at a time of fervid, nay, violent +public excitement, caused by the critical state of military matters, the +unpopularity of the draft, the increasing boldness of the democratic +party at the North in opposing the war and demanding its cessation. To +Hawthorne it appeared no more than just that he should dedicate his book +to the friend whose public act, in sending him abroad in the government +service, had made it possible for him to gather the materials he had +embodied in these reminiscences. But his publisher, Mr. Fields, knowing +that ex-President Pierce was very generally held to be culpable for his +deference towards Southern leaders who had done much to bring on the +war, and that he was ranked among the men who were ready to vote against +continuing the attempt to conquer the Confederacy, foresaw the clamor +which would be raised against Hawthorne if, at such a moment, he linked +his name publicly with that of Pierce. He remonstrated upon the proposed +dedication. But Hawthorne was not to be turned aside from his purpose by +any dread of an outcry which he considered unjust. "I find," he +replied, "that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw +either the dedication or the dedicatory letter, ... and if he [Pierce] +is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, +there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him. I +cannot, merely on account of pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go +back from what I have deliberately felt and thought it right to do; and +if I were to tear out the dedication, I should never look at the volume +again without remorse and shame.... If the public of the North see fit +to ostracize me for this, I can only say that I would gladly sacrifice a +thousand or two of dollars rather than retain the good-will of such a +herd of dolts and mean-spirited scoundrels." The language did not lack +vigor and warmth; but Dr. Loring has stated that he spoke of the matter +to the same effect, "not in the heat of passion, but with a calm and +generous courage." The dedicatory letter was printed, of course, and +drew down upon Hawthorne abundant condemnation; but he had maintained +his integrity. + +The shock of such an accident was by no means the right sort of tonic +for a man of Hawthorne's sensitive disposition when he was already +feeble and almost ill. In April, 1862, he had been to Washington, and +the things that impressed him there were noted down in an "Atlantic +Monthly" paper, entitled "Chiefly About War Matters." At Washington, +also, Leutze painted a portrait of him for General Pierce. In July, he +took a brief trip with his son to the Maine coast, and began a new +journal. There were no other changes of scene for him; the monotony of +his life at The Wayside was seldom broken. That this period was for him +one of unmitigated gloom cannot truthfully be predicated; he enjoyed +his home, he had the society of his wife and children; he had many small +and quiet pleasures. But there was likewise much to make him sorrowful, +and the tide of vitality was steadily ebbing away. In May, 1863, James +Russell Lowell invited him to Elmwood, and Hawthorne agreed to go, but +he was finally prevented from doing so by a troublesome cold. The slow +and mysterious disease, which was to prove fatal within a year, +continued to make inroads upon his constitution. After the publication +of "Our Old Home," in the autumn of 1863, there is no certain record of +his condition or his proceedings, beyond this, that he went on +declining, and that--having abandoned the two preceding phases of his +new fiction--he attempted to write the resultant form of it, which was +to have been brought out as "The Dolliver Romance." + +Although the title had not yet been determined upon, he consented to +begin a serial publication of the work in the "Atlantic Monthly" for +January, 1864. But he wrote to Mr. Fields: "I don't see much probability +of my having the first chapter of the Romance ready so soon as you want +it. There are two or three chapters ready to be written, but I am not +yet robust enough to begin, and I feel as if I should never carry it +through.... I can think of no title for the unborn Romance. Always +heretofore I have waited till it was quite complete, before attempting +to name it, and I fear I shall have to do so now." On the 1st of +December, he dispatched the manuscript of the first chapter, with the +title of the whole. But he could not follow it up with more, and wrote, +about the middle of January, 1864: "I am not quite up to writing yet, +but shall make an effort as soon as I see any hope of success." At the +end of February: "I hardly know what to say to the public about this +abortive Romance, though I know pretty well what the case will be. I +shall never finish it..., I cannot finish it unless a great change comes +over me; and if I make too great an effort to do so, it will be my +death." From this time on he accomplished no work which he was willing +to send to the press, although he had among his papers the two +fragmentary scenes from "The Dolliver Romance" that were posthumously +printed. + +The wife of ex-President Pierce died in December, 1863, and Hawthorne +went to New Hampshire to attend the funeral. When he passed through +Boston, on his return, he appeared to Mr. Fields ill and more nervous +than usual. Dreary events seemed to thicken around his path. In the last +days of March, 1864, Mr. Fields saw him again; and by this time his +appearance had greatly changed. "The light in his eye was as beautiful +as ever, but his limbs were shrunken, and his usual stalwart vigor [was] +utterly gone." A photograph taken not long before that date represents +him with cheeks somewhat emaciated, and a worn, strangely anxious, +half-appealing expression, which, while singularly delicate and noble, +is extremely sad. Soon after this, in March, he set out for Washington +with Mr. William Ticknor, Mr. Fields's senior partner in the publishing +firm of Ticknor & Fields. The travelling companions spent two or three +days in New York, and had got as far as Philadelphia, when Mr. Ticknor +was taken suddenly ill, at the Continental Hotel, and died the next day. +Stunned, wellnigh shattered by this sinister event, Hawthorne was almost +incapacitated for action of any sort; but there were kind and ready +friends in Philadelphia who came to his aid, and relieved him from the +melancholy duty which he would else have had to meet. He returned to +Concord, in what forlorn state an extract from a letter of Mrs. +Hawthorne's may best convey: "He came back unlooked for, that day; and +when I heard a step on the piazza, I was lying on a couch and feeling +quite indisposed. But as soon as I saw him I was frightened out of all +knowledge of myself,--so haggard, so white, so deeply scored with pain +and fatigue was the face, so much more ill than ever I saw him before." +Mrs. Hawthorne still hoped for some favorable turn, if he could but +obtain a complete change of scene and escape from the austere New +England spring, into some warmer climate. "He has not smiled since he +came home till to-day," she wrote, "when I made him laugh, with +Thackeray's humor, in reading to him." She was constant in her care; she +would scarcely let him go up and down stairs alone. But not the most +tender solicitude, nor any encouragement of unquenchable hope, could now +avail to help him. + +The only stratagem that could be devised to win back health and strength +was the plan proposed by General Pierce, to take Hawthorne with him on +an easy journey by carriage into New Hampshire. They started in +May,--the two old college-mates; the ex-President so lately widowed and +still in the shadow of his own bereavement, with the famous romancer so +mournfully broken, who was never more to be seen in life by those to +whom he was dearest. From the Pemigewasset House at Plymouth, New +Hampshire, where they had stopped for the night, General Pierce sent the +news on May 19, that Hawthorne was dead. "He retired last night," wrote +the General, "soon after nine o'clock, and soon fell into a quiet +slumber.... At two o'clock I went to H----'s bedside; he was apparently +in a sound sleep; and I did not place my hand upon him. At four o'clock +I went into his room again, and, as his position was unchanged, I placed +my hand upon him and found that life was extinct.... He must have passed +from natural slumber to that from which there is no waking, without the +slightest movement." + +Hawthorne was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at Concord, on the 24th +of May, 1864. The grave was made beneath the shadowing pines of a hill +near one of the borders of the beautiful, wooded burial-ground, whence +there is a peaceful view over the valley of the Concord River. It was +close to the slope where Thoreau now lies, and not far away is the +grassy resting-place of Emerson. The spot was one for which Hawthorne +had cherished an especial fondness. Emerson, that day, stood beside the +grave, and with him Longfellow and Lowell were present; Agassiz, Holmes, +James Freeman Clarke, Edwin Whipple, Pierce, and Hillard, had all +assembled to pay their last reverence. A great multitude of people +attended the funeral service at the old Unitarian First Church in the +village, and Mr. Clarke, who had performed the marriage ceremony for +Hawthorne, conducted the rites above him dead. It was a perfect day of +spring; the roadside banks were blue with violets, the orchards were in +bloom; and lilies of the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among +flowers, had blossomed early as if for him, and were gathered in masses +about him. Like a requiem chant, the clear strains that Longfellow wrote +in memory of that hour still echo for us its tender solemnity:-- + + "How beautiful it was, that one bright day + In the long week of rain! + Though all its splendor could not chase away + The omnipresent pain. + + "The lovely town was white with apple-blooms, + And the great elms o'erhead + Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms, + Shot through with golden thread. + + "Across the meadows, by the gray old manse, + The historic river flowed; + I was as one who wanders in a trance, + Unconscious of his road. + + "The faces of familiar friends seemed strange; + Their voices I could hear, + And yet the words they uttered seemed to change + Their meaning to the ear. + + "For the one face I looked for was not there, + The one low voice was mute; + Only an unseen presence filled the air, + And baffled my pursuit. + + "Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream + Dimly my thought defines; + I only see--a dream within a dream-- + The hill-top hearsed with pines. + + "I only hear above his place of rest + Their tender undertone, + The infinite longings of a troubled breast, + The voice so like his own. + + "There in seclusion and remote from men + The wizard hand lies cold, + Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen, + And left the tale half told. + + "Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power, + And the lost clue regain? + The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower + Unfinished must remain!" + + + + +V. + + +This narrative of his career, in one sense so simple, so uneventful, has +brought chiefly to the front, as we have followed it, a phase under +which Hawthorne appears the most like other men; with motives easily +understood, wishing to take his full share in human existence and its +responsibilities; devoted in his domestic relations. Moderately +ambitious of worldly welfare, but in poverty uncomplaining, he is so +coolly practical in his view that he scarcely alludes to the products of +his genius except as they may bear upon his material progress. Even this +much of the character is uncommon, because of its sterling tone, the +large, sustained manliness, and the success with which in the main it +keeps itself firmly balanced; but it is a character not difficult to +grasp, and one that appeals to every observer. It leaves out a great +deal, however. The artist is absent from it. Neither is that essential +mystery of organization included which held these elements together, +united them with something of import far different, and converted the +whole nature into a most extraordinary one, lifting it to a plane high +above that on which it might, at first, seem to rest. + +We know, from brief allusions in his "Note-Books," that Hawthorne was +perfectly well aware of his high quality as an artist. He speaks of +having won fame in his dismal room in Herbert Street; and at Arezzo, in +1858, the well "opposite Petrarch's birth-house" which Boccaccio +introduced into one of his stories, recalls to the American writer one +of his own performances. "As I lingered round it I thought of my own +town-pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my towns-people would ever +point it out to strangers, and whether the stranger would gaze at it +with any degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. Oh, +certainly not; but I made that humble town-pump the most celebrated +structure in the good town. A thousand and a thousand people had pumped +there, merely to water oxen or fill their tea-kettles; but when once I +grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth that meandered as far as +England, as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every town and +village of our own country. I like to think of this, so long after I did +it, and so far from home, and am not without hopes of some kindly local +remembrance on this score."[10] Such indications of the artistic +consciousness are the merest ripples on the surface; the deeper +substance of it, with Hawthorne, always remained out of sight. Letters, +which are assumed to reveal so much of those who indite them, are, when +we come to the fact, very insufficient exponents of character; as, for +instance, we may observe in the letters of Michael Angelo, whose mood +and manner vary according to the person addressed. Correspondence, it is +true, is appetizing to readers, and should be prized for the help it +gives in defining an individual, but it does not always do full justice +to the larger being included in the whole personality. Hawthorne's +letters are more representative of those faculties by which he came into +association with his fellows, than of those which tended to separate him +from them by making him single and phenomenal, in his function as writer +of romance. But in his actual presence there was a something which did +most noticeably correspond to the hidden sources of his power, and +visibly express them. There was the hale and vigorous port of a man well +fitted by his physical constitution to meet the rudest emergency; but +there was also a temperament of which the reserve, the delicacy, the +tremulous sensitiveness were equal to those of the most finely organized +woman. "He was tall and strongly built," wrote his friend Hillard, "with +broad shoulders, deep chest, a massive head.... He looked like a man who +might have held the stroke oar in a University boat.... But, on the +other hand, no man had more of the feminine element than he. He was +feminine in his quick perceptions, his fine insight, his sensibility to +beauty.... No man comprehended woman better than he. And his face was as +mobile and rapid in its changes of expression as that of a young +girl.... His eyes would darken visibly under the touch of a passing +emotion, like the waters of a fountain ruffled by the breeze of summer. +So, too, he was the shyest of men."[11] + +The same writer adds: "There was nothing morbid in his character or +temperament. He was, indeed, much the reverse of morbid. No man of +genius ever had less the infirmities of genius than he.... Hawthorne was +physically one of the healthiest of men. His pulse always kept even +music. He cared nothing for wine or tobacco, or strong coffee or strong +tea. He was a sound sleeper and an early riser. He was never moody or +fitful or irritable. He was never unduly depressed or unreasonably +elated. His spirits were not brilliant, but they were uniform, and, as +Mrs. Hawthorne says, 'The airy splendor of his wit and humor was the +light of his own home.'" + +Dr. Loring has supplied another sketch of his appearance in general +intercourse, which does a great deal to fill out our conception:-- + +"He knew no such thing as fear; was scrupulously honest; was unwavering +in his fidelity; conscientious in the discharge of his duty. There may +have been men of more latent power, but I have known no man more +impressive, none in whom the great reposing strength seemed clad in such +a robe of sweetness as he wore. I saw him on the day General Pierce was +elected to the presidency. It was a bright and delicious day in late +autumn. He was standing under the little shaded and embowered piazza of +'The Wayside,' at Concord, in the full vigor of his manhood, radiant +with joy at the good fortune of his friend, and with that sad, shy smile +playing over his face, which was so touching and charming. I have seen +him fishing from the rocks of the Essex County shore at Swampscott, +enjoying the bliss of absolute repose and the sweet uncertainty which +attends the angler's line. I have sat with him in the dimly lighted room +on autumnal evenings, cheerful and vocal with the cricket's chirp, and +have heard his wise and sensible talk, uttered in that soft, melodious +tone which gave such a peculiar charm to his utterances,--a tone so shy +that an intruder would hush it into silence in an instant. I have +strolled with him in the darkness of a summer night through the lanes of +Concord, assured by his voice, which came up from the grass-grown +roadside in a sort of mysterious murmur, that he was my companion still. +And everywhere and at all times, he bore about him a strong and +commanding presence and impression of unpretending power. I can hardly +tell how Hawthorne succeeded in entertaining his companions and securing +their entire confidence, unless it was that he displayed great good +sense and acuteness and good temper in his intercourse with them, and +never misled them by false promises or low appeals. This, in addition to +his subtile genius, everywhere recognized and never wholly concealed to +even the most commonplace associates, made him a most fascinating +friend, as he was really and truly a man of rare quality among ordinary +men."[12] + +The earlier portraits of Hawthorne show the gentleness and the feminine +traits in his disposition much more distinctly than those that are best +known to the world. There is one, now owned by his cousin, Mr. Richard +C. Manning, of Salem, which was painted in 1840 by Charles Osgood, an +artist of Salem, and induced this comment from his sister Louisa: "The +color is a little too high, to be sure, but perhaps it is a modest +blush at the compliments which are paid to your pen." Another, painted +by a Mr. C. G. Thompson, at Boston, in 1850 (now owned by Mr. Julian +Hawthorne), resembles this, and presents, one would say, the ideal +Hawthorne of the "Twice-Told Tales" and "The House of the Seven Gables." +The face is smooth shaven and the cheeks are somewhat slender, making +all the lines and features contribute to an effect of greater length and +of more oval contour than that given by the later representations. The +color is delicate; the large eyes look forth with peculiarly fascinating +power from beneath a forehead of exceptional height and harmonious +prominence. The hair is long, and recedes slightly on both sides of the +forehead; a single lock in the middle curving over and drooping forward. +There is less firmness about the lips than was characteristic of them in +his latter years; they close softly, yet even in their pictured repose +they seem to be mobile and ready to quiver with response to some emotion +still undefined but liable to make itself felt at any instant. In its +surrounding of long hair, and of a collar rising above the jaws, with a +large black tie wound about the throat in the manner of a stock but +terminating in a large bow at the front, the beardless countenance is +stamped with a sort of prevalent aspect of the period when it was +painted, which gives it what we call the old-fashioned look. It is, none +the less, a striking one; one that arrests the glance immediately, and +holds it by a peculiar spell. There is no suggestion of a smile or of +cheeriness about it; the eyes even look a little weary, as with too much +meditation in the brain behind them; there is not a trace discernible of +that sturdy, almost military, resoluteness so marked in the familiar +crayon portrait by Rowse, executed after Hawthorne's return from Italy +and England. Here the face is pensive, timid, fresh and impressionable +as that of some studious undergraduate unusually receptive of ideas, +sentiments, and observations: it is, indeed, quiet and thoughtful to the +verge of sadness. Longfellow kept always in his study a black-and-white +copy from this portrait, and in speaking of it and of the subject's +extreme shyness, said that to converse with Hawthorne was like talking +to a woman. The Thompson picture was reproduced in 1851, in a steel +engraving of considerable merit, and Hawthorne, thanking Mr. Fields for +some of the prints, wrote from Lenox: "The children recognized their +venerable sire with great delight. My wife complains somewhat of a want +of cheerfulness in the face; and, to say the truth, it does appear to be +afflicted with a bedevilled melancholy; but it will do all the better +for the author of 'The Scarlet Letter.' In the expression there is a +singular resemblance (which I do not remember in Thompson's picture) to +a miniature of my father." + +In Rome, Miss Landor modelled a bust, the marble copy of which is now in +the Concord Public Library. It is of life-size, and presents the head in +a position which raises the chin and inclines the plane of the face +slightly backward, so that the effigy might be taken for that of an +orator addressing a great audience. This pose was selected by the +sculptress because, after due study, she was persuaded that when +Hawthorne became interested in conversation and kindled with the desire +to set forth his own view, he always raised his head and spoke from a +commanding attitude. She chose to perpetuate a momentary action, instead +of rendering his customary aspect of holding the chin somewhat down or +on a firm level; and this may account for the likeness not being +satisfactory to the members of Hawthorne's own family. The bust, +however, renders impressively the magnificent proportions of the neck +and head and the whole physiognomy. The mouth is not concealed, and, +although it exhibits more decision than that of the Thompson picture, it +conveys the same general impression of a quickly responsive sensibility. +Mr. Thompson made his painting when Hawthorne was forty-six, and Miss +Landor had sittings from the author at the age of fifty-four; but the +difference in apparent maturity of power in the face would indicate a +much longer interval. This is perhaps due to the difference in the means +of representation, and to some defect of strength in Mr. Thompson's +drawing; but perhaps also the decided change in Hawthorne's general +look, which began under the greatly altered conditions attending his +European life, proceeded very rapidly. He allowed a thick mustache to +grow, during his last stay in England, and it was then that Kuntze +modelled his profile, which sets Hawthorne's features before us in a +totally different way from any of the other portraits. Unfortunately, +Kuntze's relief is reduced to a size below that of life, and the +features accordingly assume a cramped relation. The lofty forehead is +given its due importance, however, and concentration of impassioned +energy is conveyed by the outline of the face, from this point of view. +The chin, always forcible as well as delicate, impresses one in this +case with a sense of persistent and enduring determination on the part +of the original; and with this sense there is mingled an impression of +something that approaches sternness, caused, it may be, by the hirsute +upper lip. In considering these several representations and the crayon +by Rowse, together with the photographs taken after Hawthorne's +home-return, it is impossible not to observe that the sturdier and more +practical elements in the romancer gained upon him, so far as personal +appearance was concerned, with advancing age and a wider experience of +life in the large world. But such a series of glimpses can do no more +than to suggest disjointedly the union in him of attributes positive and +passive, which always struck those who met him. A photograph which was +secured before he left England depicts him in a mood and with an air +that very happily convey this complete equipment of the man, this +wellnigh perfect combination of traits, which enabled him by sympathy to +run through the entire gamut of human feeling. His friend, John Lothrop +Motley, induced him one day to enter a photographer's establishment, on +the plea that he had business of his own there. Hawthorne was given a +book to read, while waiting; and when the photographer was ready Motley +attracted his friend's attention. Hawthorne looked up with a dawning +smile, a bright, expectant glance,--holding the book on his knee +meanwhile, with a finger in the place,--and instantly a perfect negative +was made. The resulting portraiture showed him absolutely as he was: a +breathing form of human nobility; a strong, masculine, self-contained +nature, stored in a stalwart frame--the face grown somewhat more rotund +than formerly, through material and professional success, and lighted up +with captivating but calm geniality; while over the whole presence +reigned an exquisite temperance of reserve, that held every faculty in +readiness to receive and record each finest fluctuation of joy or +sorrow, of earnest or of sport. + +Such as he there appears, we shall do well to imagine him to ourselves. + +The tendency at first, among those who judged him from his writings +alone, was to set him down as a misanthrope. We need not go to the other +extreme now. That he inclined to gravity, in his manner and in his habit +of thought, seems to be beyond question; but he was not sombre. Neither +was he hilarious. At home, though he was frequently silent, he never +appeared to be so from depression, except in seasons of distress at the +illness of members of the household; the prevailing effect of his +presence, even when he was least communicative, being that of a cheerful +calm with mellow humor underlying it. One of his children said to Mr. T. +W. Higginson: "There was never such a playmate in all the world." On the +other hand, I remember a letter from Hawthorne (no longer accessible for +exact quotation), in which he frankly speaks of himself as taking +constitutionally a somewhat despondent view of things. But if he did so, +he never permitted the shadow to fall upon his friends. "I should fancy +from your books," Hillard confessed in a letter to him, "that you were +burdened with some secret sorrow, that you had some blue chamber in your +soul, into which you hardly dared to enter yourself; but when I see you, +you give me the impression of a man as healthy as Adam in Paradise." Mr. +Hillard once told the present writer that he had sometimes walked twenty +miles along the highway with Hawthorne, not a word being spoken during +the entire tramp, and had nevertheless felt as if he were in constant +communication with his friend. Mr. Curtis wrote many years ago: "His own +sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said for +hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor a +single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or society failed to thrill +his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Everything seemed to +have been said." + +His fondness for seclusion, his steady refusal to talk when he did not +feel like talking, and his unobtrusive but immovable independence in +opinion, together with his complete disregard of conventional +requirements in social intercourse, prevented Hawthorne from ever +becoming a popular man. But he was the object of a loving admiration and +the sincerest friendship, on the part of certain few intimates. Those +who knew him best, and had been longest in relations with him, +insensibly--as one observer has well suggested--caught from his fine +reticence a kindred reluctance to speak about him to others. A degree of +reverence was blended with their friendship, which acquired for them a +sacred privacy. Having sound health physically, as well as a healthy +mind, he enjoyed out-door occupations such as garden-work, rowing, +fishing, and walking; but he never rode on horseback. He liked to make +pedestrian trips through the country, stopping at haphazard in country +taverns and farm-houses and listening to the conversation that went on +there. In chance companionship of that sort, he could tolerate much +freedom of speech, in consideration of the mother-wit that prompted it; +but among men of his own class he never encouraged broad allusions. If +anything that savored of the forbidden were introduced, he would not +protest, but he at once turned the conversation towards some worthier +subject. The practical vein in Hawthorne--his ingrained sympathy with +the work-a-day world in which his father and his forefathers had busied +themselves-adapted him to the official drudgery to which he devoted +nine years of his life; although, while he was occupied with that, the +ideal activities of his nature lay dormant. The two sets of faculties +never could be exercised in equal measure at the same time: one or the +other had to predominate. Yet in the conduct of his own affairs, so far +as his pecuniary obligations were concerned, he was very prudent, and to +the last degree scrupulous. One or two exceedingly small debts, which he +was forced to contract, weighed upon him with a heaviness that to the +ordinary commercial mind would be altogether inconceivable; and the +relief he experienced when he was able to cancel them was inexpressible. +His fault, in business, was that he attributed to other people a sense +of honor equal to his own. This entailed upon him sundry losses which he +was not well able to afford, through loans made to supposed friends. +Notwithstanding the carefulness of his expenditure and a few moderately +good receipts from the publication of his books in England, he died +leaving a property of little more than twenty thousand dollars, besides +his house at Concord and the copyright of his works. + +In addition to the strong physical frame and tall stature several times +noticed in the present sketch, Hawthorne's personal appearance was +distinguished by his large and lustrous gray-blue eyes, luxuriant dark +brown hair of remarkable fineness, and a delicacy of the skin that gave +unusual softness to his complexion; a complexion subdued, but full of +"healthy, living color," as Mrs. Hawthorne once described it. "After his +Italian journey he altered much, his hair having begun to whiten, and a +thick dark mustache being permitted to grow, so that a wit described him +as looking like a 'boned pirate.' When it became imperative to shake +off his reticence, he seems to have had the power of impressing as much +by speech as he had before done by silence. It was the same abundant, +ardent, but self-contained and perfectly balanced nature that informed +either phase. How commanding was this nature may be judged by the fact +related of him by an acquaintance, that rude people jostling him in a +crowd would give way at once 'at the sound of his low almost irresolute +voice.'... Something even of the eloquent gift of old Colonel Hathorne +seemed to be locked within him, like a precious heirloom rarely shown; +for in England, where his position called for speech-making, he +acquitted himself with brilliant honor. But the effort which this +compelled was no doubt commensurate with the success. He never shrank, +notwithstanding, from effort, when obligation to others put in a plea. A +member of his family has told me that, when talking to any one not +congenial to him, the effect of the contact was so strong as to cause an +almost physical contraction of his whole stalwart frame, though so +slight as to be perceptible only to eyes that knew his informal and +habitual aspects; yet he would have sunk through the floor rather than +betray his sensations to the person causing them. Mr. Curtis, too, +records the amusement with which he watched Hawthorne paddling on the +Concord River, with a friend whose want of skill caused the boat +continually to veer the wrong way, and the silent generosity with which +he put forth his whole strength to neutralize the error, rather than +mortify his companion by explanation. His considerateness was always +delicate and alert."[13] A niece of Horace Mann, who passed a part of +the spring of 1852 with Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne at West Newton, supplies +one little instance of this, which shall be registered here. Mrs. Dean, +the lady in question, was then under engagement to teach in Boston, but +had an interval of time on her hands before the work should begin. She +was invited by the Hawthornes to the West Newton house (at that time +owned by Mr. Mann), where she was to occupy a room which had formerly +been hers. She found that a fire was carefully laid in the stove every +night, to warm the room in the morning, and, thinking that too much +trouble was taken on her account, she begged to be allowed to attend to +this detail herself. It was then she discovered that it was Hawthorne +who made up the fire; and he insisted upon continuing his service. Mrs. +Dean also recalls that he listened attentively to the incidental and +ordinary chat between Mrs. Hawthorne and herself, seldom making any +remark, but, when he did volunteer one, giving it a pungent and +epigrammatic or humorous turn. Entering the room where she was +constructing a raised map for schoolroom use, he watched her with close +interest for a while, and then observed: "I would rather have had the +making of the world itself, in the beginning." + +Taking whatever happened in a spirit always very much the same; +reflective, penetrating, quietly sportive--a spirit, likewise, of +patience and impartiality--Hawthorne kept his power of appreciation +fresh to the very last. He could endure the humdrum tasks of government +office, but they did not dull his pleasure in the simplest incidents of +home-life, nor his delight in nature. "Every year the recurrent changes +of season filled him with untold pleasure; and in the spring, Mrs. +Hawthorne has been heard to say, he would walk with her in continuous +silence, his heart full of the awe and delight with which the miracle +of buds and new verdure inspired him." Taking everything in this spirit, +we may repeat, mingling with the rough and the refined, and capable of +extracting the utmost intellectual stimulus from the least of mundane +phenomena, he maintained intact a true sense of relativity and a +knowledge that the attainable best is, in the final analysis, +incomplete. Contemplating a rose one day, he said: "On earth, only a +flower is perfect." He cherished a deep, strong, and simple religious +faith, but never approved of intellectual discussion concerning +religion. + +The slightness of the definite fact, or of the reminiscence vouchsafed +by those who knew him, is continually impressed upon us in reviewing +this career. Considered in its main outline, how very plain and +unambitious is the history! A sea-captain's son, born in Salem; living +obscurely; sent up to the rude clearing where a new village was founding +in Maine; induced, against his preference, to go to college; writing +timid stories and essays, which the world had no suspicion that it +needed, and prompted to this by an impulse of which the origin is +inexplicable; next, the author coming into notice, but under eclipse now +and then from disappearance behind a public office; finally, the +acknowledged romancer of indefinitely great endowment--the head of his +order in America--sent abroad to an important post, where he is +recognized and warmly greeted by every one who can discern clearly: such +is the general course of the narrative. Afterwards, the now eminent man +comes back to his native land, labors a little longer in comparative +obscurity, suffers unmerited obloquy for his fidelity to a personal +friend, while perfectly loyal to his government; then dies, and is +mourned not alone by those devoted companions who felt him to be the one +great fact to them in present human nature, but also by famous scholars +and poets, and by a multitude of strangers, who gather around his bier +with a stricken sense of loss ineffable. It is very simple; it is very +democratic--the unnoticed American boy in humble circumstances becoming +the centre of a circle of fame which is still extending its radius. Very +simple it is, and yet inexplicable. But if we cannot tell precisely how +the mind came into being, nor what were the fostering influences that +most cogently aided its growth, we can, at least, pay our reverence to +the overruling Power that brings genius to the flowering-point under +circumstances seemingly the most unpropitious. + +In 1863--the last year of his life--Hawthorne wrote to Mr. Stoddard, who +had sent him a copy of his poem, "The King's Bell." "I sincerely thank +you," he said, "for your beautiful poem, which I have read with a great +deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had a right to expect from +what you gave us in years gone by; only I wish the idea had not been so +sad. I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his lifetime, and +again at the moment of death. Yet you may be right. I have been a happy +man, and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspiring +circumstances that I could have rung a joy-bell for it." + +Yes, he had been a happy man; one who had every qualification for a rich +and satisfactory life, and was able to make such a life out of whatever +material offered. He might not have been willing to sound the joy-bell +for himself, but the world has rung it because of his birth. As for his +death, it is better not to close our sketch with any glimpse of that, +because, in virtue of his spirit's survival among those who read and +think, he still lives. + + G. P. L. + + NEW YORK, _May_ 20, 1883. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _A Study of Hawthorne_, III., 67-69. + +[2] _Yesterdays With Authors_, p. 113. + +[3] Both his friends, George William Curtis and George S. Hillard, in +writing about him, have made the mistake of assigning to him black or +dark eyes; an error perhaps due to the depth of shadowed cavity in which +they were seen under the high and massive forehead. + +[4] _Hawthorne and his friends: Harper's Magazine_, vol. 63 (July, +1881). + +[5] Vol. 45 (July, 1837), p. 59. + +[6] _Transcendentalism in New England._ + +[7] She died, unmarried, in September, 1877. + +[8] The allusion to a baby-boy is confusing, because Mr. Julian +Hawthorne was not born at Concord, and when the family returned thither +to occupy The Wayside, he was about six years old. + +[9] This is the first intimation of the story of _Septimius Felton_, so +far as local setting is concerned. The scenery of that romance was +obviously taken from The Wayside and its hill. + +[10] _French and Italian Note-Books_, May 30, 1858. A contributor to +_Appletons' Journal_, writing in 1875, describes a surviving specimen of +the old contrivances which then gave Salem its water-supply. "The +presumption is that a description of this particular one answers for +Hawthorne's pump, seeing that they were all alike. It is large enough +for a mausoleum and looks not unlike one, made of slabs of dingy stone, +like stained, gray gravestones set up on one end, in a square at the +foundation, but all inclining inward at the top, where they are kept in +position by a band of iron. A decaying segment of log appears, in which +the pump-handle works in vain, now, however, since, being long out of +use, it has no connection with the water below; on the front side are +two circular holes, like a pair of great eyes, made for the insertion of +the spouts; and, finally, a long-handled iron dish, like a saucepan or +warming-pan on a smaller scale, is attached by an iron chain to the +stone, by way of drinking-vessel. Altogether, though it may not strike +an old Salem resident in that way, it seems to the stranger a very +unique, antiquated, and remarkable structure." + +[11] _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1870, vol. 26, p. 257. + +[12] _Papyrus Leaves_, pp. 261, 262. + +[13] _A Study of Hawthorne_: Chapter, xi., 291, 292. + + + + +Corrections + +The first line indicates the original, the second the correction. + + p. 528: "and Buchanan, the nminister" + "and Buchanan, then minister" + + p. 529: "a book shall he honored" + "a book shall be honored" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Complete Works of Nathaniel +Hawthorne, Appendix to Volume XII: Tales, Sketches, and other Papers by Nathaniel Hawthorne with a Biographical Sketch by George Parsons Lathrop, by George Parsons Lathrop + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40529 *** |