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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8530-8.txt b/8530-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e71a000 --- /dev/null +++ b/8530-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10755 @@ +Project Gutenberg's A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Study of Hawthorne + +Author: George Parsons Lathrop + +Posting Date: November 7, 2012 [EBook #8530] +Release Date: July, 2005 +First Posted: July 20, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE + +BY + +GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. + +[Illustration] + + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. POINT OF VIEW + + II. SALEM + + III. BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE + + IV. TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES + + V. AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM + + VI. THE OLD MANSE + + VII. THE SCARLET LETTER. + +VIII. LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD + + IX. ENGLAND AND ITALY + + X. THE LAST ROMANCE + + XI. PERSONALITY + + XII. POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE + +XIII. THE Loss AND THE GAIN + +APPENDIX I. + +APPENDIX II. + +APPENDIX III. + +INDEX + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE. + + + + +I. + + +POINT OF VIEW. + +This book was not designed as a biography, but is rather a portrait. +And, to speak more carefully still, it is not so much this, as my +conception of what a portrait of Hawthorne should be. For I cannot write +with the authority of one who had known him and had been formally +intrusted with the task of describing his life. On the other hand, I do +not enter upon this attempt as a mere literary performance, but have +been assisted in it by an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathy +with the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of inspiration. My +guide has been intuition, confirmed and seldom confuted by research. +Perhaps it is even a favoring fact that I should never have seen Mr. +Hawthorne; a personality so elusive as his may possibly yield its traits +more readily to one who can never obtrude actual intercourse between +himself and the mind he is meditating upon. An honest report upon +personal contact always has a value denied to the reviews of +after-comers, yet the best criticism and biography is not always that of +contemporaries. + +Our first studies will have a biographical scope, because a certain +grouping of facts is essential, to give point to the view which I am +endeavoring to present; and as Hawthorne's early life has hitherto been +but little explored, much of the material used in the earlier chapters +is now for the first time made public. The latter portion of the career +may be treated more sketchily, being already better known; though +passages will be found throughout the essay which have been developed +with some fulness, in order to maintain a correct atmosphere, +compensating any errors which mere opinions might lead to. Special +emphasis, then, must not be held to show neglect of points which my +space and scope prevent my commenting on. But the first outline +requiring our attention involves a distant retrospect. + +The history of Hawthorne's genius is in some sense a summary of all New +England history. + +From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its +activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to +dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly +enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light +and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, +in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old +colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. +Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must +not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent +deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty +influence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period of +action must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent, +and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New England +civilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdens +and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming +a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path +in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an +ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were +enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and +exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm +Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's +Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease +whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to +satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from +England multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusual +reverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, the +dependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally the +excitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity for +any aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here ever +since Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the New +World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to +uphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, +therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding +centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we +owe the high qualities of New England,--a nature which is often so +easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,--this side, +long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found +expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various +elements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's genius +revived. The sensuous substance of the early New England character had +piously surrendered to the severe maxims which religion and prudence +imposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part of +Puritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpses +through the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it has +been rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with through +Hawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustration +of it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which he +himself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from the +interior, to possess himself of the very fire which burned in men's +breasts and set their minds in movement at that epoch. In his own person +and his own blood the same elements, the same capabilities still +existed, however modified or differently ordered. The records of +Massachusetts Bay are full of suggestive incongruities between the +ideal, single-souled life which its founders hoped to lead, and the +jealousies, the opposing opinions, or the intervolved passions of +individuals and of parties, which sometimes unwittingly cloaked +themselves in religious tenets. Placing himself in the position of these +beings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies of +emotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it was +natural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between the +intense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outward +appearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source of +motive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter." It is +thus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief. +They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought so +intimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passions +sounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in our +own ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes or +situations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style, +I think,--particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales,"--a union of +vigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardedness +which verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilled +sensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which is +his by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers. +How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the past +of his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on. + +Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; as +intimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Dante +and Michael Angelo could have had their growth. It is endlessly +suggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselves +for all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and with +mysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimes +despite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterward +see could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and would +surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared +in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato; +Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris +secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled +expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the +eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to the +capital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober little +New England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in its +way hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preserved +in Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose. + +Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise than +remotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in a +figurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid, +various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificent +works of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture,--things +in which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artistic +spirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force of +contrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed many +a silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in his +person, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made to +contribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicate +perfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice still +haunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their very +strangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, and +captivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chief +and most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness of +his native earth which would at first seem to offer only denial to his +development. It is in this direction that we catch sight of the analogy +between his intellectual unfolding and that of the great Florentines. It +consists in his drawing up into himself the nourishment furnished by the +ground upon which he was born, and making the more and the less +productive elements reach a climax of characteristic beauty. One marked +difference, however, is that there was no abundant and inspiriting +municipal life of his own time which could enter into his genius: it was +the consciousness of the past of the place that affected him. He himself +has expressed as much: "This old town of Salem--my native place, though +I have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer +years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of +which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence +here.... And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within +me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be +content to call affection.... But the sentiment has likewise its moral +quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition +with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as +far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a kind of +home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the +present phase of the town." + +It is by briefly reviewing that past, then trying to reproduce in +imagination the immediate atmosphere of Hawthorne's youth, and comparing +the two, that we shall best arrive at the completion of our proposed +portrait. We have first to study the dim perspective and the suggestive +coloring of that historic background from which the author emerges, and +then to define clearly his own individual traits as they appear in his +published works and Note-Books. + +The eagerness which admirers of such a genius show, to learn all +permissible details of his personal history, is, when freed from the +vulgar and imbecile curiosity which often mars it, a sort of homage that +it is right to satisfy. It is a respect apt to be paid only to men whose +winning personal qualities have reached through their writing, and +touched a number of grateful and appreciative hearts. But two objections +may be urged against giving such details here: one is, that Hawthorne +especially disapproved the writing of a Life of himself; the other, that +the history of Salem and the works of Hawthorne are easily accessible to +any one, without intervention. + +Of the first it may frankly be said, indeed, that Hawthorne alone could +have adequately portrayed his life for us; though in the same breath it +should be added that the idea of his undertaking to do it is almost +preposterous. To such a spirit as his, the plan would have had an +exquisite absurdity about it, that might even have savored of +imposition. The mass of trivial details essential to the accurate and +consecutive account of an entire life could never have gained his +serious attention: his modesty would have made as little of them as of +boyish slate-scribblings, full of significance, fun, and character to +observers, but subjected to the sponge without a pang by their producer. +There is something natural and fine in this. I confess that to me the +spectacle presented by Goethe when dwelling on the minutest incidents of +his childhood with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning with +avaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which--like a very +different sort of Saint Charles Borromeo--he hopes to have the reverent +ages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective though +splendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, +that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried with +him inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. In +the Note-Books of Hawthorne this want is to a large extent made good. +His shrinking sensitiveness in regard to the embalming process of +biography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been of +incalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he really +was. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhat +meagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing. +There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it is +difficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive. +Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, the +physical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business; +and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the public +regard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign that +floats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtile +influence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one), +we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceiving +that the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from the +subject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography of +Shakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions of +him; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mystery +should soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne +could ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behind +the greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminent +for strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their private +lives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with those +Etruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect state +within their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were +opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever +stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer +injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, +after his so deep repose in death. + +"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil in +Manuscript," [Footnote: See the Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] +"to undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise +bestowed against the giver's conscience!... An outlaw from the +protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might +spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death!" This, to +be sure, is a heated statement, in the mouth of a young author who is +about to cast his unpublished works into the fire; but the dread +expressed here is by no means unfounded. Even the publication of +Hawthorne's Note-Books has put it in the power of various writers of the +day to assume an omniscience not altogether just, and far from +acceptable. Why, then, should further risk of this be incurred, by +issuing the present work? + +It is precisely to put a limit to misconstructions, as well as to +meet--however imperfectly--the desire of genuine appreciators, that it +has been written. If this study for a portrait fulfils its aim, it will +at least furnish an outline, fix a definite shape, within which whatever +is observed by others may find its place with a truer effect and more +fitting relation. The mistakes that have been made, indeed, are in no +wise alarming ones; and it would be difficult to find any author who has +been more carefully considered, on the whole, or with such generally +fair conclusions, as Hawthorne. Still, if one sees even minor +distortions current, it can do no harm to correct them. Besides, there +has as yet been no thorough attempt at a consistent synthetic +portraiture; and the differences of different critics' estimates need +some common ground to meet and be harmonized upon. If this can be +supplied, there will be less waste of time in future studies of the same +subject. + +It will be seen, therefore, that my book makes no pretension to the +character of a Life. The wish of Hawthorne on this point would alone be +enough, to prevent that. If such a work is to be undertaken, it should +be by another hand, in which the right to set aside this wish is much +more certainly vested than in mine. But I have thought that an earnest +sympathy with the subject might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, +after all, is the talisman which may preserve even the formal biographer +from giving that injury to his theme just spoken of. And if the insight +which guides me has any worth, it will present whatever material has +already been made public with a selection and shaping which all +researchers might not have time to bestow. + +Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I am +conscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture and +praise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame so +well established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to +the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge of +presumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the right +perspective and proportion. + +On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence enough for such +an attempt as the one now offered; the relative rank of Hawthorne, and +other distinctions touching him, seem to call for a fuller discussion +than has been given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is in no +wise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative estimation. It is +inevitable that the judgments of competent and cultivated persons should +flatly contradict each other, as well as those of incompetent persons; +and this whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the last, it +is in many respects matter of simple individual impression; and there +will always be persons of high intelligence whom it will be impossible +to make coincide with us entirely, touching even a single author. So +that the best we can do is to set about giving rational explanation of +our diverse admirations. Others will explain theirs; and in this way, +everything good having a fit showing, taste finds it easier to become +catholic. + +Whoever reverences something has a meaning. Shall he not record it? But +there are two ways in which he may express himself,--through speech and +through silence,--both of them sacred alike. Which of these we will use +on any given occasion is a question much too subtle, too surely fraught +with intuitions that cannot be formulated, to admit of arbitrary +prescription. In preferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that I +have adopted only another kind of silence. + +[Illustration] + + + + +II. + + +SALEM. + +Let us now look more closely at the local setting. To understand +Hawthorne's youth and his following development, we must at once +transport ourselves into another period, and imagine a very different +kind of life from the one we know best. It hardly occurs to readers, +that an effort should be made to imagine the influences surrounding a +man who has so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864 that he +died,--little more than a decade since. But he was born sixty years +before, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter of +the century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects; +almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations, +opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action, +these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-fold +between us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerable +space to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthorne +then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life of +Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "A +poet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much +attention.... When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to +investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morning +are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian +splendor." The bustle of American life certainly does away with "the +dews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter to +reproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with the +century. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall +view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has +fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since +as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect. +Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading +softly and easily into the past. + +You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place +wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem +impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the +streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due +understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote +themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic +events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this +stronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must +approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They +will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. +Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, +as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex +Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come +upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses +stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold +the whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, with +carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with some +simple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand +on the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that +hang long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There are quaint +gardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with iron +gracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always +with their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keeps +rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growth +caught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the right +magic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps +like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling +little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and +such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having +been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by +ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past +and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the +ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by +soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge +gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or +a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising +slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach +a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at +intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probable +aspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for +the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds of +spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspiration +that alike found expression on this soil. Off beyond the gray and +sober-tinted town is the sea, which in this perspective seems to rise +above it and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening blue; +as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great measure, bringing +first the persecuted hither and then inviting so many successive +generations forth to warlike expedition, or Revolutionary privateering +or distant commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's name +again is connected, as we shall presently notice. Then, quitting the +brimming blue, our eyes return over the "flat, unvaried surface covered +chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to +architectural beauty," with its "irregularity which is neither +picturesque nor quaint, but only tame"; and retracing the line upon +which Hawthorne has crowded the whole history of Salem, in "Main +Street," [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] we +fall to pondering upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At its +foot a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which there are +exhalations of smoke and steam. The mists of superstition that once +overhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it the +land opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest +period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as complete +as that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic webs +from one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that grow +upon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world +full of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion of +the dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obliging +Irish population has relieved the descendants of both the witches and +their exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with their own +barren little dwellings the three sides of the height facing the town. +Still, they have not ventured beyond a certain line. One small area at +the summit is wholly unencroached upon. Whether or not through fear of +some evil influence resting upon the spot, no house as yet disturbs this +space, though the thin turf has been somewhat picked away by desultory +sod-diggers. There is nothing save this squalid, lonely desolation to +commemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless deaths were here +endured. It is enough. Mere human sympathy takes us back with awful +vividness to that time when the poor victims looked their last from +this, upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and that +hopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. A terrible and fitting +place for execution, indeed! It looms up visible for many miles of lower +country around; and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall away +with such a fatal ease around it! + +The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, by +calling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoed +with bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous +"witch-pins." These are the identical little instruments which the +afflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in the +trial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused them +to be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a small +glass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at the +curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh at +the absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of what +deadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one is +hesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up +speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of some +document; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquities +elsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere large +enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelter +and make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch +House," to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy +room where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrap +of antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened on +to a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp's +nest,--as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants of +the first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of the +First Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, +though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built Essex +Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the +original framework set into a modern covering for protection,--the whole +church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this +little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been +huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single +pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some +engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I +visited the place, a party of young men and women were there, who +hopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settled +on me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before their +light laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, and +incontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She was +a pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle of +protesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily have +divined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men not +only believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young man +who had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printed +pamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages, +seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient and +worshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered +presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and their +grave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls but +soberly in.'" + +"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state." + +And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess the +sunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober. + +Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will not +let you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, on +reflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life of +to-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of our +dreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and present +thus occasioned leads to a discovery. + +In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorable +than at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds its +history in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, with +the quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants, +finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The very +meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former +condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an +incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy +of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out +before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I +passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it +was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring +thus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberated +through my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of +a vanished year! Then, in the room where I slept, there was rich and +ponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; the bed was draped and +canopied with hangings that seemed full of spells and dreamery; and +there was a mirror, tall, and swung between stately mahogany posts +spreading their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy of +Hawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley," [Footnote: See also +American Note-Books, Vol. I.; and the first chapter of The House of the +Seven Gables.] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in +procession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters as +these engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review of +local history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to +roving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangely +intimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds, +the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historic +changes of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one day +through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist of +centuries; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, at +other times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, +unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something of +primitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, and +the air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deeds +of the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this, +too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything. + +Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actual +contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of +Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of +what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame +summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from +this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a +hundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influence +itself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more salient. If +you read even now, on the ground itself, the story of the settlement and +the first century's life of Salem and the surrounding places, a delicate +suffusion of the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe facts +of the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This arises partly +from the imaginative and symbolic way of looking at things of the +founders themselves. + +John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the "Dorchester +Adventurers," established the first colony at Cape Ann, was moved to +this by the wish to establish in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place for +the fishermen who came over from Dorchester in England, so that they +might be kept under religious influences. This was the origin of Salem; +for the emigrants moved, three years later, to this spot, then called +Naumkeag. In the Indian name they afterward found a proof, as they +supposed, that the Indians were an offshoot of the Jews, because it +"proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum Keike; by +interpretation, the bosom of consolation." Later, they named it Salem, +"for the peace," as Cotton Mather says, "which they had and hoped in +it"; and when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great Pond, now +Wenham, he took as his text, "At Enon, near to Salim, because there was +much water there." This playing with names is a mere surface indication +of the ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were constantly +tracing in all their acts. Cut off by their intellectual asceticism from +any exertion of the imagination in literature, and denying themselves +all that side of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrains +the sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves by running +parallels between their own mission and that of the apostles,--a +likeness which was interchangeable at pleasure with the fancied +resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one +considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the +enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, +and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable +wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the +depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had +to struggle,--one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed +fortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality of +a special Providence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singular +way with a treacherous strand of credulity and superstition. Sometimes +one is impressed with a sense that the prodigious force by which they +subdued the knotty and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many other +more dangerous difficulties, was the ecstasy of men made morbidly strong +by excessive gloom and indifference to the present life. "When we are in +our graves," wrote Higginson, "it will be all one whether we have lived +in plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of downe or lockes of +straw." And Hawthorne speaks of the Puritan temperament as +"accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so +little." Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those that +dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast hopes at +heart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them and +before them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, and +using a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid in +their imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of their +power is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imagination +were so closely knit up with real insight, that they could not +themselves distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, their +outlook into another life, though tinged by unhealthy terrorism, was a +solid, energetic act of imagination; but when it had to deal with +intricate tangles of mind and heart, it became credulity. That lurking +unhealthiness spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judgment +entirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft delusion makes this +fearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft,"--one of the most +vigorous, true, and thorough of American histories, without which no one +can possess himself of the subject it treats,--has shown conclusively +the admirable character of the community in which that delusion broke +out, its energy, common-sense, and varied activity; but he points out +for us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagination in a matter +where religion, physiology, and affairs touched each other so closely as +in the witchcraft episode. The persecution at Salem did not come from +such deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it was +not at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecution +in England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general," +procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than three +times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; several +persons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and +Cambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capital +punishments took place there some years after the end of the trouble +here. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death for +witchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem was +heightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance +because "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action +in the absence of scientific certainty, was ... exercised in vain +attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the +elements and first principles of nature," [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and +"had reached a monstrous growth," nourished by a copious literature of +magic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humane +preachers and poets. + +The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which +accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified +in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed +in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail +of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief +of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about +witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the +material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality +which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into +this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for +any other quality in it. + + "Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd + In secret, riding through the air she comes, + Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance + With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon + Ellipses at their charms." + +_Paradise Lost_, II. 662. + +Again, in Comus:-- + + "Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, + Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost + That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, + No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, + Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." + +How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same +string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the +_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would +have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something +to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept +awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a +transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value +not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an +inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts +of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial +suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the +positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper +symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element +to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He +produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo +of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which +urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making +poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity +throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in the +poet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there is +nothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to be +the relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; and +the homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me as +an actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton's +Beelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes the +historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving an +allegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progress +seems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless +due to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in a +single and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost." Milton, by +implying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challenges +dispute; but Bunyan, in humbly confessing himself a dreamer, disarms his +reader and traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was not the +greater artist: that supposition will not even bear a moment's +contemplation; but, as it happened, his weakness was his strength. He +had but one chance. His work would have been nothing without allegory, +and the simple device of the dream--which is the refuge of a man +unskilled in composition, who feels that his figures cannot quite stand +as self-sufficient entities--happens to be as valuable to him as it was +necessary; for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light of +surprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of the story and its +assumed insubstantiality. Milton had many chances, many resources of +power to rely on; but by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticity +he loses that one among the several prizes within his reach. I do not +know that I am right, but all this seems to me to argue a certain +dividing and weakening influence exerted by the imagination which uses +religious or superstitious dread for the purposes of beauty; while that +which discourses confidently of the passage from this to another life, +with all the several stages clearly marked, and floods the whole scene +with a vivid and inartificial light from "the powers and terrors of what +is yet unseen," affects the mind with every atom of energy economized +and concentred. + +Leaving the literary question, we may bring this conclusion to bear upon +the Puritans and Salem, as their history affected Hawthorne. I have said +that a gradual suffusion of the marvellous overspreads the comparatively +arid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the proper influences; +and I have touched upon the two phases of imagination which, playing +over the facts, give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from the +contrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the lower kind of +imagination--that is, imagination deformed to credulity--would be likely +to be the more impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, +is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of New England's and +perhaps especially of Salem's colonial history, as Hawthorne turns them. +This is the dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer air +of his own reveries, has made so many people shudder on entering the +great romancer's shadowy but serene domain. + +And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, by bringing +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wide +apart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union in +this modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the +rays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches the +heavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each of +these Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no less +individual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand on +Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head of +allegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so much +of mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as was +inseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while in +Milton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact +balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhaps +outweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory +is found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes +to light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that added +such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special cases +the allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's +work; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbal +style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in the +very instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held to +the illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most +absolutely to the jewelled truth it holds,--in these very causes, I say, +the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown by +an unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It is +here that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But more +commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and the +aesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems to +be a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and +centrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again, +though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic the +tendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other. +In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement and +proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins. +However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very fact +of his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner he +chose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with the +want of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We may +say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written +such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the +"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him +something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which +Milton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive +truths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the +temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completer +harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence of +Milton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan +singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in +singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of +a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most +masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still +they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson +Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime +and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise +dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for +any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons +individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of +traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, +and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man +or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go +round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, +though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are +moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental +mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or +Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while +maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this +bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings +us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between +widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters +the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These +characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those +of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and +elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied +moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and +made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as +we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius, +Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled +strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill +them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute +intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground +connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the +relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the +chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's +resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably +modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, +combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion +for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into +the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a +modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to +Hawthorne. + +Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we +have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in +this compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with the +trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally +breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the +predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne +their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its +sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over +the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole +legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with +many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth +while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this +enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way +for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with +some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes +to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old +houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the +passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable +treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and +retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they +are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords. +One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad +about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger +of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter +strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the +light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character +of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but +these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to +the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of +mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the +occupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in +our way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible that +in a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there should +be a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differently +circumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as well +as its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, which +perhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source of +continuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable for +strong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, no +less than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become a +pronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it is +fecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to +their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the +descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the +early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and +depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily +pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether +from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me +remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and +die within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told of +persons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inherited +insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or +three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust +with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped +idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that +seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy +man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a +window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the +half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to +him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other +places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a +preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood +might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt +to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I +do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental +derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town, +having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in +sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the +privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had +compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has +reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House +of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, +takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance +that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to +meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a +proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine +outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself +to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has +called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and +home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder +individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with +almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, +and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types which +inevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. +Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, and +the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in the +romance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man, +urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham's +careful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedly +mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of +accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a +characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it +fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible +remains of the past. + +It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if not +showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks and +crannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his native +place in "The House of the Seven Gables," that the name of Thomas Maule +(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his death +by Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of a +sympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "Truth +Held Forth," published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which, +"The Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. He +seems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogether +in comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for saying +that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "the +doctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth," which contained +severe reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, +was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some time +Hawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as a +plausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters his +prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood to +drink." + +Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of the +laboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with some +comments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes in +once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a different +strain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies +to a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the +cent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in their +carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business,--good +business." It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romance +should find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the +Salem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645. + +The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge cast +such a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, and +became the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had written +the "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It is +enough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that he +searched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestion +already connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, when +remonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know of +any person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; but +the circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showing +that many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of that +half-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short +tales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were very +likely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when he +chanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables," they revived +and took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them. +That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation in +the statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most +vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable +names for the _dramatis personae._ Balzac used to look long among +the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived +character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very +rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the +discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to +the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that +Hawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his +countrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of the +settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell, +and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. Roger +Chillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine and +controversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has been +transferred, in "Blithedale," from the reign of Edward VI. to the +experimental era of Brook Farm. + +It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he could +not glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans +and of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his genius +that called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not write +philanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographies +of benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles +Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It is +the same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certain +preachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a model +apostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which would +reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain men +have certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime to +proving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence of +other things which they have no time and no supreme command to do. +Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence that +they are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of +the merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progress +from their own time to the present; and they have found a worthy +monument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more +reason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces of +our early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth and +eternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze through +Hawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogy +is the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unless +Hawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would still +have had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, were +worked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has been +able to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the race +of historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be a +satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for +assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases +constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any +other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the +insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. +Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures +of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things +seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time, +then vanish forever. + +But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be +practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had +no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and +penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which +had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the +surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and +strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely +represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously +sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling +in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of +his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of +which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic +purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat +this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements +of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But +there is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches of +assumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here and +there in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness, +which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment +about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing of +his own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actual +veneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earlier +generations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all too +tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and so +characteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that it +should not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too, +he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throws +himself into an understanding with those who look at New England and the +Puritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to +prepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by not +seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of the +reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which he +himself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this way +he really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality +and race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the most +pronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity. + +But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the +shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in +his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own +genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still +and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles +peopled. + +The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, +was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote: +This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as +Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have +substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of +the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B._, +October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with +Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, +1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, +and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "the +ten men," in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to +the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, +before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is +easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined +Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to +Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would +remove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he should +become an inhabitant of that town." He removed accordingly, and, in +1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of his +many employments for towne and countrie." Some of these lands were +situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be +the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that +portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned +the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a +"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the same +year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular +troop organized in Salem to "advance the military art." From 1636 to +1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and +Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an +assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town +a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over +twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his +famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these +various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and +in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his +efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of +twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this +year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these +"were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be +sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of +weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian +Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many +lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to +be his executioners." There was some reason for this severity, for in +crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The +captain adds: "We have no bread these three days." This early ancestor +was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who +reported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his +Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as +inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their +government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years +later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, +and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of +1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of +stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the +whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He +is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation +for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of the +Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who +glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his +political integrity." And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," +naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercy +we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, +whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and +Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make +use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do +with any foreign government." It is instructive to find what ground he +took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a +forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally +gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one +supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided +in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he that +will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters +of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the +commonwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that +Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap +barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he +resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the +copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure +New England history. + +Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that +"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, +Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a +magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the +government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall +preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a +law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most +abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be +as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could +be." His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See +"The Custom House," introductory to "The Scarlet Letter."] says that the +account of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than any +record of his better deeds, though these were many." Yet it should not +be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England +persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a +previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden +death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So +that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir +Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible +for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant +bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of +religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of +persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, +which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, +order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead its +subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the +commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to +repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death +should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the +dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, +like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too +heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes +for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to +more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after +five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility +of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various +justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was +oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only +because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of +his most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy." + +William Hathorne, however,--whatever his taste in persecution,--makes +his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give my +soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore +my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom +this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the +estate God hath given me in this world.... I do dispose of as +followeth." Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, +followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in +Salem," to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his +"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can +come over and enjoy it." Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence +for the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man who +appears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. +II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of +that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be +found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne +himself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, son +of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died +before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott +Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into +the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was the +famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," says Mr. +Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a +Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestor +calls him his _nephew_." The will says, "gr. ch."; and I suppose +the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at +hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in +years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for +it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from +this life forever. + +His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of +the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in +1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, +from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the +deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of +Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some +years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in +1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He +attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew +off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow +developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in +1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the +fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had +presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, +bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. +Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought +before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. +"She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I +might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me +to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I +did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she +should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to +torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I +repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me +to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote: +Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that +this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his +wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said +to have fallen upon the justice's posterity. + +From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position +in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet +of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he +married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished +mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the +eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In +the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne +earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in +his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may +have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to +have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member +of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a +Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with +four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, +being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase," captured by +the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. +C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, +originated the traditional career of the men of this family,--"a +gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage +puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy +of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most +eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, +and grandfather of the author. + +Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, +1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into +the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a +stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became +commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he +commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but +their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his +bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met +with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who +was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his +countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical +craft:-- + +BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER. + + The twenty-second of August, before the close of day, + All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh. + We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more, + When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan + shore. + + Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth, + Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth; + She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast, + And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause + was lost. + + Now farewell to America,--farewell our friends and wives, + We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives, + To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main, + And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. + + The wind it being leading and bore us on our way, + As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida, + When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main; + We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. + + We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight; + The contest held four glasses,[*] until the dusk of night; + Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea, + We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. + +[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four +times,--two hours.] + + Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, + All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try; + But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; + We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. + + We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale: + In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. + We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow + Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. + + Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:-- + "My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid; + All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear; + We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near." + + She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured, + And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, + When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain; + But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. + + And now the scene is altered,--the cannon ceased to roar; + We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more; + The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay, + But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. + + Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear, + Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer; + Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave, + Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave! + + Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew, + With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. + To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer! + Success to fair America and our good privateer! + +This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show +that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the +poetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappy +necessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "the +Eastern shore on board for forty leagues," in the first stanza; but it +was due to its historic and associative value to give it entire. + +Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes to +take to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to lie +in that direction. Many of these old New England seaports have +magnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessed +from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport, +and the rest,--they controlled the carrying of vast regions, and +fortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry +and reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept the +monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, +Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar; +Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee +and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and +Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, +Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean +many men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, and +has left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built, +still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinement +nurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to +the town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, who +married Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817, +leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom +House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon +Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, +however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth +began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine +the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that +his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road +to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever +winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's +head might with some reason have been thought to still hang over his +race, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition +... for many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of such +a curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share in +developing that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to his +father. + +It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of the +Seven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, with +important differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses a +special spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a property +which he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong is +done, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations is +subordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to his +own descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin. +The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but it +must be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which +doubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, is +transferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that of +Maule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule's +posterity," says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet, +honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generally +poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful +diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea +as sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to be +found, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor as +with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spoken +of--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or those +who endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round about +the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an +exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible +for any man to step." The points of resemblance here may be easily +distinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote which +recalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who had +been tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. +On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well," said +he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (he +had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is +the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based +upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate +study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and +contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort +of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not +consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, +and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds a +trait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes something +having a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproduction +nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of the +creative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables" +comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the +most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have +better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than +Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, +and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost +foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no +one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his +townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though +always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed +and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic +traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the +disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute, +admirable impartiality. + +[Illustration] + + + + +III. + + +BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE. + +1804-1828. + +With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him, +Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. + +His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons of +the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father and +son, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and the +day that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. The +elder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that his +predecessors had provided,--for they had some eight different ways of +writing, though presumably but one of pronouncing it,--and called +himself Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his only boy, +second of his three children, however, that he left the name to this +male successor, with whom it underwent a restoration to the more +picturesque and flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son of +Daniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, it is +thought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his family +suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot convey +the sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as +the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit +so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have +become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, +and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he +had a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him on +his long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with the +Puritan blood will easily understand the sort of dark, underlying +deposit of unutterable sadness that often reminds such persons of their +austere ancestry; but, in addition to this, the Hathornes had now firmly +imbibed the belief that their family was under a retributive ban for its +share in the awful severities of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. +It was not to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to us, +but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, that must often +have struck across their actions in a chilling and disastrous way. Their +ingrained reticence was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne's +fame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that fate was +making reprisals upon them. The captain's children felt this; and the +son, when grown to manhood, was said to greatly resemble his father in +appearance, as well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in the +maritime history of Salem, it is told that in the West Indies the name +grew so familiar as being that of the captain of a vessel, that it +became generic; and when a new ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Who +is the Endicott?" Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame in the +ports where they traded. At all events, some forty years after the +captain's death at Surinam, a sailor one day stopped Mr. Surveyor +Hawthorne on the steps of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if he +had not once a relative--an uncle or a father--who died in Surinam at +the date given above. He had recognized him by his likeness to the +father, of whom Nathaniel probably had no memory at all. + +But he inherited much from his mother, too. She has been described by a +gentleman who saw her in Maine, as very reserved, "a very pious woman, +and a very minute observer of religious festivals," of "feasts, fasts, +new moons, and Sabbaths," and perhaps a little inclined to superstition. +Such an influence as hers would inevitably foster in the son that strain +of reverence, and that especial purity and holiness of thought, which +pervade all that he has written. Those who knew her have said also, that +the luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so impressed people in +Hawthorne were like hers. She had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, +the daughter of Richard Manning, whose ancestors came to New England +about 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Manning, a well-known +pomologist of the same place. After the death of her husband, this +brother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but +little property: he was only thirty-two when he died. + +Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on Union +Street, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in +1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom House +of that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brick +building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne,"--as if the +future Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawing +nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house +of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The +land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house +they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, +Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was +born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union +Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American +Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME +was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated +October 4, 1840. + +"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever +needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of +which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so +interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with +as much care as I may. + +Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these go +to show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child, +quite handsome, with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of +him; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. While +quite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who was +trying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a +loud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of taking +long walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have a +companion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from +his home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must have +taken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak, +uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he should +never see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a +cabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination toward +mournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother's +care to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break out +from the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I is +going away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of the +head, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in his +mind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, +and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should take +in future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; on +these occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of his +failing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish +mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to +make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the +_dénouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard +him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more +while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however, +seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak +distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard +III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always +declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone, +was,-- + + "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!" + +Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of +his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the +"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it +is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him +for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an +example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who +were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private +individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the +beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But +as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up +the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons +whose descriptions answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that +they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her +belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I +never see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking that +this may be the lost uncle." At the time of that loss Hawthorne was but +eight years old; he wrote this memorandum at fifty; and all that time +the early impression had remained intact, and the old semi-hallucination +about the uncle's being still alive hung about his mind through forty +years. When we change the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had no +very distinct interest with the father whose decease had so overclouded +his mother's life, and thwarted the deep yearnings of his own young +heart, we may begin to guess the depth and persistence of the emotions +which must have been awakened in him by this awful silence and absence +of death, so early thrown across the track of his childish life. I +conceive those lonely school-boy walks, overblown by shadow-freighting +murmurs of the pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of the +sea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, too sacred +for other companionship than that of uninquisitive Nature;--questionings +not even shaped and articulated to his own inner sense. + +Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound and tender +speculations and sad reflections the boy was moulding within himself, +this did not master him. The seed, as time went on, came to miraculous +issue; but as yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most part +happily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a house which +looked upon the garden of the widow's new abiding-place, used to see him +at play there with his sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure; and +a little incident of his school-days, at the same time that it shows how +soon he began to take a philosophical view of things, gives a hint of +his physical powers. He was put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, the +famous lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had come to +Salem and taken a school there for a few years;) and it is told of him +at this time, on the best authority, that he frequently came home with +accounts of having fought with a comrade named John Knights. + +"But why do you fight with him so often?" asked one of his sisters. + +"I can't help it," he said. "John Knights is a boy of very quarrelsome +disposition." + +Something in the judicial, reproving tone of the reply seems to hint +that Hawthorne had taken the measure of his rival, physically as well as +mentally, and had found himself more than a match for the poor fellow. +All that is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood and at +college weighs on this side; and Horatio Bridge, [Footnote: See +Prefatory Note to The Snow Image.] his classmate and most intimate +friend at Bowdoin College, tells me that, though remarkably +calm-tempered, any suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness to +give the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. + +But one of the most powerful influences acting on this healthy, +unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have been that of books. The +house in Herbert Street was well provided with them, and he was allowed +to make free choice. His selection was seldom, if ever, questioned; and +this was well, for he thus drew to himself the mysterious aliment on +which his genius throve. Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson are +mentioned among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance on +first beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indolence" seems to have +been one of his favorite poems while a boy. He is also known to have +read, before fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to have +gone through, with great diligence, the whole of "The Newgate Calendar," +which latter selection excited a good deal of comment among his family +and relatives, but no decisive opposition. A remark of his has come down +from that time, that he cared "very little for the history of the world +before the fourteenth century"; and he had a judicious shyness of what +was considered useful reading. Of the four poets there is of course but +little trace in his works; Rousseau, with his love of nature and +impressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand more directly related to +the future author's development, and "The Newgate Calendar" must have +supplied him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep ponderings +on sin and crime which almost from the first tinged the pellucid current +of his imagination. There is another book, however, early and familiarly +known to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in an +important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." + +Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him by +inheritance from his seafaring 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 his foot +is no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. "May be," 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." +This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, +already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; +though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated +distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not +yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he has +hopped out into the street once since his lameness began, and been "out +in the office and had four cakes." 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 (at +whose sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's "Speaker," +the name of which had "a classical sound in his ears," long, long +afterward, when he saw the author's tombstone in Liverpool), came to +hear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure after +this in Hawthorne's boyish 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 +stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When +tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books +for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps +erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must +have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one +would almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound body +that kept him sporting and away from reading, had devised a seemingly +harsh plan of luring him into his proper element. + +It was more likely after this episode than before, that Bunyan took that +hold upon him so fraught with consequences. He went every Sunday to his +grandmother Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon the +book; then, going to a particular three-cornered chair in a particular +corner of the room, "he would read it by the hour, without once +speaking." I have already suggested the relations of the three minds, +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect of this reading +is the allegorical turn which it gave the boy's thoughts, manifest in +many of his shorter productions while a young man; the most curious and +complete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad," in the "Mosses," +where Christian's pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad route +to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at +first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a +novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of +certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction +of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult +manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so +exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery as +Hawthorne's, which a passage like the following would make. In his +discourse with Talkative, Faithful says: "A man may cry out against sin, +of policy; but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. I +have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who can abide it well +enough in the heart, house, and conversation." + +Here is almost the motive and the moral of "The Scarlet Letter." But +Hawthorne refined upon it unspeakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, +when he perceived that there might be motives far more complex than that +of policy, a condition much more subtly counterfeiting the mien of +goodness and spirituality. Talkative replies, "You lie at a catch, I +perceive,"--meaning that he is sophistical. "No, not I," says Faithful; +"I am only for setting things right." Did not this desire of setting +things right stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's consciousness? It is not +a little singular to trace in Bunyan two or three much more direct links +with some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautiful +is shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with some +angels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellously +complete "Virtuoso's Collection," [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, +Vol. II.] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steed +Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the +warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's +analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of +Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we +can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom +Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot +refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which +recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, enough, at +least, to have given them a partially prophetic power over his +character. Mr. Great-Heart says of Mr. Fearing: "He desired much to be +alone; yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind the +screen to hear it." (So Hawthorne screened himself behind his genial +reserve.) "He also loved much to see ancient things, and to be pondering +them in his mind." What follows is not so strictly analogous throughout. +Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good a man as Fearing "should be all +his days so much in the dark." And he answers, "There are two sorts of +reasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe, +and some must weep.... And for my part, I care not at all for that +profession which begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that +the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in +tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in +tune for himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing; he +could play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter end." +Let the reader by no means imagine a moral comparison between Hawthorne +and Bunyan's Mr. Fearing. The latter, as his creator says, "was a good +man, though much down in spirit"; and Hawthorne, eminent in uprightness, +was also overcast by a behest to look for the most part at the darker +phases of human thinking and feeling; yet there could not have been the +slightest real similarity between him and the excellent but weak-kneed +Mr. Fearing, whose life is made heavy by the doubt of his inheritance in +the next world. Still, though the causes differ, it could be said of +Hawthorne, as of Master Fearing, "Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, +he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to him +a terror." I mean merely that Hawthorne may have found in this +character-sketch--Bunyan's most elaborate one, for the typical subject +of which he shows an evident fondness and leniency--something peculiarly +fascinating, which may not have been without its shaping influence for +him. But the intimate, affectionate, and lasting relation between +Bunyan's allegory and our romancer is something to be perfectly assured +of. The affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in the +"Note-Books" and the works of Hawthorne which recall and sustain it. So +late as 1854, he notes that "an American would never understand the +passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along a +by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stiles +and by-paths in our country." Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from or +alludes to other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in "The +Blithedale Romance," and several are found in "The Scarlet Letter": it +is in that romance that the most powerful suggestion of kinship between +the two imaginations occurs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview with +Hester, in the wood, he suffers the most freakish temptations to various +blasphemy on returning to the town: he meets a deacon, and desires to +utter evil suggestions concerning the communion-supper; then a pious and +exemplary old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse urges +him to whisper what then seemed to him an "unanswerable argument against +the immortality of the soul," and after muttering some incoherent words, +he sees "an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like +the _shine of the celestial city_ on her face." Then comes the most +frightful temptation of all, as he sees approaching him a maiden newly +won into his flock. "She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in +Paradise. The minister knew well that he himself was enshrined within +the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about +his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a +religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young +girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of +this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and +desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him to +condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of +evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit +betimes." Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian was +so confounded, that he did not know his own voice.... Just when he was +come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones +got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, +suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had +proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift +of these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, and +vividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element +common to both. + +For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that the +first book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen," for +which he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and +Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." The incident of Dr. Johnson's +penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he +has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it +in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly +impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared +it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this +time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not +be at a loss to find endless entertainment there. + +It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. In +June of the same year an event had taken place which must have entered +strongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young +Lawrence, of the American navy,--who had won honors for himself at +Tripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain,--had just +been promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to a +captaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake," at Boston. A +British frigate, the "Shannon," had been cruising for some time in the +neighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake," and the +valiant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he had +only just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (some +of whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement of +commissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake" +was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, and +how Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, +"Don't give up the ship." The battle was watched by crowds of people +from Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the +result. + +When the details at last reached the town, many days afterward, Captain +George Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax with +ten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his +lieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gave +itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martial +dignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannon +reverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast, +shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration over +them, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with that +spiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes at +hours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have +stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, and +imbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profound +love of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which +marked his whole maturity. + +I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathaniel +again lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. In +another brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all +these documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to find +anything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school a +little longer" before removing with his mother to the house which his +uncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant, +which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seeming +to show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency among +persons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to +establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in this +powerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular as +in intellectual development. + +It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family to +Raymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the +primitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning's +Folly." Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake, +and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is near +what has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by Robert +Manning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widow +married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's will +provided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood, +and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, the +community ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remained +untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of being +haunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more lively +aspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of the +Folly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyond +the open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, ranging +and rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distance +every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blue +of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland became +the nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one +twelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for college +preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, lies +less than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the same +county: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at +Raymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps even +deepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith of +women's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration as +this of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to +have heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remained +bereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With pathetic +energy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, +sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, I +think this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may have +impregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of +mortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifying +the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to this +exquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus +true to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in a +sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set in +an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not how +to hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims of +convenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledge +of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or later +know how much it owes to such as you! + +More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres of +the heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and, +incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one of +the Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of the +sensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably the +fact," so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lost +companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other +hand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the +departed, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with a +Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect +example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, +concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead," +[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which +I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned +and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope +and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women," +the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two +successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances +of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies +the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is +roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that the +report about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty without +the whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory +without losing the effect they make together. It is a complete +presentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence I +may remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inward +to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless +contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, +had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as +his widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dwelt +there together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake! + +Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he had +not always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16, +1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his +uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the +trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on +Lymington mountains. 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 brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me +to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is, +to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is +otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother +says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been +very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great +deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne +reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking +man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake; +"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of +solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so +perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." 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 at will through the woods of Maine!... Everything is +beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The same +writer mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the +return from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his +quiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and never +touch the shore again." I have it from his sister that he used to +declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a +mariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and the +salt spray in his blood. + +Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missed +carrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we have +explained all the fostering influences and formative forces that +surround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the +inexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not find +the right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right and +left and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannot +wholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death before +it will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to get +into a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possible +from what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whom +perception and receptivity exist in that active state which we call +genius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether the +conditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it +must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry +behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had +remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; +lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community +of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age; +yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes +they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in +his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of that +interior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment of +his outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance of +unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come +violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he +would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature +against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be +said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the +mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled +in any case. + +As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March +7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:-- + +"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. +Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in +your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, +but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my +lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the +morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A +minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a +career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. +"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at +the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was +again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest +days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will +come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note +that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a +large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I +append it. + +"I remain," he says, + "Your + Affectionate + and + Dutiful + son, + and + Most + Obedient + and + Most + Humble + Servant, + and + Most + Respectful + and + Most + Hearty + Well-wisher, + NATHANIEL HATHORNE." + +A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would +perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall +with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this +harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness +into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And +with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for +his pure young heart. + +In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the +possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, +unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been +forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he +had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this +extract:-- + +"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 for me but to be an author. How +would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by +your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?" + +But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "Early +Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland +"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs +them; [Footnote: See Appendix I.] and it has been impossible, up to this +time, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons named +in them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cumberland +County, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence of +authorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the first +leaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as +reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the book +had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning, +"with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as +good words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of the +best means of his securing for mature years command of thought and +language"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, if +true, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He did +not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly been +there, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816. +So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, though +their mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they must +cover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisher +of the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with a +date. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems also +probable that the whole series was written before the author's college +days. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's +perceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course, +and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which he +must have seen at Raymond. + +"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the +mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know +about. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great +pond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that +flies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be +miserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not +yet seen one turn to defend himself. + +"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." + +Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably her +nephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance +which ripened into "The Gentle Boy." + +"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not long +ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'Long +Reds.' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he liked +them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,--one end is very +poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was +gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and +that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it +very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato +spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would +have been called witty." + +"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read, +the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes to +Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library. + +"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 wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go +down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. +Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless +her for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are to +have a pump in the well, after this mishap. + +"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He was +in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the +half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a +second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have +supposed that he was drumming with twenty." + +"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday. +One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him down +near the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I +thought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so asked +Mr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, and +that will bring sixty-five cents,' was the answer. I ran and petitioned +mother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile that +she tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a great +spendthrift.' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (without +taking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the +butcher. + +"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter White +of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain +Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out +to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also 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. It is strange that this beautiful +body of water is called a 'Pond.' The geography tells of many in +Scotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes.' It is +not respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of +clear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of +goose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the +streams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and he +calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that Captain +Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr. +Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears and +wolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a grove +so fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. On +the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spotted +trout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, after +we got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. The +men said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the water +it would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking +hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line had +been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or have +been pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. I +am a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at the +Images, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. In +coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. +White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without +finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat, +as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats +in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man +standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more +than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at +the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of +Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the +almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light. +If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to +see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the +hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good +Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made +the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before +sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely +moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to +fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure +that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I +was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that +with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy +charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went +to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother +with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. +Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I +had found that out before. + +"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house, +that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning +Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long. +It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the +track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was +twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me +about the snakes. + +"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between +Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just +taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of the +trees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examining +closely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut off +the root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body; +saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he found +that there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake, +too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with the +axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears in +less than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and what +hunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably +true, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was here +with his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of the +Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday. + +"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two days ago, up in +Crooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swim +the faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him in +fun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit +his chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before his +friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says) +beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother this +morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercy +endureth forever.' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man just +married. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming +any more 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. + + * * * * * + +"Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds as long as +myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that he thought it a water +moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that it was a 'young sea-sarpint +sure.' Mr. Ficket, the blacksmith, begged it to take home for its skin, +as he said for buskin-strings and flail-strings. So ends my day's +fishing. + + * * * * * + +"Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have always thought +there was some mystery about it, but I can make them myself. Why did the +Israelites complain so much at having to make bricks without straw? I +should not use straw if I was a brick-maker; besides, when they are +burned in the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full of +holes. + + * * * * * + +"I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt Manning's garden, +this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, flitting among the +rose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. She will +never realize the calamity that came upon her brothers and sisters that +terrible night when her father and mother lay within a few rods of each +other, in the snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of her +loss; and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, in her +poverty, could have been." + + * * * * * + +This little girl was the child of some poor people of the neighborhood +who were frozen to death one March night, in 1819. In a letter to his +uncle Robert, March 24, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you have not +heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were froze to death +last Wednesday. They were brought out from the Cape on Saturday, and +buried from Captain Dingley's on Sunday." This determines the time of +writing the last-quoted extract from the journal. + + * * * * * + +"This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old horse, hitched +to the trough. 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 to 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 him and the meal up the Ben Ham Hill, and home, and am +now so weak that I can hardly stand. O 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, for his master might come out and see what +I was about. 'Thank you,' said he, 'a luncheon of corn with the bits in +is much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch so slowly, +that master may come before I finish it, and thrash me for eating his +corn, and you for the kindness.' I sat down on a stone out of the wind, +and waited in trouble, for fear that the miller and the owner of the +corn would come and find out what I had done. At last the horse winked +and stuck out his upper 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 shut his eyes as if to take a nap. 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 if his +master whipped him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, +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.' I asked him why he +did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. 'I did try +once,' said he, 'but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels +high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and +fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck me +over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just +before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and ready +for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike +again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I +was sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good.' 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 knew well enough what I said, for +I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language. At that moment the +brute that owned the horse came out of the store, and down the hill +towards us. I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in the +wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad picked up and a +thrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. Looking at the end of the +stick, the man bawled, 'What little devil has had my goad?' and then +began striking with all his strength; but his steed only walked, shaking +his head as he went across the bridge; and I thought I heard the ancient +Equus say as he went, 'Thrash as much as you please, for once you cannot +stab.' I went home a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the feeding +the man's corn to his horse was not stealing, and thinking that if the +miller found it out, he would have me taken down before Squire Longley. + + * * * * * + +"Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. She rode as +gracefully as a Trooper. I wish with all my heart that I was as daring a +rider, or half so graceful. + + * * * * * + +"This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and climbed up into +the pulpit. It looks like a rough place to preach from, and does not +seem so much like a pulpit when one is in it, as when viewing it from +the road below. It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought a +book and sat in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is a +point on the road known to all teamsters. They have a string of names +for reference by which they tell each other where they met +fellow-teamsters and where their loads got stuck, and I have learned +them from those who stop for drinks at the store. One meets another near +our house, and says, 'Where did you meet Bill?' 'Just this side of +Small's Brook,' or 'At the top of Gray's Pinch,' 'At the Dry Mill-Pond,' +'Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's,' 'On the long causeway,' 'At +Jeems Gowen's,' 'Coming down the Pulpit Rock Hill,' 'Coming down Tarkill +Hill.' I have heard these answers till I have them by heart, without +having any idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I have +seen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, who lives +not far away, came along and asked where I had been. On my telling him, +he said that no money would hire him to go up to that pulpit; that the +Devil used to preach from it long and long ago; that on a time when +hundreds of them were listening to one of his sermons, a great chief +laughed in the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and the +ground to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, and +every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. He +declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easily +several feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, when +instantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell as +from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. +Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near that +swamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the +road near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas Pond, +keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a wide berth. Mr. West +talked as though he believed what he said. + + * * * * * + +"A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle Richard's store, +telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but tried not to seem +interested. The story was of a house, the owner of which was suddenly +killed. Since his death the west garret-window cannot be kept closed; +though the shutters be hasped and nailed at night, they are invariably +found open the next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nails +were drawn. There is also on the farm an apple-tree, the fruit of which +the owner was particularly fond of, but since his death no one has been +able to get one of the apples. The tree hangs full nearly every year, +but whenever any individual tries to get one, stones come in all +directions as if from some secret infernal battery, or hidden catapult, +and more than once have those making the attempts been struck. What is +more strange, the tree stands in an open field, there being no shelter +near from which tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says that +it seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when the +snow is four feet deep; and, what is a mystery, there are no apples in +the spring; no one ever sees the wind blow one off, none are seen on the +snow, nor even the vestige of one on the grass under the tree; and that +children may play on the grass under and around it while it is in the +blossom, and until the fruit is large enough to tempt them, with perfect +safety; but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is full +of flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night he was +passing the house, and looking up saw the phantom walk out of the garret +window with cane in hand, making all the motions as if walking on +_terra firma_, although what appeared to be his feet were at least +six yards from the ground; and so he went walking away on nothing, and +when nearly out of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as of +twenty field-pieces, then--nothing. This story was told with seeming +earnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How strange it +is that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of hearing about the +supernatural, though it produces nervousness and fear! I should not be +willing to sleep in that garret, though I do not believe a word of the +story. + + * * * * * + +"The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs across the Great +Pond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of many +thousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor +dragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty or +thirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men +say who are familiar with such business. All the men and boys went from +the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They +have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great +body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. +A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright +windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of +the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a +yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half +a mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the rope, the +anchor thrown over, and the men on the headworks wind up the capstan and +so draw along the acres of logs. After we went down to the shore, +several of the men came out on the boom nearest to us, and, striking a +single log, pushed it under and outside; then one man with a gallon jug +slung to his back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the small +single log,--a feat that seemed almost miraculous to me. This man's name +was Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in no fear of getting soused. This +masterly kind of navigation he calls 'cuffing the rigging'; nobody could +tell me why he gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had the +jug filled with rum (the supply having run out on the headworks), and +made the voyage back the way he came. His comrades received him with +cheers, and after sinking the log and drawing it back under the boom, +proceeded to try the contents of the jug, seeming to be well satisfied +with the result of his expedition. It turned out that Murch only rode +the single log ashore to show his adroitness, for the yawl-boat came +round from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts to +where we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixed +with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called +'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea of +a Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle.' I think his real name was Wood. +The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' +pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly man +named Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, +interfered and put a stop to what was becoming something like a fight. +Mr. Thompson said that the wind would go down with the sun, and that +they must get ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, +and the raft was almost to Frye's Island. + + * * * * * + +"I have read 'Gulliver's Travels,' but do not agree with Captain Britton +that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, +and the _lies_ too _false_." + + * * * * * + +The next and last piece of this note-book was printed two years later +than the preceding items, and after the death of the person who +professed to own the manuscript, but still with the same degree of +mystery, except in the matter of date. + +"Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from Windham, Mr. M. P. Sawyer +of Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, and +Enoch White, a boy of about my own age, from White's Bridge, came up to +the Dingley Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy River +Bog, for a day's sport, fishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch proposed that +I should go with them. I needed no urging, but knew how unwillingly my +mother would consent. They could wait but a few minutes, and Uncle +Richard kindly wrote a note, asking her to be willing to gratify me +_this_ time. + +"She said, 'Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasure +would cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up hooks and +lines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous number +of biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, then +skilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-bag, +and slung over my shoulder. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, +as we walked down to the boat, as to which would catch the largest +number of fish. + +"The air was clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us along +pleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was not exactly after +us, though we made but two tacks to reach the mouth of Muddy River. The +men praised the grand view, after we got into the Great Bay. We could +see the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they were +eighty miles from us; 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. Mr. Little seems to be familiar with every +book that has ever been written, and must have a great memory. Among +other things, he said:-- + +"'Gentlemen, do you know that this should be called the sea, instead of +the Great Pond; that ships should be built here and navigate this water? +The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of which we hear so much in the New +Testament, was just about equal to the surface of our sea to-day.' + +"And then he went on to give a geographical description of the country +about the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels between places named in the +Testament and points in sight. His talk stole my attention until we were +fairly at Muddy River mouth. + +"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties into the pond +between two small sandy capes or points, only a short distance apart; +but after running up a little between them we found the bog to widen to +fifty or sixty rods in some places, and to be between two or three miles +long. People say that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles that +ever grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down with another +a little longer, and this may be repeated until the long poles are all +gone. + +"Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every part, with +the exception of a place five or six rods wide, running its whole +length, and nearly in the middle, which is called the Channel. One can +tell at first sight that it is the place for pickerel and water-snakes. + +"Mr. Deblois stated something that I never heard before as a fact in +natural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all fish, except the +trout, who is too active for him; that he is a piscatorial cannibal; but +that under all circumstances and in all places, he lives on good terms +with the water-snake. + +"We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer had +a gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as four were flying and +seemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he would frighten +them, if no more; when, to our surprise, he brought one down. The gun +was loaded with ball, and Mr. Deblois told him he could not do it again +in a million shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that he had always been a +votary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated him +handsomely. + +"We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and trolling for +pickerel; and though we saw a great many, not one offered to be caught, +but horned pouts were willing, and we caught them till it was no sport. +We found a man there who had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He was +on a raft, and had walked from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otisfield. +Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 'The next +time you come to Portland I want half a dozen of your best jewsharps; +leave them at my store at Windham Hill. I need them very badly.' + +"The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that he had just +pulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began solemnly to explore +in his pockets, and brought out six quaint jewsharps carefully tied to +pieces of corn-cobs; then he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Little, +saying, 'There they are, Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made; +I shall charge you fifty cents for them.' Mr. Little had the worst of +the joke; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out the +silver and paid the half-dollar; but they laughed at him till he told +them, if they would say no more about it, he would give them all the +brandy they could drink when they got home. + +"Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed; that he must tell Peter White +when he got to Windham Hill. + +"Mr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it for a yoke of +steers. + +"After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry knoll that +made out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The men had a variety of +eatables, and several bottles that held no eatables. The question was +started whether Enoch and I should be invited to drink, and they +concluded not to urge us, as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. +Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much +yours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drink +spirits.' + +"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and had +no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little had +been there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water, +that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of the +bog. + +"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to be +settled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number of +fish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted my +string and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I was +about turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was +the largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made +twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, and +found it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr. +Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly larger +than mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four, +and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over, +until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice +alike. + +"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you have +turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all.' The men +laughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of the +joke was. + +"Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to go over to +the next term. After starting for home, while running down the bog, Mr. +Sawyer killed three noble black ducks at one shot, but the gun was not +loaded this time with ball. Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole, and +killed a monstrous water-snake. Mr. Little measured a stick with his +hands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. If I +thought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, I never would go +into the water there again. + +"When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found a lively +breeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the Dingley Brook in +less than an hour, and then kept on like a great white bird down towards +the Cape, and for the outlet. I stood and watched the boat until it was +nearly half-way to Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helped +me to enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and greeted +mother just as the sun went out of sight behind the hills in Baldwin. +The fish were worthless, but I thought I must have something to show for +the day spent. After exhibiting them to mother and sister, and hearing +the comments as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what their +horns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that pouts were the +best of fish after they were skinned. + +"I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle Richard, who +is an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such sport, and wished me to +describe everything just as it had happened, whether witty or silly, and +give my own impressions. He has read my diary, and says that it +interested him, which is all the reward I desire. And now I add these +lines to keep in remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received in +hearing the conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. +August, 1818, Raymond." + + * * * * * + +These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if they be genuine, as in most +respects I believe they must be, will furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, +to the distinct turn which the boy's mind took toward authorship after +his return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classical culture. +We can also see in them, I think, the beginning of that painstaking +accumulation of fact, the effort to be first of all accurate, which is a +characteristic of his maturer and authenticated note-books; very +significant, too, is the dash of the supernatural and his tone +concerning it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of communing +with himself through the pen, so constant and assiduous as we know it to +have been in his later years,--even when mind and time were +preoccupied,--must have been formed early, to retain so strong a hold +upon him. But there is another reason for supposing that he had begun to +compose with care before coming from Raymond to Salem; and this is found +in the fact that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very small +and intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly paper printed +with the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed note size, and written in an +excellent style. + +The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, opens with the Editor's +Address:-- + +"Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number of the +Spectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, when he beholds a +beloved child about to embark on the troubled Ocean of public Life. +Perhaps the iron hand of Criticism may crush our humble undertaking, ere +it is strengthened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected and +forgotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the Pride and +Ornament of our Country.... We beg leave farther to remark that in order +to carry on any enterprise with spirit MONEY is absolutely necessary. +Money, although it is the root of all evil, is also the foundation of +everything great and good, and therefore our Subscribers ... will please +carefully to remember that the terms are two cents per month." + +A little further on there is this allusion to the Scriptural proverb +cited above: "We have been informed that this expression is incorrect, +and that it is the love of Money which is the 'Root of all Evil.' But +money is certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, Money is +the deepest 'Root of Evil.'" (Observe, here, the young student's pride +of reason, and the consciousness of a gift for casuistry!) Under the +head of "Domestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, the +deduction from various rumors about the monster being that "he seems to +possess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing in +different shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees a +shark, another beholds a nameless dragon." (Here, too, is the humorously +veiled distrust that always lurked beneath his dealings with the +marvellous.) In the next columns there is found an advertisement of the +Pin Society, which "will commence lending pins to any creditable person, +on Wednesday, the 23d instant. No numbers except ten, twenty, and thirty +will be lent"; and the rate of interest is to be one pin on every ten +per day. This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the editor in +person,--a combination which in these days would lay him open to +suspicions of unfair dealing. I have seen a little manuscript book +containing the remarkable constitution and by-laws of this society, in +which there were but two members; and it is really a curious study of +whimsical intricacy, the work of a mind perfectly accustomed to solitude +and fertile in resources for making monotony various and delightful. It +does not surprise one to meet with the characteristic announcement from +this editor that he has "concluded not to insert deaths and marriages +(except of very distinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see but +little use in thus giving to the world the names of the crowd who are +tying the marriage knot, and going down to the silent tomb." There is +some poetry at the end of the paper, excellent for a boy, but without +the easy inspiration of the really witty prose. + +It would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, which was also an +end, before nourishing up into the series of which I have synopsized the +first issue; for there is another Number One without date, but +apparently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments "On +Solitude," with a touch of what was real profundity in so inexperienced +a writer. "Man is naturally a sociable being," he says; "and apart from +the world there are no incitements to the pursuit of excellence; there +are no rivals to contend with; and therefore there is no improvement.... +The heart may be more pure and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposed +to the influences of the depravity of the world; but the benefit of +virtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious ones, and both +are equally lost." The "Domestic Intelligence" of this number is as +follows: "The lady of Dr. Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. +Hathorne's cat, Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies are +in a state of convalescence." Also, "Intentions of Marriage. The +beautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah Dingley will shortly be united to +Dominicus Jordan Esq." (The young author appears to have allowed himself +in this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction respecting real +persons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler of the Raymond notes. Who Miss +Keziah was I do not know, but from the name I guess her to have been a +relative, by appellation at least, through Richard Manning's wife. If +Hawthorne did not himself call Miss Dingley aunt, he may very likely +have heard her commonly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyish +association perhaps unconsciously supply him with a name for the Indian +aunt of "Septimius Felton"?) The next item is "DEATHS. We are sorry to +be under the necessity of informing our readers that no deaths of +importance have taken place, except that of the publisher of this Paper, +who died of Starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage." +Notwithstanding this discouraging incident, one of the advertisements +declares that "Employment will be given to any number of indigent Poets +and Authors at this office." But shortly afterward is inserted the +announcement that "Nathaniel Hathorne proposes to publish by +subscription a new edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will be +added a sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own +experience." + +In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of a discourse by Dr. +Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening.... With the amount of the contribution +which was taken up ... we are unacquainted, as, having no money in our +pockets, we departed before it commenced." This issue takes a despondent +view of the difficulties that beset editors. There is a clever paragraph +of "Domestic News" again. "As we know of no News," it says, "we hope our +readers will excuse us for not inserting any. The law which prohibits +paying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case." Next +we have a very arch dissertation "On Industry": "It has somewhere been +remarked that an Author does not write the worse for knowing little or +nothing of his subject. We hope the truth of this saying will be +manifest in the present article. With the benefits of Industry we are +not personally acquainted." The desperate editor winds up his week's +budget with a warning to all persons who may be displeased by +observations in the Spectator, that he is going to take fencing lessons +and practise shooting at a mark. "We also," he adds, "think it advisable +to procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the constant companion of our +peregrinations." The assumption of idleness in the essay on Industry, +just quoted, breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor--in +apologizing for inaccuracies in the printing of his paper--enumerates +his different occupations: "In the first place we study Latin and Greek. +Secondly we write in the employment of William Manning Esq., [at that +time proprietor of an extensive line of stagecoaches]. Thirdly, we are +Secretary, Treasurer, and Manager of the 'Pin Society'; Fourthly, we are +editor of the Spectator; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own Printers, +Printing Press and Types." But the young journalist carried on his +labors unabatedly, for the term of some five weeks, and managed to make +himself very entertaining. I take from an essay "On Benevolence" a +fragment which has a touch of poetry out of his own life. Benevolence, +he says, is "to protect the fatherless, and to make the Widow's heart +sing for joy." One of the most cherishable effusions is that "On +Wealth," in which the venerable writer drops into a charmingly +confidential and reminiscent vein. "All men," he begins, "from the +highest to the lowest, desire to pursue wealth.... In process of time if +we obtain possession" of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, "we +generally find ourselves as far from being contented as at first.... +When I was a boy, I one day made an inroad into a closet, to the secret +recesses of which I had often wished to penetrate. I there discovered a +quantity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take only one, +which I put in my pocket. But those which remained were so very inviting +that it was against my conscience to leave them, and I filled my pockets +and departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas! an apple +which was unable to find space enough among its companions bounced down +upon the floor before all the Family. I was immediately searched, and +forced, very unwillingly, to deliver up all my booty." In the same +number which contains this composition appears the token of what was +doubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in literature. It is a +"Communication," of tenor following:-- + +"Mr. Editor: I have observed in some of your last papers, Essays on +Various subjects, and am very much pleased with them, and wish you to +continue them. If you will do this, you will oblige + +"MARIA LOUISA HATHORNE." + +"We hail the above communication," writes the editor with exaggerated +gratitude, "as the dawn of a happy day for us." In his next and final +issue, though (September, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces his +dissatisfaction at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, +through this "Request":-- + +"As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticise +home-manufactured publications, we most earnestly desire some of our +benevolent Readers to write a book for our special benefit. At present +we feel as we were wont to do in the days of our Boyhood, when we +possessed a Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We engage to +execute the Printing and Binding, and to procure the Paper for the Work, +free of all expense to the Author. If this request should be denied us, +we must infallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, as +they will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very unwilling to do. +We do not wish that the proposed work should be too perfect; the Author +will please to make a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon." + +In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased maturity (though +it be only by a year or two) of the lad, since the engrossing of his +records at Raymond. We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of a +steady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air of assumed +indifference, and see how easily already his humor began to play, with +that clear and sweet ripeness that warms some of his more famous pages, +like late sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and translucent +grapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation at this point would not be +complete, without recognition of the graver emotions that sometimes +throbbed beneath the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimes +must have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit with weary +movelessness, and all the pain of awakening ambition and departing +boyhood, seem to find a symbol in this stanza from the fourth +"Spectator":-- + + "Days of my youth, ye fleet away, + As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, + And scarce my infant hours are gone, + Ere manhood's troubled step comes on. + My infant hours return no more, + And all their happiness is o'er; + The stormy sea of life appears, + A scene of tumult and of tears." + +Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of sixteen did not speak +without knowledge. Various sorts of pressure from uncongenial sources +were now and then brought to bear upon him; there was present always the +galling consciousness of depending on others for support, and of being +less self-sustaining than approaching manhood made him wish to be. +Allusion has been made to his doing writing for his uncle William. "I +still continue," he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his mother at +Raymond, "to write for Uncle William, and find my salary quite +convenient for many purposes." This, to be sure, was a first approach to +self-support, and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. But +Hawthorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for maturity. An +outpouring of his thoughts on this and other matters, directed to his +sister, accompanies the letter just cited. Let us read it here as he +wrote it more than a half-century ago:-- + +DEAR SISTER:--I am very angry with you for not sending me some of your +poetry, which I consider a great piece of ingratitude. You will not see +one line of mine until you return the confidence which I have placed in +you. I have bought the 'Lord of the Isles,' and intend either to send or +to bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems. I +have read Hogg's "Tales," "Caleb Williams," "St. Lean," and +"Mandeville." I admire Godwin's novels, and intend to read them all. I +shall read the "Abbot," by the author of "Waverley," as soon as I can +hire it. I have read all Scott's novels except that. I wish I had not, +that I might have the pleasure of reading them again. Next to these I +like "Caleb Williams." I have almost given up writing poetry. No man can +be a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find this place most +"dismal," and have taken to chewing tobacco with all my might, which, I +think, raises my spirits. Say nothing of it in your letters, nor of the +"Lord of the Isles." ... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I +can scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four years +longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!" +You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to Uncle +Richard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds +it thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his +epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must conclude, as I +am in a "monstrous hurry!" + +Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE. + +P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:-- + + "She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, + She's gone to dwell in Heaven: + Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon + For dwalling out of Heaven." + +It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as I +know you would admire it. + +As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into the +obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart must +have borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this must +not be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that were +compounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last he +struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 he +went to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow and +Cheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verse +of "Morituri Salutamus,"--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe," an +anonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of the +college at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction. + +"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accurate observer +might pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of those +classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would +inform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a not +less toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments of +a more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the +polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler +cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in +general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were +understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater +could bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in the +world. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. A +few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and +these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom +they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the +fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them +in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from +both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, +to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the +benefits of civilization. + +"If this institution 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 students, indeed, ignorant +of their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their +entrance on the business of life; but they found, in after years, that +many of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes which they would +with least reluctance live over again, referred to the seat of their +early studies." + + * * * * * + +He here divides the honors pleasantly between the forest-bred and +city-trained youth, having, from his own experience, an interest in each +class. Yet I think he must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. +Horatio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more confidential +friend than Pierce, was brought up on his father's estate at Bridgton, +north of Sebago Lake; and Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, his +only other frequent companion, was a native of the New Hampshire +hill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, perhaps gathered to his +person something the look of both the seaport lads and the sturdy +mountaineers and woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to his +uncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives the measure of his +foot, for some new shoes that are to be sent; it is ten inches), but an +interior and ruling grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being a +sea-captain's son, he would naturally make his connections at college +with men who had the out-of-doors glow about them; the simple and severe +life at Raymond, too, had put him in sympathy with the people rather +than with the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of some +of the old dwellers near Raymond describe the widow and her brother +Richard as being exclusive and what was there thought "aristocratic"). +Hawthorne, Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athenaean Society, +the newer club of the two college literary unions, and the more +democratic; and the trio preserved their cordial relations intact for +forty years, sometimes amid confusions and misconstructions, or between +cross-fires of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity. +Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his grasp, but he and +his two cronies seem to have taken their curriculum very easily, though +they all came off well in the graduation. Hawthorne was a good Latinist. +The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin compositions, +even in the Freshman year, were remarkable; and Mr. Longfellow tells me +that he recalls the graceful and poetic translations which his classmate +used to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity in Greek, I +believe, but he always kept up his liking for the Latin writers. Some +years since a Latin theme of his was found, which had been delivered at +an exhibition of the Athenaean Society, in December, 1823. [Footnote: +See Appendix II.] It shows some niceties of selection, and the style is +neat; I even fancy something individual in the choice of the words +_sanctior nec beatior_, as applied to the republic, and a +distinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the _fulgor tantum fuit sine +fervore_; though a relic of this kind should not be examined too +closely, and claims the same exemption that one gives to Shelley's +school-compelled verses, _In Horologium_. + +His English compositions also excited notice. Professor Newman gave them +high commendation, and Mr. Bridge speaks of their superiority. But none +of them have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilant +suppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Hawthorne's habit as a +young man to destroy all of his own letters that he could find, on +returning home after an absence; and few records of his college life +remain. Here is a brief note, however. + +BRUNSWICK, August 12, 1823. + +MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should have +answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L---- +conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will +last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next +Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I +suppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, +and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I should +prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there is +a steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If this +be the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has no +apprehension of the boiler's bursting. + +I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to the +usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or four +pages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hope +you will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness.... + +Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE. + +This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyish +simplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personality +already unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of +Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept his +maturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatory +culture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes +toward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only two +slight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, he +recalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committee +of which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise," he says, "that +the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a +college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered +into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I +could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be +inclined to smile." But much more intimate and delightful is the +reminiscence which, in the dedicatory preface of "The Snow Image," +addressed to his friend Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody is +responsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know +not whence your faith came: but, 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 treats in +that shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering +riverward through the forest,--though you and I will never cast a line +in it again,--two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to +acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard +of, or else it had been the worse for us,--still it was your prognostic +of your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction." I have +asked Mr. Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, and he +tells me that it was an indescribable conviction, aroused by the whole +drift of his friend's mind as he saw it. Exquisite indeed must have been +that first fleeting aroma of genius; and I would that it might have been +then and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our delight. But we must +be satisfied with the quick and sympathetic insight with which +Hawthorne's friend discovered his true bent. The world owes more, +probably, to this early encouragement from a college companion than it +can ever estimate. + +Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more peculiar and +unchanging value than the mutual impressions of young men at college: +they meet at a moment when the full meaning of life just begins to +unfold itself to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two or +three traits the whole character of a comrade, where a maturer man +weighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and ends after all with a like or +dislike that is only lukewarm. Far on toward the close of life, +Hawthorne, in speaking of something told him by an English gentleman +respecting a former classmate of the latter's, wrote: "It seemed to be +one of those early impressions which a collegian gets of his +fellow-students, and which he never gets rid of, whatever the character +of the person may turn out to be in after years. I have judged several +persons in this way, and still judge them so, though the world has come +to very different opinions. Which is right,--the world, which has the +man's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who has +nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, +doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man's +mature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable or +otherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. In +this, then, we perceive one of the formative effects on Hawthorne's mind +of his stay at Brunswick. Those four years of student life gave him a +thousand eyes for observing and analyzing character. He learned then, +also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always afterward he was +singularly independent in selecting friends; often finding them even in +unpopular and out-of-the-way persons. The affinity between himself and +Bridge was ratified by forty years of close confidence; and Hawthorne +never swerved from his early loyalty to Pierce, though his faithfulness +gave him severe trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not of +those who explain this steadfastness by a theory of early prepossession +on Hawthorne's part, blinding him to Pierce's errors or defects. There +is ample proof in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, which I +have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguished +friend the President's character with his impartial and searching eye +for human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe if +he had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certain +candor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided it +seemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his old +friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought +hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the +severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid +unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was +perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old +"Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person +of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed +Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he +saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the +harsh multitude. + +Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an +apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen +or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted +with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was +especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from +college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, +his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own +imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the +papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there +for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith +the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was +not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. + +In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive, +there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplier +of events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strain +of revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion shows +that he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824 +(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty cents +for neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did its +best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings. +[Footnote: The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 1824, is +but $19.62, of which $2.36 is made up of fines. The figures give a +backward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, but show that the +disinclination of students to comply with college rules was even then +expensive. The "average of damages" is only thirty-three cents, from +which I infer that the class was not a destructive one.] Logically, +these tendencies away from essay and oratory are alien to minds destined +to produce literature; but empirically, they are otherwise. Meantime, we +get a sudden light on some of the solid points of character, apart from +genius, in this note from the college president, and the student's +parallel epistles. + +May 29, 1822. + +MRS. ELIZABETH C. HATHORNE. + +MADAM:----By note of the Executive Government of this college, it is +made my duty to request your co-operation with us in the attempt to +induce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution. He +was this day fined fifty cents for playing cards for money, last term. +He played at different times. Perhaps he might not have gained, were it +not for the influence of a student whom we have dismissed from college. +It does not appear that your son has very recently played cards; yet +your advice may be beneficial to him. I am, madam, + +Very respectfully, + +Your obedient, humble servant, + +WILLIAM ALLEN, _President_. + +The next day after this note was written (on May 30, 1822) the subject +of it wrote thus:-- + +"MY DEAR MOTHER:--I hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I have +nothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players in +college have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. +One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with +myself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the President +intends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be +the case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again detected, I +shall have the honor of being suspended; when the President asked what +we played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty cents, +although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I had told him of +that, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appears +that the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that +time was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the common +term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There was no untruth in the +case, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. +I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall not +till the last week." + +But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 1822) a few +months afterward, he touches the matter much more vigorously:-- + +"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead, +absconded, or anything worse.' [The allusion is to some reproach for a +long silence on his part.] I have involved myself in no 'foolish +scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune +I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have +been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong +drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold +good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I +have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so +severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by +the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full +as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and +would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence +playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another +into anything wrong." + +I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headed +attitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made up +his mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinks +himself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdom +of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself less +thoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitable +theory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral sense +and ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect lives +by truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:-- + +"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago to +read Hume's 'History of England,' but found it so abominably dull that I +have given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procure +books of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which I +am a member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, among +which is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed in 1819], and many +other valuable works.... Our class will be examined on Tuesday for +admittance to our Sophomore year. If any of us are found deficient, we +shall be degraded to the Freshman class again; from which misfortune may +Heaven defend me." + +But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt any, was soon +soothed; he passed on successfully through his course. Not only did he +graduate well, but he had also, as we shall see, begun to prepare +himself for his career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentary +way, his mood at graduation:-- + +"BRUNSWICK, July 14, 1825. + +"MY DEAR SISTER:--.... I am not very well pleased with Mr. Dike's report +of me. The family had before conceived much too high an opinion of my +talents, and had probably formed expectations which I shall never +realize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally 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. I do +not say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but +merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where your +partiality has led you astray. I did hope that Uncle Robert's opinion of +me was nearer to the truth, as his deportment toward me never expressed +a very high estimation of my abilities." + +Mr. Dike was a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, after +seeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. +Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, +before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anything +decisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed his +success as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture which +precipitated and made perfect the mysterious solution in which his +genius lay. The wish "to plod along with the multitude," seemingly +unambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most undyingly with +hope of achievement in art, often throw off this vapor of discontent; +they feel a prophetic thrill of that nameless suffering through which +every seeker of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, for +the sweet obscurity of the ungifted. + +Another part of this letter shows the writer's standing at college:-- + +"Did the President write to you about my part? He called me to his +study, and informed me that, though my rank in the class entitled me to +a part, yet it was contrary to the law to give me one, on account of my +neglect of declamation. As he inquired mother's name and residence, I +suppose that he intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you will +send me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with this +arrangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship, while +it saves me the mortification of making my appearance in public at +Commencement. Perhaps the family may not be so much pleased by it. Tell +me what are their sentiments on the subject. + +"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday." + +Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on the +threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young, +and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all his +shy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo such +long applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some great +thing was already a part of his life, together with that longing for +recognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of +beginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words, +which I find in "Fanshawe," drawn from the author's knowledge of his own +heart? + +"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent in +solitary study,--in conversation with the dead,--while he had scorned to +mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives. +Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world, +unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his +pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost +heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that +dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a +thousand realities." + +Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and +perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some +forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to +us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. It +is this:-- + + "The ocean hath its silent caves, + Deep, quiet, and alone; + Though there be fury on the waves, + Beneath them there is none." + +If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque +murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, +that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a +near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, +but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the +cable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much more +nearly does the writer justice:-- + +"MOONLIGHT. + + "We are beneath the dark blue sky, + And the moon is shining bright; + O, what can lift the soul so high + As the glow of a summer night; + When all the gay are hushed to sleep + And they that mourn forget to weep, + Beneath that gentle light! + + "Is there no holier, happier land + Among those distant spheres, + Where we may meet that shadow band, + The dead of other years? + Where all the day the moonbeams rest, + And where at length the souls are blest + Of those who dwell in tears? + + "O, if the happy ever leave + The bowers of bliss on high, + To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, + And wipe the tear-drop dry; + It is when moonlight sheds its ray, + More pure and beautiful than day, + And earth is like the sky." + +At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held such +strong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, +these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for a +certain independence; but there is something besides in the refined +touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne's +individuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, +was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first +fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration +of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the +Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise +on the Hills":-- + + "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke + Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," + +it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted +the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the +rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne +had as yet hardly found his appropriate element. + +In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published an +anonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe," much more nearly approaching +a novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and +Capen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate the +edition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. We +have seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. +"Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Peveril of the +Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared +while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become +the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy +between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the +people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a +common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of +both states at about the same period, and in both it has had the same +result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, +intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe +some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter +climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is +pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a +little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as +a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his +own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a +joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and +many-sided of American humorists. And, though many of the conditions of +the two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races are of +course largely dissimilar. The most salient distinction, perhaps, is +that of the Scotch being a musical and dancing nation; something from +which the New-Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him with +his Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake as a Pilgrim and not a +Covenanter, Hawthorne was by nature formed with little ear for music. It +seems strange that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight," +just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admitted an ill-timed +strain or jarring cadence into his pure, symphonious prose, should +scarcely be able to distinguish one tune from another. Yet such was the +case. But this was owing merely to the absence of the _musical_ +instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccompanied voice; and I +have been always much touched by a little incident recorded in the +"English Note-Books": "There is a woman who has several times passed +through this Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasionally to +sing songs under the windows; and last evening ... she came and sang +'Kathleen O'Moore' richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, +chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat in +our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me more +deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale +suddenly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste of +such a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a +harp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the +woman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open to +sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now than +formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps,--grievous that it should be so!--of +the superior temperance of our race. For, by one of those strange +oversights that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the door +for song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, seems to admit quite +freely two vagabonds that have no business there, Squalor and +Drunkenness. Yet notwithstanding this grave unlikeness between the two +peoples, Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeit +unwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit to Glasgow, +that in spite of the poorer classes there excelling even those of +Liverpool in filth and drunkenness, "they are a better looking people +than the English (and this is true of all classes), more intelligent of +aspect, with more regular, features." There is certainly one quality +linking the two nations together which has not yet been commented on, in +relation to Hawthorne; and this is the natural growth of the weird in +the popular mind, both here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enter +into this at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have suggested +some of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne's +fiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides +George Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with +real skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his +work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving +Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be +ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from +the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the +Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification. + +Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returned +from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visit +to Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long +before arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. The +exact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorous +whimsey, "P.'s Correspondence," which contains the essence of the best +criticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] In +allusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, or +architecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinite +variety." And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter +Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works went +out of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather than +that fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and +as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like +the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a more +earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he +was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the present +generation even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe" +there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the very +resemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent. + +The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, "in an ancient, though +not very populous settlement in a retired corner of one of the New +England States." This, no doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. +Longfellow tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of the +country around it strongly suggest the Brunswick College. The President +of Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an amiable and simple old delver in +learning, in a general way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorous +spouse rules him somewhat severely: their little bickerings supply a +strain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but quite unlike +anything in Hawthorne's later work. A young lady, named Ellen Langton, +daughter of an old friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stay +under his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, in the style +of Scott's heroines; but this sentence ends with a trace of the young +writer's quality: "If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's +beauty, it would achieve what pencil ... never could; for though the +dark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped +through them could only be seen and felt." This maiden the doctor once +took into his study, to begin a course of modern languages with her; but +she "having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrived +by the sweet charm of her voice to engage his attention," and quite +beguiled him from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two young +students at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, +handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns; +and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, +already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and +meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely +moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and +Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the +beginning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation with her. +The real action of the book, after the preliminaries, takes up only some +three days, and turns upon the attempt of a man named Butler to entice +Ellen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortune +to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated by +circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a much +more sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowing +that he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him the +opportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush of +desire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to take +advantage of her generosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellen +becomes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from the first; and +Fanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, dies before his class +graduates. It is easy to see how the sources of emotion thus opened +attracted Hawthorne. The noble and refined nature of Fanshawe, and the +mingled craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crude +embodiments of the same characteristics which he afterward treated in +modified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes,--both of them +remote and chilly,--of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, +after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of these +persons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked a +few characteristic portions of the book which suggest its tone. + +When the young lady's flight with the stranger actually takes place, +young Wolcott and President Melmoth ride together in the pursuit, and at +this point there occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable and +is better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, whom it +strongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears in it, too, which makes it +not out of place to mention that Hawthorne studied "Don Quixote" in the +original, soon after leaving college. + + * * * * * + +"'Alas, youth! these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a +doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant +and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of +the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray +Heaven, however, there be no encounter in store for us; for I utterly +forgot to provide myself with weapons.' + +"'I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight,' replied Edward, +whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. Melmoth's chivalrous +comparison. + +"'Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword,' said the divine. 'But +wherewith shall I defend myself?--my hand being empty except of this +golden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. Langton.' + +"'One of those, if you will accept it,' answered Edward, exhibiting a +brace of pistols, 'will serve to begin the conflict, before you join the +battle hand to hand.' + +"'Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly +instrument, since I know not accurately from which end proceeds the +bullet,' said Dr. Melmoth. 'But were it not better, seeing we are so +well provided with artillery, to betake ourselves, in the event of an +encounter, to some stone-wall or other place of strength?' + +"'If I may presume to advise,' said the squire, 'you, as being most +valiant and experienced, should ride forward, lance in hand (your long +staff serving for a lance), while I annoy the enemy from afar.' + +"'Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or +David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left +unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the +present age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to my +safety. But lo! who rides yonder?'" + + * * * * * + +In one place only does the author give full rein to his tragic power; +but this is a vigorous burst, and remarkable also for its sure and +trenchant analysis. During his escape with Ellen, Butler is moved to +stop at a lonely hut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her dying; +and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and yearns for +his presence, he makes himself known to her. + + * * * * * + +"At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once from her +soul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole countenance beaming with +joy, and threw her arms about his neck. A multitude of words seem +struggling for utterance; but they gave place to a low moaning sound, +and then to the silence of death. The one moment of happiness, that +recompensed years of sorrow, had been her last.... As he [Butler] +looked, the expression of enthusiastic joy that parting life had left +upon the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no +longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course +of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the +thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on +the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed +with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He +started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to +hide it from those dead eyes.... But his deep repentance for the misery +he had brought upon his parent did not produce in him a resolution to do +wrong no more. The sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made him +desperate. He felt as if no one had thenceforth a claim to justice or +compassion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned his +mother's life, and hastened her death." + + * * * * * + +What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne's works is an +intricate plot, with passages of open humor, and a rather melodramatic +tone in the conclusion. These are the result in part of the prevalent +fashion of romance, and in part of a desire to produce effects not quite +consonant with his native bent. The choice of the title, "Fanshawe," +too, seems to show a deference to the then prevalent taste for brief and +quaint-sounding names; and the motto, "Wilt thou go on with me?" from +Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the heads +of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerful +conceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume +an air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is as +evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale light +of morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, represents +that constant aspiration toward lofty moral truth which marked +Hawthorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the sinful spirit +which he afterward analyzed under many forms. The verbal style has few +marks of the maturer mould afterward impressed on it, except that there +is the preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin wording. Two +or three phrases, however, show all the limpidness and ease for which he +gained fame subsequently. For instance, when Fanshawe is first surprised +by his love for Ellen, he returns to his room to study: "The books were +around him which had hitherto been to him like those fabled volumes of +magic, from which the reader could not turn away his eye, till death +were the consequence of his studies." This, too, is a pretty description +of Ellen: "Terror had at first blanched her as white as a lily.... Shame +next bore sway; and her blushing countenance, covered by her slender +white fingers, might fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, +with its alternate stripes of white and red." Its restraint is perhaps +the most remarkable trait of the novel; for though this comes of +timidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether this be to his advantage or +not, was not of the order of young genius which begins with tumid and +excessive exhibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, +breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate modes of +dealing with any intellectual problem or question requiring judgment, +and the formal taste of the period in letters, probably conspired to +this end. + + + + +IV. + + +TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. + +1828-1838. + +We have now reached the point where the concealed foundations of +Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear +above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly +rising from the depths of a solitary ocean. + +When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce entered into law, +the gateway to politics; Bridge returned to his father's estate at +Bridgton, to engage later in a large enterprise there; and other +classmates took up various activities in the midst of other men; but for +Hawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Literature had not yet +attained, in the United States, the rank of a distinct and powerful +profession. Fifteen years before, Brockden Brown had died prematurely +after a hapless struggle, worn out with overwork,--the first man who had +undertaken to live by writing in this country since its colonization. +"The North American Review," indeed, in Boston, was laying the +corner-stone of a vigorous periodical literature; and in this year of +1825 William Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit "The New York +Review," after publishing at Cambridge his first volume of poetry, "The +Ages." Irving was an author of recent but established fame, who was +drawing chiefly from the rich supplies of European manners, legend, and +history; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer-land beside Otsego Lake, +had begun to make clear his claim to a wide domain of native and +national fiction. But to a young man of reserved temper, having few or +no friends directly connected with publication, and living in a sombre, +old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were before the era of +railroads, the avenue to publicity and a definite literary career was +dark and devious enough. + +I suppose it was after his venture of "Fanshawe," that he set about the +composition of some shorter stories which he called "Seven Tales of my +Native Land." [Footnote: The motto prefixed to these was, "We are +seven."] His sister, to whom he read these, has told me that they were +very beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her, +except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea, +being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter were +certain verses, beginning,-- + + "The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race." + +Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript," while depicting a +young author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations in +trying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offered +to some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read their +answers.... One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five +novels already under examination; ... another gentleman is just giving +up business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my +book.... In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has +vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, I +should judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he +calls vast improvements, and concluding ... that he will not be +concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one honest man +among these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that no +American publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by a +known writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk." +He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; but +at last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His +name was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with Caleb +Cushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette," +in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers at +a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews was +ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius; +but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author, +exasperated, recalled the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for better +business prospects, was loath to let them go; but Hawthorne insisted, +and at last the publisher sent word, "Mr. Hawthorne's manuscript awaits +his orders." The writer received it and burned it, to the chagrin of +Andrews, who had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. + +This, at the time, must have been an incident of incalculable and +depressing importance to Hawthorne, and the intense emotion it caused +may be guessed from the utterances of the young writer in the sketch +just alluded to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light film +of sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one of the feigned +names which Hawthorne himself used at times in contributing to +periodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiest +tone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape +it.... All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, +has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The +deed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; a +long repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where they +will bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to the tales +founded on witchcraft: "I could believe, if I chose," says Oberon, "that +there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, and +know what I mean,--that conception in which I endeavored to embody the +character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written +records of witchcraft. O, I have a horror of what was created in my own +brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a +sort of material existence!' You remember how the hellish thing used to +suck away the happiness of those who ... subjected themselves to his +power." This is curious, as showing the point from which Hawthorne had +resolved to treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that the +only way to make the witchcraft delusion available in fiction was to +accept the witch as a fact, an actual being, and expend his art upon +developing the abnormal character; while other writers, who have +attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the +historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of +the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of +intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and +token of an original imagination. + +After the publication of "Fanshawe" and the destruction of his "Seven +Tales," Hawthorne found himself advanced not so much as by a single +footstep on the road to fame. "Fame!" he exclaims, in meditation; "some +very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as the +penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to +everybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are +unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens." But the fame that he +desired was, I think, only that which is the recognition by the public +that a man is on the way to truth. An outside acknowledgment of this is +invaluable even to the least vain of authors, because it assures him +that, in following his own inner impulse through every doubt and +discouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and gives him new +heart for the highest enterprises of which he is capable. To attain +this, amid the peculiar surroundings of his life, was difficult enough. +At that time, Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it has +been in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families maintained +rigorously the distinctions of class; their entertainments were +splendid, their manners magnificent, and the fame of the beautiful women +born amongst them has been confirmed by a long succession reaching into +the present day. They prescribed certain fashions, customs, punctilios, +to disregard which was social exile for the offending party; and they +were divided even among themselves, I am told, by the most inveterate +jealousies. It is said that certain people would almost have endured the +thumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. There seems to be good +authority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle, +had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it; +and it appears that there was a disposition among some of the +fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances were +made by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that it +would not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entire +equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of the +results of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible; +those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of the +Hawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had a +conviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a +certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the lady +of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books," "proud of +being proud." The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other people +as the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve which +enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that, +feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in these +facts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only very +young or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the +altered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had brought +him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developed +in him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than these +magnates. His father had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, as +well as the very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to that +unpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the rich +and powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably more +bitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, +ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him with +wearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy and +appreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might have +been given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known among +his own townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encouraging +answer reached him from more distant communities. + +In his own home there was the faith which only love can give, but +outside of it a chill drove his hopes and ardors back upon himself and +turned them into despairs. His relatives, having seen him educated by +the aid of his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to take +his share in practical affairs. But the very means adopted to train him +for a career had settled his choice of one in a direction perhaps not +wholly expected; all cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordid +and alien to him. Yet a young man just beginning his career, with no +solid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot but be sensitive to +criticism from those who have gained a right to comment by their own +special successes. As he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, +from his graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully before +the public in 1837, he must often have been dragged down by terrible +fears that perhaps the fairest period of life was being wasted, losing +forever the chance of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life," he +wrote, long after, "like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang +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." Judge in what a silence and solitary +self-communing the time must have passed, to leave a thought like this: +"To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course +of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence; as, the clocks have struck, +the dead have been buried." Or this: "A recluse like myself, or a +prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his +chamber." His Note-Books show how the sense of unreality vexed and +pursued him; and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned upon him +again and again; and how he clothed these dark visitants of his brain +with the colors of imagination, and turned them away from him in the +guise of miraculous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing "the +journal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary circumstances. +The lights and shadows that flit across it, its internal vicissitudes." +But this is almost precisely what his printed Note-Books have revealed +to us. Only now and then do we get precisely the thought that is passing +through his mind at the moment; it more often throws upon the page a +reflected image,--some strange and subtle hint for a story, the germs of +delicate fabrics long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, some +tender yet piercing inference,--like the shadows of clouds passing +quickly across a clear sky, and casting momentary glooms, and glances of +light, on the ground below. These journals do not begin until a date +seven years after "Fanshawe" was published; but it is safe to assume +that they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of the +intervening years. + +His mode of life during 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; 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. In summer he was up +shortly after sunrise, and would go down to bathe in the sea. 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. Or perhaps he would pace +the streets of the town, unseen but observing, gathering material for +something in the vein of his delicious "Night Sketches." "After a time," +he writes, "the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. +Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my +spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock shall strike +bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not made of such shadowy +materials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so +long among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal as +those within." Or, if he chose a later hour, he might go abroad to +people the deserted thoroughfares with wilder phantoms. 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. His tramps +along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahant +were productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by the +Sea-shore," or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle." "Grudge +me not the day," he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent in +seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my +companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me +his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Such +companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been +admitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal." This touches +the inmost secret of those lonely, youthful years, which moulded the +pure-hearted muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, +Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior life at this time: +"This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a +starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air I became all +soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along the +Milky Way. Here is another tale in which I wrapped myself during a dark +and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the +wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a +dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describes +shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would not +depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake and +feverish, the victim of my own enchantments!" Susan, the imaginary wife +in "The Village Uncle," is said to have had a prototype in the daughter +of a Salem fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne frequent +amusement; and I suppose that not seldom he reaped delightful +suggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individual +people of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a +polite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting now +and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, to +listen to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort of +intercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republican +fellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives the +tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will put in its +word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them!" It +was this constant searching among the common types of men, and his ready +sympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored his mind with +a variety of accurate impressions which afterward surprised observers, +in a man of habits so retired. + +His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with extensive stage-coach +lines at this time, and Hawthorne seems to have used these as antennae +to bring himself in contact with new and nutritive regions and people. A +letter, probably written in 1830, which I do not feel at liberty to +quote entire, tells something of a trip that he took with Samuel Manning +through a part of Connecticut and the Connecticut valley. The extracts +that follow give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt about +everything; and I regard them as very important in showing the obverse +of that impression of unhealthy solitude which has been so generally +received from accounts of Hawthorne hitherto published. + +"We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday ... and we were forced to +halt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fifteen miles from New +Haven. The next day being Sunday, we made a Sabbath day's journey of +seventeen miles, and put up at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapid +travelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was +(of course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went to +a Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom I +afterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of very questionable +habits.... We are now at Deerfield (though I believe my letter is dated +Greenfield) ... with our faces northward; nor shall I marvel much if +your Uncle Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two or +three bad taverns in succession.... + +"I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven I observed a +gentleman staring at me with great earnestness, after which he went into +the bar-room, I suppose to inquire who I might be. Finally, he came up +to me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family of +Stanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was +sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place they +took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and strongly +recommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students at +Yale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was +standing without my coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, +and asked me for some oats for his horse." + +It was during this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, +and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The Seven +Vagabonds." The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer +in it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across the +Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada +before the fall." The narrator himself queries by what right he came +among these wanderers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggests +that side of his nature most apt to appear in these journeys: "The free +mind that preferred its own folly to another's wisdom; the open spirit +that found companions everywhere; above all, the restless impulse that +had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments: these were my +claims to be of their society." "If there be a faculty," he also writes, +"which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing +myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with a +cheerful eye the desirableness of each." There is also one letter of +1831, sent back during an expedition in New Hampshire, which supplies +the genesis of another Twice-Told Tale, "The Canterbury Pilgrims." + +"I walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was shown over +the establishment, and dined there with a squire and a doctor, also of +the world's people. On my arrival, the first thing I saw was a jolly old +Shaker carrying an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soon +as I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It +was as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was +well furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by a +middle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful.... This +establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three miles +along the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow and +tipt with red.... On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, +and, if it were not for their ridiculous ceremonies, a man could not do +a wiser thing than to join them. Those whom I conversed with were +intelligent, and appeared happy. I spoke to them about becoming a member +of their society, but have come to no decision on that point. + +"We have had a pleasant journey enough.... I make innumerable +acquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with judges, generals, and +all the potentates of the land, discoursing about the Salem murder [that +of Mr. White], the cow-skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and the +value of horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Sam +groans bitterly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill; though this +ought to make me groan rather than him, as I have to get out and trudge +every one of them." + +The "Clippings with a Chisel" point to some further wanderings, to +Martha's Vineyard; and an uncollected sketch reveals the fact that he +had been to Niagara. It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga; +[Footnote: A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow Image +volume of the Works.] but not till some years later that he saw New +York. With these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going to +Liverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that date was passed +within New England. In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day" one sees the young +observer at work upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The +"small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst +of a long bridge," spanning an arm of the sea, refers undoubtedly to the +bridge from Salem to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over the +stream of actual life, scarcely touching it before springing up again, +like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurate +and polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actual +facts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, +far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible human +pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host of +heavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. His +attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a +Steeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a +spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, +witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing +brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and +retaining no emotion peculiar to himself." He had the longing which +every creative mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to the +utmost the possibilities of human weal or woe, suppressing his own +experience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for the +emotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with the +multifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue and +play his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantly +murmurous, moralizing "aside." He delights to let the current of action +flow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when he +again withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gatherer +at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances of +earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty +pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of +phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon." + +"What would a man do," he asks himself, in his journal, "if he were +compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never +bathe himself in cool solitude?" As yet, this bracing influence of +quietude, so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he cannot +shake off its influence so far as to enter actively and for personal +interests into any of the common pursuits even of the man who makes a +business of literature. Yet nothing impresses him more than the fact +that every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, like a +shadow. Twice, with an interval of three years between, this idea recurs +in the form of a hint for romance. "Two lovers or other persons, on the +most private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be +a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people." +The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacy +they could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, +yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two +were in the deepest solitude." This contradiction between the +_apparent_ openness that must rule one's conduct among men, and the +real secrecy that may coexist with it, even when one is most exposed to +the gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of thought based +on the falsity of appearances. If a man can be outwardly open and +inwardly reserved in a good sense, he can be so in a bad sense; so, too, +he may have the external air of great excellence and purity, while +internally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes our +perfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with intense and endless +horror. He tests it, by turning it innumerable ways, and imagining all +sorts of situations in which such contradictions of appearance and +reality might be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend who +should be true by day, and false at night. At another he suggests: "Our +body to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visage +shall express one mood, and the other half another." "A man living a +wicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one +in another." Then he perceives that this same uncertainty and +contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things in +the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things +meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become +dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A +virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees +what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself +completely into his power, and is ruined,--all in jest." Likewise, the +most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often prove +the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires some +particular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great +pest of their lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the +desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrong +and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her +lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, through +a long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly +trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evil +passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greater +evil would have come upon himself than on his victim." This theme of +self-punished revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought out +in "The Scarlet Letter." Another form in which the thought of this +pervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes to him is the frightful +fancy of people being poisoned by communion-wine. Thus does the +insincerity and corruption of man, the lie that is hidden in nearly +every life and almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, +whichever way he turns, like a serpent in his path. He is in the +position of the father confessor of whom he at one time thinks, and of +"his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with +the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins +are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent +either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of +life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, +unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, +large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as it +does that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on +himself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life-long +venom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but not with any mortal +wound. He retires in profound sorrow, acknowledging that earth holds +nothing perfect, that his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, +which, in spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing for so +many years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the hereafter alone. He +confesses to himself that "there is evil in every human heart, which may +remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may +rouse it to activity." It is not a new discovery; but from the force +with which it strikes him, we may guess the strength of his aspiration, +the fine temper of his faith in the good and the beautiful. To be driven +to this dismal conclusion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, +because he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching some +brighter truth. No; not a new discovery;--but one who approaches it with +so much sensibility _feels_ it to be new, with all the fervor which +the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true +originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, +when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitive +impressiveness. + +But, in the midst of the depression born of his immense sorrow over sin, +Hawthorne found compensations. First, in the query which he puts so +briefly: "The good deeds in an evil life,--the generous, noble, and +excellent actions done by people habitually wicked,--to ask what is to +become of them." This is the motive which has furnished novelists for +the last half-century with their most stirring and pathetic effects. It +is a sort of escape, a safety-valve for the hot fire of controversy on +the soul's fate, and offers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vast +solace to those who are trying to balance the bewildering account of +virtue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial solution of the +problem, and he enlarged upon it, toward the end of his life, in "The +Marble Faun." But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished him +the chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales," "Fancy's +Show-Box," he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, +the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul. After first +strongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's +mind, which had never been carried out,--"A scheme of guilt," he argues, +taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatly +resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.... Thus a +novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, and +fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in +projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other +half-way between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is +accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims it +for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and +acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold +more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that +men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its +attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are +dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no +such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for +good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, +therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be +incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet ... +_man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest_, +since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by +the flitting phantoms of iniquity." That is, purity is too spotless a +thing to exist in absolute perfection in a human being, who must often +feel at least the dark flush of passionate thoughts falling upon him, +however blameless of life he may be. From this lofty conception of +purity comes that equally noble humility of always feeling "his +brotherhood, even with the guiltiest." What more logical issue from the +Christian idea, what more exquisitely tender rendering of it than this? +"Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can be +clean!" was his exclamation, many years later, in that English workhouse +which he describes in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called +"Outside Glimpses of English Poverty." And it was then that he revealed +the vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretched +and loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him for +kindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he had +been its father. + +Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that still persists in +evil persons, and the deep charity which every one must feel towards +even the most abject fellow-being, Hawthorne moves forth again to trace +the maze; and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found a charm +that robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and can handle them +without danger. It is said by some that Hawthorne treats wrong and +corruption too shrinkingly, and his mood of never-lessened and acute +sensibility touching them is contrasted with that of "virile" writers +like Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to make a menagerie of +life, thrusting their heads into the very lion's mouth, or boldly +embracing the snake of sin. They are indeed superior in strong dramatic +and realistic effects; but, unvicious as may be their aim, they are not +filled with a robust morality: they deliberately choose unclean elements +to heighten the interest,--albeit using such elements with magnificent +strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet +the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as +to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy +cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the +archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing the +dragon! + +We see now how, in this early term of probation, he was finding a +philosophy and an unsectarian religiousness, which ever stirred below +the clear surface of his language like the bubbling spring at bottom of +a forest pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed late. But +the most striking thing about the "Twice-Told Tales" and the first +entries in the "American Note-Books" is their evidence of a calm and +mellow maturity. These stories are like the simple but well-devised +theme which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole composition: +they show the several tendencies which underlie all the subsequent +works. First, there are the scenes from New England history,--"Endicott +and the Red Cross," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "The Gray Champion," +the "Tales of the Province House." + +Then we have the psychological vein, in "The Prophetic Pictures," "The +Minister's Black Veil," "Dr. Heidegger," "Fancy's Show-Box"; and along +with this the current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The Haunted +Mind," and "Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ramble," again, foreshadows +his charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he should +thus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his first +works. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at once +flowing and large in its outline, and masterly in its minuteness. + +But this maturity was not won without deep suffering and long-deferred +hope. + +If actual contact with men resulted in such grave and sorrowful +reflection as we have traced, how drearily trying must have been the +climaxes of solitary thought after a long session of seclusion! And much +the larger portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute silence, a +privacy unbroken by intimate confidences and rife with exhausting and +depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe +intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have +amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing +perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. +"Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in +some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the +extracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then we get from +the same source a glimpse of the haunting sense that he is missing his +fit relation to the rest of the race, the question whether his pursuit +was not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he had +noticed,--whether it was not to be nipped by the same perversity and +contradiction that seemed to affect all things mundane. Here is one of +his proposed plots, which turns an inner light upon his own frame of +mind: "Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, +and offered to his acceptance,--as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but he +to refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to +be real, and he to be told so when too late." Is this not, in brief, +what he conceives may yet be the story of his own career? Another +occurs, in the same relation: "A man tries to be happy in love; he +cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In +domestic life the same; in politics, a seeming patriot: but still he is +sincere, and all seems like a theatre." These items are the merest +indicia of a whole history of complex emotions, which made this epoch +one of continuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Preface +prefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: "They are the +memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years." Tranquil they of +course were; and to the happy and successful man of forty-seven, the +vexing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period would seem +"not unhappy," because he could then see all the good it had contained. +I cannot agree with Edwin Whipple, who says of them, "There was audible +to the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, +which showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginative +analysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood." For +this applies to only one of the number, "The Ambitious Guest." Nor do I +find in them the "misanthropy" which he defines at some length. On the +contrary, they are, as the author says, "his attempts to open an +intercourse with the world," incited by an eager sympathy, but also +restrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. + +Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his inner life just +sketched. When his friend Miss Peabody first penetrated his retirement, +his pent-up sympathies flowed forth in a way that showed how they had +longed for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion of his +peculiar mode of living, as if there could be no understanding between +himself and another, until this had been cleared up and set aside. Among +other things, he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that he was +walking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors which reflected him +a thousand times and overwhelmed him with mortification. This gives a +peculiar insight into his sensitive condition. + +The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itself +in exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers. +Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying, +voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, +or--mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling his +way through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of that +house of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited. +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 several 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 feminine element is not +to be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold and +difficult morning of Hawthorne's life. + +If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither could +the Sunday. He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which his +family had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after +coming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not always +opened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found it +essential to join any church. + +The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of so +much lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, the +writing of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. +This was the fascination that carried him through the weary +waiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which the +fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannot +conceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me. +I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I +am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping the +realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the +world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude ... where nobody +wished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do." Alluding to this +season of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up, +he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room." +To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one of +his projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses." With +that image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in the +mirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights and +trembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales." Sober and +weighty the penumbrous atmosphere in which the young creator sits; but +how calm, thoughtful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit by +the sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies! Behind his own form we catch +the movement of mysterious shapes,--men and women wearing aspects of joy +or anger, calm or passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, +and forbidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we behold +these things; rather the awesome shadowiness of a partial eclipse; but +gleams of the healthiest sunshine withal mingle in the prevailing tint, +bringing reassurance, and receiving again a rarer value from the +contrast. There are but few among the stories of this series afterward +brought together by the author which are open to the charge of +morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the +tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness +which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" +leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding +Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these +extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so +often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about +him; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, so +gently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he mixes with even +the bitterest distillations of his dreams. Nor is the sadness of his +tone disordered or destructive, more than it is selfish; he does not +inculcate despair, nor protest against life and fate, nor indulge in +gloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct exposition of his own case is +contained in a sketch, "The Journal of a Solitary Man," not reprinted +during his life. One extract from this I will make, because it sums up, +though more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of his own +life at this epoch:-- + +"It is hard to die without one's happiness; to none more so than myself, +whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys of +life, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The very +hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long +toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the +surface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep and +warm realities, ... so that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, +have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I +must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousand +vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomed +to loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my +soul has never married itself to the soul of woman." + +The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merely +metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals +the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own +perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this +time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined +activity would have shaken off the incubus: but this is to lose sight of +the gist of the matter. The situation in itself,--the indeterminateness +and repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and +various sympathies, and his capacity for affection and +responsibility,--must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne +believed himself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, +chilled, and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion +at the beginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause for +bitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter of +option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had +begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action +presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation +which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly +mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. +If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his +genius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stunted +its growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve a +certain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; and +for this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shake +off spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against +one's genius." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I.] Thus he kept +himself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that +I have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, let +this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I have +been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and +with my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have, +less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was +perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having +been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. +For a long, long while I have been occasionally visited with a singular +dream; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have +been in England. It is, that I am still at college,--or, sometimes, even +at school,--and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably +long, and have quite failed to make such progress as my contemporaries +have done; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame and +depression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. This +dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be one +of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up for +twelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, and +left me behind." Experiences which leave effects like this must bite +their way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy! This precursive +solitude had tinged his very life-blood, and woven itself into the +secret tissues of his brain. Yet, patiently absorbing it, he wrote late +in life to a friend: "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." It was under such a guise that the test of his genius +and character came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with a +huge opposition that must somehow be made to succumb, before its own +energies can know their full strength, gain a settled footing, and make +a roadway to move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless to +others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains +untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire +personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was +of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer +world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable +devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the +influences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch in +feeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remained +perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hidden +tragedies of heart and brain. + +But another and larger purpose was not less well served by this +probation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in some +sense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to be +demonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stake +life and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain of +the highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment, +even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could be +ascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a line +of New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs, +seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well that +temperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reserve +from the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple and +rural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunate +was it that nothing called him away to connect him with European +culture, on graduating. To interpret this was the honorable office of +his classmate Longfellow, who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, +has filled the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment to be +tried was, simply, whether with books and men at his command, and +isolated from the immediate influence of Europe, this American could +evolve any new quality for the enrichment of literature. The conditions +were strictly carried out; even after he began to come in contact with +men, in the intervals of his retirement, he saw only pure American +types. A foreigner must have been a rare bird in Salem, in those days; +for the maritime element which might have brought him was still +American. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his Note-Books show, pushed +through the farming regions and made acquaintance with the men of the +soil; and probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close view +was the Monsieur S---- whom he found at Bridge's, on his visit to the +latter, in 1837, described at length in the Note-Books. So much did +Hawthorne study from these types, and so closely, that he might, had his +genius directed, have written the most homely and realistic novels of +New England life from the material which he picked up quite by the way. +But though he did not translate his observations thus, the originality +which he was continuously ripening amid such influences was radically +affected by them. They established a broad, irrepressible republican +sentiment in his mind; they assisted his natural, manly independence and +simplicity to assert themselves unaffectedly in letters; and they had +not a little to do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn for +examining with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness into +everything that came before him, without accepting prescribed opinions. +The most characteristic way, perhaps, in which this American nurture +acted was by contrast; for the universal matter-of-fact tone which he +found among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to him to maintain +a counteracting idealism. Thus, singularly enough, the most salient +feature of the new American product was its apparent denial of the +national trait of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed that +Hawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting the American +nature in fiction. These things can be done only half consciously, at +the most. Perhaps it is well that the mind on which so much depends +should not be burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how much is +expected from it by the ages. Therefore, we owe the triumphant assertion +of the American quality in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, +unfaltering, brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, +unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive that a great end +was being served by it. But, although unaware of this end at the time, +he afterward saw some of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, +he speaks thus of his old room in Union Street:-- + +"This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon +thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them +have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he +ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so +much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and _here my mind and +character were formed_; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and +here I have been despondent.... And now I begin to understand why I was +imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never +break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my +escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and my heart +might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But +living in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the dew of my +youth and the freshness of my heart." + +Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne! It was a young nation's faith in its +future which--unsuspected by any then, but always to be remembered +henceforth--had found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithful +and hopeful heart of yours! Thus was it that the young poet who, in the +sense we have observed, stood for old New England, absorbed into himself +also the atmosphere of the United States. The plant that rooted in the +past had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. In +such wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. + +I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, which +indicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" +went through. The lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 include +nearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides a quantity of +bound magazines. This gives no account of his dealings with books in the +previous five years, when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nor +does it, of course, let us know anything of what he obtained from other +sources. When Miss E. P. Peabody made his acquaintance, in 1836-37, he +had, for example, read all of Balzac that had then appeared; and there +is no record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, +giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him with one volume a +week,--not, on the whole, a meagre rate, when we consider the volumes of +magazines, the possible sources outside of the library, and the +numberless hours required for literary experiment. I do not fancy that +he plodded through books; but rather that he read with the easy energy +of a vigorous, original mind, though he also knew the taste of severe +study. "Bees," he observes in one place, "are sometimes drowned (or +suffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some writers are lost in +their collected learning." He did not find it necessary to mount upon a +pyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get the +highest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a man +of parts," precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice of +reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a +rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books +which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See +Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he +read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he +examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of +Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried +only Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local American +histories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety of +biography,--"Lives of the Philosophers," "Plutarch's Lives," biographies +of Mohammed, Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, +Baxter, Heber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brewster's "Natural +Magic" and Sir Walter Scott's essay on "Demonology and Witchcraft" are +books that one would naturally expect him to read; and he had already +begun to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which he +always had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem not +entirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but it +is a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in +"Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He dipped, also, into botany and +zoölogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary," +read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; and +was entertained by Dunlap's "History of the Arts of Design in America." +It was from this last that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures," +in the "Twice-Told Tales." Some Boston newspapers of the years 1739 to +1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News," +reprinted in "The Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked much +about reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of books +and his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there is +no more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that he +cared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, of +men, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted all three estates. + +Gradually, from the midst of the young author's obscurity, there issued +an attraction which made the world wish to know more of him. One by one, +the quiet essays and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like drops +from a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internal +movement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the dark +concamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. +The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; but +the average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when he +guessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under a +feigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great deal +better if he could come out of seclusion and make himself more like +other people. + +The first contributions were made to the "Salem Gazette" and the "New +England Magazine"; then his attempts extended to the "Boston Token and +Atlantic Souvenir," edited by S. G. Goodrich; and later, to other +periodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor (October, +1831): "I am gratified to find that all whose opinion I have heard agree +with me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen." But for +none of these early performances did Hawthorne receive any considerable +sum of money. And though his writings began at once to attract an +audience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three young ladies--of whom his +future sister-in-law, Miss Peabody, was one--were among the first +admirers; and though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps retarded +his own notoriety by assuming different names in print, [Footnote: Among +these were "Oberon" and "Ashley Allen Royce," or "The Rev. A. A. Royce." +The latter was used by him in the Democratic Review, so late as March, +1840.] they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them out of +magazines, and preserved them. But they could not discover his personal +identity. One of them who lived in Salem used constantly to wonder, in +driving about town, whether the author of her favorite tales could be +living in this or in that house; for it was known that he was a Salem +resident. Miss Peabody, who had in girlhood known something of the +Hathorne family (the name was still written either way, I am told), was +misled by the new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that Nathaniel +Hawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were especially moved by "The +Gentle Boy" when it appeared, and Miss Peabody was on the point of +addressing "The Author of 'The Gentle Boy,'" at Salem, to tell him of +the pleasure he had given. When afterward told of this, Hawthorne said, +"I wish you had! It would have been an era in my life." Soon after, the +Peabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from some one that the new +romancer was the son of the Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that her +family had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking off into +the garden of the old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, +though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy's +form dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind +therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had shown +great facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to say +that it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full of +this conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the +author, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retired +and little-visited mansion. It was the other sister into whose presence +she came, and to her she began pouring out the reason of her intrusion, +delivering at once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. + +"My brother's, you mean," was the response. + +"It _is_ your brother, then." And Miss Peabody added: "If your +brother can write like that, he has no right to be idle." + +"My brother never is idle," answered Miss Louisa, quietly. + +Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Hawthorne from the spell +of solitude, and led directly to the richest experiences of his life. +Old habits, however, were not immediately to be broken, and months +passed without any response being made to the first call. Then at last +came a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales," fresh from the press. But it was +not until the establishment of the "Democratic Review," a year or two +later, that occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne was +too shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Peabody, finally, +addressing him by letter, to inquire concerning the new periodical, for +which he had been engaged as a contributor, asked him to come with both +his sisters on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, +they came. She herself opened the door, and there before her, between +his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong, with no +appearance whatever of timidity, but, instead, an almost fierce +determination making his face stern. This was his resource for carrying +off the extreme inward tremor which he really felt. His hostess brought +out Plaxmau's designs for Dante, just received from Professor Felton of +Harvard, [Footnote: The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman's +drawings, issued in 1833.] and the party made an evening's entertainment +out of them. + +The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss Peabody's, led to +an immediate invitation of Hawthorne to dinner at another house, for the +next day. He accepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped at +the "Salem Gazette" office, full of the excitement of his new +experiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, that he was getting +dissipated. He told of the evening with Miss Peabody, where he said he +had had a delightful time, and of the dinner just achieved. "And I've +had a delightful time there, too!" he added. Mr. Foote, perceiving an +emergency, at once asked the young writer to come to his own house for +an evening. Hawthorne, thoroughly aroused, consented. When the evening +came, several ladies who had been invited assembled before the author +arrived; and among them Miss Peabody. When he reached the place he +stopped short at the drawing-room threshold, startled by the presence of +strangers, and stood perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvan +creature on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie no longer +availed him; he was stricken with dismay; his face lost color, and took +on a warm paleness. All this was in a moment; but the daughter of the +house moved forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though he +assumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very great: he stood by a +table, and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found his +hand trembling so that he was forced to put it down again. + +While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in this way, he was +approached in another by Mr. Goodrich, who induced him to go to Boston, +there to edit the "American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining +Knowledge." This work, which only continued from 1834 to September, +1837, was managed by several gentlemen under the name of the Bewick +Company. One of these was Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver; another +was Goodrich, who also, I think, had some connection with the American +Stationers' Company. The Bewick Company took its name from Thomas +Bewick, the English restorer of the art of wood-engraving, and the +magazine was to do his memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, +in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one profit. It was +a penny popular affair, containing condensed information about +innumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts were +of the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of +several editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at a +salary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got next +to nothing, and that he did not stay in the position long. There is +little in its pages to recall the identity of the editor; but in one +place he quotes as follows from Lord Bacon: "The ointment which witches +use is made of the fat of children digged from their graves, and of the +juices of smallage, cinquefoil, and wolf's-bane, mingled with the meal +of fine wheat," and hopes that none of his readers will try to compound +it. In the tale of "Young Goodman Brown," when Goody Cloyse says, "I was +all anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil and +wolf's-bane," and the Devil continues, "'Mingled with fine wheat and the +fat of a new-born babe,'--'Ah, your worship knows the recipe,' cried the +old lady, cackling aloud." A few scraps of correspondence, mostly +undated, which I have looked over, give one a new view of him in the +bustle and vexation of this brief editorial experience. He sends off +frequent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, who did some of the +condensing and compiling which was a part of the business. "I make +nothing," he says, in one, "of writing a history or biography before +dinner." At another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, but +warns his correspondent to "see that it contains nothing heterodox." At +the end of one of the briefest messages, he finds time to speak of the +cat at home. Perhaps with a memory of the days when he built +book-houses, he had taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton and +Bunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called Beelzebub and +Apollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for me," he writes. But the following +from Boston, February 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of the +situation:-- + +"I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay me +forty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept promising from +one day to another, till I do not see that he means to pay at all. I +have now broke off all intercourse with him, and never think of going +near him ... I don't feel at all obliged to him about the editorship, +for he is a stockholder and director in the Bewick Company; ... and I +defy them to get another to do for a thousand dollars what I do for five +hundred." + +Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum; and the relations +between them were resumed.. A letter of May 5, in the same year, +contains these allusions:-- + +"I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday.... He wants me to undertake a Universal +History, to contain about as much as fifty or sixty pages of the +magazine. [These were large pages.] If you are willing to write any part +of it, ... I shall agree to do it. If necessary I will come home by and +by, and concoct the plan of it with you. It need not be superior in +profundity and polish to the middling magazine articles.... I shall have +nearly a dozen articles in The Token,--mostly quite short." + +The historical project is, of course, that which resulted in the famous +"Peter Parley" work. "Our pay as historians of the universe," says a +letter written six days later, "will be about one hundred dollars, the +whole of which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but better than +the Token; because the writing is so much less difficult." He afterward +carried out the design, or a large part of it, and the book has since +sold by millions, for the benefit of others. There are various little +particulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Hawthorne, +especially if one is familiar with his "Grandfather's Chair" and "True +Stories" for children; though the book has probably undergone some +changes in successive editions. This passage about George IV. is, +however, remembered as being his: "Even when he was quite an old man, +this king cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a great +deal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, for +he might otherwise have been an excellent tailor." + +Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty dollars for four +months' editorial labor. "And, as you may well suppose," he says, "I +have undergone very grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the whole +amount shortly, I shall return to Salem, and stay there till they do." +It seems a currish fate that puts such men into the grasp of paltry and +sordid cares like these! But there is something deeper to be felt than +dissatisfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoying scheme +of harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid yet paying hack. This +deeper something is the pathos of such possibilities, and the spectacle +of so renowned and strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take his +share of worldly struggle; perfectly conscious that it is wholly beneath +his plane, but accepting it as a proper part of the mortal lot; +scornful, but industrious and enduring. You who have conceived of +Hawthorne as a soft-marrowed dweller in the dusk, fostering his own +shyness and fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well at +all this. And you, also, who discourse about the conditions essential to +the development of genius, about the _milieu_ and the +_moment_, and try to prove America a vacuum which the Muse abhors, +will do well to consider the phenomenon. "It is a poor compensation, yet +better than the Token"; so he wrote, knowing that his unmatched tales +were being coined for even a less reward than mere daily bread. He took +the conditions that were about him, and gave them a dignity by his own +fine perseverance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing of the +worst and making it the best, which has formed the history of all art. +You talk of the ages, and choose this or that era as the only fit one. +You long for a cosey niche in the past; but genius crowds time and +eternity into the present, and says to you, "Make your own century!" + +Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthorne +was winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipful +self is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed all +my articles in the last Token, with long extracts." This refers to the +'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell" +and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which has +singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," and gave three +columns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the notice +being no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward met +Hawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting his +tales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception of +a travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form the +interludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, +prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," has been published in the +"Mosses," with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." +Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary the +expense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting the +tales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridge +came to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, +himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales" +were first brought collectively before the world; and for the second +time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligation +to himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew +of his friend's interposition in the affair. + +Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a great +enterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam up +that river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, +Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described his +impressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absence +from Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot long +continue as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between high +prosperity and utter ruin." + +The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not +come through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in a +short time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketches +were reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" was +circulated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author's +name, as a temperance tract.] though Longfellow, then lately established +in his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer," +greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review," which wielded +a great influence in literary affairs. + +On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to +announce the new volume. + +"The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of a +book entitled 'Twice-Told Tales,'--of which, as a classmate, I venture +to request your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well acquainted +at college, that I can plead an absolute right to inflict my +'twice-told' tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that we +were not better known to each other, and have been glad of your success +in literature and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he +adds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you some +part of the pleasure which I have derived from your own 'Outre-Mer.' + +"Your obedient servant, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +Longfellow replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne wrote again, a long +letter picturing his mood with a fulness that shows how keenly he had +felt the honest sympathy of the poet. + +"Not to burden you with my correspondence," he said, "I have delayed a +rejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, until now. It gratifies +me that you have occasionally felt an interest in my situation; but your +quotation from Jean Paul about the 'lark's nest' makes me smile. You +would have been much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwelling +in an owl's nest; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I seldom +venture abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or other--for I +really cannot assign any reasonable why and wherefore--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. +I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I +cannot find the key to let myself out,--and if the door were open, I +should be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you have met with +troubles and changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can +assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and that +there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no share in either +its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only +dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some +unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in +the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction +all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant +remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that +future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more +tolerable than the past. + +"You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that I have led a +studious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so +desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me the +fruits of study. 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. I have +had no external excitement,--no consciousness that the public would like +what I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that they should do +so. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be ambitious of, I have been +considerably interested in literature; and if my writings had made any +decided impression, I should have been stimulated to greater exertions; +but there has been no warmth of approbation, so that I have always +written with benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in the +lack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I have +nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy to +give a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes through a +peep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, and the two or +three articles in which I have portrayed these glimpses please me better +than the others. + +"I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I +lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall +have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you +would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as +children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that +will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, +offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition +[Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing +that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I should +certainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I have +always had a desire to run round the world.... I intend in a week or +two to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in the +summer,--employing the interval in making a tour somewhere in New +England. You who have the dust of distant countries on your +'sandal-shoon' cannot imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in this +little excursion.... + +"Yours sincerely, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfellow's review of the +book, appeared; and the note of thanks which Hawthorne sent is full of +an exultation strongly in contrast with the pensive tone of the letter +just given. + +SALEM, June 19th, 1837. + +DEAR LONGFELLOW:--I have to-day 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 correctness 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.... + +Very sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +That "Evangeline" was written upon a theme suggested to Hawthorne (by a +friend who had heard it from a French Canadian [Footnote: See American +Note-Books, October 24,1839]) and by him made over to the poet, has +already been made public. Hawthorne wrote, on its appearance:---- + +"I have read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorous +to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most triumphant of all +your successes." + +Nevertheless, he gave vent to some of his admiration in a notice of the +work which he wrote for "The Salem Advertiser," a Democratic paper. + +"The story of Evangeline and her lover," he there says, "is as poetical +as the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to the heart as a +fact that has actually taken place in human life." He speaks of "its +pathos all illuminated with beauty,----so that the impression of the +poem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, and glows with the purest +sunshine where we might the least expect it, on the pauper's +death-bed.... The story is told with the simplicity of high and +exquisite art, which causes it to flow onward as naturally as the +current of a stream. Evangeline's wanderings give occasion to many +pictures both of northern and southern scenery and life: but these do +not appear as if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale; they seem to +throw their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as it +flows past them.... By this work of his maturity he has placed himself +on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of +envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, +until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, +as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than +this poem of Evangeline!" + +Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as follows:---- + +"MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:----I have been waiting and waiting in the hope of +seeing you in Cambridge.... I have been meditating upon your letter, and +pondering with friendly admiration your review of 'Evangeline,' in +connection with the subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, a +literary project arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can pay +you back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a theme for +story, in return for a theme for song. It is neither more nor less than +the history of the Acadians, _after_ their expulsion as well as +before. Felton has been making some researches in the State archives, +and offers to resign the documents into your hands. + +"Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so as to pass a night +with us, if possible, this week; if not a day and night. + +"Ever sincerely yours, + +"HENRY W. LONGFELLOW." There is nothing in our literary annals more +unique and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm recognition +of his old classmate, and the mutual courtesies to which it led. One is +reminded by it of the William Tell episode between Goethe and Schiller, +though it was in this case only the theme and nothing of material that +was transferred. + +An author now almost forgotten, Charles Fenno Hoffman, also published in +"The American Monthly Magazine," [Footnote: For March, 1838.] which he +was editing, a kindly review, which, however, underestimated the +strength of the new genius, as it was at first the general habit to do. +"Minds like Hawthorne's," he said, "seem to be the only ones suited to +an American climate.... Never can a nation be impregnated with the +literary spirit by minor authors alone.... Yet men like Hawthorne are +not without their use.".... In this same number of the magazine, by the +way, was printed Hawthorne's "Threefold Destiny," under the pseudonyme +of Ashley Allen Royce; and the song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, +is thus given:---- + + "O, man can seek the downward glance, + And each kind word,----affection's spell,---- + Eye, voice, its value can enhance; + For eye may speak, and tongue can tell. + + "But woman's love, it waits the while + To echo to another's tone; + To linger on another's smile, + Ere dare to answer with its own." + +These versicles, though they might easily be passed over as commonplace, +hold a peculiar inner radiance that perhaps issued from the dawn of a +lifelong happiness for Hawthorne at this period. + + + + +V. + + +AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. + +1838-1842. + +Hawthorne's mood at this time was one of profound dissatisfaction at 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 that I can call 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 on a table that stood +by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself +more of a man." He was now thirty-four, and the long restraint and +aloofness of the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousness +that he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and the sense of loss +in being denied his share in affairs, had become intolerable. It was +now, also, that a new phase of being was opened to him. He had become +engaged to Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. + +President Van Buren had been two years in office, 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 a lady 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 had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time been +tendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it because +he would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know," said +the lady, "that he would be very glad of employment." The result was +that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soon +after, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire further +about it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher and +gauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just before +entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore a +very dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his own +appointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher. +Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation in +office. It is not good for the human being." But he took his place, +writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839): + +"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 and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the +Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class." + +Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the election for the +Whigs, he suffered the fate of his predecessor. And here I may offer an +opinion as to Hawthorne's connection with the Democratic party. When +asked why he belonged to it, he answered that he lived in a democratic +country. "But we are all republicans alike," was the objection to his +defence. "Well," he said, "I don't understand history till it's a +hundred years old, and meantime it's safe to belong to the Democratic +party." Still, Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his less +transient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere badinage, +like that just quoted, must not be taken as really covering the ground +of his choice in politics. A man of such deep insight, accustomed to +bring it to bear upon everything impartially, was not to be influenced +by any blind and accidental preference in these questions; albeit his +actual performance of political duties was slight. I think he recognized +the human strength of the Democratic, as opposed to the theorizing and +intellectual force of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, that +with us the party of culture should be the radical party, upholding +ideas even at the expense of personal liberty; and the party of +ignorance that of order, the conservating force, careful of personal +liberty even to a fault! Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work too +rapidly here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greater +resistance to them. + +This term of service in Boston was of course irksome to Hawthorne, and +entirely suspended literary endeavors for the time. Yet "my life only is +a burden," he writes, "in the same way that it is to every toilsome +man.... But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons +of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeing +that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the +midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide." He +need not always have made the employment so severe, but the wages of the +wharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked in a day, and +Hawthorne used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the wharf +at the earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, +he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there could +not have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and the +interval served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm episode. + +That this least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a +socialistic community, seems at first inexplicable enough; but in +reality it was the most logical step he could have taken. He had +thoroughly tried seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself the +first realization of what the world actually is. Next, he entered into +the performance of definite duties and the receipt of gain, and watched +the operation of these two conditions on himself and those about him; an +experiment that taught him the evils of the system, and the necessity of +burying his better energies so long as he took part in affairs. This +raised doubts, of course, as to how he was to fit himself into the frame +of things; and while he mused upon some more generous arrangement of +society, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was started which +plainly proposed to settle the problem. Fourier had only just passed +away; the spread of his ideas was in its highest momentum. On the other +hand, the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of Emerson, +had carried men's thoughts to the very central springs of intellectual +law, while in Boston the writing and preaching of Channing roused a +practical radicalism, and called for a better application of +Christianity to affairs. The era of the Transcendentalists had come. The +Chardon Street meetings--assemblages of ardent theorists and +"come-outers" of every type, who, while their sessions lasted, held +society in their hands and moulded it like clay--were a rude +manifestation of the same deep current. In the midst of these +influences, Mr. Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy, received +an inspiration to establish a modified socialistic community on our own +soil. The Industrial Association which he proposed at West Roxbury was +wisely planned with direct reference to the emergencies of American +life; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and the +Saint Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mistakes of +Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; though it agreed with +Fourier and Owen both, as I understand, in respect of labor. In a better +and freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, the +design sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control. +His 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. It was a practical, orderly, +noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs and +institutions. "A few men and women 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." At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the young +Brownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George William +Curtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kind +of granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy a +burden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society, +flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "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." + +To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad, +the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath the +lightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to begin +repairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losing +nothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable. Because +Brook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the +meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, in +Boston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not at +first know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced as +willing to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, he +felt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if," he tells me, "the heavens +would presently be filled with angels, 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." For his personal +benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one, +to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to +secure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which should +successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body and +brain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours of +daily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like a +dragon," says Mr. Ripley. + +The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leading +aim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men, +women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildings +accommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table was +spread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The Pilgrim +House; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as The +Cottage. In The Eyrie, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great part +of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when +the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and +shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom +Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an +original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with +the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements +failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. +Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farm +would drive into Boston in carriages and wagons to the opera or the +play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes, in +The Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped them +with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, +belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, +and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns, and +hats,--which were then an innovation in feminine attire. In the season +of wood-wanderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of barberry +or hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered,--a suggestion of the +future Priscilla of "Blithedale." Some families and students came to the +farm as boarders, paying for their provision in household or field +labor, or by teaching; a method which added nothing to the funds of the +establishment, and in this way rather embarrassed it. A great deal of +individual liberty was allowed. People could eat in private or public; +and it has been said by those who were there that the unconventional +life permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was quite +unfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. When a member +wished to be absent, another would generally contrive to take his work +for the interval; and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. +Still, I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncertain air +about the enterprise, much of the time; and the more intimate unions of +some among the members who were congenial, gave rise to intermittent +jealousies in those who found no special circle. "In this way it was +very much like any small town of the same number of inhabitants," says +one of my informants. Indeed, though every one who shared in the Brook +Farm attempt seems grateful for what it taught of the dignity and the +real fellowship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons that +it could not long have continued at its best. The system of compensating +all kinds of service, skilled or otherwise, according to the time used, +excited--as some have thought--much dissatisfaction even among the +generous and enlightened people who made up the society. "I thought I +could see some incipient difficulties working in the system," writes a +lady who was there in 1841. "Questions already arose as to how much +individual freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the best +interests of the whole. Those who came there were the results of another +system of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radical +tendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shown +equal, certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of this augury +is the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly more +Fourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that another +generation might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence +among them. Theories and opinions were very openly talked over, and +practical details as well; and though this must have had its charm, yet +it would also touch uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon a +peculiar mood. In such enterprises there must always be a slight +inclination to establish a conformity to certain freedoms which really +become oppressions. Shyness was not held essential to a regenerated +state of things, and was perhaps too much disregarded; as also was +illness, an emergency not clearly provided for, which had to be met by +individual effort and self-sacrifice, after the selfish and +old-established fashion of the world. How this atmosphere affected +Hawthorne he has hinted in his romance founded on some aspects of +community life: "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." +A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow +some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face +shaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too much +of a party up there," was his answer, as he pointed toward the community +buildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sit +silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive, +where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the +young people," himself almost always holding a book before him, but +seldom turning the leaves. + +One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased +during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to +disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, +even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the +old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination +flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm +community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in +Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a +delightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his +experiment. + +"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, if +you can do anything better with them?... I am bent upon coming to see +you, this summer. Do not you remember how we used to go a-fishing +together in Raymond? Your mention of wild flowers and pickerel has given +me a longing for the woods and waters again." + +Then, in August, + +"C---- A----," writes his sister Louisa, "told me the other day that he +heard you were to do the travelling in Europe for the community." + +This design, if it existed, might well have found a place in the +Dialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne once meant to write; for this +was his only summer at Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, of +something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and +there became a rich experience," he writes, in "Blithedale." "I found +myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on +the same system." This was, in fact, his attitude; for, after passing +the winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting himself a little +while, he returned in the spring to look over the ground and perhaps +select a house-site, just before his marriage, but came to an adverse +decision. This no doubt accorded with perceptions which he was not +called upon to make public; but because he was a writer of fiction there +seems to have arisen a tacit agreement, in some quarters, to call him +insincere in his connection with this socialistic enterprise. He had not +much to gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its treasury +a thousand dollars, about the whole of his savings from the custom-house +stipend, and had next to nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, +while a niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost him nothing +but labor. The length of his stay was by no means uncommonly short, for +there was always a transient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whom +remained but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, who had +given six thousand dollars for the building of the Pilgrim House, and +hoped to end his days within it, retired forever after a very short +sojourn, not dissuaded from the theory, but convinced that the practical +application was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though a manful +effort was made, with good pecuniary success for a time, ten years +brought the final hour of failure to this millennial plan. + +Very few people who were at Brook Farm seem to have known or even to +have seen Hawthorne there, though he was elected chairman of the Finance +Committee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome presence, +his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and his hearty +participation in labor commanded a kind of reverence from some of the +members. Next to his friend George P. Bradford, one of the workers and +teachers in the community, his most frequent associates were a certain +Rev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book called +"Scenery-Shower," designed to develop a proper taste for landscape; and +one Frank Farley, who had been a pioneer in the West, a man of singular +experiences and of an original turn, who was subject to mental +derangement at times. The latter visited him at the Old Manse, +afterward, when Hawthorne was alone there, and entered actively into his +makeshift housekeeping. + +President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an acquaintance about +Hawthorne, said: "He is enthusiastic when he speaks of the aims and +self-sacrifice of some of the Brook Farm people; but when I questioned +him whether he would like to live and die in a community like that, he +confessed he was not suited to it, but said he had learned a great deal +from it. 'What, for instance?' 'Why, marketing, for one thing. I didn't +know anything about it practically, and I rode into Boston once or twice +with the men who took in things to sell, and saw how it was done.'" The +things of deepest moment which he learned were not to be stated fully in +conversation; but I suppose readers would draw the same inference from +this whimsical climax of Hawthorne's as that which has been found in +"The Blithedale Romance"; namely, that he looked on his socialistic life +as the merest jesting matter. Such, I think, is the general opinion; and +a socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the Oneida Community, has +indignantly cried out against the book, as a "poetico-sneering romance." +This study of human character, which would keep its value in any state +of society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and sane, to be +belittled to the record of a brief experiment! Hawthorne indeed, +speaking in the prefatory third person of his own aim, says: "His whole +treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of +the romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to +illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in +respect to socialism." And though he has told the story +autobiographically, it is through a character whom we ought by no means +to identify with Hawthorne in his whole mood. I have taken the liberty +of applying to Hawthorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale's +account, because they picture something known to be the case; and a +careful sympathy will find no difficulty in distinguishing how much is +real and how much assumed. Coverdale, being merely the medium for +impressions of the other characters, is necessarily light and +diaphanous, and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an advantage +to the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt to hold him up in the +air all the time, but lets him down now and then, and assumes the part +himself. The allusions to the community scheme are few, and most of them +are in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely because the hopes of the +socialists were so unduly high, he values them and still is glad of +them, though they have fallen to ruin. "In my own behalf, I rejoice that +I could once think better of the world than it deserved. It is a mistake +into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and +higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error." +Where is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensive +utterance? There is a class of two-pronged minds, which seize a pair of +facts eagerly, and let the truth drop out of sight between them. For +these it is enough that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farm +memories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in the first person, +with a few dashes of humor. + +Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold, +self-removed observation," quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph in +a letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled.... My mind will not +be abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myself +with catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter. +Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to set +seriously about literary occupation for the present." This is offered as +showing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits our +critic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of his +nature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up +into fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up his +entire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that each +should take such share of the labor as was for his own and the general +good, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A +singular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthorne +lays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had no +other motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing from +hearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually! +He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled +me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) +to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, by +delicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record, +and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the +companions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden +even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold +inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the +inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such distortion is amazing. +The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled to +get at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is the +motive? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the amusement of +making stories out of it? The holding up to one's self the stern and +secret realities of life is no such pleasing pursuit. These men are +driven to it by the divine impulse which has made them seers and +recorders. + +As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned with the same rich +human faith that fills the heart of every manly genius; and if +discouraging truth made him suffer, it was all the more because his +ideals--and at first his trust in their realization--were so generous +and so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, transferred to +the "The Blithedale Romance," show the wisdom on which his withdrawal +was based. The first relates to himself: "No sagacious man will long +retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and +progressive people, without periodically returning to the settled system +of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old +standpoint." He had too much imagination to feel safe in giving free +rein to it, in a special direction of theoretic conduct; he also +remembered that, as the old system of things was full of error, it was +possible that a new one might become so in new ways, unless watched. The +second observation touches the real weakness of the Brook Farm +institution: "It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first +questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, +self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the +advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But +to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regarded +society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than +new brotherhood._" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's +attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of men +who have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on a +grander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energy +after another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be made +effectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, and +recognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the trouble +to formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in +advance. + +The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristic +part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and rapt +enthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughing +allusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similar +to Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for the +field-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that they +were people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes with +refinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the tone +Hawthorne has given to Coverdale. + +The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little +seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the +farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of +a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been +thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at +Brook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that he +traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well to +remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote with +any one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one of +his most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of +composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he was +describing resembled in some point one or more persons of his +acquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla had +developed itself in his imagination, he found he could give her a +greater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; and +that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figure +to prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history of +Zenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds of +all readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down +and describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises to +make the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons the +character becomes quite a different thing to them from the actual +prototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no +doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that and +the atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that, +without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meeting +might have the effect of _suggesting_ it. Then he would brood over +this suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to his mind; and +thus his characters were conceived independently in a region somewhere +between himself and the people who had awakened speculation in his mind. + +He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might be +transferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the story +of a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her +aspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and the +hard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable and +morbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homely +stream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly +troubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himself +coming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summon +Hollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to find +the poor girl's body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the villagers +had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appeared +among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their +service." + +By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance" +bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. + + + + +VI. + + +THE OLD MANSE. + +1842-1846. + +There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makes +each step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of their +careers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, +Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllic +retirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy," he +says, "I felt as if there were no question to be put." + +Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his first +home. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather's +Chair," the first part of a series of sketches of New England history +for children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wiley +and Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stay +at the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also some +biographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He also +resumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review," the most brilliant +periodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and +other noted authors made their appearance. It was published at +Washington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensions +to a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, at +a fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not always +Hie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into +which he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," "The +Celestial Railroad," "The Procession of Life," "Fire Worship," "Buds and +Bird Voices," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the +"Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followed +in the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales" +was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the +"African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, +who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evidently carried +great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel +Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to +a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an +attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time +of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and +that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, +was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an +excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of +the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small +profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to +Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for +nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The +explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native +authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to +even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he +wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards +empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come +from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so +broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for +small gains." + +Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic" +some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his +"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. +A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was then +in the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser," +says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. No +American book in a long time has been so well noticed." The same firm +were now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears +in the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of another +scheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow," he writes, +"if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS.! MSS.! Mr. +Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and how +stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?" +The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mosses +from an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. This +attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows a +wider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-Told +Tales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken such +intimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommending +themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse was +assuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyed +happiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of first +possession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the +quiet course of the days, with their openings into healthful outdoor +exercise, made a perfect balance between creation and recreation. The +house in which he dwelt was itself a little island of the past, standing +intact above the flood of events; all around was a mild, cultivated +country, broken into gentle variety of "hills to live with," and touched +with just enough wildness to keep him from tiring of it: the stream that +flowed by his orchard was for him an enchanted river. He renewed the +pleasant sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, and +in winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid skates. In the +more genial months, the garden gave him pleasant employment; and in his +journal-musings, the thought gratifies him that he has come into a +primitive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manse +are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of that +immemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences has +all been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the +"Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed in +that vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, +into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrast +between the peaceful character of these first years at Concord and the +increased sombreness of some of the visions there recorded. + +The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to a +stature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on his +actual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value for +the "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. But +they, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear brown +twilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" are +the work of a man who has learned to know the world, and the atmosphere +in which they were composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of some +of them. "The Birthmark," "The Bosom Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," +and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made +up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The +Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of +awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful +and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes +almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? +The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliest +of all elements in production,--time; the brooding propensity was +indispensable to him; and, accordingly, as some of these conceptions had +occurred to him a good while before the carrying out, they received +great and almost excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, the +pervasiveness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in the +earlier tales: in this series, the idea bursts up like a long-buried +fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of Hell seem yawning +beneath us. Dismal, too, is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial," and +dreary "The Christmas Banquet," with its assembly of the supremely +wretched. In "Earth's Holocaust" we get the first result of Hawthorne's +insight into the demonianism of reformatory schemers who forget that the +centre of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this marks +out the way to "The Scarlet Letter" on the one hand, and "The Blithedale +Romance" on the other, in which the same theme assumes two widely +different phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more certainly +the central fountain of moral suggestion from which he drew his best +inspirations. The least pleasing quality of the work is, I think, its +overcharged allegorical burden. Some of the most perfect of all his +tales are here, but their very perfection makes one recoil the more at +the supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels a certain +chagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the completeness of embodiment +had given the central idea a shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorne +is most enjoyable and most true to himself when he offers us the chalice +of poetry filled to the very brim with the clear liquid of moral truth. +But, at first, there seems to have been a conflict between his aesthetic +and his ethical impulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from the +allegorical, by calling it a part of some whole which it represents. +"Allegory cannot be other than spoken consciously; whereas in the symbol +it is very possible that the general truth represented may be working +unconsciously in the writer's mind.... The advantage of symbolical +writing over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of faculties, +but simple predominance." Now in the "Allegories of the Heart," +collected in the "Mosses," there is sometimes an extreme consciousness +of the idea to be illustrated; and though the ideas are in a measure +symbolical, yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effect +to leave the artistic result quite generous and satisfying. Allegory +itself, as an echo of one's thought, is often agreeable, and pleases +through surprise; yet it is apt to be confusing, and smothers the poetic +harmony. In his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a hugely significant, +symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this partial vexation. "The +Celestial Railroad," of course, must be excepted from censure, being the +sober parody of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satirical +allegory. And in two cases, "Drowne's Wooden Image," and "The Artist of +the Beautiful," we find the most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, +the story of Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet rendered +additionally lovely by its homeliness; and the essence of all artistic +life, in the other, presented in a form that cannot be surpassed. "Mrs. +Bullfrog" is a sketch which is ludicrously puzzling, until one recalls +Hawthorne's explanation: "The story was written as a mere experiment in +that style; it did not come from any depth within me,--neither my heart +nor mind had anything to do with it." [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. II.] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark in +one direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of the +clearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales," begins in the "Mosses" +to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with the +gathering strength of imagination,--the enlarged power for bringing the +most unreal things quite into the circle of realities,--a compensating +richness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices," +"Fire Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." + +Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the +absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first +had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any +displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign +to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the +highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as +the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere +acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in +him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the +majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of +rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a +given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great +part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless +literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has +form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne +thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould. + +The "Mosses," as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for +the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current +epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of +New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his +attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly +and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he +was, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a Democratic +President. On the other hand, a writer in "The Church Review" of New +Haven, whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tilt +against him as a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, of +phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. In +like manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at the +Transcendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals +betray), Edgar Poe, a literary _Erinaceus_, wellnigh exhausted his +supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward which +he felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, in his +most high-pitched strain of personal abuse, "get a bottle of visible +ink, hang (if possible) the editor of 'The Dial,' cut Mr. Alcott, and +throw out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the 'North +American Review.'" This paper of Poe's is a laughable and pathetic case +of his professedly punctilious analysis covering the most bitter +attacks, with traces of what looks like envy, and others of a resistless +impulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against the average +mind. He begins with a discussion of originality and peculiarity: "In +one sense, to be peculiar is to be original," he says, but the true +originality is "not the uniform but the continuous peculiarity, ... +giving its own hue to everything it touches," and touching everything. +From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, which seems to make two +different things out of the same thing, he goes on to conclude that, +"the fact is, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail +of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is _not_ +original in any sense." He then attempts to show that Hawthorne's +peculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck as the source of this +idiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinuation may be the origin of Hawthorne's +effort to read some of the German author, while at the Old Manse,--an +attempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the unhappy critic brings +up his favorite charge of plagiarism; and it happens, as usual, that the +writer borrowed from is Poe himself! The similarity which he discovers +is between "Howe's Masquerade" and "William Wilson," and is based upon +fancied resemblances of situation, which have not the least foundation +in the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, +"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, written +a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:-- + +"Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that they belong to +the highest region of art,--an art subservient to genius of a very lofty +order. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had +been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent +_cliques_ who beset our literature; ... but we have been most +agreeably mistaken.... Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, +creation, imagination, originality,--a trait which, in the literature of +fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the +originality ... is but imperfectly understood.... The inventive or +original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of _tone_ as +in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in _all_ points." + +This, certainly, is making generous amends; but before he leaves the +subject, the assertion is repeated, that "he is peculiar, and _not_ +original." + +Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's represents pretty +well the want of understanding with which Hawthorne was still received +by many readers. His point of view once seized upon, nothing could be +more clear and simple than his own exposition of refined and evasive +truths; but the keen edge of his perception remained quite invisible to +some. Of the "Twice-Told Tales" Hawthorne himself wrote:-- + +"The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but it +is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design +on the writer's part to make them so.... Every sentence, so far as it +embodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody +who will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book +in a proper mood." + +But it was hard for people to find that mood, because in fact the Tales +_were_ profound. Their language was clear as crystal; but all the +more dazzlingly shone through the crystal that new light of Hawthorne's +gaze. + +After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the Manse came to an +end, and he returned to Salem, with some prospect of an office there +from the new Democratic government of Polk. It is said that President +Tyler had at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post-office, +but was induced to withdraw his name. There were local factions that +kept the matter in abeyance. The choice, in any case, lay between the +Naval Office and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne's +appointment to the latter. "Whichever it be," wrote Hawthorne, "it is to +you that I shall owe it, among so many other solid kindnesses. I have as +true friends as any man has, but you have been the friend in need and +the friend indeed." At this time he was seriously in want of some +profitable employment, for he had received almost nothing from the +magazine. It was the period of credit, and debts were hard to collect. +His journal at the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have been +told that, besides losing the value of many of his contributions to the +"Democratic," through the failure of the magazine, he had advanced money +to the publishers, which was never repaid; but this has not been +corroborated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook Farm, it is +a little doubtful. At length, he was installed as surveyor in the Salem +Custom-House, where he hoped soon to begin writing at ease. + + + + +VII. + + +THE SCARLET LETTER. + +1846-1850. + +The literary result of the four years which Hawthorne now, after long +absence, spent in his native town, was the first romance which gave him +world-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write soon was not +easy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. + +"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my +regard," he says, in "The Custom-House." "I cared not at this period for +books; they were apart from me.... A gift, a faculty, if it had not +departed, was suspended and inanimate within me." + +Readers of that charming sketch will remember the account of the +author's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet letter in an unfinished +upper room of the public building in which he labored at this time, and +how he was urged by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written an +account of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter public. The +discovery of these materials is narrated with such reassuring accuracy, +that probably a large number of people still suppose this to have been +the origin of "The Scarlet Letter." But there is no knowledge among +those immediately connected with Hawthorne of any actual relic having +been found; nor, of course, is it likely that anything besides the +manuscript memorandum should have been preserved. But I do not know that +he saw even this. The papers of Mr. Poe were probably a pure invention +of the author's. + +A strange coincidence came to light the year after the publication of +the romance. A letter from Leutze, the painter, was printed in the Art +Union Bulletin, running thus:-- + +"I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald (in an old +castle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery; it has haunted me +ever since. It was not the beauty or finish that charmed me; it was +something strange in the figures, the immense contrast between the child +and what was supposed to be her gouvernante in the garb of some severe +order; the child, a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, a +princess of some foreign land. No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter' +than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no one +else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, and +found my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicable +embroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token of +her order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hidden +by the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon +it at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as +was possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever +came to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freak +of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, the +Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please." + +A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it be +trustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it has +been verified. + +The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The name +Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an original +and isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story." + +In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice-told series printed +many years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with no +mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the +breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. +Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had +embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the +nicest art of needlework." A friend asked Hawthorne if he had +documentary evidence for this particular punishment, and he replied that +he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, though +with no attendant details. [Footnote: I may here transcribe, as a further +authority, which Hawthorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws of +Plymouth Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the events +of "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the Court and the +Authoritie thereof that whosoeuer shall committ Adultery shal bee +seuerly Punished by whipping two seueral times viz: once whiles the +Court is in being att which they are convicted of the fact, and the +second time as the Court shall order, and likewise to were two Capitall +letters viz: A D cut cut in Cloth and sewed on their vpermost garments +on their arme or backe; and if at any time they shal bee taken without +said letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be forthwith +Taken and publicly whipt."] This friend said to another at the time: "We +shall hear of that letter again, for it evidently has made a profound +impression on Hawthorne's mind." Returning to Salem, where his +historical stories and sketches had mainly been written, he reverted +naturally to the old themes; and this one doubtless took possession of +him soon after his entrance on his customs duties. But these disabled +him from following it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs got hold +of the government again, Hawthorne's literary faculty came into power +also, for he was turned out of office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, +he got to work on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the +"Mosses" he had formally renounced the short story; but "The Scarlet +Letter" proved so highly wrought a tragedy that he had fears of its +effect upon the public, if presented alone. + +"In the present case I have some doubts about the expediency, [he wrote +to Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new publisher, Ticknor,] +because, if the book is made up entirely of 'The Scarlet Letter,' it +will be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the shadows of the +story with so much light as I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping so +close to its point as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise than +by turning different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it +will weary very many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, to +stake the book entirely on this one chance?" + +His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward printed with the "The +Snow Image," and entitle the whole "Old Time Legends, together with +Sketches Experimental and Ideal." But this was abandoned. On the 4th of +February, 1850, he writes to Bridge:-- + +"I finished my book only yesterday: one end being in the press at +Boston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as you +see, the story is at least fourteen miles long.... + +"My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before April. He +speaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, +to whom I read the conclusion last night. [Footnote: This recalls an +allusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking of +Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own +pathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of +The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,--tried to read it, +rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down +on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous +state, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion while +writing it, for many months."] It broke her heart, and sent her to bed +with a grievous headache,--which I look upon as a triumphant success. +Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate on +what bowlers calls a 'ten-strike.' But I do not make any such +calculation." + +Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangible +and terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The Scarlet +Letter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of five +thousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salem +and in the region of New England history where he had won his first +triumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, received +the applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, and +speedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum," received +"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at the +same time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on the +author which it is quite worth while to record here. This was an article +in "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quarterly published at New Haven), +[Footnote: In the number for January, 1851.] written, I am told, by a +then young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical +body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous +article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking +of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet +_Lakers_ "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But +that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay +writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing +them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was +in the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism of +the Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It is +time," announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, +"that the literary world should learn that Churchmen are, in a very +large proportion, their readers and book-buyers, and that the tastes and +principles of Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those of +Puritans and Socialists." Yet, inconsistently enough, he declared that +Bay writers could not have grown to the stature of authors at all, +unless they had first shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "a +religion of indifference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as +Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied +that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a +writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. +But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he +was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing +but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest +taste. He imagines that Hawthorne "selects the intrigue of an adulterous +minister, as the groundwork of his ideal" of Puritan times, and asks, +"Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" Yet, being in some +points, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad," he +says, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an +experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And +in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is +willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss +to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a +provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the +beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: +whether he is making fun of all religion, or only giving a fair hint of +the essential sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished +at the kind of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseology, +he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "the +romance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, +like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a very +tolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, +within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found this +doctrine urged? Only once, faintly, and then in the words of one of the +chief sinners. + +"Shelley himself," says the austere critic, airing his literature, +"never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that in which the +polluted minister comforts himself with the thought, that the revenge of +the injured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 'Thou +and I never did so, Hester,' he suggests; and she responds, 'Never, +never! What we did had a consecration of its own.'" + +And these wretched and distorted consolations of two erring and +condemned souls, the righteous Churchman, with not very commendable +taste, seizes upon as the moral of the book, leaving aside the terrible +retribution which overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vain +plan of flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne defend +their excuses for themselves. Of Hester:-- + +"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These [he says] had been her teachers,--stern +and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much +amiss." + +And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmesdale must, of course, +by any pure-minded reader, be included among the errors thus taken into +her mind. + +"The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience +calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; +although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of +the most sacred of them.... Were such a man once more to fall, what plea +could be urged in extenuation of his crime? _None_; unless it avail +him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; +that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which +harrowed it." + +But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer goes on to show, +in this solemn declaration:-- + +"And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has +once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. +It may be watched and guarded.... But there is still the ruined wall, +and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his +unforgotten triumph." + +How Mr. Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is then described; but +it is also shown how Roger Chillingworth, the personified retribution of +the two sinners, fastens himself to them in all their movements, and +will be with them in any flight, however distant. + +"'Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,' said he, looking darkly at +the clergyman, 'there was no one place so secret, no high place nor +lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me.'" + +And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of +the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this +delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their +empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment of +fulfilment. + +But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient affinity of his +imagination, saw nothing of the awful truths so clearly though briefly +expressed, and finally came to the conclusion that the moral of the +whole fiction was "that the Gospel has not set the relations of man and +woman where they should be, and that a new gospel is needed to supersede +the Seventh Commandment, and the bond of matrimony." + +"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer,] is philosophized into a +natural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of marriage, which by +holding her irrevocably to her vows, as plighted to a dried-up old +book-worm, ... is viewed as making her heart an easy victim.... The sin +of her seducer, too, seems to be considered as lying, not so much in the +deed itself, as in his long concealment of it; and in fact the whole +moral of the tale is given in the words, 'Be true, he true!' as if +sincerity in sin were a virtue, and as if 'Be clean, he clean!' were not +the more fitting conclusion." + +But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious that Hawthorne probably +never dreamed of any one's requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it is +the starting-point, the very foundation, of the tragedy. The tale is a +massive argument for repentance, which is the flinging aside of +concealment, and the open and truthful acknowledgment of sin. In the +Puritan mode of dealing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem of +repentance and confession presented in the most drastic, concentrated, +and startling form; for the Puritans carried out in the severest style a +practical illustration of the consequences of moral offence. Since men +and women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse and public +admission of wrong-doing, these governors and priests determined to try +the effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. People +were set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at the +whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their ears +cropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; other +criminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that this +was only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of such +punishment were arrogating too much to themselves, and shared the office +of the fiend; that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outward +truthfulness would never build up the real inner truth of the soul;--all +this Hawthorne perceived and endeavored to portray in a form which +should be as a parable, applying its morality to the men and women of +to-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirectness. As a +study of a system of social discipline never before so expounded, it +claimed the deepest attention. And never was the capacity of sinning men +and women for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in this +romance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion was shown to be +self-analysis; that is, the conscientious view of one's self which keeps +the right or wrong of one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester was +on the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, and the +advantages of this comparative trueness are constantly made manifest. +She in a measure conquers evil and partly atones for her wrong, by the +good which she is able to do among her fellow-beings,--as much +compensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman who has once been so +essentially corrupted as she. Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of native +truth that he never allows his conscience to slumber for a moment, and +plies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent he +is better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own hands +the retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity for +his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in that +which ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, +and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, +though not coolly and maliciously false, stops short of open confession, +and in this submits himself to the most occult and corrosive influence +of his own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible consisted in +abject acknowledgment. Once announcing that he had fallen, and was +unworthy, he might have taken his place on the lower moral plane; and, +equally resigning the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hester, +he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing of some limited +good. The shock to the general belief in probity would have been great; +but the discovery that the worst had been made known, that the minister +was strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the place he no +longer was fit for, would have restored the public mind again, by +showing it that a deeper probity possible than that which it wanted to +see sustained. This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothing is so +destructive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that sincerity in +sin is a virtue, but that it is better than sin and falsehood combined. +And if anything were wanting, at first, to make this clear, there +certainly is not a particle of obscurity left by the glare of the +catastrophe, when the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that he and she +may meet after death, and spend their immortal life together, and says +that God has proved his mercy most of all by the afflictions he has laid +upon him. + +As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be revealed, it could have +been no other than that ultimate lifting up of the race into a plane of +the utmost human truthfulness, which every one who believes in the +working of all things for good, looks forward to with vague longing, but +with most certain faith. How far the Puritan organization was from this +state of applied truth, the romance shows. Nearly every note in the +range of Puritan sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. The +still unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who cannot but feel +something of mercifulness toward Hester is overruled by the harsh +exultation of other women in her open shame. We have the noble and +spotless character of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of his +death on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but much more +distinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, who, nevertheless, is +utterly incompetent to deal with the problem of a woman's lost morality. +Governor Bellingham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of the +state and its ferocious sanctions; yet in the very house with him dwells +Mistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in the secret knowledge of +widespread sin. Thus we are led to a fuller comprehension of +Chillingworth's attitude as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea of +spiritual government; and in his diabolical absorption and gloating +interest in sin, we behold an exaggerated--but logically +exaggerated--spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipitate and +personally supervise the punishments of eternity on this side of death. + +Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply to +this article in "The Church Review," though he recognized, as all +readers of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not by +any means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity for +whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. + +Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so +excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly +be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the +adroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, which +we call "plot." Passion and motive and character, having been brought +together in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; but +the individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures, +with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama +gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration, +indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evident +as is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, +long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like a +playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather +arrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this is +simply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist's +method; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that, +and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies all +Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but also +protracting the impression a little too much, at times. Yet the general +conception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating +the characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis of +the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and, +notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole work +carries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of events +is affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the +necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influences +novelists of the higher order. + +As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extended +romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in +its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the +aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was +no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure +beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself +and the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had not +so transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty, +he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious to +speculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House of +the Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the tragic +element in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentleness +of incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discovering +the writer's real measure, for a while longer. But "The Scarlet Letter" +burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent public awoke +in good earnest, and never forgot, though it speedily forgave the shock. + +There was another smaller but attendant explosion. Hawthorne's prefatory +chapter on the Custom-House incensed some of his fellow-citizens of +Salem, terribly. There seems to have been a general civic clamor against +him, on account of it, though it would be hard to find any rational +justification therefor. In reference to the affair, Hawthorne wrote at +the time:-- + +"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, and on two false +indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf." + +This refers to political machinations of the party opposed to Hawthorne +as an official: they had pledged themselves, it was understood, not to +ask for his ejection, and afterward set to work to oust him without +cause. There is reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperation +at these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoyance came upon him +when he was worn out with the excitement of composing "The Scarlet +Letter"; and this ebullition of local hostility must moreover have been +especially offensive at a moment when the public everywhere else was +receiving him with acclaim as a person whose genius entitled him to +enthusiastic recognition. Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincere +friends in Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure the +culmination of that smouldering disagreement which had harassed him in +earlier years, and had lurked in his heart in spite of the constant mild +affection which he maintained toward the town. + +But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was now to be finally +broken off. He longed for change, for the country, and for the +recreation that the Old Manse garden had given him. "I should not long +stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led +for the last few months," he wrote to Bridge. "Here I hardly go out once +a week." On this account, and because of his difficulty in writing while +in office, he did not so much regret losing his place. One of the plans +proposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the Sparhawk house, +a famous old colonial mansion on Goose Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, +which was then to be disposed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, would +have found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the neighborhood. +After his return from abroad, he made a visit to the quaint and stately +little city of Portsmouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful old +houses in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Langdon, then +occupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A memorial of that visit remains, in +this bright note from his host:-- + +PORTSMOUTH, September, 1860. + +MR. HAWTHORNE. + +MY DEAR SIR:--There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse," there is no +Romance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter." But you can +give us a "Twice-Told Tale," if you will for the second time be our +guest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. + +Very truly yours, + +CHARLES BURROUGHS. + +But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire. + + + + +VIII. + + +LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. + +1850-1853. + +In the early summer, after the publication of "The Scarlet Letter," +Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where himself and +his family were ensconced in a small red house near the Stockbridge +Bowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means of +obtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the +world to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. + +He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this time living in +Pittsfield. There was even talk of their writing something together, as +I judge from some correspondence; though this was abandoned. + +Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The House +of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for +Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow +Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short +"Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to +literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook +Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a +full current if only left free to do so. + +The industry and energy of this period are the more remarkable because +he could seldom accomplish anything in the way of composition during the +warm months. "The House of the Seven Gables" was under way by September, +1850. + +"I shan't have the new story ready," he writes to his publisher on the +1st of October, "by November, for I am never good for anything in the +literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat +such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about +me,--multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to be +sober and shabby enough after all." + +The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which he indulged one +month later is so important as to merit dwelling upon. + +"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the book +requires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also I have to +wait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in one tone, I +had only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many +passages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a +Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, +when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from +beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is +always, or always ought to be, careering on, the utmost verge of a +precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as +possible, without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that +the book ought to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter,' though I +have no idea that it will." + +By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write: "My 'House of the +Seven Gables' is, so to speak, finished; only I am hammering away a +little at the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were left +incomplete"; and at the end of that month, he despatched the manuscript +to Boston, still retaining his preference for it over the preceding work. + +"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." + +He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the critics, and +giving his own opinion time to mature:-- + +"I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and more proper and +natural for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter,'--but, for that very +reason, less likely to interest the public. Nevertheless, it appears to +have sold better than the former, and I think is move sure of retaining +the ground that it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works are +popular in England, and advises me to take out my copyright there." + +His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production to his first +great romance is no doubt one that critics will coincide with as regards +artistic completeness; though his fear that it would not succeed so well +was not confirmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to acquire +that momentum of public favor which sets in after its first immense +inertia has once been overcome. Acting on the reports from England, he +made a suggestion to his publisher; and though this at first met with +discouragement, ten months later £200 were received from a London house +for "The Blithedale Romance." English editions of his works had already +become numerous. But Hawthorne began now to receive a more ethereal and +not less welcome kind of tribute from abroad, that of praise from the +makers and markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a high +place; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross the sea; and Miss +Mitford--of whom he said, "Her sketches, long ago as I read them, are as +sweet in my memory as the scent of new hay"--sent special messages +expressive of her pleasure. + +When the "Blithedale Romance" had come out, Mr. Hawthorne sent Miss +Mitford a copy, and she wrote in reply this cordial and delightful +note:-- + +SWALLOWFIELD, August 6,1852. + +At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write again to tell +you how much I thank you for the precious volume enriched by your +handwriting, which, for its own sake and for yours, I shall treasure +carefully so long as I live. The story has your mark upon it,--the fine +tragic construction unmatched amongst living authors, the passion of the +concluding scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finish +of style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I have ever +known, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent of Miss Edgeworth, +says of your style: "His English is the richest and most intense essence +of the language I know of; his words conveying not only a meaning, but +more than they appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, +as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes of +imagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, +as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond of +bringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfect +Englishmen of our day are Americans,--Irving, Prescott, and this great +new writer, Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, dear +Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of whose works you +remind me, not by imitation, but by resemblance, is the great French +novelist, Balzac. Do you know his books? He is untranslated and +untranslatable, and it requires the greatest familiarity with French +literature to relish him thoroughly.... I doubt if he be much known +amongst you; at least I have never seen him alluded to in American +literature. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, but, +being what he is, Mrs. Browning and I used to discuss his personages +like living people, and regarded his death as a great personal calamity +to both. + +I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being well enough +to meet her in London.... How I wish, dear Mr. Hawthorne, that you were +here to meet them! The day will come, I hope. It would be good for your +books to look at Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue would +rejoice to look at you. + +Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, + +M. R. MITFORD. + +I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Herman Melville, who, +in the midst of his epistle, suddenly assumes the tone of a reviewer, +and discourses as follows, under the heading, "_The House of the Seven +Gables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne_. 16_mo. pp._ 344." + +"The contents of this book do not belie its clustering romantic title. +With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each separate gable. +This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly but still judiciously +furnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish +it. There are rich hangings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. +There is old china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet; +there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an +admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a +smell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is a +dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled _Hawthorne: +A Problem_.... + +"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest surpasses the +other work of the author. The curtains are now drawn; the sun comes in +more; genialities peep out more. Were we to particularize what has most +struck us in the deeper passages, we should point out the scene where +Clifford, for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, to +join the procession; or the scene where the Judge is left seated in his +ancestral chair. + +"Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the +finest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we +would say, that did the circumstances permit, we should like nothing +better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full +consideration and analysis of the purpose and significance of what so +strongly characterizes all of this author's writing. There is a certain +tragic phase of humanity, which, in our opinion, was never more +powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne: we mean the tragicalness of human +thought in its own unbiased, native, and profound workings. We think +that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the whole truth +ever entered more deeply than into this man's. By whole truth, we mean +the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they +strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst +to him." + +This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes to extract from +the "Pittsfield Secret Review," of which I wish further numbers could be +found. + +But chief among the prizes of this season were letters from his friends +Lowell and Holmes. The latter's I insert, because it admirably +illustrates the cordial relation which has always distinguished the +famous writers of New England,--no pleasant illusion of distance, but a +notable and praiseworthy reality. + +BOSTON, April 9, 1851. + +MY DEAR SIR:--I have been confined to my chamber and almost to my bed, +for some days since I received your note; and in the mean time I have +received what was even more welcome, the new Romance "from the Author." +While I was too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you have +been playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with the +magnetism of your imagination. + +I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long +time. I had become so set in this feeling, that but for your last two +stories I should have given up hoping, and believed that all we were to +look for in the way of spontaneous growth were such languid, lifeless, +sexless creations as in the view of certain people constitute the chief +triumphs of a sister art as manifested among us. + +But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fern +and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of +our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded and +flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a +seedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the moment +a fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us and +transfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others +analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciating +sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, of +character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayon +sketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story. +Only one word, then, this: that the solid reality and homely +truthfulness of the actual and present part of the story are blended +with its weird and ghostly shadows with consummate skill and effect; +this was perhaps the special difficulty of the story. + +I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall come up, I +trust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the MS. in question, as +a duty, with as much pleasure as many other duties afford. To say the +truth, I have as great a dread of the _Homo Caudatus_ Linn., +Anglicé, the Being with a Tale, male or female, as any can have. + + "If foes they write, if friends they read me dead," + +said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I will +stipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds avoirdupois +by weight or eighteen reams by measure or "tale,"--provided there is no +locomotion in the case. The idea of visiting Albany does not enter into +my intentions. I do not know who would serve as a third or a second +member of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does not +prevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real +truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The Scarlet +Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That is +what they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classical +condition _not to leave the country except in case of invasion_, +absentees, voters by proxy, potential but not personally present +bottle-holders, I will add my name to those of Latimer, Ridley, and Co. +as a Martyr in the cause of Human Progress. + +Believe me, my dear sir, + +Yours very sincerely, + +O. W. Holmes. + +Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was also very great, and one +of the last books which he read at all was "Elsie Venner," which he had +taken up for a second time shortly before his death. + +Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless praise, or of other +comment on the new romance, he began to feel that necessity for +abstracting his attention entirely from what was said of his work in +current publications, which forces itself upon every creative mind +attempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering and unprivate +age like the present. This feeling he imparted to Bridge, and it also +appears in one or two published letters. At the same time, it must be +remembered how careful a consideration he gave to criticism; and he +wrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the "Seven Gables":-- + +"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helped +me to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish I +could feel the praise to be so fully deserved. Being better (which I +insist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have never expected it to be +so popular." + +In this same letter occurs the following:-- + +"---- ----, Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have +made his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon +(or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their +representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge +Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ----'s grandfather, and (at +least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman +in the world. There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheons +which, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in my +eye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and +thinks it monstrous that the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to rest +quietly in their graves." + +The matter here alluded to threatened to give Hawthorne almost as much +inconvenience as the tribulation which followed the appearance of "The +Custom-House." One of the complainants in this case, though objecting to +the use of the name Pyncheon, "respectfully suggests," with an ill-timed +passion for accuracy, that it should in future editions be printed with +the _e_ left out, because this was the proper mode in use by the +family. + +There has been some slight controversy as to the original of the +visionary mansion described in this romance. Mr. Hawthorne himself said +distinctly that he had no particular house in mind, and it is also a +fact that none is recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that of +the "Seven Gables." Nevertheless, one party has maintained that the old +Philip English house, pulled down many years since, was the veritable +model; and others support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. The +Curwin, called the "Witch House," appears, by an antique painting from +which photographs have been made, to have had the requisite number of +peaks at a remote date; but one side of the structure being perforce +left out of the picture, there is room for a doubt. [Footnote: It is +from one of these photographs that the cut in the new edition of +Hawthorne's Works has been developed.] + +In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection of +parts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in the +same fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter." There is, besides, a larger range +of character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed and +reticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting on +ivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being. Very noticeable is the +delicate veneration and tenderness for her with which the author seems +to inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost nothing +definite to say of her except what tends to throw a light ridicule. She +is continually contrasted with the exquisite freshness, ready grace, and +beauty of Phoebe, and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mind +of Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic perception +casts silent reproach upon her. Yet, in spite of this, she becomes in a +measure endeared to us. In the grace, and agreeableness too, with which +Hawthorne manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a unit of +measure for the beauty with which he has invested the more frightful and +tragic elements of the story. It is this triumph of beauty without +destroying the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artistic +virtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified discomfort to the +reader, yet he is entirely held within bounds by the prevailing charm of +the author's style, and by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanter +elements of the other characters are applied. At times the strong +emphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect that the villain is +too deeply dyed; but the question of equity here involved is one of the +most intricate with which novelists have to deal at all. The +well-defined opposition between good and bad forces has always been a +necessity to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life furnishes +the most absolute extremes of possession by the angel or the fiend; and +Shakespere has not scrupled to use one of these ultimate possibilities +in the person of Iago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of the +downward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's pronounced iniquity +stand without giving a glimpse of incipient evil in another quarter. +This occurs in the temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds that +he possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the latest Pyncheon +offshoot, as that which his ancestor Matthew Maule exercised over Alice +Pyncheon. The momentary mood which brings before him the absolute power +which might be his over this fair girl, opens a whole new vista of +wrong, in which the retribution would have been transferred from the +shoulders of the Pyncheons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yielded +then, he might have damned his own posterity, as Colonel Pyncheon had +_his_. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, we are made aware of +possibilities as malicious and destructive as those hereditary faults +grown to such rank maturity in the Judge; and this may be said to offer +a middle ground between the side of justice and attractiveness, and the +side of injustice and repulsiveness, on which the personages are +respectively ranged. + +The conception of a misdeed operating through several generations, and +righted at last solely by the over-toppling of unrestrained malevolence +on the one hand, and on the other by the force of upright character in +the wronged family, was a novel one at the time; this graphic depicture +of the past at work upon the present has anticipated a great deal of the +history and criticism of the following twenty-five years, in its close +conjunction of antecedent influences and cumulative effects. + +As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, this second +romance was not less remarkable than the one which preceded it. The +theme furnished by the imaginary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragic +in the Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Clifford, to a +grotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. Thence we are led to +another vein of simple, fun-breeding characterization in Uncle Venner +and Ned Higgins. The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Venner +in such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one degree of sunniness +above the dubious light in which Hepzibah stands, so that he may soften +the contrast of broad humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the "First +Customer." I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not give freer scope +to his delicious faculty for the humorous, exemplified in the "Seven +Gables." If he had let his genius career as forcibly in this direction +as it does in another, when burdened with the black weight of the dead +Judge Pyncheon, he might have secured as wide an acceptance for the book +as Dickens, with so much more melodrama and so much less art, could gain +for less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the tragic +element, and comparative neglect of the other, was in one sense an +advantage; but if in the case under discussion he had given more bulk +and saliency to the humorous quality, he might also have been more +likely to avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after that +marvellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the lifeless +Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave for +Phoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house where +Death and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too +violent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midst +of the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spread +around itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; and +it might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom to +gladness just here, and a more frequent play of the brighter mood +throughout the book. But the tragic predilection seems ultimately to +gain the day over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was so +strong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater play to humor in +later fictions, it curtailed it more and more, from the production of +the "Seven Gables" onward. + +Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after the publication of +the new book, which, as it gives another instance of the writer's keen +enjoyment of other men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life at +Lenox, I will copy at length:-- + +LENOX, April 29,1851. + +MY DEAR HOWADJI:--I ought to be ashamed (and so I really am) of not +having sooner responded to your note of more than a month ago, +accompanied as it was by the admirable "Nile Notes." The fact is, I have +been waiting to find myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that I +might pay my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of the +occasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless never will; and +now I have delayed so long, that America and England seem to have +anticipated me in their congratulations. + +I read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have felt that we +never knew anything of the Nile before. There is something beyond +descriptive power in it. You make me feel almost as if we had been there +ourselves. And then you are such a luxurious traveller.... The fragrance +of your chibonque was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot be +concealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths of +those chapters about the dancing-girls, lest they might result in +something not altogether accordant with our New England morality; and +even now I hardly know whether we escaped the peril, or were utterly +overwhelmed by it. But at any rate, those passages are gorgeous in the +utmost degree. However, I suppose you are weary of praise; and as I have +nothing else to inflict, I may as well stop here. + +S---- and the children and I are plodding onward in good health, and in +a fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite the +happiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little old +red farm-house you ever saw.... + +What shall you write next? For of course you are an author forever. I am +glad, for the sake of the public, but not particularly so for your own. + +Very soon after the issue of the "Seven Gables," another lighter +literary project was put into execution. + +"I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write within six weeks +or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical +myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; +Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; +Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." + +The "Wonder-Book" was begun on the first of June, and finished by the +middle of July; so that the intention of writing it within six weeks was +strictly carried out: certainly a rapid achievement, considering the +excellent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It is a minor +work, but a remarkable one; not its least important trait being the +perfect simplicity of its style and scope, which, nevertheless, omits +nothing essential, and preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiar +excellences come out still more distinctly when contrasted with Charles +Kingsley's "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales," published in England +five years after the appearance of the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresher +play of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing more +agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he has +thrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vine +curling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task--it was very +uncommon for him to write in the hot season--perhaps had something to do +with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was not +good. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not +suit his sea-braced temperament; and so, instead of renting Mrs. +Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he decided to leave +Berkshire with the birds; but not to go southward. Moving to West +Newton, near Boston, he remained there for the winter, writing +"Blithedale," which was put forth in 1852. + +The special characteristic of "The Blithedale Romance" seems to me to be +its appearance of unlabored ease, and a consequent breeziness of effect +distinguishing its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. +The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part of the book +that gives the same impression of almost unnecessary polish which +occasionally intervenes between one's admiration and the "Seven Gables." +On this score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of the four +completed romances. And as Hawthorne has nowhere given us more robust +and splendid characterization than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, +the work also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, which seemed +partly dispersed in the "Seven Gables," gather again in this succeeding +story; but, on the other hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as "The +Scarlet Letter." From this it is saved partly by the sylvan surrounding +and the pleasant changes of scene. In comparing it with the other works, +I find that it lets itself be best defined as a mean between extremes; +so that it ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attempered +of all. The theme is certainly as deep as that of the earlier ones, and +more tangible to the general reader than that of "The Marble Faun"; it +is also more novel than that of "The Scarlet Letter" or even the "Seven +Gables," and has an attractive air of growing simply and naturally out +of a phenomenon extremely common in New England, namely, the man who is +dominated and blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollingsworth, +through this very prepossession and absorption, is brought to the ruin +of his own scheme, and has to concentrate his charity for criminals upon +himself as the first criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. +Yet, in discussing the relative positions of these four works. I am not +sure that we can reach any decision more stable than that of mere +preference. + +There is a train of thought suggested in "Blithedale" which receives +only partial illustration in that story, touching the possible identity +of love and hate. It had evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very early +period, and would have made rich material for an entire romance, or for +several treating different phases of it. Perhaps he would have followed +out the suggestion, but for the intervention of so many years of +unproductiveness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent too +early death. + +It was while at West Newton, just before coming to the Wayside, that he +wrote a note in response to an invitation to attend the memorial meeting +at New York, in honor of the novelist, Cooper, which should be read for +its cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the tender thought +of the closing sentence. + +_To Rev. R. W. Griswold._ + +February 20,1852. + +Dear Sir:--I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible for +me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honor of +James Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present than +myself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. +Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe the +earnestness with which the literary men of our country unite in paying +honor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to hope that, in the +eyes of the public at large, American literature may henceforth acquire +a weight and value which have not heretofore been conceded to it: time +and death have begun to hallow it. + +Very respectfully yours, + +Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he had +bought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtis +was at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes of +American Authors," among which was to be included the new abode of +Hawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:-- + +CONCORD, July 14, 1852. + +MY HEAR 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 hillside 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 hillside 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 Hillside." 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. [Footnote: 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.] 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. + +The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when its +owner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment." It +characterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though the +spell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself was +small, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legend +over Ariosto's door, _Parva, sed apta mihi_. In October, 1852, he +wrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or +two, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design this +was cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in the +preceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with the +demand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of +invention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he could +produce as many books as he might have time for writing. But +circumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as he +was preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the +"Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, +urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I have +consented to do so," wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhat +reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where a +man careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting his +acquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not be +ashamed to tell the truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book +was out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried to +persuade Pierce 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." In this letter, also, he states that before +undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce; +though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly than +heroism." In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:-- + +"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." + +These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during the war. Speaking of +Pierce's indorsement of the Compromise, both as it bore hard on Northern +views and exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be more +than reciprocal, he says:-- + +"It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken +advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that +great object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least +scrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slavery +recognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom +and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the +Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into +distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into +one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years, +from the first settlement of the American wilderness until the +Revolution." + +He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, and +the good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravated +injuries from the very process designed to better their state. It is +useless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong on +either side, in the struggle which had already become formidable before +Pierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generous +motives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must be +maintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur of +achievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civil +war, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which +forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, because +it could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on the +shedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that found +shelter in the heart of Hawthorne. + +Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, in +friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements of +greatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career. +[Footnote: As a literary performance, the book is of course but slightly +characteristic; and being distasteful to the author, it is even dry. Yet +there is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The Whig journals +belabored it manfully, and exhausted the resources of those formidable +weapons, italics and small capitals, in the attempt to throw a +ridiculous light on the facts most creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne came +in for a share of the abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "new +romance"; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simonides, who was +the first poet to write for money. The other party, of course, took +quite another view of the work. A letter to Hawthorne from his elder +sister bears well upon his fidelity. "Mr. D---- has bought your Life of +Pierce, but he will not be convinced that you have told the precise +truth. I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say."] +He had not much hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, +the question of office, which he had already mooted, was definitely +brought before him. When Pierce learned that he positively would not +take an office, because to do so now might compromise him, he was +extremely troubled. He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some one +of the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But the service he +had exacted from his friend threatened to deprive Hawthorne of the very +benefit which Pierce had been most anxious he should receive. At last, +Mr. Ticknor, Hawthorne's publisher, was made the agent of Pierce's +arguments, and to them he added personal considerations which were +certainly not without weight. Literature gave but a bare subsistence, +and Hawthorne was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. +His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach that would be +made in the fortunes of his family, were he to be suddenly removed. +This, Mr. Ticknor urged, in addition to the friendly obligation which +Pierce ought to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, had +always wished to travel, and the prospect of some years in Europe was an +alluring one: the decision was made, to take the Liverpool consulship. + +The appointment was well received, though many persons professed +surprise that Hawthorne could accept it. One gentleman in public life, +however, who knew how unjust current judgments may often be, was not of +this number, as appears from his note below.-- + +SENATE CHAMBER, March 26, 1853. + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--"Good! good!" I exclaimed aloud on the floor of the +Senate as your nomination was announced. + +"Good! good!" I now write to you, on its confirmation. Nothing could be +more grateful to me. Before you go, I hope to see you. + +Ever yours, + +CHARLES SUMNER. + + + + +IX. + + +ENGLAND AND ITALY. + +1853-1860. + +It is very instructive to trace the contact of Hawthorne's mind with +Europe, as exhibited in his "English Note-Books" and "French and Italian +Note-Books." But in these records three things are especially +observable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, with an individual mood as +easily sustained, as he would enter Boston or New York. He carries no +preconception of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. +There has never been a more complete and charming presentment of a +multitude of ingenuous impressions common to many travellers of widely +differing endowment than here, at the same time that you have always +before you the finished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly +and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, +fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one a +dreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical +and even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had gone +abroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book and +in a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to +himself, sometimes the other; and occasionally they con each other's +paragraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of the first. It is +interesting to note their twofold inspection of Westminster Hall, for +example. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding its +length to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immense +barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it not +irreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "I +wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic +representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or +death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident ... +that has occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such as +this, so tapestried with recollections." But in any case it is always +apparent that the thought is colored by a New World nurture. From this +freshness of view there proceeded one result, the searching, +unembarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial criticism of +England in "Our Old Home." But it also gave rise to the second notable +quality, that exquisite apprehension of the real meaning of things +European, both institutions and popular manners and the varied products +of art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for the one end of +adding this final grace of definition which he so deftly attaches to the +monuments of that older civilization. He brings a perception so keen and +an innate sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, that +the mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmosphere upon the objects +before him invests them with a quality which we feel to be theirs, even +while we know that it could not have become _ours_ without his aid. +A breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows of the Old World, +and--I had almost said--bedims them with a film of evanescent frost-work; +yet, as that lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, a +legendary fascination in their deep-gemmed gorgeousness, which, although +we have felt it and read of it before, we never seized till now. I speak, +of course, from the American point of view; though in a great measure the +effect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy a special +appropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture of estimation and +enthusiasm which forms the medium through which Hawthorne looks at the +spectacle of transatlantic life and its surroundings. He visits the +British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated +sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, +slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with +which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes +that form the real population of Rome. + +Even there, he has much dissent to make, still; and we may not find +it at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviations +ourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is impossible not to +feel sure that within this circle of contradictions, of preference for +new frames and of his friend Thompson's pictures to all but a very few +of the old masters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthy +aesthetic sensibility which grasps the "unwritten rules of taste," the +inmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, however we may turn it, +a matter of paradox, and the moment it professes to be explained, that +moment are the gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness and +the protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses to himself as he +wanders through the galleries of Europe, are the trembling of the +needle, perfectly steadfast to the polar opposites of truth, yet +quivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial +influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this +singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index +finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone +which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a +little crude,--that very air of being the uncritical and slightly +puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful +accuracies of interpretation. + +The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation is its entire +freedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot be made to appear more +clearly than in the contrast presented by his "English Note-Books" and +"Our Old Home" to Emerson's "English Traits," and Taine's "Notes on +England." The latter writer is an acute, alert, industrious, and +picturesque comparer of his own and a neighboring country, and is +accompanied by a light battery of literary and pictorial criticism, +detached from his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other hand, +gives us probably the most masterly and startling analysis of a people +which has ever been offered in the same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, +in brilliancy and penetration of statement. But the "English Traits" is +as clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and perhaps a +little too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of England, though not +comparable to Emerson's work for analysis, has this advantage, that its +outline is more flexible and leaves room for many individual +discriminations to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. +Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign land: Hawthorne +causes us to inhale its very atmosphere, and makes the country ours for +the time being, rather than an alien area which we scrutinize in +passing. Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities that are +dominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every Englishman runs to 'The Times' +with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother," is as +epigrammatic as anything in "English Traits"; [Footnote: No one, I +think, has so well defined our relation to the English as Hawthorne, in +a casual phrase from one of his printed letters: "We stand in the light +of posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity." This, on +London, ought to become proverbial: "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 die, or go to London."] +and there is a tendency in his pages to present the national character +in a concrete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addition, +Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and renders human character +with a force and fineness which give it its true value as being, after +all, far weightier and dearer to us than the most important or famous of +congealed _results_ of character. Withal a wide and keen observer +and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these upon +us as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense of +greater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. + +It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write an English +romance, as well, or rather than an Italian one? More than half his stay +abroad was north of the Channel, and one would infer that there could +have been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England," he +wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had +been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England +just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on +the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a source of romantic +possibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But the +greater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, where +his consular duties suppressed fiction-making. [Footnote: And it was not +till he reached the villa of Montauto at Florence that he could write:-- + +"It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really 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 +Yankee-dom 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 out of all my old tracks, and am really remote."] + +Hawthorne's genius was extremely susceptible to every influence about +it. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which owes its fine +properties to the tempering of time and atmosphere, and transmits +through its strings the very thrill of sunshine that has sunk into its +wood. His utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. In +one of his letters from Florence he wrote:-- + +"Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which I could +have ready for the press in a few months if I were either in England or +America. But 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." + +But though England might be his workshop for books dreamed of in Italy, +yet the aspect of English life seems much more fittingly represented by +his less excursively imaginative side, as in "Our Old Home," than in a +romance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation; but I believe we +may much better spare the possible English romance, than we could have +foregone the actual Italian one. + +In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring and +impressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, +without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or even +by some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circle +which no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself has +even begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric +time--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his +fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--this +conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or +crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has +nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of +Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book +reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as +the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the +primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt +at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of +those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to +each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his +individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the +theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's +nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their +origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, +that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory +that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he +shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler +individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes +without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides +with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of +spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, +I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by +self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a +Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, +"it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of +intellect and soul." This idea is several times urged by Miriam and +Kenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then by +Hilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which +human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function of +the author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance of +Monte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man +repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of all +religious problems, affirming,--as one interpreter [Footnote: See an +unsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne," in the Atlantic Monthly for +September, 1868.] has said,--"the inherent freedom of man," and +illustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. Donatello is the +ideal of the childlike nature on the threshold of history who has lived +without choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence of +Miriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of the +catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual +choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely +asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his +immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety +of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis +of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and +this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatello +himself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, are +involved. There is first the reaction upon and inculpation of Miriam, +whose glance had confirmed Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, +yet enough to involve her in the doom of change and separation--of sin +in short--which falls upon the Faun. And in Hilda's case, it is the +simple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as if +she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who +are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite +meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author has +given. + +But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous and intricate study +of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's story, in a new form. Miriam is a +different woman placed in the same circumstances which made the Cenci +tragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books," Hawthorne describes the +look he caught sight of in Guido's picture,--that "of a being +unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote and +inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no +human sympathy could reach her." It was of this single insight that both +Miriam and Hilda were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, +slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIII.): "It was the +intimate consciousness of her father's guilt that threw its shadow over +her, and frightened her into" this region. Now, in the chapter called +"Beatrice," quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam and +Hilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It is evident, from the +emphasis given by the chapter-title, that this subject is very deeply +related to the theme of the romance; and no theory can explain Miriam's +passionate utterances about the copy of Guido's portrait, except that +which supposes her own situation to be that of Beatrice. This chapter is +full of the strongest hints of the fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance to +the picture, at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret of +Beatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence; her ardent defence of +Beatrice's course, as "the best virtue possible under the +circumstances," when Hilda condemns it; her suggestion that, after all, +only a woman could have painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, +and that _she herself_ has "a great mind to undertake a copy," +giving it "what it lacks";--all these things point clearly. But there is +a mass of inferential evidence, besides; many veiled allusions and +approaches to a revelation, as well as that very marked description of +the sketches in which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a "woman +acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man," and the hint, in +the description of her portrait of herself, that "she might ripen to be +what Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, and +slew him for too much adoring it." There is no need to pursue the proof +further: readers will easily find it on re-examining the book. But what +is most interesting, is to observe how Hawthorne has imagined two women +of natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a similar +pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guilt +which has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnatural +depravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of +blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam the +white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her--though +perfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam--believe +herself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime +which weighs upon the soul; but Miriam, in exactly the position of +Beatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep-colored nature than she; and +Hilda, differently affected by the same question of conscience, is a +vastly spiritualized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after the +avenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must have done, +whether there be any guilt in such avengement; but being of so different +a temperament, and having before her eyes the effect of this murder upon +the hitherto sinless Faun, the reality of her responsibility is brought +home to her. The clear conscience of Hilda confirms it. Thus by taking +two extremes on either side of Beatrice,--one, a woman less simply and +ethereally organized, and the other one who is only indirectly connected +with wrong or crime,--Hawthorne seems to extract from the problem of +Beatrice all its most subtle significance. He does not coldly condemn +Beatrice; but by re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds in +magnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful knot of crime and +its consequence, which lies inextricably tangled up within it. How +different from Shelley's use of the theme! There is certainly nothing in +the "Marble Faun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, and the +piercing outcry against the shallow but awful errors of human justice, +which uplift Shelley's drama. But Shelley stops, on the one side, with +this climax:-- + + "O plead + With famine or wind-walking pestilence, + Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man!" + +And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with Beatrice's +characterization of the parricide, + + "Which is, or is not, what men call a crime." + +Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter doubt. "The foremost +result of a broken law," he says, "is ever an ecstatic freedom." But +instead of pausing to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, he +distinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded father to be +crime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam and Donatello may work out +their purification. So that if the first part of the romance is the Fall +of Man repeated, the second part is the proem to a new Paradise +Regained; and the seclusion of the sculptor and the Faun, and their +journey together to Perugia, seasoned with Kenyon's noble and +pure-hearted advice, compose a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim's +Progress. Apt culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton and +Bunyan we found to be so suggestive! The chief means which Kenyon offers +for regeneration is that Miriam and the Faun shall abandon any hope of +mutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery in +the world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, +they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. +At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied ways +of dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happiness +for the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, +springing along a path that leads to higher ends." But he also shows, in +Donatello's final delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom of +some definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by society. Thus, +avenues of thought are opened to us on every side, which we are at +liberty to follow out; but we are not forced, as a mere theorist would +compel us, to pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. +In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of eternal law, or +pluck garlands from some new-budded bough of moral truth. The romance is +like a portal of ebony inlaid with ivory,--another gate of +dreams,--swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. But +some pause on the threshold, unused to such large liberty; and these cry +out, in the words of a well-known critic, "It begins in mystery, and +ends in mist." + +Though the book was very successful, few readers grasped the profounder +portions. It is a vast exemplar of the author's consummate charm as a +simple storyteller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascination +over all readers, notwithstanding the heavy burden of uncomprehended +truths which they were obliged to carry with them. Some critics complain +of the extent to which Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome have +been introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word wasted in the +two volumes. The "vague sense of ponderous remembrances" pressing down +and crowding out the present moment till "our individual affairs are but +half as real here as elsewhere," is essential to the perspective of the +whole; and nothing but this rich picturesqueness and variety could avail +to balance the depth of tragedy which has to be encountered; so that the +nicety of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this great +modern religious romance should thus have become also the ideal +representative of ruined Rome--the home of ruined religions--in its +aesthetic aspects. But one instance of appreciation must be recorded +here, as giving the highest pitch of that delightful literary fellowship +which Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in England. His friend +John Lothrop Motley, the historian, wrote thus of "The Marble Faun," +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. +Where, O where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and +diamonds?... 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 criticised, 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; and to those who +complain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with +a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile of +attitudes,--his ears revealed through a white nightcap,--would be +satisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really +moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile +figures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance.... 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." + +To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley has +kindly sent me a copy of the letter. + +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 loved 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 most 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.... [The allusion here is to illness in the family, +of which there had also been a protracted case in Rome]. 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, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the most opulently happy +part of Hawthorne's life. Before he left America, although he had been +writing--with several interruptions--for twenty-four years, he had only +just reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched upon the petty clamor +which his Custom-House pictures aroused, and the offensive political +attacks following the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scattered +along the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his first +efforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with which he everywhere +met in England, and the charm of highly organized society, with its +powerful artistic classes centred upon great capitals there and in +Italy, a very captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The most +serious one was the change in the consular service made during his term +at Liverpool. The consulate there was considered the most lucrative post +in the President's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to begin +with, Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to resign prospectively, so +that Hawthorne lost entirely the first five months of his tenure. These +were very valuable months, and after the new consul came into office the +dull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business continued bad +so long, that even up to 1855 little more than a living could be made in +the consulate. In February of that year a bill was passed by Congress, +remodelling the diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the salary of +the Liverpool consul at $7,500,--less than half the amount of the best +annual income from it before that time. The position was one of +importance, and involved an expensive mode of life; so that even before +this bill went into operation, though practising "as stern an economy," +he wrote home, "as ever I did in my life," Hawthorne could save but +little; and the effect of it would have been not only to prevent his +accomplishing what he took the office for, but even to have imposed loss +upon him. For, in addition to social demands, the mere necessary office +expenses (including the pay of three clerks) were very large, amounting +to some thousands yearly; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, +to whom Hawthorne could not bring himself to be indifferent, carried off +a good portion of his income. As he says, "If the government chooses to +starve the consul, a good many will starve with him." The most +irritating thing about the new law was that it merely cut down the +consular fees, without bringing the government anything; for the fees +came from business that a notary-public could perform, and the consul +would naturally decline to take it upon himself when his interest in it +was removed. Fortunately, the President was given some discretion about +the date of reappointment, and allowed the old commission to continue +for a time. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of the new +rule, to alter his mode of life materially. He now planned to give up +the place in the autumn of 1855, and go to Italy; but this was not +carried out till two years later. + +Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it his home. There had +not been want of unjust criticism of him in America, while at Liverpool. +When some shipwrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, for +whom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's (then minister) +refusing to have anything to do with the matter, a newspaper rumor was +started at home that Mr. Hawthorne would do nothing for them until +ordered to by Mr. Buchanan. + +"It sickens me," he wrote at that time, "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." + +And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend:-- + +"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be very +well contented there." + +But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many Americans under +similar circumstances, was rigorously obeyed. We shall see what sort of +reward this fidelity to country won from public opinion at home. + + + + +X. + + +THE LAST ROMANCE. + +1860-1863. + +There are in the "English Note-Books" several dismal and pathetic +records of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which it +was Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as one +might have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impression +upon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United States +government in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But though +this evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, there +was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, to +help it along, and he could effect nothing. He resolved, on returning +home, to write some articles--perhaps a volume--exposing the horrors so +calmly overlooked; but the slavery agitation, absorbing everybody, +perhaps discouraged him: the scheme was never carried out. It is a pity; +for, aside from the weight which so eminent a name might have given to a +good cause, the work would have clearly proven the quick, responsive, +practical nature of his humanity--a quality which some persons have seen +fit to deny him--in a case where no question of conflicting rights +divided his sense of duty. + +He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings of +rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856 +he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn +out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same +year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening +between the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:-- + +"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. 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." + +He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from the +beginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to be +severed, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods and +wishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and he +saw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to one +course. In the December after his return, secession began; and for more +than a year following he could not fix his attention upon literary +matters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has +told us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influence +about him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination which +overlay the fixed substance of personal character,--so that, as we have +seen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions,--it +was not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion of +hate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him, +now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination. +It was no time for quiet observation or creative revery. A new era had +broken upon us, ushered by the wild din of trumpet and cannon, and +battle-cry; an era which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. +He must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, striving vainly to +absorb the commotion into himself and to let it subside into clear visions +of the future. No hope! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any horizon +of better things. He who had schooled himself so unceasingly to feel with +utmost intensity the responsibility of each soul for any violence or crime +of others, could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by any +hypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst of that magnificent +turbulence, he was like the central quiet of a whirlpool: all the fierce +currents met there, and seemed to pause,--but only seemed. Full of +sympathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times by the same +warlike impulses, he could not give himself rein as they did, nor dared +to raise any encouraging strain in his writing, as others felt that they +might freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refined by descent and +wedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all carefully, to debate long and +compassionately. But meantime the popular sense of justice--that same +New England sentiment, of which his own was a development--cared nothing +for these fine considerations, and Hawthorne was generally condemned by +it as being warped by his old Democratic alliances into what was called +treason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native land, and suffer +bitter criticism here,--if that were all that could be granted,--rather +than to remain an unmolested exile. + +An article which he contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" in July, 1862, +gives a faint inkling of his state of mind at this time; but nothing +illustrates more clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimed +lay behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. For he there +gives the idea of something like coldness in his attitude touching the +whole great tragedy. But those who saw him daily, and knew his real +mood, have remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. +Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of the degree in +which his sympathy with his own side of the struggle sometimes mastered +him. He used to say that he only regretted that his son was too young +and himself too old to admit of either of them entering the army; and +just after the first battle of Bull Run he wrote to Mr. Lowell, at +Cambridge, declining an invitation:-- + +THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD, July 23, 1861. + +DEAR LOWELL:--I am to start, in two or three days, on an excursion +with----, who has something the matter with him, and seems to need +sea-air and change. If I alone were concerned, ... I would most gladly +put off my trip till after your dinner; but, as the case stands, I am +compelled to decline. Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dull +the edge of many a Northern appetite; but if it puts all of us into the +same grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had better have +suffered ten defeats than won this victory. + +Sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +And to another friend, in October:-- + +"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.... 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 at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper +as of yore." + +He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality," or "Septimius +Felton," which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by +him for another treatment of the same theme, called "The Dolliver +Romance." This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinished +at his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: it +contains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey +which would require too much space. The subject had been one of the +earliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with a +fountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. +One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typification +in Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot of +every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are, +equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a more +ethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us +a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth. These +relate mainly to the temptation of the artist to effect a severance of +ordinary, active human relations. (Sad to think what bitter cause the +author had to brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) The +poet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own circle of +serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life; +but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows,--if he cannot make +the light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appear +shining to posterity,--then he will fall into the treacherous pit of +selfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set of +meanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like the +cabalistic manuscript described in its pages: now it is blurred over +with deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multifarious beauties +like those that swim within the golden depth of Tieck's enchanted +goblet. The ultimate and most insistent moral is perhaps that which +brings it into comparison with Goethe's "Faust"; this, namely, that, in +order to defraud Nature of her dues, we must enter into compact with the +Devil. Both Faust and Septimius study magic in their separate ways, with +the hope of securing results denied to their kind by a common destiny; +but Faust proves infinitely the meaner of the two, since he desires only +to restore his youth, that he may engage in the mere mad joy of a lusty +existence for a few years, while Septimius seeks some mode, however +austere and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries of +world-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined egoism which lays +hold of Septimius is the same spirit incarnated in Goethe's +Mephistopheles,--_der Geist der stets verneint_. To Faust he denies +the existence of good in anything, primarily the good of that universal +knowledge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, but +through this scepticism mining his faith in all besides. To Septimius he +denies the worth of so brief a life as ours, and the good of living to +whatever end seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius might +perhaps be described as Faust at an earlier stage of development than +that in which Goethe represents him. [Footnote: Indeed, these words, +applied by Mephistopheles to Faust, suit Septimius equally well:-- + + "Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben + Der ungebändigt immer vorwarts dringt + Und dessen übereiltes Streben + Der Erde Freuden überspringt."] + +As a further point of resemblance between the two cases, it may be +noticed that the false dreams of both are dispelled by the exorcising +touch of a woman. Both have fallen into error through perceiving only +half of the truth which has hovered glimmering before them; these errors +originate in the exclusively masculine mood, the asceticism, which has +prevailed in their minds. It will be observed that, in the first +relation of Rose to Septimius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast with +this mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conservatism and +wisely practical tendency to be satisfied with life, which make her +influence so admirable a poising force to man. The subsequent alteration +of the situation, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, is +owing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact "that a heroine +must be supplied who corresponds to the idea in the lover's soul; like +Helena in the second part of Faust." [Footnote: A phase of character +rich in interest, but which I can only mention, in passing, is presented +in the person of Sybil Dacy, who here occupies very much the same place, +in some regards, as Roger Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter." The +movement of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revenge +undertaken by her, as that of "The Scarlet Letter" hangs upon the mode +of retribution sought by the physician; but her malice is directed, +characteristically, against the slayer of the young officer who had +despoiled her of her honor, and, again characteristically, she is unable +to consummate her plan, from the very tenderness of her feminine heart, +which leads her first to half sympathize with his dreams, then pity him +for the deceit she practised on him, and at last to rather love than +hate him.] + +But there is a suitable difference between the working of the womanly +element in "Faust" and in Hawthorne's romance. In the former instance it +is through the gratification of his infernal desire that the hero is +awakened from his trance of error and restored to remorse; while +Septimius's failure to accomplish his intended destiny appears to be +owing to the inability of his aspiring nature to accommodate itself to +that code of "moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. +"Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be very +fair," is the maxim taught him. "If thou love her, all is over, and thy +whole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain." How pathetic +a situation this, how much more terrible than that of Faust, when he has +reached the turning-point in his career! A nature which could accept an +earthly immortality on these terms, for the sake of his fellows, must +indeed have been a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much of +the heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel an +abstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, with the +long-sought drink standing ready for his lips, Septimius nevertheless +seeks a companion. Half unawares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, and +thenceforth, though in a way he had not anticipated, "all is over." Yet, +saved from death by the poison in which he had hoped to find the spring +of endless life, his fate appears admirably fitting. There is no picture +of Mephisto hurrying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. The +wrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, humanity,--these, +indeed, remain, and are remembered. He has undoubtedly fallen from his +first purity and earnestness, and must hereafter be content to live a +life of mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional goodness, +conventional charities, in that substantial English home of his. Could +anything be more perfectly compensatory? + +Nothing is more noticeable than the way in which, while so many +symbolisms spring up out of the story, the hero's half-crazed and +bewildered atmosphere is the one which we really accept, until the +reading is ended. By this means we are enabled to live through the whole +immortal future which he projects for himself, though he never in +reality achieves any of it. This forcing of the infinite into the +finite, we are again indebted to Mr. Higginson for emphasizing as "one +of the very greatest triumphs in all literature." "A hundred separate +tragedies," he says, "would be easier to depict than this which combines +so many in one." + +But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's mind. "Dr. +Heidegger's Experiment," in which several people are restored to youth +for an hour by a life-elixir, was published before 1837. In 1840 we have +this entry in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever here, +he would not care about his offspring." A few years afterward, in "A +Virtuoso's Collection," the elixir vitae is introduced, "in an antique +sepulchral urn," but the narrator refuses to quaff it. "'No; I desire +not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on the +earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial +something within us, that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere +of heaven to preserve it from ruin.'" But the revolt against death, and +then the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence for it, +must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, have been very early +familiar to Hawthorne; and in the course of these meditations, the +conception of deathlessness must often have floated before him. The +tradition as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought he +should never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, in 1852 [Footnote: +See ante, p. 244.]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837 +thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents, +in trying to achieve something totally impossible,--as, to make a +conquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who had +expected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The way +in which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious. +The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "The +print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a +town." By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterward +in England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, at +Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7, +and August 25, 1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that +he "should write a ghost-story for her house," and he observes that "the +legend is a good one." Only five days after first hearing it he makes a +note thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have +carried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, had +he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret +he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited +throughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my +Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he +still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family." This +clearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind, +and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and the +estate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius." Could he have +already connected the two things, the bloody footstep and this +Anglo-American interest? The next piece of history comes in the shape of +a manuscript book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawthorne had +left the consulate, and containing what must have been the earliest +sketch of the story, as he then conceived it. It begins abruptly, and +proceeds uncertainly, at the rate of a few pages each day, for about a +month. Detached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of the +proposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The chief interest seems +to lie in the project which a young American has formed, during a visit +to England, of tracing out and proving his inherited right to an old +manor-house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old hall +possesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and with this some +mystery is connected, which the writer himself does not yet seem to have +discovered. He takes a characteristic pleasure in waiting for this +suggestive footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to its +lair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon it, +indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of vague anticipation +in which he hopes to envelop the good reader. The perusal of this +singular journal, in which the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, +is absorbing beyond description. But though at times he seems to be +rapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at every point the +subtle darkness and coming terror of the theme seem to baffle the +author, and he retires, to await a more favorable moment. At its +conclusion, though he appears now to have formed a clear picture enough +of what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the underlying +thought, which he at moments dimly feels but cannot bring to light, and +without which he is unable to fuse the materials into readiness for the +mould. + +Our only information as to the course of the story between April, 1858, +and the time of writing "Septimius," must be gathered from a sketch +found among the author's papers, the date of which it is not possible to +determine with precision, though both its matter and form indicate that +it must have been written subsequently to the journal above mentioned. +Herein are curiously mingled certain features of both "Septimius" and +the "Dolliver Romance." So far as is consistent with the essential +privacy of the manuscript, I shall give a general outline of its +contents. It consists of two sections, in the second of which a lapse of +some years is implied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardly +exceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a singular, +morose old man, who inhabits a house overlooking a New England +graveyard. But though his situation resembles in this particular that of +Grandsir Dolliver, his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. +Portsoaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy-and-water and a +cloud-compelling pipe; and his study, like the doctor's chamber in +"Septimius," is tapestried with spider-webs; a particularly virulent +spider which dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, +being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. On the other +hand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that of +Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, +straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character of +Dr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver. This "grim +doctor," as he is almost invariably styled in the manuscript, seems to +have originated in Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, +spiritualist and antiquarian, of Florence, [Footnote: French and Italian +Note-Books, Vol. II.] who also probably stood as a model for Grandsir +Dolliver. Not that either of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup; +but the personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman had +some sort of affinity with the author's idea, which led him to maintain +a certain likeness between him and his own fictitious persons. As in the +case of the Florentine antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house of +the doctor, her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's adopted +daughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. There is much about her like +Pansie, of the "Dolliver" fragment, but she is still only dimly brought +out. The boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely addicted +to revery. Though his traits are but slightly indicated, he suggests in +general the character of Septimius, and may very easily have grown into +him, at a later period. At first he is much neglected by the doctor, but +afterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in questioning his mysterious +guardian as to his own origin, and the connection subsisting between +them, he secures greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints to +him the fact of his descent from an old English family, and frequent +mention is made of the ancestral hall, the threshold of which is stained +by the imprint of a bloody footstep marking the scene of some dark +tragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, +assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangers +are introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, and +connection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone is +discovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old +man had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness of +a foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, and +the children, in playing about it, discover a little silver key, which +the doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the declaration +that it is of no value. After this, the boy's education is taken in hand +by his being sent to school; but presently the doctor sickens of life, +and characteristically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die, +does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made of certain papers +which he had kept in a secret place, and these the youth now secures. +The second part describes his advent into England. He soon makes his way +to the old hall, but just as his connection with it and its inmates +begins, the manuscript terminates. + +It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at first laid in +New England, whereas the journalized sketch opened the drama in England. +From this I infer that the former was written after the return to this +country. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, after +the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before +the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note +of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on +beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with +the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the +legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no +longer write an English romance, but must give the book mainly an +American coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, too, in his thus +wavering between the two countries, which now so nearly equally divided +his affections, and striving to unite the Wayside with the far-off +English manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall into +place. The deathless man was made the hero; the English inheritance +became an inferior motive-power, on which, however, the romantic action +depends; the family papers and the silver key came well to hand for the +elucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new and deep +significance; and a "purple everlasting flower," presented in 1854 to +Mrs. Hawthorne by the gardener of Eaton Hall, blossomed out, with +supernatural splendor, as a central point in the design. The scene being +in Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revolutionary +association was natural. But the public phase of that epoch could not +assume an important place: it was sunk into the background, forming +merely a lurid field on which the figures of this most solemn and +terrific of all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. One +singular result of the historic location, however, is the use that was +now made of that tradition which Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, +concerning a boy who was chopping wood on the April morning of the +famous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the field, whom he +killed with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, +I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, +and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain.... This one +circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us +of the fight." Thus had he written, fourteen years before; and now that +sombre study furnished him with the psychology of the death-scene in the +beginning of "Septimius." + +But the romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learn +from the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home," written in July, +1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown +aside," which "will never now be accomplished." In November of that +year, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; and +in the first page of the isolated opening scene, published in July, +1864, occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from which the +good doctor had received great invigoration, and which we may well +suppose was destined to tincture the whole story. Another point from +which a connection with "Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is the +passing mention of Grandsir Dolliver's grandson Cornelius, by whom this +cordial had been compounded, he having displayed a great efficiency with +powerful drugs. Recalling that the author describes many nostrums as +having been attributed to Septimius, which he had perhaps chanced upon +in his unsuccessful attempts to distil the elixir of life, we may fairly +conjecture this posthumous character of Cornelius, this mere memory, to +be the remains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been buried +by the author under the splendid monument of a still more highly wrought +and more aspiring form of the romance. The only remaining portions of +this latest form have been printed, and are lull of a silvery and +resonant promise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romance +of Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the child +Pansie--who promised to be the author's most captivating feminine +creation--with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of +celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorseless +mournfulness of the preliminary work. In the manuscript sketch for +"Septimius" there is a note referring to a description in the "English +Note-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead and +dry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this is +caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted round +them like gigantic snakes, ... throttling the life out of them, ... and +one feels that they have _stolen the life_ that belonged to the +pines." This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of some +life being stolen in order to add to any other life more than its share, +is an idea that very clearly appears in the romance. In "Dolliver" the +same strain of feeling would probably have reappeared; but it would +there perhaps have been beautified, softened, expiated by the mutual +love of Pansie and the grandsire; each wishing to live forever, for the +other. Even in "Septimius" we can discern Hawthorne standing upon the +wayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of the unhappy hero, +tenderly diffusing the essence of his own concluding thoughts on art and +existence. Like Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his own +death, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in midmost of the melody, +leaving the strain unfinished, he labors on, prescient of the +overhanging doom. Genial and tender at times, amidst their sadness, his +reveries are nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death; and it +is not until the opening of "The Dolliver Romance" that the darkness +breaks away. Then, indeed, we feel once more the dewy freshness of the +long-past prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, +undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the dark valley appears +for a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on his +countenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this new +message that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddle +of sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out a +little way from earth. + +Only an eddying silence! And yet the air seems even now alive with his +last words. + + + + +XI. + + +PERSONALITY. + +What has thus far been developed in this essay, concerning Hawthorne's +personality, though incidental, has, I hope, served the end in +view,--that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the most +profound thought and the most graceful and humorous mental play. The +details of his early life already given show how soon the inborn honor +of his nature began to shine. The small irregularities in his college +course have seemed to me to bring him nearer and to endear him, without +in any way impairing the dignity and beauty of character which prevailed +in him from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared the average +human history in these harmless peccadilloes; for they never hurt his +integrity, and they are reminders of that old but welcome truth, that +the greatest men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. He +had many difficulties to deal with, as unpicturesque and harassing as +any we have to encounter in our daily courses,--a thing which people are +curiously prone to forget in the case of eminent authors. The way in +which he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We discover how +well the high qualities of genius were matched by those of character. + +Fragmentary anecdotes have a value, but so relative that to attempt to +construct the subject's character out of them is hazardous. Conceptions +of a man derived only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb's +ghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, are replaced +throughout the body by new ones. Likewise, the grossest errors have been +committed through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne's +writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so much +imagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and careful +imagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to be +interpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, very +inadequately representative, and often--unless read in many +lights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false +notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modest +covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing to +withdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of the +latter's unpopularity:-- + +"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it is +honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measure +out my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of the +occasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit of +it needlessly." + +Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifying +word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne +says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between +the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he +should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for +the transient embodiment of a mood! + +The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that he +must have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so many +grave thoughts and solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as he +himself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale or +an essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not what +is peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me." He +sympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mind +of the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through +life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is +called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius +who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to +describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the +abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of +_self_-study,--personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is +what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing +to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it +being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against +them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is +so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and +forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is to +excite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that the +elements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; therefore +we begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual nature +all the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any of +us. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy person. + +"You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me," his friend +George Hillard wrote to him, once. "How comes it that, with so +thoroughly healthy an organization as you have, you have such a taste +for the morbid anatomy of the human heart, and such a knowledge of it, +too? I should fancy, from your books, 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." + +This very healthiness was his qualification for his office. By virtue of +his mental integrity and absolute moral purity, he was able to handle +unhurt all disintegrated and sinful forms of character; and when souls +in trouble, persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote to +him for counsel, they recognized the healing touch of one whose pitying +immaculateness could make them well. + +She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympathy such as has +rarely been given to any man, who lived with him a life so exquisitely +fair and high, that to speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, has +written:-- + +"He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed +what a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood was +always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the +airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too +far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping +imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived +morbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumination of +his own steady cheer." + +His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his genial warmth and +ease in converse with them. He could seldom talk freely with more than +two or three, however, on account of his constitutional shyness, and +perhaps of a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind; though he possessed +a ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody: to Mrs. T---- good sense; +to Mary, good sense, with a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G----, sentiment, +romance, and nonsense." [Footnote: American Note-Books, 1837.] A +gentleman who was with him at Brook farm, and knew him well, tells me +that his presence was very attractive, and that he inspired great esteem +among all at the farm by his personal qualities. On a walking trip to +Wachusett, which they once made together, Hawthorne showed a great +interest in sitting in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen to +the talk of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in which he +was approached had a great deal to do with his response. If treated +simply and wisely, he would answer cordially; but he was entirely +dismayed, as a rule, by those who made demonstrations of admiration or +awe. "Why do they treat me so?" he asked a friend, in one case of this +sort. "Why, they're afraid of you." "But I tremble at _them_," he +said. "They think," she explained, "that you're imagining all sorts of +terrible things." "Heavens!" he answered; "if they only knew what I +_do_ think about." At one time, when he was visiting this same +friend, he was obliged to return some calls, and his companion in the +midst of conversation left him to continue it. He had previously asked +his hostess, in assumed terror, what he should talk about, and she +advised "climate." Accordingly, he turned to the naval officer whom he +was calling upon, and asked him if he had ever been to the Sandwich +Islands. "The man started," he said, on returning, "as if he had been +struck. He had evidently been there and committed some terrible crime, +which my allusion recalled. I had made a frightful mess of it. B---- led +me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary +and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation +caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a +new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis +has given an account of his demeanor on another occasion:-- + +"I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. +It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable +hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled; and I, who +listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some +time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a +little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and +his black eyes ['black' is an error] clearly burning under his black +brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent +as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a +poet,--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and +stood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. +No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversation +flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to +be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent man +imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at +his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing was +lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the +exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but +this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said +by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness +of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently +rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his +face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the +night.'" + +He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if a +man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, +because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not." And the +same writer says:---- + +"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." + +I am told that in his own home, though he was often silent, it was never +with sadness except in seasons of great illness in the house, the +prevailing effect of his manner being usually that of a cheerful and +almost humorous calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the best +descriptions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering smile"; +and of his atmosphere, when he says that at Emerson's house it seemed +always morning, but at Hawthorne's you passed into + + "A land in which it seemed always afternoon." + +Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who knew him to have +been always very impressive. He was tall and strongly built, with +beautiful and lustrous gray-blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair of +great softness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the early +engraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar fineness and delicacy, +giving unusual softness to his complexion. After his Italian sojourn 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 from 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 and almost irresolute voice." +The occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at anything +were very rare; but when these came, he manifested a strength of sway +only to be described as regal. Without the least violence, he brought a +searching sternness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying as +it did the weight of perfect self-control. 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 quite +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 habitual and informal 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 an explanation. His considerateness was always delicate and +alert, and has left in his family a reverence for qualities that have +certainly never been surpassed and not often equalled in sweetness. + +He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, but +not--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside the +Concord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and +was fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercise +was walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never even +seen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows" +with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in a +paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, +sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanac +or newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored +volumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in his +choice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for the +hour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently +by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving an +interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, +was at one time a special favorite with him. + +It begins:-- + + "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, + Places devoted to the Night, + Remote from Tumult and from Noise, + How you my restless thoughts delight!" + +And the last stanza has these lines:-- + + "O, how I solitude adore, + That element of noblest wit, + Where I have learned Apollo's lore, + Without the pains to study it."] + +An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books in +themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulate +a library of any size, but he had a passion for books. + +"There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of +all kinds," he writes in "The Old Manse." "A bound volume has a charm in +my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good +Mussulman; ... every new book or antique one may contain the 'open +sesame,'--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected +cave of Truth." + +When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a small +package of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure for +many days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, +from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordial +admirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical review +of their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test of +his own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which he +judges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind was +impressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found in +them. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did not +weakly underrate his work. "Recognition," he once said to Mr. Howells, +"makes a man very modest." + +An attempt has also been made to show that he had little interest in +animals, partly based, ludicrous as it may seem, on his bringing them +into only one of his books. In his American journals, however, there is +abundant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at the Old +Manse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he says he should not have +done it for himself; and in the Trosachs he finds a moment for pitying +some little lambs startled by the approach of his party. [Footnote: +English Note-Books (May, 1856).] I have already mentioned his fondness +for cats. It has further been said that he did not enjoy wild nature, +because in the "English Note-Books" there is no outgushing of ecstatic +description. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment of it. He could +not enter into the spectacle when hurrying through strange regions. +Among the English lakes he writes:-- + +"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me +that I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all in +the space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was a +surfeit. + +"I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who goes for the +set and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not let herself be seen +in such cases. You must patiently bide her time; and by and by, at some +unforeseen moment, she will quietly and suddenly unveil herself and for +a brief space allow you to look right into the heart of her mystery. But +if you call out to her peremptorily, 'Nature! unveil yourself this very +moment!' she only draws her veil the closer; and you may look with all +your eyes, and imagine that you see all that she can show, and yet see +nothing." + +But this was because his sensibility was so great that he drew from +little things a larger pleasure than many feel when excited by grand +ones; and knowing this deeper phase, he could not be content with the +hasty admiration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty of a +scene which he could absorb in peace was never lost upon him. 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. Nothing could be more +accurate or sensitive than the brief descriptions of nature in his +works. But there is nothing sentimental about them; partly owing to the +Anglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to seek precise and detailed +statement first of all, and partly because of a certain classic, +awe-inspired reserve, like that of Horace and Virgil. + +There was a commendable indolence in his character. It was not a +constitutional weakness, overcoming will, but the instinctive precaution +of a man whose errand it was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. +He always waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But these +intervals, of course, were richly productive of revery which afterward +entered into the creative moments. He would sometimes become deeply +abstracted in imagination; and while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter" +it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting in the room where +his wife was doing some sewing, he unconsciously took up a part of the +work and cut it into minute fragments with the scissors, without being +aware that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in the same way +gradually chipped off with a knife portions of a table, until the entire +folding-leaf was worn away by the process. The opinion was sometimes +advanced by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial labor he +might not have done so much with the pen; but in this he perhaps +underestimated the leisure in his blood, which was one of the elements +of his power. Men of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire of +ideas, and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from such a +fate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, it may have had +something to do with his comparative withdrawal from practical affairs +other than those which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave he +writes:-- + +"His error lay in supposing that this age more than any past or future +one is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a new +suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; ... and +more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in +view whether he himself should contend for it or against it." + +The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of a fatalist, but +of an optimist (if we must connect him with any "ism") who has a very +profound faith in Providence; not in any "special providence," but in +that operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies and +conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs +to a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers of +his generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of +showing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, +how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of very +great sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, by +consequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeleton +statement: the noblest element in his mood is that he believes with his +heart. A good interpreter has said that he _feels_ with his _brain_, and +_thinks_ with his _heart_, to show the completeness with which he +mingled the two elements in his meditations on existence. A warm, pure, +living sympathy pervaded all his analysis of mankind, without which that +analysis would have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view which +reckons him to have been wanting in moral enthusiasm: he had not that +kind which can crush out sympathy with suffering, for the sake of +carrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but one +cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possesses +another side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must be +remembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a suffering +poet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was +deeper than that of any scheme or system. + +His distaste for society has been declared to proceed from the fact +that, when he once became interested in people, he could no longer +chemically resolve them into material for romance. But this assumption +is also erroneous; for Hawthorne, if he felt it needful, could bring to +bear upon his best friends the same qualitative measuring skill that he +exercised on any one. I do not doubt that he knew where to place his +friends and acquaintance in the scale of relative excellence. All of us +who have not an equal analytic power with his own can at least reverence +his discretion so far as to believe that he had stand-points not open to +every one, from which he took views often more essentially just than if +he had assumed a more sweeping estimate. In other cases, where he +bestowed more friendship and confidence than the object of them +especially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple pleasure of accepting +what circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person; +although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he +often spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense," deeming it a +desirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioning +trust on his part; for he might well be called + + "As the greatest only are, + In his simplicity sublime." + +The connection between Pierce and himself involved too many +considerations to make it possible to pass them with indifference; and +he perhaps condemned certain public acts of the President, while feeling +it to be utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mistakes +with any one. As to other slighter connections, it is very likely he did +not take the trouble that might have saved him from being imposed upon. + +But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality precisely. A +poet's whole effort is to indirectly express this, by expressing the +effect of things upon him; and we may read much of Hawthorne in his +books, if we have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only a +part of himself into them; that part which best served the inexorable +law of his genius for treating life in a given light. For the rest, his +two chapters on "The Custom-House" and "The Old Manse" show us something +of his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost character +was a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundly +the impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudy +veil stretches over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. "I +have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At another time: "Lights +and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know +neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closely +into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality of +appearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities which +are all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he would +hesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his +searching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In other +persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study of +investigation from without inward,--a more healthy method. His +_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, would +of course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to +light in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inability +to define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is the +creative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whether +many of the famous delineators of character could give us a very +distinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it would +probably make them out the most uninteresting of beings. It would +certainly be divested of the special charm of their other writing. +Imagine Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar traits: +would he be able to excite even a smile? How much of his own delicious +personality could Thackeray have described without losing the zest of +his other portraitures? Hawthorne has given a kind of picture of himself +in Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that character by his +friends; but I suspect he has adroitly constructed Coverdale out of the +_appearance_ which he knew himself to make in the eyes of +associates. I do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisive +personality; for indeed he had. But the essence of the person cannot be +compressed into a few brief paragraphs, and must be slowly drawn in as a +pervasive elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In the +latter he has given as much definition of his interior self as we are +likely to get, for no one else can continue the broken jottings that he +has left, and extend them into outlines. We shall not greatly err if we +treat the hidden depths of his spirit with as much reverence as he +himself used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of those who +have studied this most careful and delicate of definers have embraced +the madness of attempting to bind him down in unhesitating, absolute +statements. He who mastered words so completely that he learned to +despise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy epithets and a +few conventional phrases. But none can ever be said to know Hawthorne +who do not leave large allowances for the unknowable. + + + + +XII. + + +POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. + +The names of Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have been so often connected +without due discrimination, that it is imperative to consider here the +actual relation between the three men. Inquiry might naturally be roused +by the circumstance that, although Hawthorne has freely been likened to +Irving in some quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are never +supposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they might aptly be cited +in illustration of the widely opposed tendencies already developed in +our brief national literature. Two things equal to the same thing are +equal to each other; and if Poe and Irving were each equal to Hawthorne, +there would be some similarity between them. But it is evident that they +are not like quantities; and we must conclude that they have been +unconsciously used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure to +gauge the greatest of the triad with. + +Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to both Poe and Irving. +Hawthorne and Irving represent a dignity and roundedness of diction +which is one of the old-fashioned merits in English writing; and because +they especially, among eminent authors of the century, have stood for +this quality, they have been supposed to stand close together. But +Irving's speech is not so much an organic part of his genius as a +preconceived method of expression which has a considerable share in +modifying his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. On the other +hand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and strongly +out of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the +slightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the +informing thought,--like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery. +The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in the +beginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that +massive power of hewing out individual character which afterward had +full swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in his +lighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "The +Mutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne's +conceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" might +have issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's own +repertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile art +than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even +in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than +Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. +Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on +endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with +that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the +construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and +symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It is a brilliant +instance of the more ideal mind asserting its commanding power, by +admirable achievements in the inferior styles,--so that even in those he +was at once ranked with the most famous practiser of them,--and then +quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one +had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a +moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of +"Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but +evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the +same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they +assuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have next +to nothing. The only phases of character which Irving has any success in +dealing with are those of credulity and prejudice. The legendary +tendency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. Both were +lovers of association, and turned naturally to the past for materials: +the New-Yorker found delightful sources of tradition or of ludicrous +invention in the past of that city, where his family held a +long-established and estimable footing; and the New-Englander, as we +have seen, drew also through the channel of descent from the dark tarn +of Puritan experience. But Irving turned his back upon everything else +when he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while Hawthorne +sought that vantage-ground only to secure a more impressive view of +humanity. There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as well +as a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is his +ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of double +meanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself, +but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid +fascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, +possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was at +once seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination were +always in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associate +with him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainly +very charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief to +turn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. He +pitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time and +locality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality, +than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almost +entirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here, +indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer of +fiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not want +reality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that we +must not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is a +Northern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke was +seen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, +and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came. When he +awoke, he described an imaginary excursion of his own, following exactly +the course which the smoke had taken. This indirect contact might +furnish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious intercourse with +the world through his books. + +It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this difference to the +greater strength of Irving's humor,--a trait, always much lauded in him. +It is without doubt a good quality. This mild, sweet radiance of an +uncontaminated and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. +But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer and far more +joyous" than Addison's. Both in style and in humor Irving has caught +something of the grace of "The Spectator"; but as in the style he +frequently falls short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in humor +I cannot see how he is to be brought at all on a level with Addison, who +is primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, but all the deeper on +that account in the lustre of his humorous displays. Addison, too, had +somewhat of the poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as of +neat satire and compact characterization. But if we looked for a pithy +embodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might call +the former a "polite writer," and the latter a profound poet: as, +indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent to +confuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos is +the great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always a +lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made +so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has won +so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there +is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an +industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, +have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now know +is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous +character,--a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of +relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our +sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears an +aspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can +is barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow of +his return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not even +suspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness of +the situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to the +bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over the +spectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written tale +is a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is a +common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life +hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out +of Rip Van Winkle's flagon." To be sure, there is a hidden moral here, +of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscured +as to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind. Such a +moral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced, +in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person of +searching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it without +injury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine what +divine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of this +theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the +case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving +given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master +comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul +that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must +admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector +of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to +forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the +discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage +in Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker +and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something +more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we +have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he +would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of +him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be +always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, +now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out +upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the +silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion +of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor +play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos +of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. +This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The +Marble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet Letter," for that does not present +Hawthorne's genius in its widest action. In one place he speaks of "the +tragic power of laughter,"--a discrimination which involves the whole +deep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to remark that +at the most affecting portions of the play "Rip Van Winkle," the +majority of the audience always laugh; this, though irritating to a +thoughtful listener, is really an involuntary tribute to the marvellous +wisdom and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and humor. +Again Hawthorne: "Human destinies look _ominous_ without some +perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray." And, elsewhere: +"There is _something more awful in happiness than in sorrow_, the +latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance +and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble +at it." These thoughts could never have occurred to Irving with the same +intensity. Now, from all this we gather inference as to the deep sources +of Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was the daughter, +and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to actual exhibition of humor, +Hawthorne's is made a diffusive medium to temper the rays of tragedy +with, and never appears in such unmixed form as that of Irving. So that +even though we must confess a smaller mental calibre in the latter, we +may gladly grant him a superiority in his special mood of fun. +An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately wrote: "Poe is a +kind of Hawthorne and _delirium tremens_." This announcement, +however, betrays a singular misapprehension. When Hawthorne's tales +first appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an intimate +and direct relation to the author's own moods; while Poe's were supposed +to be daring flights of pure imagination, or ingenious attempts to prove +theories held by the writer, but were not charged directly to his own +experience. Time has shown that the converse was the case. The psychical +conditions described by Hawthorne had only the remotest connection with +any mood of his own; they were mainly translations, into the language of +genius, of certain impressions and observations drawn from the world +around him. After his death, the Note-Books caused a general rustle of +surprise, revealing as they did the simple, wholesome nature of this +strange imaginer; yet though he there speaks--surely without prejudice, +because without the least knowledge that the world would ever hear +him--of "the objectivity" of his fictions, critics have not yet wholly +learned how far apart from himself these creations were. The observation +of some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings, +would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a concise +embodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate it +with; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like that +of Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil," or a singular +physiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based, +would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstrip +it in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, the +whole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from +_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; and +this expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and +movement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from the +outside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merely +inventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild, +arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but his +impressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid. +What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that this +quality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owing +to it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's +unfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to a +scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of his +unjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one else +could be. The fine enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadly +acid of his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have pierced +his poetry and prose, shattered their structure, and blurred their +beauty. Only four or five of his poems--"The Raven," "Ligeia," the +earlier of the two addressed "To Helen," and the sonnet to his +wife--escape being flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable error +of taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. In +criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acute +instinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as all +his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding +clever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things are +essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe to +exemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of his +thoroughly unsound mind subverted the better qualities, vitiated his +judgments with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, and +withered the most that he wrote in this direction into something very +like rubbish. We have seen, for example, how his attempt to +dispassionately examine Hawthorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ran +his own pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is suggestive +to find that the holder of such exacting doctrine about beauty, the man +also of whom pre-eminently it may be said, as Baudelaire wrote of him, +"Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great enemies," should so +completely fail to reach even the unmoral perfection which he assigned +as the highest attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of the +beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the most +loathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. This +passionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a +normal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interior +discord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, +instead of the sense of beauty,--except (as has been said) in fragments. +Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, +and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classic +antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of all +lovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. "I have imbibed +the shadows of fallen columns," he says in one of his tales, "at Balbec, +and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin." +Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, and +it is the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of the +still living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clinging +around them. Hawthorne, too, wandered much amid human ruin, but it was +not with delight in the mere fact of decay; rather with grieving over +it, and the hope to learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, +and how future structures might be made stronger by studying the sources +of failure. One of the least thoughtful remarks which I have heard +touching Hawthorne was this, that his books could not live because they +dealt with the "sick side" of human nature. As if great poets ever +refrained from dealing with it! The tenure of fame depends on whether +the writer has himself become infected with sickness. With Hawthorne +this is most certainly not the case, for the morbid phases which he +studied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the other hand, +pictured his own half-maniacal moods and diseased fancies. There is +absolutely no study of character in his stories, no dramatic +separateness of being. He looks only for fixed and inert human +quantities, with which he may juggle at will. He did not possess +insight; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud was merely a +sort of mathematical ingenuity of calculation, in which, however, he was +extraordinarily keen. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poe +must be rated almost highest among American poets, and high among +prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and +frightful energy crowded into such small compartments. Yet it would be +difficult to find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than that +which informs his tales. It is not the _representation_ of +semi-insanity that he gives: he himself is its _representative_. +Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into some sort of healthy +relation with us, he is swayed and carried away by it. His genius +flourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that it +left, are like a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyncheon in the "Seven +Gables" is Poe himself, deprived of the ability to act: in both are +found the same consummate fastidiousness, the same abnormal egotism. And +it is worth attention that when Clifford is aroused to sudden action by +Judge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his intellect is almost +precisely that brilliant but defective kind of ratiocination which Poe +so delights to display. It is crazy wildness, with a surface appearance +of accurate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne--the calm, +ardent, healthy master of imagination--is able to create the disordered +type that Poe _is_, we shall find by how much the former is greater +than the latter. + +A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical question as to Poe. He +calls him "the mad man of letters _par excellence_," and by an +ingenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe was +the victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts +to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less +given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the +necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is a +morbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; but +that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates the +perfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded with +it. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of men like +Shakespere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their temperaments, +grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, +and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparing +insight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in so +advanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more +dazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably more +unique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the true +sense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the +side of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition with +Hawthorne: although we have ranked him high in poetry and prose, +regarded simply as a dynamic substance, it must be confessed that his +prose has nothing which can be called style, nor even a manner like +Irving's very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself in +various ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for the sake of +getting off one of his pseudo-philosophical disquisitions; and, +notwithstanding many successful hits in expression, and a specious but +misleading assumption of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language is +loose, promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. + +Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary condition in common: +each shows a double side. With Poe the antithesis is between poetry and +criticism; Irving, having been brought up by Fiction as a foster-mother, +is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian, History; and +Hawthorne rests his hand from ideal design, in elaborating quiet +pictures of reality. In each case there is more or less seeming +irreconcilement between the two phases found in combination; but the +opposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the grasp with +which it is controlled by him is stronger than that of either Poe or +Irving,--again a result pronouncing him the master. + +There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. The +question of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one +in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so +relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study +of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point +of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, +German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their +component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be +called a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. +The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them is +that of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original in +American genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains a +certain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It is +not one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had the +sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, +the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, +both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of our +Revolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certain +truths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming of +separate standards in literature is a continuation of that historic +attitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of the +world, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. The +attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a +singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe +exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that +he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position +in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want +of deep literary identification with the national character in general. +But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have +been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do +with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in +Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Théophile Gautier, as a sort +of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with +the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, +comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and +the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's +position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius +under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native +Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and +"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited +literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign +audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone +secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly +wise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "English +Writers on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served in +our days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, and +every day we live a whole volume of refutation." His friendship with +Scott, also, was a delightful addition to the amenities of literature, +and shall remain a goodly and refreshing memory to us always. Yet what +he accomplished in this way for American literature at large, Irving +compensated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot be denied +that the success of "The Sketch-Book" led to an overdoing of his part in +"Bracebridge Hall." "Salmagundi" was the first step in the path of +palpable imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch-Book," +though taking some charming departures, the writer made a more refined +attempt to produce the same order of effects so perfectly attained by +the suave Queen Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollection +of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes positively annoying. It is +not that the style of Addison is precisely reproduced, of course, but +the general resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have been +without direct and conscious copying, the memory of Addisonian methods +is too apparent. Irving's real genius, which occasionally in his other +writings emits delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in this +work; and though he has the knack of using the dry point of Addison's +humor, he doesn't achieve what etchers call "the burr" that ought to +result from its use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with true +aquafortis precision, and Irving's sketches are to his as pen-and-ink +drawing to the real etching. But it was not only this lack of literary +independence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so well +satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two +nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he +had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_ +obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused +pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,--honest, pathetic Paulding, a +rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and +couldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as + + "The bard of the backwoods, + The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin." + +Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his old +coadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish, +they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude which +Irving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a page +on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually amiable toward him at first, +thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance: +"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. He +was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owed +him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us.... It was +plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everything +to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a less savage fashion +we, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with such +unjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between the +date of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home"; +the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time. + +In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a pioneer, along +with Cooper, and was in this quite different from Poe, who had no +aptitude in that way. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" is too +farcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedly +had a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local +antiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were +valuable acquisitions so far as they went. Would that they had been +wrought out with a more masterly touch; and would that Irving had +penetrated further in this direction! But, though these Hudson legends +will long keep his fame renewed, it will perhaps be chiefly as a +historian that he will be prized. His pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, +his "Mahomet," "Columbus," and "Conquest of Granada," though not too +profound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem; and his mellow and +stately narrative of Washington's life is a work of enduring excellence. +But these lie outside of our present discussion. Nor need we compare his +achievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after the review we +have been making of the latter's relation to New England. + +Poe and Irving and Hawthorne have all met with acceptance in other +countries, and their works have been translated into several languages. +Irving has exercised no perceptible influence on literature at home or +abroad; Poe has entered more or less into the workings of a school in +England and a group in France. Hawthorne's position on the Continent has +perhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstract +admiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind +than either of the others, and it is probable that his share in +inspiring noble literature in America will--as it has already begun to +show itself an important one--become vastly greater in future. It is +impossible, as we have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between these +writers. Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is beyond +dispute the more original of the two. Each, again, has something which +Hawthorne does not possess. But, if we must attempt at all to reduce so +intricate a problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three may +be stated in the equation, Poe _plus_ Irving _plus_ an unknown +quantity equals Hawthorne. + + + + +XIII. + + +THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. + +The suddenness with which Hawthorne faded away and died, when at the +zenith of his fame, is no less strange and sad and visionary now than it +was a poignant anguish then. He returned from Europe somewhat +lingeringly, as we have seen, knowing too well the difference between +the regions he was quitting and the thinner, sharper, and more wasting +atmosphere of a country where every one who has anything to give is +constantly drawn upon from every side, and has less resource for +intellectual replenishment than in other lands. His seven years in +England and Italy had, on the whole, been a period of high prosperity, +of warm and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful literary +encounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning among so many new +and suggestive scenes. And when he found himself once more on the old +ground, with the old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily in +the face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain degree of +depression would follow. Just as this reaction had set in, the breaking +out of civil war threw upon Hawthorne, before he had time to brace +himself for the shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. The +conflict of feelings which it excited on the public side has been +sketched; and that alone should have been enough to make the years of +strife a time of continuous gloom and anxiety to him; but it would be +losing sight of a very large element in his distress, not to add that he +mourned over the multitude of private griefs which were the harvest of +battle as acutely as if they had all been his own losses. His intense +imagination burned them too deeply into his heart. How can we call this +weakness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness and sympathy? +"Hawthorne's life was shortened by the war," Mr. Lowell says. Expressing +this view once, to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, I +was met with entire understanding. He told me that his own father, a +stanch Unionist, though not in military service, was as certainly +brought to his death by the war as any of the thousands who fell in +battle. In how wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply to +Hawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death,-- + + "To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed!" + +His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from the first he +foresaw that he could not outlive these trials. In April, 1862, he +visited Washington, and wrote the article "Chiefly about War Matters" +already alluded to. He has left this glimpse of himself at that time:-- + +"I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think will +be the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One charm it must +needs have,--an aspect of immortal jollity and well-to-do-ness; for +Leutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and when +he sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne; +and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutual +good-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture made a +really miraculous progress. Leutze is the best of fellows." + +The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had already begun to +give way; and though he wrote thus cheerily, he was by no means well. In +another published note there is this postscript:-- + +"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I enclose, +makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure in making me +venerable,--as if I were as old as himself." + +He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon "The Dolliver +Romance," trudging to and fro upon his hill-top, which was called, at +home, "the mount of vision." But before proceeding with that, he began +the series of essays composing "Our Old Home," not yet feeling strong +enough for the more trying exertion of fiction. But the preparation of +these, charming as they are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. +"I am delighted," he writes to his publisher, "at what you tell me +about the kind appreciation of my articles, for I feel rather gloomy +about them myself.... I cannot come to Boston to spend more than a day, +just at present. It would suit me better to come for a visit when the +spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your +hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; +though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me +somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of his +shell." + +His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" seems to have been one of +fatigue and discouragement. He had, besides, to deal with the harassing +question of the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved in this +manly and admirable letter to his publisher:-- + +"I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed my +reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, smoke cigars +over it, and see what it might be possible for me to do towards taking +it. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw +either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate +personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, +especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence +without his kindness; and if he 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. As for the literary public, it must accept my book precisely +as I think fit to give it, or let it alone." + +By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the Romance had sunk +still lower, so that he wrote:-- + +"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if ever. +There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at +the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to +be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of +writing a sunshiny book." + +And, a little later:-- + +"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." + +His inability to work has been illustrated in the numerous bulletins of +this period published by Mr. Fields: they show him at times despondent, +as in the extracts above, then again in a state of semi-resolution. At +another time there is mixed presentiment and humor in his report. + +"I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I +see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other +broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist +upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. That +trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a further +stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, lost its temper +and its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. +Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for it; +perhaps not." + +But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy shadow that makes +the flickering humor even sadder than the awesome conviction that he has +done with writing. How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, in +which he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his literary faculty! +Here he announces, finally: "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." Yet the cause was not so much the +loss of literary power, as the physical exhaustion that had already worn +him away beyond recovery. He longed for England; and possibly if he +could have gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the sense +of rest that he would have felt there, might have restored him. He had +friends in this country, however, who made attempts to break up the +disastrous condition into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of +1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, he received from his friend Mr. +Lowell this most charming invitation to come to Cambridge:-- + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--I hope you have not forgotten that during +"anniversary week" you were to make me a little anniversary by a visit? +I have been looking forward to it _ever_ so long. My plan is that +you come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club, +and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last +day of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book is +going through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here. +I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind,--red +for sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing at +all, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one is +satisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader of +taste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as +high and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that +my crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shall +present you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soon +as you arrive. + +Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you I +have looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest spring +pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds. + +Always cordially yours, + +J. R. LOWELL. + +"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," wrote Hawthorne, in +answer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighing +upon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine and +for my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but I +hope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club on +Saturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit." + +But, at the last moment, he was obliged to give it up, being detained by +a cold. And there seemed indeed a fatality which interfered with all +attempts to thwart the coming evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, +completely broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out southward +with Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at Philadelphia he began to +improve; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he had +gained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here to +dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: these +things would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditation +on Hawthorne's life which we have been following out,--a life so +beautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance of +mere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. But it was +needful to show in what way this great spirit bowed beneath the weight +of its own sympathy with a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him in +Boston, though "his aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable," +and though "he spoke as if his work were done, and he should write no +more," still "there was no failing noticeable in his conversational +powers." "There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect," wrote Dr. +Holmes, "that gave warning of so sudden an end as that which startled us +all." He passed on into the shadow as if of his own will; feeling that +his country lay in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hate +and horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look at; +welcoming--except as those dear to him were concerned--the prospect of +that death which he alone knew to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, +1864, that the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire,--whither he +had gone with Ex-President Pierce,--that Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, +it was recalled with a kind of awe that through many years of his life +Hawthorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly scribbling at +any time, of writing the number sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge of +his death, which he showed in the final days, had already begun to +manifest itself in this indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himself +felt that the number was connected with his life in some fatal way. Five +days later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, the beautiful cemetery where +he had been wont to walk among the pines, where once when living at the +Manse he had lain upon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, when Mr. +Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and said the Muses were in the woods +that day. + +A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut upon it, was placed +above him. He had wished that there should be no monument. He liked +Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant to +think and know that he did not care for a stately monument." Longfellow +and Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis Agassiz, and his friends +Pierce, and Hillard, with Ellery Channing, and other famous men, +assembled on that peaceful morning to take their places in the funeral +train. Some who had not known him in life came long distances to see +him, now, and ever afterward bore about with them the memory of his +aspect, strong and beautiful, in his last repose. The orchards were +blossoming; the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies of +the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among the flowers, had come +forth in quiet companies, to look their last on his face, so white and +quiet too. So, while the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenly +in the distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the dead +poet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we look back and listen, +Longfellow's simple, penetrating chant returns upon the ear. + +In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered in Hawthorne's +death; and no less vain the attempt to fix in a few words the +incalculable gain his life has left with us. When one remembers the +power that was unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach cold +Time and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that lay before us +all, in the continuance of his career. We look upon these few great +works, that may be numbered on the fingers of a hand, and wonder what +good end was served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that had +just begun to open. We remember the tardy recognition that kept the +fountain of his spirit so long half concealed, and the necessities that +forced him to give ten of his best years to the sterile industry of +official duties. But there are great compensations. Without the youthful +period of hopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have seen, would not have +been the unique force, the high, untrammelled thinker that he became +through that fortunate isolation; wanting the uncongenial contact of his +terms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be that he could not +have developed his genius with such balance of strength as it now shows; +and, finally, without the return to his native land, the national fibre +in him would have missed its crowning grace of conscientiousness. He +might in that case have written more books, but the very loss of these, +implying as it does his pure love of country, is an acquisition much +more positively valuable. + +There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of his activity, in +so far as it gives emphasis to that incompleteness of any verbal +statement of truth, which he was continually insisting upon with his +readers. + +Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that however many works +he might have produced, it seems unlikely that any one of them would +have failed to record some large movement in his growth; and therefore +it is perhaps to be regretted that his life could not have been made to +solely serve his genius, so that we might have had the whole sweep of +his imagination clearly exposed. As it is, he has not given us a large +variety of characters; and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certain +general likeness one to another. Phoebe, however, is quite at the +opposite pole of womanhood; Hilda is as unlike any of them as it is easy +to conceive of her being; and Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature of +unique calibre, as weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at the +same time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet captivating +fragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are embodied two widely opposed +classes of New England women. The male characters, with the exception of +Donatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as the feminine ones: +Coverdale and Kenyon come very close together, both being artistic and +both reflectors for the persons that surround them; and Dimmesdale is to +some extent the same character,--with the artistic escape closed upon +his passions, so that they turn within and ravage his heart,--arrested +and altered by Puritan influences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilish +a shape of revenge to be discussed as a human individual. Septimius, +again, is distinct; and the characterization of Westervelt, in +"Blithedale," slight as it is, is very stimulating. Perhaps, after all, +what leads us to pronounce upon the whole fictitious company a stricture +of homogeneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us each +time with a set of persons sufficiently separate from his previous ones, +does not emphasize their differences with the same amount of external +description that we habitually depend upon from a novelist. The +similarity is more in the author's mode of presentation than in the +creations themselves. + +This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearly +related with some special distinctions of his genius. He is so +fastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit his +actors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though retaining their +essential individuality, they are endowed with the author's own +delightful power of expression. This outward phasis of his work +separates it at once from that of the simple novelist, and leads us to +consider the special applicability to it of the term "romance." He had +not the realistic tendency, as we usually understand that, but he +possessed the power to create a new species of fiction. For the kind of +romance that he has left us differs from all compositions previously so +called. It is not romance in the sense of D'Urfé's or Scudéri's; it is +very far from coming within the scope of Fielding's "romances"; and it +is entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Romantic school. It +is not the romance of sentiment; nor that of incident, adventure, and +character viewed under a worldly coloring: it has not the mystic and +melodramatic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouqué. There are +two things which radically isolate it from all these. The first is its +quality of revived belief. Hawthorne, as has been urged already, is a +great believer, a man who has faith; his belief goes out toward what is +most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetry +and moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progeny +is perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest +truth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a varied +and tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is what +makes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order of +novelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been credited +with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt is +superficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating fine +but only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch of +superstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his English +journal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested in +such subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, +indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the ethereal +with earthly attributes, and so make it grossly perceptible." This +observation has a still greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. +And out of this questioning belief and transmutation of superstition +into truth--for such is more exactly his method--proceeds also that +quality of value and rarity and awe-enriched significance, with which he +irradiates real life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image of +the eternal verities. + +If these things are limitations, they are also foundations of a vast +originality. Every greatness must have an outline. So that, although he +is removed from the list of novelists proper, although his spiritual +inspiration scares away a large class of sympathies, and although his +strictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and restrain his dramatic +fervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, these facts, on the other hand, +are so many trenches dug around him, fortifying his fair eminence. +Isolation and a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense as +this, belong peculiarly to American originality. But Hawthorne is the +embodiment of the youth of this country; and though he will doubtless +furnish inspiration to a long line of poets and novelists, it must be +hoped that they, likewise, will stand for other phases of its +development, to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Hawthorne is +less in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which would +merely make a school of followers. + +It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will take in the +literature of the world; but as his influence gains the ascendant in +America, by prompting new and _un_-Hawthornesque originalities, it +is likely also that it will be made manifest in England, according to +some unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be distinctly +colored by the peculiar dye in which his own pages are dipped; but the +renewed tradition of a highly organized yet simple style, and still more +the masculine tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjustment +of aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent truthfulness which +he carries with him, may be expected to become a constituent part of +very many minds widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is no +fictionist who penetrates so far into individual consciences as +Hawthorne; that many persons will be found who derive a profoundly +religious aid from his unobtrusive but commanding sympathy. In the same +way, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no +secondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words," says Heine; +"Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not so with Hawthorne's. +Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axis +of conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is one +of the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of the +world. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in private +character, but in addition his unnoticed leverage for the thought of the +age is prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a temper so +modest and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract enthusiasm +for art, place him on a plane between Shakespere and Goethe. With the +universality of the first only just budding within his mind, he has not +so clear a response to all the varying tones of lusty human life, and +the individuality in his utterance amounts, at particular instants, to +constraint. With less erudition than Goethe, but also less of the +freezing pride of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. +His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but they have the +same quick music of heart-throbs that Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is at +the same moment ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Another +generation will see more of him than we do; different interpreters will +reveal other sides. As a powerful blow suddenly descending may leave the +surface it touches unmarked, and stamp its impress on the substance +beneath, so his presence will more distinctly appear among those farther +removed from him than we. A single mind may concentrate your vision upon +him in a particular way; but the covers of any book must perforce shut +out something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow the +landscape. + +Look well at these leaves I lay before you; but having read them throw +the volume away, and contemplate the man himself. + + + + +APPENDIX I. + + +In May, 1870, an article was published in the "Portland Transcript," +giving some of the facts connected with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, as +a boy. This called out a letter from Alexandria, Va., signed "W. S.," +and purporting to come from a person who had lived at Raymond, in +boyhood, and had been a companion of Hawthorne's. He gave some little +reminiscences of that time, recalling the fact that Hawthorne had read +him some poetry founded on the Tarbox disaster, already +mentioned. [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 89.] Himself he described as +having gone to sea at twenty, and having been a wanderer ever since. In. +speaking of the date of the poetry, "We could not have been more than +ten years old," he said. This, of course, is a mistake, the accident +having happened in 1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it is +tolerably certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he was +twelve. + +The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson Cook, of +Bolster's Mills, in Maine, who had also known Hawthorne as a boy; some +poetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also found, and printed, which +afterward proved to have been written by another person; and one or two +other letters were published, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, but +concerning the Tarbox affair. After this, "W. S." wrote again from +Alexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he had come into +possession, several years before, of the manuscript book from which he +afterward sent extracts. The book, he explained, was found by a man +named Small, who had assisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a +"large mahogany bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. +This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S." met Small in +the army, in Virginia. He reported that the book--"originally a bound +blank one not ruled," and "gnawed by mice or eaten by moths on the +edges"--contained about two hundred and fifty pages, and was written +throughout, "the first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showing +in its progress a marked improvement in penmanship." The passages +reprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over the signature "W. +Sims," to the "Transcript," and published at different dates (February +11, 1871; April 22, 1871). Their appearance called out various +communications, all tending to establish their genuineness; but, beyond +the identification of localities and persons, and the approximate +establishing of dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, +however, was recalled by former residents near Raymond; and there seemed +at least much inferential proof in favor of the notes. A long silence +ensued upon the printing of the second portion; and at the end of 1871 +it was made known that Sims had died at Pensacola, Florida. The third +and last supposed extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent from +Virginia again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a person +professing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was written to +by the editors of the "Transcript," but no reply has ever been received. +A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also wrote to the Pensacola journal in +which Sims's death was announced, making inquiry as to its knowledge of +him and as to the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was ever +received from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in the +secret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war-days; and it +may be that, having enemies, he feared the notoriety to which his +contributions to journalism might expose him, and decided to die,--at +least so far as printer's ink could kill him. All these circumstances +are unfortunate, because they make the solution of doubts concerning the +early notes quite impossible, for the present. + +The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literary +skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long ago +as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an extremely +improbable one. It is not likely that an ordinary impostor would hit +upon the sort of incident selected for mention in these extracts. Even +if he drew upon circumstances of his own boyhood, transferring them to +Hawthorne's, he must possess a singularly clear memory, to recall +matters of this sort; and to invent them would require a nice +imaginative faculty. One of the first passages, touching the "son of old +Mrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne," is of a sort to +entirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole method of observation, +too, seems very characteristic. If the portion descriptive of a raft and +of the manners of the lumbermen be compared with certain memoranda in +the "American Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from somewhat +similar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seizing +characteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early notes are +fabrications, it may be that the author of them drew carefully after +passages of the maturer journal, and this among others. But the +resemblance is crossed by a greater youthfulness in the early notes, it +seems to me, which it would be hard to produce artificially. The cool +and collected style of the early journal is not improbable in a boy like +Hawthorne, who had read many books and lived much in the companionship +of older persons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of "The +Spectator" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, +Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal and "The +Spectator." The circumstance that the dates should all have been said to +be missing from the manuscript book is suspicious. Yet the last extract +has the month and year appended, August, 1819. What is more important +is, that the date of the initial inscription is given as 1816; and at +the time when this was announced it had not been ascertained even by +Hawthorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Raymond so +early. But since the publications in the "Transcript," some letters have +come to light of which I have made use; and one of these, bearing date +July 21, 1818, to which I have alluded in another connection, speaks of +Raymond from actual recollection. "Does the Pond look the same as when I +was there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thought +there was no place that I should say so much of." The furnisher of the +notes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered that +Hawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on a +statement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne +was taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed: +"Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years." I have already said that Sims +refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time when +he and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old." This, at first, +would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon the +editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis +for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain +exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. +The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the +inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one +already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes +did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, and +was confused by the statement of the "Transcript." An impostor must have +taken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "the +Widow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his +preliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciation +of the name in Raymond was Hathorn,--the first syllable exactly as the +word 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of the +spelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the +passage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic form +of the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by the +transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object in +keeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make it +available for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record as +a nucleus. + + + + +II. + + +The theme referred to in Chapter III. is given in full below. After the +earlier portion of the present essay had been stereotyped, an article by +Professor G. T. Packard, on Bowdoin College, was published in +"Scribner's Monthly," which contains this mention of Hawthorne:-- + +"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he so +dwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the world's +sensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written in the +sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an +inimitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, +was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he not +infrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment of +reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of +Hawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself +at the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted a +composition which no man in his class could equal.... When the class was +graduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having their +profiles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did he +take part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood that +he intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated his +remarkable development and enduring fame. It seems strange that among +his admirers no one has offered him a fitting tribute by founding the +Hawthorne Professorship of English Literature in the college where, +under the tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative Professor +Newman, he was stimulated to cultivate his native gift." + +DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. + +Senatum Romanorum jam primum institutum, simplicem siniul atquo +praestantissimuni fuisse sentiant onmes. Imperium fint, quod populo aec +avaritis nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretar. Lecti fuerunt senatores, +non qui ambitiose potestatem eupiere, sesl qui senectute, qui sapientia, +qui virtute bellica vel privata insigues, in republica plurimam +pollebant. Hominum consiliis virtute tam singulari praeditorum paruit +populus libenter atque senatores at patres civilius venerati. Studium +illis paternum adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam turn Romana, nec +sanctior nec beatior t'uit; iis temporibus etenim solum in publicum +commodum principes administrabant; fidemque principibus populi habetant. +Sed virtute prisca reipublierc perdita, inimicitus mutuis patres +plebesque flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populum +tyrannice saeviit, atque hostem se monstravit potiue quam custodem +reipubliere. Concitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendre, alque per +multa secula patrum plebisque contentiones historia Romana memorat; +patribus pristinam auctoriratem servare conatis, liccentiaque plebis +omnia jura spernante. Hoc modo usque ad Panieum bellum, res se habebant. +Tun pericula externa discordiam domesticam superabant, reipublicaeque +studium priscam patribus sapientiam, priscam populis reverentiam +redundit. Hae aetate omnibus virtutibus cnituit Roma. Senatus, jure +omnium consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis aequavit; +patriaeque solum amore gloria quaesita, pecunia niluii habita est. Sed +quuam Carthaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica ad +vitia pristina. Patres luxuria solum populis praestiterunt, et vestigia +eorum populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, +annus unusquisque diminuit, donce in aerate Angasti interitus nobilium +humiliumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conficerunt. Augustus +equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantum +liut sine fervore. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestates +recuperatae. Postremum species etiam amissa est. + +HATHORNE. + + +THE ROMAN SENATE. + +Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originally +constituted, was a no less simple than illustrious body. It was a +sovereignty which appeared most desirable to a populace vitiated neither +by avarice nor luxury. The senators were chosen, not from those who were +ambitious of power, but those who wielded the largest influence in the +Republic through wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. The +citizens bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with such +singular worth, and venerated the senators as fathers. The latter +exercised a paternal care. No republic ever was holier or more blessed +than that of Rome at this time; for in those days the rulers +administered for the public convenience alone, and the people had faith +in their rulers. But, the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, the +fathers and the commonalty began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, +and to seek after the possessions of others. The Senate vented its wrath +savagely upon the people, and showed itself rather the enemy than the +guardian of the Republic. The multitude was aroused by the desire of +recovering liberty, and through a very long period Roman history +recounts the contentions of the fathers and the commonalty; the fathers +attempting to preserve their old authority, and the license of the +commons scorning every law. Affairs remained in this condition until the +Punic War. Then foreign perils prevailed over domestic discord, and love +of the Republic restored to the fathers their early wisdom, to the +people their reverence. At this period, Rome shone with every virtue. +The Senate, through the rightfully obtained consent of all parties, +nearly equalized its power with the powerlessness of the commonalty; and +glory being sought solely through love of the fatherland, wealth was +regarded as of no account. But when Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, the +commonwealth returned to its former vices. The fathers were superior to +the populace only in luxury, and the populace followed in their +footsteps. From that very time, every year diminished the authority of +the Senate, until in the age of Augustus the death of the nobles and the +selection of insignificant men almost wholly destroyed its dignity. +Augustus, to be sure, restored to the fathers their ancient +magnificence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it was without +real heat. Never was the power of the senators recovered. At last even +the appearance of it vanished. + + + + +III. + + +The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. were recorded by different +hands, or in different ways at various dates, so that they have not been +made out quite satisfactorily. Some of the authors named below were +taken out a great many times, but the number of the volume is given in +only a few cases. It would seem, for example, that Voltaire's complete +works were examined by Hawthorne, if we judge by his frequent +application for some part of them, and the considerable number of +volumes actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same volume +is sometimes called for more than once. To make the matter clearer here, +I have reduced the entries to a simple list of the authors read, without +attempting to show how often a particular one was taken up. Few or none +of them were read consecutively, and the magazines placed together at +the end of my list were taken out at short intervals throughout the +different years. + + 1830. + + Oeuvres de Voltaire. + Mémoire de Litérature. + Liancourt. + Oeuvres de Rousseau. + Mass. Historical Collections. + Trial and Triumph of Faith. + Oeuvres de Pascal. + Varenius' Geography. + Mickle's Lucian. + Dictionnaire des Sciences. + Pamela. (Vols. I., II.) + Life of Baxter. + Tournefort's Voyage. + Swift's Works. + Hitt on Fruit-Trees. + Bibliotheca Americana. + Ames's Antiquities. + Hamilton's Works. + Gifford's Juvenal. + Allen's Biographical Dictionary. + Fénélon. + Académie Royale des Inscriptions. + Mather's Apology. + Vertol's History of Sweden. + Taylor's Sermons. + Life of Luckington. + L'an 2440. + Montague's Letters. + English Botany. (3 vols.) + Gay's Poems. + Inchbald's Theatre. + Sowerby's English Botany. + Crabbe's Borough. + Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. + Collection of Voyages (Hakluyt's?). + Lives of the Admirals. + British Zoölogy. + + 1831 + + Los Eruditos. + Connoisseur. + Camilla. + Gifford's Persius. + Bartram's Travels. + Humphrey's Works. + Voltaire. + Pennant's British Zoology. + Mandeville's Travels. + Rehearsal Transposed. + Gay's Poems. + Pompey the Little. + Shaw's General Zoology. + Philip's Poems. + Sowerby's English Botany. + Racine. + Corneille. + Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. + History of the Shakers. + The Confessional. + Calamy's Life of Baxter. + Académie Royale des Inscripts. + Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I., II., III., IV.) + Cadell's Journey through Italy and Carniola. + Cobbet's Rule in France. + Temple's Works. (Vols. I., II., III.) + Asiatic Researches. + Cochran's Tour in Siberia. + Chardin's Travels. + Brandt's History of the Reformation. + Russell's Natural History. + Aleppo. (Vol. I.) + Answer to the Fable of the Bees. + Hanway's Travels. + Memoirs of C. J. Fox. + Bayle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. II., V., VI.) + State Trials. (Vols. I., II., IV., V., VI.) + Tales of a Traveller. + Dictionnaire des Sciences. (Vol. XVII.) + Bacon's Works. (Vol. II.) + Gordon's Tacitus. + Colquhoun on the Police. + Cheyne on Health. + Pope's Homer. (Vol I.) + Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX.) + Reichard's Germany. + Oeuvres de Rousseau. + Notes on the West Indies by Prichard. + Crishull's Travels in Turkey. + + 1832-33. + + Clarendon's Tracts. + History of England. + Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. III., V., VI.) + Feltham's Resolves. + Roscoe's Sovereigns. + Histoire de l'Académie. + South America. + Savages of New Zealand. + Stackhouse's History of the Bible. + Dryden's Poems. + Tucker's Light of Nature. + History of South Carolina. + Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. + Brace's Travels. + Browne's Jamaica. + Collins's New South Wales. + Broughton's Dictionary. + Seminole War. + Shaw's Zoology. + Reverie. + Gifford's Pitt. + Curiosities of Literature. + Massinger. + Literary Recollections. + Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. + Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. + Paris and Fonblanque. + Elia. + Gardens and Menagerie. + Medical Jurisprudence. + History of Paris. + Scott's Prose Works. + Kittell's Specimens American Poetry. + Lister's Journey. + Annals of Salem. + Library of Old English Prose Writers. + Memoirs of Canning. + Miscellaneous Works of Scott. + Jefferson's Writings. + History of Andover. + Good's Book of Nature. + History of Haverhill. + Madden's Travels. (Vols. I., II.) + Riedesel's Memoirs. + Boston Newspapers (1736, 1739, 1754, 1762, 1771, 1783). + Drake's Mornings in Spring. + Drake's Evenings in Autumn. + Anecdotes of Bowyer. + Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. I., II.) + Bryan Walton's Memoirs. + Moses Mendelssohn. + Collingwood. + Felt's Annals. + Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. + Schiller. + Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols.) + Thatcher's Medical Biography. + History of Plymouth. + Crabbe's Universal Dictionary. + Lewis's History of Lynn. + A Year in Spain, by a Young American. (Vols. I., II.) + Croker's Boswell. + Deane's History of Scituate. + Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. I., II.) + Temple's Travels. (Vol. II.) + Fuller's Holy State. + Remarkables of Increase Mather. + History of Portland. (Vols. I., II.) + Practical Tourist. + Elements of Technology. + Heber's Life, by Taylor. + Ductor Substantium. + Heber's Travels in India. (Vols. I., II.) + Byron's Works. + Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. + History of Spain. + Franklin's Works. + Mental Cultivation. + + 1835. + + Life of Gouverneur Morris. + Hamilton's Progress of Society. + Twiner's Sacred History. + Encyclopaedia. + Life of Arthur Lee. + Life of Sir Humphry Davy. + Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. + Prior's Poems. (Vol. I.) + Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I., II.) + Memoirs of the Tower of London. + History of King's Chapel. + Memoirs of Dr. Burney. + Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I, II., III.) + Life of Livingstone. + + 1836. + + Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I.) + Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I.) + Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I.) + Combe on the Constitution of Man. + Babbage on Economy of Machinery. + Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. + Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I., III.) + Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design. (Vols. I., II.) + Mende's Guide to Observation of Nature. + Cobbett's Cottage Economy. + Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I.) + Practical Tourist. (Vols. I., II.) + Dick on Improvement of Society. + Bush's Life of Mohammed. + Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I.) + Gay's Poems. + Pliny's Natural History. + Coleridge's Table-Talk. + Letters from Constantinople. (Vols. I., II.) + Reynolds's Voyages. + Adventures on Columbia River, by Ross Cox. + Baine's History of Cotton Manufacture. + History of Nantucket. + Travels in South America. + Müller's Universal History. + Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. + Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. I., II.) + Description of Trades. + Colman's Visit to England. + Ludolph's History of Ethiopia. + Griffin's Remains. + McCree's Life of Knox. + Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. + Voyage de la mer du Sud an Nord. + Biographia Literaria. + The Stranger in America. + Raumer's England in 1835. + Random Recollections of the House of Lords. + The German Student. + Sparks's American Biography. + Brewster's Natural Magic. + Prior's Life of Goldsmith. + Sparks's Washington. + Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft. + Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols.) + + 1837. + + Washington's Writings. + Martineau's Miscellany. + Wraxall's Memoirs. + Bancroft's United States History. + Rush, on the Human Voice. + Drake's Indian Biography. + Wordsworth's Poetical Works. + Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. + Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. + Bayle's Historical Memoirs of Plymouth County. + Life of Jefferson, by Tucker. + Random Recollections of the House of Commons. + Specimens of American Poetry. + + 1838. + + Life of Jefferson. + Brown's Novels. + Parr's Works. + Select Comedies. + Froissart's Ancient Chronology. + Byron's Works. + Plutarch's Lives. + London Encyclopedia of Architecture. + Gentleman's Magazine. + Monthly Magazine. + Monthly Review. + European Magazine. + Christian Examiner. + Edinburgh Magazine. + Annual Register. + Quarterly Review. + Southern Review. + Worcester's Magazine. + North American Review. + United States Service Journal. + Court Magazine. + Museum of Literature and Science. + Westminster Review. + London Monthly Magazine. + Eclectic Review. + Foreign Quarterly Review. + Blackwood's Magazine. + Metropolitan Magazine. + New England Magazine. + British Critic. + American Encyclopaedia. + Rees's Cyclopaedia. + Gifford's Juvenal. + + + + + INDEX. + + + Addison, Joseph + Allegory and symbolism + Ambitious Guest, The + America, Hawthorne's sentiment about returning to + American Magazine + American Note-Books, record of youth in + American nurture of Hawthorne's genius + American quality in literature + Andrews, Ferdinand + Apollyon, name of cat + Artist of the Beautiful, The + Atmosphere, Hawthorne's susceptibility to + Autobiographies + + Balzac's method of dealing with sin + Bancroft, George + Baudelaire + Bay writers, nickname given by Church Review + Beelzebub, Hawthorne's cat + Belief, Hawthorne's + Bewick Company + Biography, Hawthorne's feeling about + Birth-mark, The + Blithedale Romance + its relation to Brook Farm + real incident applied in + when written + remarks on + Bloody Footstep + Boston Custom-House + Boston Token, The + Bowdoin College + passage from "Fanshawe" descriptive of + Bridge, Horatio + prognostic of, concerning Hawthorne + Brig Fair American, Ballad of + Brook Farm, origin of + Hawthorne's aim in going to + length of stay there + trenchant remark upon, in Blithedale + Brown, Brockden + Buchanan, James + Buds and Bird-Voices + Bunyan, compared with Milton + with Hawthorne + Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note from, to Hawthorne + Bryant, William Cullen + + Celestial Railroad, The + Characters of Hawthorne + Chippings with a Chisel + Chorley, H. F. + Christmas Banquet, The + Church Review + attack of, on The Scarlet Letter + Cilley, Jonathan + Clarendon's History + Coleridge, S. T. + Conception of Character, Hawthorne's method of + Contact of life and death + Contradictions of critics + Cooper, J. Fenimore + Cooper Memorial letter of Hawthorne + Coverdale, Miles, origin of name + character of, how related to Hawthorne + Curtis, George William + letters from Hawthorne to + Curwin Mansion + Cushing, Caleb + Custom-House, prefatory chapter on the + excitement over it in Salem + + Democratic Review + Devil in Manuscript, The + Dickens + Dixey, William, name in Seven Gables + Doctor Heidegger's Experiment + Dolliver Romance, The + Drake, J. R. + Dramatic quality in Hawthorne + Drowne's Wooden Image + D'Urfé + + Early Notes, discovery of + passages from + Earth's Holocaust + Eccentricity in Salem + Edinburgh Review, stricture of, upon Irving + Emerson's English Traits + Endicott and The Red Cross + passage from, bearing on Scarlet Letter + Endicotts, anecdote of + English Note-Books, characteristics of + Evangeline, origin of + Hawthorne's review of + + Fame, in what way desirable + Fancy's Show-Box + Faust + "Fanshawe" + abstract of + passages from + Fearing, Master, and Hawthorne + Fielding, Henry + Fields, J. T., mistake of + Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking at + Fire worship + First Church of Salem + First publication by Hawthorne + Foote, Caleb + Fouqué + French and Italian Note-Books + Froissart + + Gautier, Theophile + Goethe + Godwin, William + Goldsmith + Goodrich, S. G. + employs Hawthorne as editor + difficulties with + Grandfather's Chair + publication of + Gray Champion, The + + Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, + mother of Nathaniel Hawthorne, + piety of, her inconsolableness + at loss of her husband + Hathorne, John, judge in witchcraft + trials + Hathorne, Joseph, Benjamin, + Daniel + Hathorne, Nathaniel, father of Nathaniel, + death of; Hawthorne's + resemblance to + Hathorne, William; his persecution + of Quakers; his will + Haunted Mind, The + HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, birth of + changes spelling of name + birthplace of; childhood of; + lameness in boyhood; + fondness for cats; scholarship + of, at college; English + compositions of; Latin theme + of, (in full, Appendix); + reading of; love + of books; first printed + article of; college associations + of; literary struggles + of; pecuniary difficulties + of; Democratic sympathies + of; his inability to + distinguish tunes; social + nature of; error as to long + obscurity of; anecdotes of; + value of these in + general; his love of solitude; + healthiness of; + shyness; considerateness + for others; personal appearance; + G. W. Curtis's + reminiscence of; his simplicity + of habits; love of books; + abstraction; moral enthusiasm + of, characterized; + unsuspiciousness of; introspection + of, how exaggerated; + distaste for society, how explainable; + in what greater than + Irving; ghostly atmosphere + of; humor of; American quality of; effect of civil + war upon; death of; his + grave; burial; literary + and intellectual influence of + Heine, Heinrich + Helwyse, Gervase + Hillard, George S. + Hoffman, Charles Fenno + Hogg's Tales + Holmes, Oliver Wendell; letter + from, to Hawthorne + Horace + House of the Seven Gables, The; + Hathorne history; composition + of; originals for the + house; survey of + Howells, W. D., Hawthorne's remark + to + + Invisible struggles of genius + Irving, Washington; comparison + with Hawthorne; humor + of; attitude of, in England; + his use of native + material; his histories; + style of + + John Ingefield's Thanksgiving + Johnson, Samuel + Journal of an African Cruiser + Journal of a Solitary Man + + Kingsley's Greek Fairy-Tales + + Latin Theme of Hawthorne; + in full, Appendix + Lawrence, Lieutenant, killed off + Marblehead + Lenox, removal to + Letters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, + from college; + from Connecticut and New Hampshire; + to Longfellow; + to Bridge; + to Curtis; + to Motley; + to Lowell + Leutze + Limitations of Hawthorne + Liverpool consulate; + reduction in receipts of; + unjust criticism of Hawthorne in + Longfellow, Henry W.; + review of Twice-Told Tales; + letter to Hawthorne + Loring, Dr. G. B. + Lowell, James Russell; + letter from + + Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in boyhood + Manning, Elizabeth Clarke, Hawthorne's mother + Manning's Folly + Manning, Richard + Manning, Robert + Manning, Samuel + Manuscript sketch for Septimius + Marble Faun, The; + examination of + Marine outrages, Hawthorne's wish + to redress + Marvell, Andrew + Maturity in Hawthorne, earliness of + Maule, Thomas + Maypole of Merry Mount, The + Melville, Herman; + private review of Seven Gables by + Michael Angelo + Milton compared with Bunyan and Hawthorne + Minister's Black Veil, The + Mitford, Miss, Letter from, to Hawthorne + Mosses from an Old Manse; + first issue of; + criticism of + Motley, John Lothrop, letter of, to Hawthorne + Mozart + Mrs. Bullfrog + + New England civilization; + early character + Newman, Professor + Nomenclature of fiction + Novalis + + Oberon + Objectivity of Hawthorne + Old Apple-Dealer, The + Oliver, B. L. + Our Old Home + + Packard, Professor G. T.; + Appendix + Papers of an old Dartmoor prisoner + Paulding, J. K. + Peabody, Miss E. P., acquaintance with Hawthorne + Peabody, Miss Sophia + Peter Parley's History, written by Hawthorne + Pierce, Franklin; + Hawthorne's Life of; + (sentiments in, touching slavery; + resulting abuse of Hawthorne;) + dedication of Our Old Home to + Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's reading of; + allusions to, in his works + Plato + Plymouth Colony enactment against adultery, foot-note + Poe's criticism on Hawthorne; + similarities of, to Hawthorne; + effectiveness of; + subjectivity of; doubtful + sanity of; his ratiocination; + foreign influence of + Pope, Alexander + Procession of Life, The + Prophetic Pictures, The + Pseudonymes of Hawthorne (foot-note) + Puritan imagination + Puritans, Hawthorne's view of + Pyncheon, Clifford, how resembling Poe + Pynchons, complaints of the, against Seven Gables + + Rappaccini's Daughter + Raymond, Maine, removal to + Ripley, George + Roger Malvin's Burial + Rossetti-Morris school + Rousseau + + Salem, as a native soil; Hawthorne's + sentiment for; aspects + of; origin of name; + trade + Salem Custom-House + Sand, George + Sanity of highest genius + + Scarlet Letter; origin + of; publication of; + Leutze's coincidence; + passage compared with Bunyan; + theme of revenge in; + analysis of the romance; + as a work of art + Scotland and New England + Scott, Sir Walter; Hawthorne's + estimate of + Scudéri; Madeleine de + Sebago Lake + Sense of form in Hawthorne; + in Poe + Septimius Felton; symbolism + of; origin of + "Seven Tales of my Native Land." + Shakespere + Shelley's Latin verses; The + Cenci, compared with Marble + Faun + Sights from a Steeple + Sims, William, finder of supposed + Early Notes, Appendix + Sin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne; + how conducive to originality + Slavery, Hawthorne's sentiments + concerning + Snow Image + Sparhawk House, Kittery + "Spectator," The; extracts + from + Spenser + St. John's, John Hathorne's attack + on + Story, Joseph + Sumner, Charles, note of, to Hawthorne + Sunday at Home + Supernatural, Hawthorne's use of + Surroundings of genius assist but + do not produce it + + + Taine's Notes on England + Tales of the Province House + Tanglewood Tales + Term-Bill at College + Thackeray + Thomson, James + Thoreau's Legend of the Wayside + Tieck + Toll-Gatherer's Day + Tragedy of isolation + True Stones + Twice-Told Tales; + temperament in style of; first + collection of; second + + Union of the States, Hawthorne's + feeling about + Union Street + Upham's "Salem Witchcraft." + + Verses by Hawthorne, at college + Virgil + Virtuoso's Collection + Voltaire + + Wayside, The, purchase of + Wedding Knell, The + Weird, The, in Scotland and New + England + West Newton, removal to + Whipple, Edwin, objection to remark + of; Hawthorne's pleasure in + reviews written by + White, John, Rev. + White Old Maid, The + Widowhood, sentiment of, expressed + by Hawthorne + Winthiop, John + Witchcraft + Witch-ointment + Witch-pins + Wonder-Book + Worcester, Dr. J. E. + + Young Goodman Brown. + Youth of Hawthorne, habits in; + valuable formative results + of + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + +***** This file should be named 8530-8.txt or 8530-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/3/8530/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/8530-8.zip b/8530-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f7e666b --- /dev/null +++ b/8530-8.zip diff --git a/8530.txt b/8530.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9fa192b --- /dev/null +++ b/8530.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10755 @@ +Project Gutenberg's A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Study of Hawthorne + +Author: George Parsons Lathrop + +Posting Date: November 7, 2012 [EBook #8530] +Release Date: July, 2005 +First Posted: July 20, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE + +BY + +GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. + +[Illustration] + + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. POINT OF VIEW + + II. SALEM + + III. BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE + + IV. TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES + + V. AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM + + VI. THE OLD MANSE + + VII. THE SCARLET LETTER. + +VIII. LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD + + IX. ENGLAND AND ITALY + + X. THE LAST ROMANCE + + XI. PERSONALITY + + XII. POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE + +XIII. THE Loss AND THE GAIN + +APPENDIX I. + +APPENDIX II. + +APPENDIX III. + +INDEX + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE. + + + + +I. + + +POINT OF VIEW. + +This book was not designed as a biography, but is rather a portrait. +And, to speak more carefully still, it is not so much this, as my +conception of what a portrait of Hawthorne should be. For I cannot write +with the authority of one who had known him and had been formally +intrusted with the task of describing his life. On the other hand, I do +not enter upon this attempt as a mere literary performance, but have +been assisted in it by an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathy +with the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of inspiration. My +guide has been intuition, confirmed and seldom confuted by research. +Perhaps it is even a favoring fact that I should never have seen Mr. +Hawthorne; a personality so elusive as his may possibly yield its traits +more readily to one who can never obtrude actual intercourse between +himself and the mind he is meditating upon. An honest report upon +personal contact always has a value denied to the reviews of +after-comers, yet the best criticism and biography is not always that of +contemporaries. + +Our first studies will have a biographical scope, because a certain +grouping of facts is essential, to give point to the view which I am +endeavoring to present; and as Hawthorne's early life has hitherto been +but little explored, much of the material used in the earlier chapters +is now for the first time made public. The latter portion of the career +may be treated more sketchily, being already better known; though +passages will be found throughout the essay which have been developed +with some fulness, in order to maintain a correct atmosphere, +compensating any errors which mere opinions might lead to. Special +emphasis, then, must not be held to show neglect of points which my +space and scope prevent my commenting on. But the first outline +requiring our attention involves a distant retrospect. + +The history of Hawthorne's genius is in some sense a summary of all New +England history. + +From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its +activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to +dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly +enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light +and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, +in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old +colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. +Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must +not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent +deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty +influence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period of +action must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent, +and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New England +civilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdens +and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming +a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path +in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an +ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were +enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and +exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm +Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's +Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease +whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to +satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from +England multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusual +reverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, the +dependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally the +excitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity for +any aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here ever +since Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the New +World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to +uphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, +therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding +centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we +owe the high qualities of New England,--a nature which is often so +easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,--this side, +long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found +expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various +elements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's genius +revived. The sensuous substance of the early New England character had +piously surrendered to the severe maxims which religion and prudence +imposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part of +Puritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpses +through the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it has +been rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with through +Hawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustration +of it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which he +himself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from the +interior, to possess himself of the very fire which burned in men's +breasts and set their minds in movement at that epoch. In his own person +and his own blood the same elements, the same capabilities still +existed, however modified or differently ordered. The records of +Massachusetts Bay are full of suggestive incongruities between the +ideal, single-souled life which its founders hoped to lead, and the +jealousies, the opposing opinions, or the intervolved passions of +individuals and of parties, which sometimes unwittingly cloaked +themselves in religious tenets. Placing himself in the position of these +beings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies of +emotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it was +natural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between the +intense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outward +appearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source of +motive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter." It is +thus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief. +They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought so +intimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passions +sounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in our +own ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes or +situations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style, +I think,--particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales,"--a union of +vigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardedness +which verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilled +sensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which is +his by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers. +How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the past +of his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on. + +Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; as +intimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Dante +and Michael Angelo could have had their growth. It is endlessly +suggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselves +for all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and with +mysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimes +despite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterward +see could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and would +surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared +in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato; +Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris +secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled +expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the +eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to the +capital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober little +New England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in its +way hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preserved +in Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose. + +Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise than +remotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in a +figurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid, +various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificent +works of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture,--things +in which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artistic +spirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force of +contrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed many +a silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in his +person, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made to +contribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicate +perfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice still +haunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their very +strangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, and +captivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chief +and most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness of +his native earth which would at first seem to offer only denial to his +development. It is in this direction that we catch sight of the analogy +between his intellectual unfolding and that of the great Florentines. It +consists in his drawing up into himself the nourishment furnished by the +ground upon which he was born, and making the more and the less +productive elements reach a climax of characteristic beauty. One marked +difference, however, is that there was no abundant and inspiriting +municipal life of his own time which could enter into his genius: it was +the consciousness of the past of the place that affected him. He himself +has expressed as much: "This old town of Salem--my native place, though +I have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer +years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of +which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence +here.... And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within +me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be +content to call affection.... But the sentiment has likewise its moral +quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition +with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as +far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a kind of +home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the +present phase of the town." + +It is by briefly reviewing that past, then trying to reproduce in +imagination the immediate atmosphere of Hawthorne's youth, and comparing +the two, that we shall best arrive at the completion of our proposed +portrait. We have first to study the dim perspective and the suggestive +coloring of that historic background from which the author emerges, and +then to define clearly his own individual traits as they appear in his +published works and Note-Books. + +The eagerness which admirers of such a genius show, to learn all +permissible details of his personal history, is, when freed from the +vulgar and imbecile curiosity which often mars it, a sort of homage that +it is right to satisfy. It is a respect apt to be paid only to men whose +winning personal qualities have reached through their writing, and +touched a number of grateful and appreciative hearts. But two objections +may be urged against giving such details here: one is, that Hawthorne +especially disapproved the writing of a Life of himself; the other, that +the history of Salem and the works of Hawthorne are easily accessible to +any one, without intervention. + +Of the first it may frankly be said, indeed, that Hawthorne alone could +have adequately portrayed his life for us; though in the same breath it +should be added that the idea of his undertaking to do it is almost +preposterous. To such a spirit as his, the plan would have had an +exquisite absurdity about it, that might even have savored of +imposition. The mass of trivial details essential to the accurate and +consecutive account of an entire life could never have gained his +serious attention: his modesty would have made as little of them as of +boyish slate-scribblings, full of significance, fun, and character to +observers, but subjected to the sponge without a pang by their producer. +There is something natural and fine in this. I confess that to me the +spectacle presented by Goethe when dwelling on the minutest incidents of +his childhood with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning with +avaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which--like a very +different sort of Saint Charles Borromeo--he hopes to have the reverent +ages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective though +splendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, +that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried with +him inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. In +the Note-Books of Hawthorne this want is to a large extent made good. +His shrinking sensitiveness in regard to the embalming process of +biography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been of +incalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he really +was. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhat +meagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing. +There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it is +difficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive. +Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, the +physical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business; +and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the public +regard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign that +floats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtile +influence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one), +we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceiving +that the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from the +subject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography of +Shakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions of +him; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mystery +should soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne +could ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behind +the greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminent +for strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their private +lives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with those +Etruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect state +within their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were +opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever +stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer +injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, +after his so deep repose in death. + +"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil in +Manuscript," [Footnote: See the Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] +"to undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise +bestowed against the giver's conscience!... An outlaw from the +protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might +spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death!" This, to +be sure, is a heated statement, in the mouth of a young author who is +about to cast his unpublished works into the fire; but the dread +expressed here is by no means unfounded. Even the publication of +Hawthorne's Note-Books has put it in the power of various writers of the +day to assume an omniscience not altogether just, and far from +acceptable. Why, then, should further risk of this be incurred, by +issuing the present work? + +It is precisely to put a limit to misconstructions, as well as to +meet--however imperfectly--the desire of genuine appreciators, that it +has been written. If this study for a portrait fulfils its aim, it will +at least furnish an outline, fix a definite shape, within which whatever +is observed by others may find its place with a truer effect and more +fitting relation. The mistakes that have been made, indeed, are in no +wise alarming ones; and it would be difficult to find any author who has +been more carefully considered, on the whole, or with such generally +fair conclusions, as Hawthorne. Still, if one sees even minor +distortions current, it can do no harm to correct them. Besides, there +has as yet been no thorough attempt at a consistent synthetic +portraiture; and the differences of different critics' estimates need +some common ground to meet and be harmonized upon. If this can be +supplied, there will be less waste of time in future studies of the same +subject. + +It will be seen, therefore, that my book makes no pretension to the +character of a Life. The wish of Hawthorne on this point would alone be +enough, to prevent that. If such a work is to be undertaken, it should +be by another hand, in which the right to set aside this wish is much +more certainly vested than in mine. But I have thought that an earnest +sympathy with the subject might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, +after all, is the talisman which may preserve even the formal biographer +from giving that injury to his theme just spoken of. And if the insight +which guides me has any worth, it will present whatever material has +already been made public with a selection and shaping which all +researchers might not have time to bestow. + +Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I am +conscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture and +praise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame so +well established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to +the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge of +presumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the right +perspective and proportion. + +On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence enough for such +an attempt as the one now offered; the relative rank of Hawthorne, and +other distinctions touching him, seem to call for a fuller discussion +than has been given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is in no +wise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative estimation. It is +inevitable that the judgments of competent and cultivated persons should +flatly contradict each other, as well as those of incompetent persons; +and this whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the last, it +is in many respects matter of simple individual impression; and there +will always be persons of high intelligence whom it will be impossible +to make coincide with us entirely, touching even a single author. So +that the best we can do is to set about giving rational explanation of +our diverse admirations. Others will explain theirs; and in this way, +everything good having a fit showing, taste finds it easier to become +catholic. + +Whoever reverences something has a meaning. Shall he not record it? But +there are two ways in which he may express himself,--through speech and +through silence,--both of them sacred alike. Which of these we will use +on any given occasion is a question much too subtle, too surely fraught +with intuitions that cannot be formulated, to admit of arbitrary +prescription. In preferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that I +have adopted only another kind of silence. + +[Illustration] + + + + +II. + + +SALEM. + +Let us now look more closely at the local setting. To understand +Hawthorne's youth and his following development, we must at once +transport ourselves into another period, and imagine a very different +kind of life from the one we know best. It hardly occurs to readers, +that an effort should be made to imagine the influences surrounding a +man who has so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864 that he +died,--little more than a decade since. But he was born sixty years +before, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter of +the century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects; +almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations, +opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action, +these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-fold +between us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerable +space to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthorne +then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life of +Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "A +poet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much +attention.... When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to +investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morning +are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian +splendor." The bustle of American life certainly does away with "the +dews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter to +reproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with the +century. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall +view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has +fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since +as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect. +Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading +softly and easily into the past. + +You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place +wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem +impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the +streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due +understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote +themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic +events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this +stronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must +approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They +will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. +Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, +as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex +Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come +upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses +stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold +the whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, with +carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with some +simple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand +on the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that +hang long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There are quaint +gardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with iron +gracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always +with their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keeps +rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growth +caught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the right +magic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps +like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling +little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and +such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having +been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by +ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past +and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the +ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by +soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge +gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or +a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising +slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach +a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at +intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probable +aspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for +the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds of +spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspiration +that alike found expression on this soil. Off beyond the gray and +sober-tinted town is the sea, which in this perspective seems to rise +above it and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening blue; +as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great measure, bringing +first the persecuted hither and then inviting so many successive +generations forth to warlike expedition, or Revolutionary privateering +or distant commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's name +again is connected, as we shall presently notice. Then, quitting the +brimming blue, our eyes return over the "flat, unvaried surface covered +chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to +architectural beauty," with its "irregularity which is neither +picturesque nor quaint, but only tame"; and retracing the line upon +which Hawthorne has crowded the whole history of Salem, in "Main +Street," [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] we +fall to pondering upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At its +foot a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which there are +exhalations of smoke and steam. The mists of superstition that once +overhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it the +land opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest +period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as complete +as that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic webs +from one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that grow +upon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world +full of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion of +the dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obliging +Irish population has relieved the descendants of both the witches and +their exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with their own +barren little dwellings the three sides of the height facing the town. +Still, they have not ventured beyond a certain line. One small area at +the summit is wholly unencroached upon. Whether or not through fear of +some evil influence resting upon the spot, no house as yet disturbs this +space, though the thin turf has been somewhat picked away by desultory +sod-diggers. There is nothing save this squalid, lonely desolation to +commemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless deaths were here +endured. It is enough. Mere human sympathy takes us back with awful +vividness to that time when the poor victims looked their last from +this, upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and that +hopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. A terrible and fitting +place for execution, indeed! It looms up visible for many miles of lower +country around; and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall away +with such a fatal ease around it! + +The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, by +calling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoed +with bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous +"witch-pins." These are the identical little instruments which the +afflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in the +trial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused them +to be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a small +glass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at the +curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh at +the absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of what +deadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one is +hesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up +speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of some +document; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquities +elsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere large +enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelter +and make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch +House," to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy +room where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrap +of antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened on +to a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp's +nest,--as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants of +the first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of the +First Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, +though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built Essex +Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the +original framework set into a modern covering for protection,--the whole +church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this +little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been +huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single +pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some +engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I +visited the place, a party of young men and women were there, who +hopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settled +on me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before their +light laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, and +incontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She was +a pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle of +protesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily have +divined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men not +only believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young man +who had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printed +pamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages, +seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient and +worshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered +presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and their +grave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls but +soberly in.'" + +"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state." + +And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess the +sunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober. + +Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will not +let you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, on +reflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life of +to-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of our +dreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and present +thus occasioned leads to a discovery. + +In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorable +than at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds its +history in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, with +the quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants, +finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The very +meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former +condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an +incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy +of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out +before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I +passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it +was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring +thus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberated +through my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of +a vanished year! Then, in the room where I slept, there was rich and +ponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; the bed was draped and +canopied with hangings that seemed full of spells and dreamery; and +there was a mirror, tall, and swung between stately mahogany posts +spreading their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy of +Hawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley," [Footnote: See also +American Note-Books, Vol. I.; and the first chapter of The House of the +Seven Gables.] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in +procession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters as +these engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review of +local history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to +roving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangely +intimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds, +the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historic +changes of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one day +through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist of +centuries; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, at +other times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, +unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something of +primitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, and +the air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deeds +of the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this, +too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything. + +Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actual +contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of +Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of +what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame +summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from +this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a +hundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influence +itself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more salient. If +you read even now, on the ground itself, the story of the settlement and +the first century's life of Salem and the surrounding places, a delicate +suffusion of the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe facts +of the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This arises partly +from the imaginative and symbolic way of looking at things of the +founders themselves. + +John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the "Dorchester +Adventurers," established the first colony at Cape Ann, was moved to +this by the wish to establish in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place for +the fishermen who came over from Dorchester in England, so that they +might be kept under religious influences. This was the origin of Salem; +for the emigrants moved, three years later, to this spot, then called +Naumkeag. In the Indian name they afterward found a proof, as they +supposed, that the Indians were an offshoot of the Jews, because it +"proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum Keike; by +interpretation, the bosom of consolation." Later, they named it Salem, +"for the peace," as Cotton Mather says, "which they had and hoped in +it"; and when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great Pond, now +Wenham, he took as his text, "At Enon, near to Salim, because there was +much water there." This playing with names is a mere surface indication +of the ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were constantly +tracing in all their acts. Cut off by their intellectual asceticism from +any exertion of the imagination in literature, and denying themselves +all that side of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrains +the sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves by running +parallels between their own mission and that of the apostles,--a +likeness which was interchangeable at pleasure with the fancied +resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one +considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the +enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, +and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable +wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the +depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had +to struggle,--one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed +fortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality of +a special Providence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singular +way with a treacherous strand of credulity and superstition. Sometimes +one is impressed with a sense that the prodigious force by which they +subdued the knotty and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many other +more dangerous difficulties, was the ecstasy of men made morbidly strong +by excessive gloom and indifference to the present life. "When we are in +our graves," wrote Higginson, "it will be all one whether we have lived +in plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of downe or lockes of +straw." And Hawthorne speaks of the Puritan temperament as +"accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so +little." Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those that +dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast hopes at +heart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them and +before them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, and +using a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid in +their imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of their +power is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imagination +were so closely knit up with real insight, that they could not +themselves distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, their +outlook into another life, though tinged by unhealthy terrorism, was a +solid, energetic act of imagination; but when it had to deal with +intricate tangles of mind and heart, it became credulity. That lurking +unhealthiness spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judgment +entirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft delusion makes this +fearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft,"--one of the most +vigorous, true, and thorough of American histories, without which no one +can possess himself of the subject it treats,--has shown conclusively +the admirable character of the community in which that delusion broke +out, its energy, common-sense, and varied activity; but he points out +for us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagination in a matter +where religion, physiology, and affairs touched each other so closely as +in the witchcraft episode. The persecution at Salem did not come from +such deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it was +not at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecution +in England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general," +procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than three +times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; several +persons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and +Cambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capital +punishments took place there some years after the end of the trouble +here. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death for +witchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem was +heightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance +because "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action +in the absence of scientific certainty, was ... exercised in vain +attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the +elements and first principles of nature," [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and +"had reached a monstrous growth," nourished by a copious literature of +magic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humane +preachers and poets. + +The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which +accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified +in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed +in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail +of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief +of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about +witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the +material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality +which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into +this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for +any other quality in it. + + "Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd + In secret, riding through the air she comes, + Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance + With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon + Ellipses at their charms." + +_Paradise Lost_, II. 662. + +Again, in Comus:-- + + "Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, + Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost + That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, + No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, + Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." + +How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same +string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the +_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would +have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something +to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept +awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a +transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value +not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an +inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts +of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial +suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the +positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper +symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element +to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He +produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo +of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which +urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making +poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity +throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in the +poet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there is +nothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to be +the relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; and +the homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me as +an actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton's +Beelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes the +historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving an +allegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progress +seems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless +due to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in a +single and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost." Milton, by +implying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challenges +dispute; but Bunyan, in humbly confessing himself a dreamer, disarms his +reader and traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was not the +greater artist: that supposition will not even bear a moment's +contemplation; but, as it happened, his weakness was his strength. He +had but one chance. His work would have been nothing without allegory, +and the simple device of the dream--which is the refuge of a man +unskilled in composition, who feels that his figures cannot quite stand +as self-sufficient entities--happens to be as valuable to him as it was +necessary; for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light of +surprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of the story and its +assumed insubstantiality. Milton had many chances, many resources of +power to rely on; but by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticity +he loses that one among the several prizes within his reach. I do not +know that I am right, but all this seems to me to argue a certain +dividing and weakening influence exerted by the imagination which uses +religious or superstitious dread for the purposes of beauty; while that +which discourses confidently of the passage from this to another life, +with all the several stages clearly marked, and floods the whole scene +with a vivid and inartificial light from "the powers and terrors of what +is yet unseen," affects the mind with every atom of energy economized +and concentred. + +Leaving the literary question, we may bring this conclusion to bear upon +the Puritans and Salem, as their history affected Hawthorne. I have said +that a gradual suffusion of the marvellous overspreads the comparatively +arid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the proper influences; +and I have touched upon the two phases of imagination which, playing +over the facts, give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from the +contrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the lower kind of +imagination--that is, imagination deformed to credulity--would be likely +to be the more impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, +is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of New England's and +perhaps especially of Salem's colonial history, as Hawthorne turns them. +This is the dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer air +of his own reveries, has made so many people shudder on entering the +great romancer's shadowy but serene domain. + +And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, by bringing +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wide +apart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union in +this modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the +rays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches the +heavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each of +these Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no less +individual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand on +Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head of +allegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so much +of mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as was +inseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while in +Milton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact +balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhaps +outweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory +is found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes +to light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that added +such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special cases +the allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's +work; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbal +style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in the +very instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held to +the illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most +absolutely to the jewelled truth it holds,--in these very causes, I say, +the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown by +an unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It is +here that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But more +commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and the +aesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems to +be a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and +centrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again, +though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic the +tendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other. +In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement and +proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins. +However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very fact +of his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner he +chose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with the +want of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We may +say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written +such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the +"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him +something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which +Milton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive +truths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the +temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completer +harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence of +Milton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan +singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in +singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of +a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most +masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still +they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson +Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime +and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise +dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for +any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons +individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of +traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, +and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man +or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go +round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, +though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are +moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental +mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or +Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while +maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this +bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings +us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between +widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters +the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These +characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those +of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and +elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied +moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and +made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as +we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius, +Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled +strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill +them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute +intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground +connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the +relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the +chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's +resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably +modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, +combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion +for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into +the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a +modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to +Hawthorne. + +Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we +have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in +this compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with the +trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally +breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the +predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne +their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its +sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over +the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole +legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with +many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth +while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this +enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way +for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with +some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes +to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old +houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the +passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable +treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and +retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they +are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords. +One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad +about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger +of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter +strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the +light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character +of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but +these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to +the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of +mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the +occupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in +our way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible that +in a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there should +be a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differently +circumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as well +as its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, which +perhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source of +continuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable for +strong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, no +less than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become a +pronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it is +fecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to +their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the +descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the +early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and +depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily +pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether +from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me +remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and +die within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told of +persons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inherited +insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or +three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust +with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped +idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that +seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy +man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a +window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the +half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to +him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other +places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a +preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood +might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt +to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I +do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental +derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town, +having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in +sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the +privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had +compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has +reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House +of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, +takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance +that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to +meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a +proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine +outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself +to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has +called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and +home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder +individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with +almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, +and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types which +inevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. +Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, and +the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in the +romance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man, +urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham's +careful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedly +mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of +accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a +characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it +fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible +remains of the past. + +It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if not +showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks and +crannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his native +place in "The House of the Seven Gables," that the name of Thomas Maule +(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his death +by Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of a +sympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "Truth +Held Forth," published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which, +"The Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. He +seems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogether +in comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for saying +that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "the +doctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth," which contained +severe reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, +was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some time +Hawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as a +plausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters his +prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood to +drink." + +Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of the +laboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with some +comments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes in +once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a different +strain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies +to a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the +cent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in their +carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business,--good +business." It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romance +should find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the +Salem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645. + +The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge cast +such a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, and +became the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had written +the "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It is +enough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that he +searched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestion +already connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, when +remonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know of +any person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; but +the circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showing +that many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of that +half-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short +tales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were very +likely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when he +chanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables," they revived +and took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them. +That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation in +the statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most +vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable +names for the _dramatis personae._ Balzac used to look long among +the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived +character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very +rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the +discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to +the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that +Hawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his +countrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of the +settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell, +and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. Roger +Chillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine and +controversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has been +transferred, in "Blithedale," from the reign of Edward VI. to the +experimental era of Brook Farm. + +It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he could +not glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans +and of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his genius +that called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not write +philanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographies +of benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles +Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It is +the same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certain +preachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a model +apostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which would +reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain men +have certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime to +proving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence of +other things which they have no time and no supreme command to do. +Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence that +they are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of +the merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progress +from their own time to the present; and they have found a worthy +monument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more +reason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces of +our early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth and +eternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze through +Hawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogy +is the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unless +Hawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would still +have had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, were +worked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has been +able to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the race +of historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be a +satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for +assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases +constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any +other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the +insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. +Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures +of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things +seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time, +then vanish forever. + +But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be +practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had +no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and +penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which +had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the +surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and +strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely +represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously +sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling +in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of +his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of +which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic +purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat +this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements +of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But +there is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches of +assumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here and +there in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness, +which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment +about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing of +his own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actual +veneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earlier +generations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all too +tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and so +characteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that it +should not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too, +he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throws +himself into an understanding with those who look at New England and the +Puritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to +prepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by not +seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of the +reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which he +himself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this way +he really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality +and race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the most +pronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity. + +But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the +shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in +his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own +genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still +and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles +peopled. + +The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, +was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote: +This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as +Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have +substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of +the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B._, +October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with +Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, +1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, +and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "the +ten men," in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to +the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, +before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is +easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined +Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to +Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would +remove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he should +become an inhabitant of that town." He removed accordingly, and, in +1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of his +many employments for towne and countrie." Some of these lands were +situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be +the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that +portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned +the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a +"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the same +year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular +troop organized in Salem to "advance the military art." From 1636 to +1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and +Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an +assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town +a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over +twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his +famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these +various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and +in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his +efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of +twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this +year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these +"were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be +sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of +weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian +Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many +lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to +be his executioners." There was some reason for this severity, for in +crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The +captain adds: "We have no bread these three days." This early ancestor +was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who +reported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his +Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as +inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their +government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years +later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, +and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of +1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of +stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the +whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He +is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation +for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of the +Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who +glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his +political integrity." And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," +naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercy +we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, +whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and +Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make +use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do +with any foreign government." It is instructive to find what ground he +took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a +forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally +gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one +supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided +in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he that +will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters +of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the +commonwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that +Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap +barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he +resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the +copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure +New England history. + +Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that +"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, +Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a +magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the +government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall +preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a +law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most +abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be +as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could +be." His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See +"The Custom House," introductory to "The Scarlet Letter."] says that the +account of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than any +record of his better deeds, though these were many." Yet it should not +be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England +persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a +previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden +death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So +that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir +Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible +for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant +bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of +religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of +persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, +which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, +order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead its +subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the +commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to +repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death +should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the +dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, +like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too +heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes +for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to +more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after +five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility +of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various +justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was +oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only +because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of +his most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy." + +William Hathorne, however,--whatever his taste in persecution,--makes +his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give my +soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore +my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom +this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the +estate God hath given me in this world.... I do dispose of as +followeth." Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, +followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in +Salem," to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his +"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can +come over and enjoy it." Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence +for the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man who +appears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. +II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of +that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be +found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne +himself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, son +of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died +before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott +Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into +the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was the +famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," says Mr. +Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a +Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestor +calls him his _nephew_." The will says, "gr. ch."; and I suppose +the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at +hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in +years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for +it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from +this life forever. + +His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of +the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in +1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, +from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the +deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of +Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some +years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in +1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He +attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew +off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow +developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in +1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the +fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had +presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, +bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. +Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought +before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. +"She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I +might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me +to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I +did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she +should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to +torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I +repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me +to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote: +Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that +this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his +wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said +to have fallen upon the justice's posterity. + +From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position +in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet +of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he +married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished +mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the +eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In +the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne +earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in +his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may +have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to +have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member +of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a +Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with +four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, +being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase," captured by +the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. +C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, +originated the traditional career of the men of this family,--"a +gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage +puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy +of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most +eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, +and grandfather of the author. + +Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, +1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into +the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a +stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became +commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he +commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but +their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his +bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met +with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who +was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his +countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical +craft:-- + +BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER. + + The twenty-second of August, before the close of day, + All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh. + We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more, + When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan + shore. + + Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth, + Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth; + She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast, + And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause + was lost. + + Now farewell to America,--farewell our friends and wives, + We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives, + To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main, + And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. + + The wind it being leading and bore us on our way, + As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida, + When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main; + We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. + + We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight; + The contest held four glasses,[*] until the dusk of night; + Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea, + We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. + +[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four +times,--two hours.] + + Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, + All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try; + But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; + We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. + + We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale: + In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. + We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow + Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. + + Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:-- + "My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid; + All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear; + We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near." + + She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured, + And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, + When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain; + But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. + + And now the scene is altered,--the cannon ceased to roar; + We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more; + The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay, + But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. + + Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear, + Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer; + Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave, + Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave! + + Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew, + With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. + To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer! + Success to fair America and our good privateer! + +This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show +that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the +poetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappy +necessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "the +Eastern shore on board for forty leagues," in the first stanza; but it +was due to its historic and associative value to give it entire. + +Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes to +take to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to lie +in that direction. Many of these old New England seaports have +magnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessed +from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport, +and the rest,--they controlled the carrying of vast regions, and +fortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry +and reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept the +monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, +Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar; +Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee +and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and +Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, +Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean +many men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, and +has left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built, +still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinement +nurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to +the town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, who +married Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817, +leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom +House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon +Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, +however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth +began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine +the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that +his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road +to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever +winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's +head might with some reason have been thought to still hang over his +race, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition +... for many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of such +a curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share in +developing that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to his +father. + +It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of the +Seven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, with +important differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses a +special spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a property +which he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong is +done, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations is +subordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to his +own descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin. +The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but it +must be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which +doubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, is +transferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that of +Maule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule's +posterity," says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet, +honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generally +poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful +diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea +as sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to be +found, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor as +with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spoken +of--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or those +who endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round about +the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an +exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible +for any man to step." The points of resemblance here may be easily +distinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote which +recalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who had +been tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. +On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well," said +he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (he +had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is +the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based +upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate +study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and +contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort +of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not +consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, +and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds a +trait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes something +having a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproduction +nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of the +creative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables" +comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the +most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have +better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than +Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, +and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost +foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no +one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his +townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though +always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed +and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic +traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the +disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute, +admirable impartiality. + +[Illustration] + + + + +III. + + +BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE. + +1804-1828. + +With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him, +Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. + +His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons of +the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father and +son, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and the +day that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. The +elder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that his +predecessors had provided,--for they had some eight different ways of +writing, though presumably but one of pronouncing it,--and called +himself Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his only boy, +second of his three children, however, that he left the name to this +male successor, with whom it underwent a restoration to the more +picturesque and flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son of +Daniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, it is +thought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his family +suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot convey +the sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as +the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit +so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have +become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, +and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he +had a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him on +his long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with the +Puritan blood will easily understand the sort of dark, underlying +deposit of unutterable sadness that often reminds such persons of their +austere ancestry; but, in addition to this, the Hathornes had now firmly +imbibed the belief that their family was under a retributive ban for its +share in the awful severities of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. +It was not to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to us, +but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, that must often +have struck across their actions in a chilling and disastrous way. Their +ingrained reticence was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne's +fame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that fate was +making reprisals upon them. The captain's children felt this; and the +son, when grown to manhood, was said to greatly resemble his father in +appearance, as well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in the +maritime history of Salem, it is told that in the West Indies the name +grew so familiar as being that of the captain of a vessel, that it +became generic; and when a new ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Who +is the Endicott?" Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame in the +ports where they traded. At all events, some forty years after the +captain's death at Surinam, a sailor one day stopped Mr. Surveyor +Hawthorne on the steps of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if he +had not once a relative--an uncle or a father--who died in Surinam at +the date given above. He had recognized him by his likeness to the +father, of whom Nathaniel probably had no memory at all. + +But he inherited much from his mother, too. She has been described by a +gentleman who saw her in Maine, as very reserved, "a very pious woman, +and a very minute observer of religious festivals," of "feasts, fasts, +new moons, and Sabbaths," and perhaps a little inclined to superstition. +Such an influence as hers would inevitably foster in the son that strain +of reverence, and that especial purity and holiness of thought, which +pervade all that he has written. Those who knew her have said also, that +the luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so impressed people in +Hawthorne were like hers. She had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, +the daughter of Richard Manning, whose ancestors came to New England +about 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Manning, a well-known +pomologist of the same place. After the death of her husband, this +brother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but +little property: he was only thirty-two when he died. + +Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on Union +Street, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in +1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom House +of that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brick +building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne,"--as if the +future Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawing +nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house +of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The +land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house +they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, +Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was +born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union +Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American +Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME +was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated +October 4, 1840. + +"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever +needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of +which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so +interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with +as much care as I may. + +Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these go +to show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child, +quite handsome, with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of +him; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. While +quite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who was +trying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a +loud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of taking +long walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have a +companion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from +his home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must have +taken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak, +uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he should +never see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a +cabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination toward +mournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother's +care to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break out +from the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I is +going away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of the +head, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in his +mind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, +and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should take +in future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; on +these occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of his +failing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish +mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to +make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the +_denouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard +him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more +while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however, +seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak +distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard +III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always +declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone, +was,-- + + "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!" + +Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of +his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the +"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it +is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him +for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an +example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who +were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private +individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the +beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But +as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up +the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons +whose descriptions answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that +they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her +belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I +never see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking that +this may be the lost uncle." At the time of that loss Hawthorne was but +eight years old; he wrote this memorandum at fifty; and all that time +the early impression had remained intact, and the old semi-hallucination +about the uncle's being still alive hung about his mind through forty +years. When we change the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had no +very distinct interest with the father whose decease had so overclouded +his mother's life, and thwarted the deep yearnings of his own young +heart, we may begin to guess the depth and persistence of the emotions +which must have been awakened in him by this awful silence and absence +of death, so early thrown across the track of his childish life. I +conceive those lonely school-boy walks, overblown by shadow-freighting +murmurs of the pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of the +sea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, too sacred +for other companionship than that of uninquisitive Nature;--questionings +not even shaped and articulated to his own inner sense. + +Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound and tender +speculations and sad reflections the boy was moulding within himself, +this did not master him. The seed, as time went on, came to miraculous +issue; but as yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most part +happily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a house which +looked upon the garden of the widow's new abiding-place, used to see him +at play there with his sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure; and +a little incident of his school-days, at the same time that it shows how +soon he began to take a philosophical view of things, gives a hint of +his physical powers. He was put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, the +famous lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had come to +Salem and taken a school there for a few years;) and it is told of him +at this time, on the best authority, that he frequently came home with +accounts of having fought with a comrade named John Knights. + +"But why do you fight with him so often?" asked one of his sisters. + +"I can't help it," he said. "John Knights is a boy of very quarrelsome +disposition." + +Something in the judicial, reproving tone of the reply seems to hint +that Hawthorne had taken the measure of his rival, physically as well as +mentally, and had found himself more than a match for the poor fellow. +All that is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood and at +college weighs on this side; and Horatio Bridge, [Footnote: See +Prefatory Note to The Snow Image.] his classmate and most intimate +friend at Bowdoin College, tells me that, though remarkably +calm-tempered, any suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness to +give the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. + +But one of the most powerful influences acting on this healthy, +unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have been that of books. The +house in Herbert Street was well provided with them, and he was allowed +to make free choice. His selection was seldom, if ever, questioned; and +this was well, for he thus drew to himself the mysterious aliment on +which his genius throve. Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson are +mentioned among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance on +first beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indolence" seems to have +been one of his favorite poems while a boy. He is also known to have +read, before fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to have +gone through, with great diligence, the whole of "The Newgate Calendar," +which latter selection excited a good deal of comment among his family +and relatives, but no decisive opposition. A remark of his has come down +from that time, that he cared "very little for the history of the world +before the fourteenth century"; and he had a judicious shyness of what +was considered useful reading. Of the four poets there is of course but +little trace in his works; Rousseau, with his love of nature and +impressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand more directly related to +the future author's development, and "The Newgate Calendar" must have +supplied him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep ponderings +on sin and crime which almost from the first tinged the pellucid current +of his imagination. There is another book, however, early and familiarly +known to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in an +important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." + +Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him by +inheritance from his seafaring 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 his foot +is no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. "May be," 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." +This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, +already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; +though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated +distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not +yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he has +hopped out into the street once since his lameness began, and been "out +in the office and had four cakes." 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 (at +whose sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's "Speaker," +the name of which had "a classical sound in his ears," long, long +afterward, when he saw the author's tombstone in Liverpool), came to +hear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure after +this in Hawthorne's boyish 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 +stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When +tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books +for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps +erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must +have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one +would almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound body +that kept him sporting and away from reading, had devised a seemingly +harsh plan of luring him into his proper element. + +It was more likely after this episode than before, that Bunyan took that +hold upon him so fraught with consequences. He went every Sunday to his +grandmother Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon the +book; then, going to a particular three-cornered chair in a particular +corner of the room, "he would read it by the hour, without once +speaking." I have already suggested the relations of the three minds, +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect of this reading +is the allegorical turn which it gave the boy's thoughts, manifest in +many of his shorter productions while a young man; the most curious and +complete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad," in the "Mosses," +where Christian's pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad route +to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at +first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a +novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of +certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction +of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult +manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so +exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery as +Hawthorne's, which a passage like the following would make. In his +discourse with Talkative, Faithful says: "A man may cry out against sin, +of policy; but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. I +have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who can abide it well +enough in the heart, house, and conversation." + +Here is almost the motive and the moral of "The Scarlet Letter." But +Hawthorne refined upon it unspeakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, +when he perceived that there might be motives far more complex than that +of policy, a condition much more subtly counterfeiting the mien of +goodness and spirituality. Talkative replies, "You lie at a catch, I +perceive,"--meaning that he is sophistical. "No, not I," says Faithful; +"I am only for setting things right." Did not this desire of setting +things right stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's consciousness? It is not +a little singular to trace in Bunyan two or three much more direct links +with some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautiful +is shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with some +angels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellously +complete "Virtuoso's Collection," [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, +Vol. II.] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steed +Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the +warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's +analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of +Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we +can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom +Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot +refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which +recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, enough, at +least, to have given them a partially prophetic power over his +character. Mr. Great-Heart says of Mr. Fearing: "He desired much to be +alone; yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind the +screen to hear it." (So Hawthorne screened himself behind his genial +reserve.) "He also loved much to see ancient things, and to be pondering +them in his mind." What follows is not so strictly analogous throughout. +Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good a man as Fearing "should be all +his days so much in the dark." And he answers, "There are two sorts of +reasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe, +and some must weep.... And for my part, I care not at all for that +profession which begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that +the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in +tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in +tune for himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing; he +could play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter end." +Let the reader by no means imagine a moral comparison between Hawthorne +and Bunyan's Mr. Fearing. The latter, as his creator says, "was a good +man, though much down in spirit"; and Hawthorne, eminent in uprightness, +was also overcast by a behest to look for the most part at the darker +phases of human thinking and feeling; yet there could not have been the +slightest real similarity between him and the excellent but weak-kneed +Mr. Fearing, whose life is made heavy by the doubt of his inheritance in +the next world. Still, though the causes differ, it could be said of +Hawthorne, as of Master Fearing, "Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, +he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to him +a terror." I mean merely that Hawthorne may have found in this +character-sketch--Bunyan's most elaborate one, for the typical subject +of which he shows an evident fondness and leniency--something peculiarly +fascinating, which may not have been without its shaping influence for +him. But the intimate, affectionate, and lasting relation between +Bunyan's allegory and our romancer is something to be perfectly assured +of. The affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in the +"Note-Books" and the works of Hawthorne which recall and sustain it. So +late as 1854, he notes that "an American would never understand the +passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along a +by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stiles +and by-paths in our country." Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from or +alludes to other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in "The +Blithedale Romance," and several are found in "The Scarlet Letter": it +is in that romance that the most powerful suggestion of kinship between +the two imaginations occurs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview with +Hester, in the wood, he suffers the most freakish temptations to various +blasphemy on returning to the town: he meets a deacon, and desires to +utter evil suggestions concerning the communion-supper; then a pious and +exemplary old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse urges +him to whisper what then seemed to him an "unanswerable argument against +the immortality of the soul," and after muttering some incoherent words, +he sees "an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like +the _shine of the celestial city_ on her face." Then comes the most +frightful temptation of all, as he sees approaching him a maiden newly +won into his flock. "She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in +Paradise. The minister knew well that he himself was enshrined within +the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about +his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a +religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young +girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of +this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and +desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him to +condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of +evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit +betimes." Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian was +so confounded, that he did not know his own voice.... Just when he was +come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones +got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, +suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had +proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift +of these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, and +vividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element +common to both. + +For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that the +first book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen," for +which he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and +Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." The incident of Dr. Johnson's +penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he +has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it +in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly +impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared +it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this +time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not +be at a loss to find endless entertainment there. + +It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. In +June of the same year an event had taken place which must have entered +strongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young +Lawrence, of the American navy,--who had won honors for himself at +Tripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain,--had just +been promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to a +captaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake," at Boston. A +British frigate, the "Shannon," had been cruising for some time in the +neighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake," and the +valiant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he had +only just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (some +of whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement of +commissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake" +was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, and +how Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, +"Don't give up the ship." The battle was watched by crowds of people +from Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the +result. + +When the details at last reached the town, many days afterward, Captain +George Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax with +ten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his +lieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gave +itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martial +dignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannon +reverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast, +shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration over +them, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with that +spiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes at +hours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have +stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, and +imbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profound +love of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which +marked his whole maturity. + +I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathaniel +again lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. In +another brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all +these documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to find +anything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school a +little longer" before removing with his mother to the house which his +uncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant, +which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seeming +to show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency among +persons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to +establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in this +powerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular as +in intellectual development. + +It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family to +Raymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the +primitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning's +Folly." Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake, +and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is near +what has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by Robert +Manning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widow +married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's will +provided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood, +and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, the +community ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remained +untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of being +haunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more lively +aspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of the +Folly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyond +the open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, ranging +and rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distance +every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blue +of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland became +the nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one +twelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for college +preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, lies +less than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the same +county: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at +Raymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps even +deepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith of +women's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration as +this of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to +have heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remained +bereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With pathetic +energy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, +sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, I +think this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may have +impregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of +mortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifying +the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to this +exquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus +true to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in a +sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set in +an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not how +to hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims of +convenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledge +of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or later +know how much it owes to such as you! + +More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres of +the heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and, +incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one of +the Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of the +sensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably the +fact," so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lost +companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other +hand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the +departed, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with a +Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect +example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, +concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead," +[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which +I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned +and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope +and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women," +the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two +successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances +of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies +the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is +roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that the +report about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty without +the whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory +without losing the effect they make together. It is a complete +presentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence I +may remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inward +to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless +contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, +had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as +his widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dwelt +there together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake! + +Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he had +not always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16, +1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his +uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the +trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on +Lymington mountains. 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 brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me +to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is, +to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is +otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother +says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been +very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great +deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne +reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking +man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake; +"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of +solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so +perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." 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 at will through the woods of Maine!... Everything is +beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The same +writer mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the +return from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his +quiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and never +touch the shore again." I have it from his sister that he used to +declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a +mariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and the +salt spray in his blood. + +Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missed +carrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we have +explained all the fostering influences and formative forces that +surround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the +inexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not find +the right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right and +left and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannot +wholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death before +it will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to get +into a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possible +from what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whom +perception and receptivity exist in that active state which we call +genius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether the +conditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it +must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry +behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had +remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; +lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community +of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age; +yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes +they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in +his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of that +interior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment of +his outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance of +unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come +violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he +would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature +against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be +said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the +mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled +in any case. + +As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March +7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:-- + +"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. +Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in +your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, +but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my +lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the +morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A +minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a +career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. +"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at +the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was +again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest +days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will +come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note +that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a +large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I +append it. + +"I remain," he says, + "Your + Affectionate + and + Dutiful + son, + and + Most + Obedient + and + Most + Humble + Servant, + and + Most + Respectful + and + Most + Hearty + Well-wisher, + NATHANIEL HATHORNE." + +A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would +perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall +with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this +harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness +into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And +with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for +his pure young heart. + +In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the +possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, +unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been +forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he +had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this +extract:-- + +"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 for me but to be an author. How +would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by +your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?" + +But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "Early +Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland +"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs +them; [Footnote: See Appendix I.] and it has been impossible, up to this +time, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons named +in them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cumberland +County, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence of +authorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the first +leaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as +reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the book +had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning, +"with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as +good words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of the +best means of his securing for mature years command of thought and +language"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, if +true, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He did +not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly been +there, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816. +So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, though +their mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they must +cover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisher +of the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with a +date. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems also +probable that the whole series was written before the author's college +days. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's +perceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course, +and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which he +must have seen at Raymond. + +"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the +mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know +about. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great +pond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that +flies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be +miserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not +yet seen one turn to defend himself. + +"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." + +Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably her +nephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance +which ripened into "The Gentle Boy." + +"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not long +ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'Long +Reds.' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he liked +them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,--one end is very +poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was +gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and +that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it +very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato +spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would +have been called witty." + +"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read, +the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes to +Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library. + +"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 wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go +down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. +Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless +her for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are to +have a pump in the well, after this mishap. + +"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He was +in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the +half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a +second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have +supposed that he was drumming with twenty." + +"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday. +One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him down +near the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I +thought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so asked +Mr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, and +that will bring sixty-five cents,' was the answer. I ran and petitioned +mother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile that +she tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a great +spendthrift.' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (without +taking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the +butcher. + +"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter White +of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain +Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out +to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also 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. It is strange that this beautiful +body of water is called a 'Pond.' The geography tells of many in +Scotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes.' It is +not respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of +clear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of +goose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the +streams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and he +calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that Captain +Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr. +Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears and +wolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a grove +so fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. On +the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spotted +trout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, after +we got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. The +men said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the water +it would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking +hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line had +been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or have +been pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. I +am a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at the +Images, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. In +coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. +White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without +finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat, +as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats +in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man +standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more +than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at +the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of +Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the +almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light. +If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to +see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the +hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good +Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made +the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before +sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely +moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to +fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure +that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I +was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that +with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy +charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went +to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother +with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. +Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I +had found that out before. + +"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house, +that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning +Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long. +It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the +track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was +twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me +about the snakes. + +"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between +Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just +taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of the +trees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examining +closely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut off +the root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body; +saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he found +that there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake, +too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with the +axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears in +less than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and what +hunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably +true, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was here +with his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of the +Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday. + +"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two days ago, up in +Crooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swim +the faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him in +fun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit +his chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before his +friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says) +beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother this +morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercy +endureth forever.' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man just +married. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming +any more 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. + + * * * * * + +"Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds as long as +myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that he thought it a water +moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that it was a 'young sea-sarpint +sure.' Mr. Ficket, the blacksmith, begged it to take home for its skin, +as he said for buskin-strings and flail-strings. So ends my day's +fishing. + + * * * * * + +"Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have always thought +there was some mystery about it, but I can make them myself. Why did the +Israelites complain so much at having to make bricks without straw? I +should not use straw if I was a brick-maker; besides, when they are +burned in the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full of +holes. + + * * * * * + +"I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt Manning's garden, +this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, flitting among the +rose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. She will +never realize the calamity that came upon her brothers and sisters that +terrible night when her father and mother lay within a few rods of each +other, in the snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of her +loss; and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, in her +poverty, could have been." + + * * * * * + +This little girl was the child of some poor people of the neighborhood +who were frozen to death one March night, in 1819. In a letter to his +uncle Robert, March 24, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you have not +heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were froze to death +last Wednesday. They were brought out from the Cape on Saturday, and +buried from Captain Dingley's on Sunday." This determines the time of +writing the last-quoted extract from the journal. + + * * * * * + +"This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old horse, hitched +to the trough. 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 to 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 him and the meal up the Ben Ham Hill, and home, and am +now so weak that I can hardly stand. O 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, for his master might come out and see what +I was about. 'Thank you,' said he, 'a luncheon of corn with the bits in +is much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch so slowly, +that master may come before I finish it, and thrash me for eating his +corn, and you for the kindness.' I sat down on a stone out of the wind, +and waited in trouble, for fear that the miller and the owner of the +corn would come and find out what I had done. At last the horse winked +and stuck out his upper 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 shut his eyes as if to take a nap. 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 if his +master whipped him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, +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.' I asked him why he +did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. 'I did try +once,' said he, 'but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels +high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and +fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck me +over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just +before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and ready +for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike +again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I +was sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good.' 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 knew well enough what I said, for +I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language. At that moment the +brute that owned the horse came out of the store, and down the hill +towards us. I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in the +wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad picked up and a +thrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. Looking at the end of the +stick, the man bawled, 'What little devil has had my goad?' and then +began striking with all his strength; but his steed only walked, shaking +his head as he went across the bridge; and I thought I heard the ancient +Equus say as he went, 'Thrash as much as you please, for once you cannot +stab.' I went home a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the feeding +the man's corn to his horse was not stealing, and thinking that if the +miller found it out, he would have me taken down before Squire Longley. + + * * * * * + +"Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. She rode as +gracefully as a Trooper. I wish with all my heart that I was as daring a +rider, or half so graceful. + + * * * * * + +"This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and climbed up into +the pulpit. It looks like a rough place to preach from, and does not +seem so much like a pulpit when one is in it, as when viewing it from +the road below. It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought a +book and sat in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is a +point on the road known to all teamsters. They have a string of names +for reference by which they tell each other where they met +fellow-teamsters and where their loads got stuck, and I have learned +them from those who stop for drinks at the store. One meets another near +our house, and says, 'Where did you meet Bill?' 'Just this side of +Small's Brook,' or 'At the top of Gray's Pinch,' 'At the Dry Mill-Pond,' +'Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's,' 'On the long causeway,' 'At +Jeems Gowen's,' 'Coming down the Pulpit Rock Hill,' 'Coming down Tarkill +Hill.' I have heard these answers till I have them by heart, without +having any idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I have +seen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, who lives +not far away, came along and asked where I had been. On my telling him, +he said that no money would hire him to go up to that pulpit; that the +Devil used to preach from it long and long ago; that on a time when +hundreds of them were listening to one of his sermons, a great chief +laughed in the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and the +ground to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, and +every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. He +declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easily +several feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, when +instantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell as +from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. +Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near that +swamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the +road near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas Pond, +keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a wide berth. Mr. West +talked as though he believed what he said. + + * * * * * + +"A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle Richard's store, +telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but tried not to seem +interested. The story was of a house, the owner of which was suddenly +killed. Since his death the west garret-window cannot be kept closed; +though the shutters be hasped and nailed at night, they are invariably +found open the next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nails +were drawn. There is also on the farm an apple-tree, the fruit of which +the owner was particularly fond of, but since his death no one has been +able to get one of the apples. The tree hangs full nearly every year, +but whenever any individual tries to get one, stones come in all +directions as if from some secret infernal battery, or hidden catapult, +and more than once have those making the attempts been struck. What is +more strange, the tree stands in an open field, there being no shelter +near from which tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says that +it seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when the +snow is four feet deep; and, what is a mystery, there are no apples in +the spring; no one ever sees the wind blow one off, none are seen on the +snow, nor even the vestige of one on the grass under the tree; and that +children may play on the grass under and around it while it is in the +blossom, and until the fruit is large enough to tempt them, with perfect +safety; but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is full +of flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night he was +passing the house, and looking up saw the phantom walk out of the garret +window with cane in hand, making all the motions as if walking on +_terra firma_, although what appeared to be his feet were at least +six yards from the ground; and so he went walking away on nothing, and +when nearly out of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as of +twenty field-pieces, then--nothing. This story was told with seeming +earnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How strange it +is that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of hearing about the +supernatural, though it produces nervousness and fear! I should not be +willing to sleep in that garret, though I do not believe a word of the +story. + + * * * * * + +"The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs across the Great +Pond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of many +thousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor +dragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty or +thirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men +say who are familiar with such business. All the men and boys went from +the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They +have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great +body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. +A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright +windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of +the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a +yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half +a mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the rope, the +anchor thrown over, and the men on the headworks wind up the capstan and +so draw along the acres of logs. After we went down to the shore, +several of the men came out on the boom nearest to us, and, striking a +single log, pushed it under and outside; then one man with a gallon jug +slung to his back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the small +single log,--a feat that seemed almost miraculous to me. This man's name +was Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in no fear of getting soused. This +masterly kind of navigation he calls 'cuffing the rigging'; nobody could +tell me why he gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had the +jug filled with rum (the supply having run out on the headworks), and +made the voyage back the way he came. His comrades received him with +cheers, and after sinking the log and drawing it back under the boom, +proceeded to try the contents of the jug, seeming to be well satisfied +with the result of his expedition. It turned out that Murch only rode +the single log ashore to show his adroitness, for the yawl-boat came +round from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts to +where we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixed +with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called +'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea of +a Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle.' I think his real name was Wood. +The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' +pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly man +named Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, +interfered and put a stop to what was becoming something like a fight. +Mr. Thompson said that the wind would go down with the sun, and that +they must get ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, +and the raft was almost to Frye's Island. + + * * * * * + +"I have read 'Gulliver's Travels,' but do not agree with Captain Britton +that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, +and the _lies_ too _false_." + + * * * * * + +The next and last piece of this note-book was printed two years later +than the preceding items, and after the death of the person who +professed to own the manuscript, but still with the same degree of +mystery, except in the matter of date. + +"Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from Windham, Mr. M. P. Sawyer +of Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, and +Enoch White, a boy of about my own age, from White's Bridge, came up to +the Dingley Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy River +Bog, for a day's sport, fishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch proposed that +I should go with them. I needed no urging, but knew how unwillingly my +mother would consent. They could wait but a few minutes, and Uncle +Richard kindly wrote a note, asking her to be willing to gratify me +_this_ time. + +"She said, 'Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasure +would cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up hooks and +lines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous number +of biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, then +skilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-bag, +and slung over my shoulder. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, +as we walked down to the boat, as to which would catch the largest +number of fish. + +"The air was clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us along +pleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was not exactly after +us, though we made but two tacks to reach the mouth of Muddy River. The +men praised the grand view, after we got into the Great Bay. We could +see the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they were +eighty miles from us; 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. Mr. Little seems to be familiar with every +book that has ever been written, and must have a great memory. Among +other things, he said:-- + +"'Gentlemen, do you know that this should be called the sea, instead of +the Great Pond; that ships should be built here and navigate this water? +The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of which we hear so much in the New +Testament, was just about equal to the surface of our sea to-day.' + +"And then he went on to give a geographical description of the country +about the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels between places named in the +Testament and points in sight. His talk stole my attention until we were +fairly at Muddy River mouth. + +"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties into the pond +between two small sandy capes or points, only a short distance apart; +but after running up a little between them we found the bog to widen to +fifty or sixty rods in some places, and to be between two or three miles +long. People say that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles that +ever grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down with another +a little longer, and this may be repeated until the long poles are all +gone. + +"Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every part, with +the exception of a place five or six rods wide, running its whole +length, and nearly in the middle, which is called the Channel. One can +tell at first sight that it is the place for pickerel and water-snakes. + +"Mr. Deblois stated something that I never heard before as a fact in +natural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all fish, except the +trout, who is too active for him; that he is a piscatorial cannibal; but +that under all circumstances and in all places, he lives on good terms +with the water-snake. + +"We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer had +a gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as four were flying and +seemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he would frighten +them, if no more; when, to our surprise, he brought one down. The gun +was loaded with ball, and Mr. Deblois told him he could not do it again +in a million shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that he had always been a +votary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated him +handsomely. + +"We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and trolling for +pickerel; and though we saw a great many, not one offered to be caught, +but horned pouts were willing, and we caught them till it was no sport. +We found a man there who had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He was +on a raft, and had walked from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otisfield. +Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 'The next +time you come to Portland I want half a dozen of your best jewsharps; +leave them at my store at Windham Hill. I need them very badly.' + +"The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that he had just +pulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began solemnly to explore +in his pockets, and brought out six quaint jewsharps carefully tied to +pieces of corn-cobs; then he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Little, +saying, 'There they are, Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made; +I shall charge you fifty cents for them.' Mr. Little had the worst of +the joke; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out the +silver and paid the half-dollar; but they laughed at him till he told +them, if they would say no more about it, he would give them all the +brandy they could drink when they got home. + +"Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed; that he must tell Peter White +when he got to Windham Hill. + +"Mr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it for a yoke of +steers. + +"After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry knoll that +made out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The men had a variety of +eatables, and several bottles that held no eatables. The question was +started whether Enoch and I should be invited to drink, and they +concluded not to urge us, as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. +Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much +yours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drink +spirits.' + +"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and had +no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little had +been there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water, +that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of the +bog. + +"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to be +settled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number of +fish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted my +string and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I was +about turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was +the largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made +twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, and +found it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr. +Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly larger +than mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four, +and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over, +until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice +alike. + +"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you have +turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all.' The men +laughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of the +joke was. + +"Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to go over to +the next term. After starting for home, while running down the bog, Mr. +Sawyer killed three noble black ducks at one shot, but the gun was not +loaded this time with ball. Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole, and +killed a monstrous water-snake. Mr. Little measured a stick with his +hands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. If I +thought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, I never would go +into the water there again. + +"When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found a lively +breeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the Dingley Brook in +less than an hour, and then kept on like a great white bird down towards +the Cape, and for the outlet. I stood and watched the boat until it was +nearly half-way to Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helped +me to enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and greeted +mother just as the sun went out of sight behind the hills in Baldwin. +The fish were worthless, but I thought I must have something to show for +the day spent. After exhibiting them to mother and sister, and hearing +the comments as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what their +horns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that pouts were the +best of fish after they were skinned. + +"I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle Richard, who +is an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such sport, and wished me to +describe everything just as it had happened, whether witty or silly, and +give my own impressions. He has read my diary, and says that it +interested him, which is all the reward I desire. And now I add these +lines to keep in remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received in +hearing the conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. +August, 1818, Raymond." + + * * * * * + +These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if they be genuine, as in most +respects I believe they must be, will furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, +to the distinct turn which the boy's mind took toward authorship after +his return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classical culture. +We can also see in them, I think, the beginning of that painstaking +accumulation of fact, the effort to be first of all accurate, which is a +characteristic of his maturer and authenticated note-books; very +significant, too, is the dash of the supernatural and his tone +concerning it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of communing +with himself through the pen, so constant and assiduous as we know it to +have been in his later years,--even when mind and time were +preoccupied,--must have been formed early, to retain so strong a hold +upon him. But there is another reason for supposing that he had begun to +compose with care before coming from Raymond to Salem; and this is found +in the fact that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very small +and intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly paper printed +with the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed note size, and written in an +excellent style. + +The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, opens with the Editor's +Address:-- + +"Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number of the +Spectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, when he beholds a +beloved child about to embark on the troubled Ocean of public Life. +Perhaps the iron hand of Criticism may crush our humble undertaking, ere +it is strengthened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected and +forgotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the Pride and +Ornament of our Country.... We beg leave farther to remark that in order +to carry on any enterprise with spirit MONEY is absolutely necessary. +Money, although it is the root of all evil, is also the foundation of +everything great and good, and therefore our Subscribers ... will please +carefully to remember that the terms are two cents per month." + +A little further on there is this allusion to the Scriptural proverb +cited above: "We have been informed that this expression is incorrect, +and that it is the love of Money which is the 'Root of all Evil.' But +money is certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, Money is +the deepest 'Root of Evil.'" (Observe, here, the young student's pride +of reason, and the consciousness of a gift for casuistry!) Under the +head of "Domestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, the +deduction from various rumors about the monster being that "he seems to +possess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing in +different shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees a +shark, another beholds a nameless dragon." (Here, too, is the humorously +veiled distrust that always lurked beneath his dealings with the +marvellous.) In the next columns there is found an advertisement of the +Pin Society, which "will commence lending pins to any creditable person, +on Wednesday, the 23d instant. No numbers except ten, twenty, and thirty +will be lent"; and the rate of interest is to be one pin on every ten +per day. This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the editor in +person,--a combination which in these days would lay him open to +suspicions of unfair dealing. I have seen a little manuscript book +containing the remarkable constitution and by-laws of this society, in +which there were but two members; and it is really a curious study of +whimsical intricacy, the work of a mind perfectly accustomed to solitude +and fertile in resources for making monotony various and delightful. It +does not surprise one to meet with the characteristic announcement from +this editor that he has "concluded not to insert deaths and marriages +(except of very distinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see but +little use in thus giving to the world the names of the crowd who are +tying the marriage knot, and going down to the silent tomb." There is +some poetry at the end of the paper, excellent for a boy, but without +the easy inspiration of the really witty prose. + +It would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, which was also an +end, before nourishing up into the series of which I have synopsized the +first issue; for there is another Number One without date, but +apparently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments "On +Solitude," with a touch of what was real profundity in so inexperienced +a writer. "Man is naturally a sociable being," he says; "and apart from +the world there are no incitements to the pursuit of excellence; there +are no rivals to contend with; and therefore there is no improvement.... +The heart may be more pure and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposed +to the influences of the depravity of the world; but the benefit of +virtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious ones, and both +are equally lost." The "Domestic Intelligence" of this number is as +follows: "The lady of Dr. Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. +Hathorne's cat, Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies are +in a state of convalescence." Also, "Intentions of Marriage. The +beautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah Dingley will shortly be united to +Dominicus Jordan Esq." (The young author appears to have allowed himself +in this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction respecting real +persons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler of the Raymond notes. Who Miss +Keziah was I do not know, but from the name I guess her to have been a +relative, by appellation at least, through Richard Manning's wife. If +Hawthorne did not himself call Miss Dingley aunt, he may very likely +have heard her commonly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyish +association perhaps unconsciously supply him with a name for the Indian +aunt of "Septimius Felton"?) The next item is "DEATHS. We are sorry to +be under the necessity of informing our readers that no deaths of +importance have taken place, except that of the publisher of this Paper, +who died of Starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage." +Notwithstanding this discouraging incident, one of the advertisements +declares that "Employment will be given to any number of indigent Poets +and Authors at this office." But shortly afterward is inserted the +announcement that "Nathaniel Hathorne proposes to publish by +subscription a new edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will be +added a sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own +experience." + +In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of a discourse by Dr. +Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening.... With the amount of the contribution +which was taken up ... we are unacquainted, as, having no money in our +pockets, we departed before it commenced." This issue takes a despondent +view of the difficulties that beset editors. There is a clever paragraph +of "Domestic News" again. "As we know of no News," it says, "we hope our +readers will excuse us for not inserting any. The law which prohibits +paying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case." Next +we have a very arch dissertation "On Industry": "It has somewhere been +remarked that an Author does not write the worse for knowing little or +nothing of his subject. We hope the truth of this saying will be +manifest in the present article. With the benefits of Industry we are +not personally acquainted." The desperate editor winds up his week's +budget with a warning to all persons who may be displeased by +observations in the Spectator, that he is going to take fencing lessons +and practise shooting at a mark. "We also," he adds, "think it advisable +to procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the constant companion of our +peregrinations." The assumption of idleness in the essay on Industry, +just quoted, breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor--in +apologizing for inaccuracies in the printing of his paper--enumerates +his different occupations: "In the first place we study Latin and Greek. +Secondly we write in the employment of William Manning Esq., [at that +time proprietor of an extensive line of stagecoaches]. Thirdly, we are +Secretary, Treasurer, and Manager of the 'Pin Society'; Fourthly, we are +editor of the Spectator; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own Printers, +Printing Press and Types." But the young journalist carried on his +labors unabatedly, for the term of some five weeks, and managed to make +himself very entertaining. I take from an essay "On Benevolence" a +fragment which has a touch of poetry out of his own life. Benevolence, +he says, is "to protect the fatherless, and to make the Widow's heart +sing for joy." One of the most cherishable effusions is that "On +Wealth," in which the venerable writer drops into a charmingly +confidential and reminiscent vein. "All men," he begins, "from the +highest to the lowest, desire to pursue wealth.... In process of time if +we obtain possession" of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, "we +generally find ourselves as far from being contented as at first.... +When I was a boy, I one day made an inroad into a closet, to the secret +recesses of which I had often wished to penetrate. I there discovered a +quantity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take only one, +which I put in my pocket. But those which remained were so very inviting +that it was against my conscience to leave them, and I filled my pockets +and departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas! an apple +which was unable to find space enough among its companions bounced down +upon the floor before all the Family. I was immediately searched, and +forced, very unwillingly, to deliver up all my booty." In the same +number which contains this composition appears the token of what was +doubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in literature. It is a +"Communication," of tenor following:-- + +"Mr. Editor: I have observed in some of your last papers, Essays on +Various subjects, and am very much pleased with them, and wish you to +continue them. If you will do this, you will oblige + +"MARIA LOUISA HATHORNE." + +"We hail the above communication," writes the editor with exaggerated +gratitude, "as the dawn of a happy day for us." In his next and final +issue, though (September, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces his +dissatisfaction at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, +through this "Request":-- + +"As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticise +home-manufactured publications, we most earnestly desire some of our +benevolent Readers to write a book for our special benefit. At present +we feel as we were wont to do in the days of our Boyhood, when we +possessed a Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We engage to +execute the Printing and Binding, and to procure the Paper for the Work, +free of all expense to the Author. If this request should be denied us, +we must infallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, as +they will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very unwilling to do. +We do not wish that the proposed work should be too perfect; the Author +will please to make a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon." + +In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased maturity (though +it be only by a year or two) of the lad, since the engrossing of his +records at Raymond. We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of a +steady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air of assumed +indifference, and see how easily already his humor began to play, with +that clear and sweet ripeness that warms some of his more famous pages, +like late sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and translucent +grapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation at this point would not be +complete, without recognition of the graver emotions that sometimes +throbbed beneath the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimes +must have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit with weary +movelessness, and all the pain of awakening ambition and departing +boyhood, seem to find a symbol in this stanza from the fourth +"Spectator":-- + + "Days of my youth, ye fleet away, + As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, + And scarce my infant hours are gone, + Ere manhood's troubled step comes on. + My infant hours return no more, + And all their happiness is o'er; + The stormy sea of life appears, + A scene of tumult and of tears." + +Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of sixteen did not speak +without knowledge. Various sorts of pressure from uncongenial sources +were now and then brought to bear upon him; there was present always the +galling consciousness of depending on others for support, and of being +less self-sustaining than approaching manhood made him wish to be. +Allusion has been made to his doing writing for his uncle William. "I +still continue," he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his mother at +Raymond, "to write for Uncle William, and find my salary quite +convenient for many purposes." This, to be sure, was a first approach to +self-support, and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. But +Hawthorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for maturity. An +outpouring of his thoughts on this and other matters, directed to his +sister, accompanies the letter just cited. Let us read it here as he +wrote it more than a half-century ago:-- + +DEAR SISTER:--I am very angry with you for not sending me some of your +poetry, which I consider a great piece of ingratitude. You will not see +one line of mine until you return the confidence which I have placed in +you. I have bought the 'Lord of the Isles,' and intend either to send or +to bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems. I +have read Hogg's "Tales," "Caleb Williams," "St. Lean," and +"Mandeville." I admire Godwin's novels, and intend to read them all. I +shall read the "Abbot," by the author of "Waverley," as soon as I can +hire it. I have read all Scott's novels except that. I wish I had not, +that I might have the pleasure of reading them again. Next to these I +like "Caleb Williams." I have almost given up writing poetry. No man can +be a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find this place most +"dismal," and have taken to chewing tobacco with all my might, which, I +think, raises my spirits. Say nothing of it in your letters, nor of the +"Lord of the Isles." ... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I +can scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four years +longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!" +You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to Uncle +Richard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds +it thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his +epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must conclude, as I +am in a "monstrous hurry!" + +Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE. + +P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:-- + + "She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, + She's gone to dwell in Heaven: + Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon + For dwalling out of Heaven." + +It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as I +know you would admire it. + +As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into the +obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart must +have borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this must +not be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that were +compounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last he +struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 he +went to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow and +Cheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verse +of "Morituri Salutamus,"--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe," an +anonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of the +college at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction. + +"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accurate observer +might pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of those +classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would +inform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a not +less toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments of +a more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the +polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler +cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in +general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were +understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater +could bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in the +world. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. A +few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and +these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom +they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the +fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them +in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from +both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, +to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the +benefits of civilization. + +"If this institution 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 students, indeed, ignorant +of their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their +entrance on the business of life; but they found, in after years, that +many of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes which they would +with least reluctance live over again, referred to the seat of their +early studies." + + * * * * * + +He here divides the honors pleasantly between the forest-bred and +city-trained youth, having, from his own experience, an interest in each +class. Yet I think he must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. +Horatio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more confidential +friend than Pierce, was brought up on his father's estate at Bridgton, +north of Sebago Lake; and Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, his +only other frequent companion, was a native of the New Hampshire +hill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, perhaps gathered to his +person something the look of both the seaport lads and the sturdy +mountaineers and woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to his +uncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives the measure of his +foot, for some new shoes that are to be sent; it is ten inches), but an +interior and ruling grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being a +sea-captain's son, he would naturally make his connections at college +with men who had the out-of-doors glow about them; the simple and severe +life at Raymond, too, had put him in sympathy with the people rather +than with the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of some +of the old dwellers near Raymond describe the widow and her brother +Richard as being exclusive and what was there thought "aristocratic"). +Hawthorne, Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athenaean Society, +the newer club of the two college literary unions, and the more +democratic; and the trio preserved their cordial relations intact for +forty years, sometimes amid confusions and misconstructions, or between +cross-fires of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity. +Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his grasp, but he and +his two cronies seem to have taken their curriculum very easily, though +they all came off well in the graduation. Hawthorne was a good Latinist. +The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin compositions, +even in the Freshman year, were remarkable; and Mr. Longfellow tells me +that he recalls the graceful and poetic translations which his classmate +used to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity in Greek, I +believe, but he always kept up his liking for the Latin writers. Some +years since a Latin theme of his was found, which had been delivered at +an exhibition of the Athenaean Society, in December, 1823. [Footnote: +See Appendix II.] It shows some niceties of selection, and the style is +neat; I even fancy something individual in the choice of the words +_sanctior nec beatior_, as applied to the republic, and a +distinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the _fulgor tantum fuit sine +fervore_; though a relic of this kind should not be examined too +closely, and claims the same exemption that one gives to Shelley's +school-compelled verses, _In Horologium_. + +His English compositions also excited notice. Professor Newman gave them +high commendation, and Mr. Bridge speaks of their superiority. But none +of them have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilant +suppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Hawthorne's habit as a +young man to destroy all of his own letters that he could find, on +returning home after an absence; and few records of his college life +remain. Here is a brief note, however. + +BRUNSWICK, August 12, 1823. + +MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should have +answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L---- +conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will +last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next +Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I +suppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, +and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I should +prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there is +a steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If this +be the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has no +apprehension of the boiler's bursting. + +I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to the +usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or four +pages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hope +you will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness.... + +Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE. + +This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyish +simplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personality +already unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of +Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept his +maturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatory +culture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes +toward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only two +slight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, he +recalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committee +of which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise," he says, "that +the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a +college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered +into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I +could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be +inclined to smile." But much more intimate and delightful is the +reminiscence which, in the dedicatory preface of "The Snow Image," +addressed to his friend Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody is +responsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know +not whence your faith came: but, 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 treats in +that shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering +riverward through the forest,--though you and I will never cast a line +in it again,--two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to +acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard +of, or else it had been the worse for us,--still it was your prognostic +of your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction." I have +asked Mr. Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, and he +tells me that it was an indescribable conviction, aroused by the whole +drift of his friend's mind as he saw it. Exquisite indeed must have been +that first fleeting aroma of genius; and I would that it might have been +then and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our delight. But we must +be satisfied with the quick and sympathetic insight with which +Hawthorne's friend discovered his true bent. The world owes more, +probably, to this early encouragement from a college companion than it +can ever estimate. + +Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more peculiar and +unchanging value than the mutual impressions of young men at college: +they meet at a moment when the full meaning of life just begins to +unfold itself to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two or +three traits the whole character of a comrade, where a maturer man +weighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and ends after all with a like or +dislike that is only lukewarm. Far on toward the close of life, +Hawthorne, in speaking of something told him by an English gentleman +respecting a former classmate of the latter's, wrote: "It seemed to be +one of those early impressions which a collegian gets of his +fellow-students, and which he never gets rid of, whatever the character +of the person may turn out to be in after years. I have judged several +persons in this way, and still judge them so, though the world has come +to very different opinions. Which is right,--the world, which has the +man's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who has +nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, +doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man's +mature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable or +otherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. In +this, then, we perceive one of the formative effects on Hawthorne's mind +of his stay at Brunswick. Those four years of student life gave him a +thousand eyes for observing and analyzing character. He learned then, +also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always afterward he was +singularly independent in selecting friends; often finding them even in +unpopular and out-of-the-way persons. The affinity between himself and +Bridge was ratified by forty years of close confidence; and Hawthorne +never swerved from his early loyalty to Pierce, though his faithfulness +gave him severe trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not of +those who explain this steadfastness by a theory of early prepossession +on Hawthorne's part, blinding him to Pierce's errors or defects. There +is ample proof in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, which I +have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguished +friend the President's character with his impartial and searching eye +for human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe if +he had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certain +candor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided it +seemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his old +friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought +hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the +severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid +unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was +perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old +"Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person +of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed +Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he +saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the +harsh multitude. + +Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an +apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen +or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted +with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was +especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from +college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, +his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own +imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the +papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there +for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith +the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was +not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. + +In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive, +there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplier +of events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strain +of revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion shows +that he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824 +(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty cents +for neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did its +best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings. +[Footnote: The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 1824, is +but $19.62, of which $2.36 is made up of fines. The figures give a +backward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, but show that the +disinclination of students to comply with college rules was even then +expensive. The "average of damages" is only thirty-three cents, from +which I infer that the class was not a destructive one.] Logically, +these tendencies away from essay and oratory are alien to minds destined +to produce literature; but empirically, they are otherwise. Meantime, we +get a sudden light on some of the solid points of character, apart from +genius, in this note from the college president, and the student's +parallel epistles. + +May 29, 1822. + +MRS. ELIZABETH C. HATHORNE. + +MADAM:----By note of the Executive Government of this college, it is +made my duty to request your co-operation with us in the attempt to +induce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution. He +was this day fined fifty cents for playing cards for money, last term. +He played at different times. Perhaps he might not have gained, were it +not for the influence of a student whom we have dismissed from college. +It does not appear that your son has very recently played cards; yet +your advice may be beneficial to him. I am, madam, + +Very respectfully, + +Your obedient, humble servant, + +WILLIAM ALLEN, _President_. + +The next day after this note was written (on May 30, 1822) the subject +of it wrote thus:-- + +"MY DEAR MOTHER:--I hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I have +nothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players in +college have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. +One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with +myself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the President +intends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be +the case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again detected, I +shall have the honor of being suspended; when the President asked what +we played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty cents, +although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I had told him of +that, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appears +that the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that +time was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the common +term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There was no untruth in the +case, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. +I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall not +till the last week." + +But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 1822) a few +months afterward, he touches the matter much more vigorously:-- + +"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead, +absconded, or anything worse.' [The allusion is to some reproach for a +long silence on his part.] I have involved myself in no 'foolish +scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune +I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have +been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong +drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold +good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I +have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so +severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by +the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full +as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and +would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence +playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another +into anything wrong." + +I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headed +attitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made up +his mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinks +himself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdom +of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself less +thoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitable +theory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral sense +and ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect lives +by truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:-- + +"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago to +read Hume's 'History of England,' but found it so abominably dull that I +have given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procure +books of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which I +am a member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, among +which is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed in 1819], and many +other valuable works.... Our class will be examined on Tuesday for +admittance to our Sophomore year. If any of us are found deficient, we +shall be degraded to the Freshman class again; from which misfortune may +Heaven defend me." + +But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt any, was soon +soothed; he passed on successfully through his course. Not only did he +graduate well, but he had also, as we shall see, begun to prepare +himself for his career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentary +way, his mood at graduation:-- + +"BRUNSWICK, July 14, 1825. + +"MY DEAR SISTER:--.... I am not very well pleased with Mr. Dike's report +of me. The family had before conceived much too high an opinion of my +talents, and had probably formed expectations which I shall never +realize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally 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. I do +not say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but +merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where your +partiality has led you astray. I did hope that Uncle Robert's opinion of +me was nearer to the truth, as his deportment toward me never expressed +a very high estimation of my abilities." + +Mr. Dike was a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, after +seeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. +Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, +before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anything +decisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed his +success as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture which +precipitated and made perfect the mysterious solution in which his +genius lay. The wish "to plod along with the multitude," seemingly +unambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most undyingly with +hope of achievement in art, often throw off this vapor of discontent; +they feel a prophetic thrill of that nameless suffering through which +every seeker of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, for +the sweet obscurity of the ungifted. + +Another part of this letter shows the writer's standing at college:-- + +"Did the President write to you about my part? He called me to his +study, and informed me that, though my rank in the class entitled me to +a part, yet it was contrary to the law to give me one, on account of my +neglect of declamation. As he inquired mother's name and residence, I +suppose that he intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you will +send me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with this +arrangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship, while +it saves me the mortification of making my appearance in public at +Commencement. Perhaps the family may not be so much pleased by it. Tell +me what are their sentiments on the subject. + +"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday." + +Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on the +threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young, +and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all his +shy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo such +long applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some great +thing was already a part of his life, together with that longing for +recognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of +beginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words, +which I find in "Fanshawe," drawn from the author's knowledge of his own +heart? + +"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent in +solitary study,--in conversation with the dead,--while he had scorned to +mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives. +Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world, +unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his +pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost +heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that +dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a +thousand realities." + +Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and +perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some +forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to +us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. It +is this:-- + + "The ocean hath its silent caves, + Deep, quiet, and alone; + Though there be fury on the waves, + Beneath them there is none." + +If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque +murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, +that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a +near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, +but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the +cable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much more +nearly does the writer justice:-- + +"MOONLIGHT. + + "We are beneath the dark blue sky, + And the moon is shining bright; + O, what can lift the soul so high + As the glow of a summer night; + When all the gay are hushed to sleep + And they that mourn forget to weep, + Beneath that gentle light! + + "Is there no holier, happier land + Among those distant spheres, + Where we may meet that shadow band, + The dead of other years? + Where all the day the moonbeams rest, + And where at length the souls are blest + Of those who dwell in tears? + + "O, if the happy ever leave + The bowers of bliss on high, + To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, + And wipe the tear-drop dry; + It is when moonlight sheds its ray, + More pure and beautiful than day, + And earth is like the sky." + +At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held such +strong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, +these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for a +certain independence; but there is something besides in the refined +touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne's +individuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, +was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first +fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration +of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the +Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise +on the Hills":-- + + "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke + Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," + +it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted +the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the +rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne +had as yet hardly found his appropriate element. + +In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published an +anonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe," much more nearly approaching +a novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and +Capen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate the +edition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. We +have seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. +"Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Peveril of the +Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared +while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become +the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy +between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the +people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a +common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of +both states at about the same period, and in both it has had the same +result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, +intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe +some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter +climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is +pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a +little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as +a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his +own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a +joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and +many-sided of American humorists. And, though many of the conditions of +the two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races are of +course largely dissimilar. The most salient distinction, perhaps, is +that of the Scotch being a musical and dancing nation; something from +which the New-Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him with +his Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake as a Pilgrim and not a +Covenanter, Hawthorne was by nature formed with little ear for music. It +seems strange that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight," +just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admitted an ill-timed +strain or jarring cadence into his pure, symphonious prose, should +scarcely be able to distinguish one tune from another. Yet such was the +case. But this was owing merely to the absence of the _musical_ +instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccompanied voice; and I +have been always much touched by a little incident recorded in the +"English Note-Books": "There is a woman who has several times passed +through this Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasionally to +sing songs under the windows; and last evening ... she came and sang +'Kathleen O'Moore' richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, +chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat in +our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me more +deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale +suddenly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste of +such a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a +harp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the +woman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open to +sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now than +formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps,--grievous that it should be so!--of +the superior temperance of our race. For, by one of those strange +oversights that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the door +for song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, seems to admit quite +freely two vagabonds that have no business there, Squalor and +Drunkenness. Yet notwithstanding this grave unlikeness between the two +peoples, Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeit +unwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit to Glasgow, +that in spite of the poorer classes there excelling even those of +Liverpool in filth and drunkenness, "they are a better looking people +than the English (and this is true of all classes), more intelligent of +aspect, with more regular, features." There is certainly one quality +linking the two nations together which has not yet been commented on, in +relation to Hawthorne; and this is the natural growth of the weird in +the popular mind, both here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enter +into this at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have suggested +some of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne's +fiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides +George Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with +real skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his +work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving +Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be +ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from +the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the +Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification. + +Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returned +from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visit +to Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long +before arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. The +exact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorous +whimsey, "P.'s Correspondence," which contains the essence of the best +criticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] In +allusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, or +architecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinite +variety." And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter +Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works went +out of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather than +that fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and +as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like +the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a more +earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he +was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the present +generation even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe" +there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the very +resemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent. + +The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, "in an ancient, though +not very populous settlement in a retired corner of one of the New +England States." This, no doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. +Longfellow tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of the +country around it strongly suggest the Brunswick College. The President +of Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an amiable and simple old delver in +learning, in a general way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorous +spouse rules him somewhat severely: their little bickerings supply a +strain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but quite unlike +anything in Hawthorne's later work. A young lady, named Ellen Langton, +daughter of an old friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stay +under his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, in the style +of Scott's heroines; but this sentence ends with a trace of the young +writer's quality: "If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's +beauty, it would achieve what pencil ... never could; for though the +dark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped +through them could only be seen and felt." This maiden the doctor once +took into his study, to begin a course of modern languages with her; but +she "having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrived +by the sweet charm of her voice to engage his attention," and quite +beguiled him from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two young +students at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, +handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns; +and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, +already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and +meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely +moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and +Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the +beginning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation with her. +The real action of the book, after the preliminaries, takes up only some +three days, and turns upon the attempt of a man named Butler to entice +Ellen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortune +to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated by +circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a much +more sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowing +that he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him the +opportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush of +desire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to take +advantage of her generosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellen +becomes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from the first; and +Fanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, dies before his class +graduates. It is easy to see how the sources of emotion thus opened +attracted Hawthorne. The noble and refined nature of Fanshawe, and the +mingled craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crude +embodiments of the same characteristics which he afterward treated in +modified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes,--both of them +remote and chilly,--of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, +after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of these +persons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked a +few characteristic portions of the book which suggest its tone. + +When the young lady's flight with the stranger actually takes place, +young Wolcott and President Melmoth ride together in the pursuit, and at +this point there occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable and +is better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, whom it +strongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears in it, too, which makes it +not out of place to mention that Hawthorne studied "Don Quixote" in the +original, soon after leaving college. + + * * * * * + +"'Alas, youth! these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a +doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant +and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of +the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray +Heaven, however, there be no encounter in store for us; for I utterly +forgot to provide myself with weapons.' + +"'I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight,' replied Edward, +whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. Melmoth's chivalrous +comparison. + +"'Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword,' said the divine. 'But +wherewith shall I defend myself?--my hand being empty except of this +golden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. Langton.' + +"'One of those, if you will accept it,' answered Edward, exhibiting a +brace of pistols, 'will serve to begin the conflict, before you join the +battle hand to hand.' + +"'Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly +instrument, since I know not accurately from which end proceeds the +bullet,' said Dr. Melmoth. 'But were it not better, seeing we are so +well provided with artillery, to betake ourselves, in the event of an +encounter, to some stone-wall or other place of strength?' + +"'If I may presume to advise,' said the squire, 'you, as being most +valiant and experienced, should ride forward, lance in hand (your long +staff serving for a lance), while I annoy the enemy from afar.' + +"'Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or +David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left +unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the +present age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to my +safety. But lo! who rides yonder?'" + + * * * * * + +In one place only does the author give full rein to his tragic power; +but this is a vigorous burst, and remarkable also for its sure and +trenchant analysis. During his escape with Ellen, Butler is moved to +stop at a lonely hut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her dying; +and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and yearns for +his presence, he makes himself known to her. + + * * * * * + +"At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once from her +soul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole countenance beaming with +joy, and threw her arms about his neck. A multitude of words seem +struggling for utterance; but they gave place to a low moaning sound, +and then to the silence of death. The one moment of happiness, that +recompensed years of sorrow, had been her last.... As he [Butler] +looked, the expression of enthusiastic joy that parting life had left +upon the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no +longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course +of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the +thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on +the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed +with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He +started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to +hide it from those dead eyes.... But his deep repentance for the misery +he had brought upon his parent did not produce in him a resolution to do +wrong no more. The sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made him +desperate. He felt as if no one had thenceforth a claim to justice or +compassion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned his +mother's life, and hastened her death." + + * * * * * + +What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne's works is an +intricate plot, with passages of open humor, and a rather melodramatic +tone in the conclusion. These are the result in part of the prevalent +fashion of romance, and in part of a desire to produce effects not quite +consonant with his native bent. The choice of the title, "Fanshawe," +too, seems to show a deference to the then prevalent taste for brief and +quaint-sounding names; and the motto, "Wilt thou go on with me?" from +Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the heads +of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerful +conceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume +an air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is as +evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale light +of morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, represents +that constant aspiration toward lofty moral truth which marked +Hawthorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the sinful spirit +which he afterward analyzed under many forms. The verbal style has few +marks of the maturer mould afterward impressed on it, except that there +is the preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin wording. Two +or three phrases, however, show all the limpidness and ease for which he +gained fame subsequently. For instance, when Fanshawe is first surprised +by his love for Ellen, he returns to his room to study: "The books were +around him which had hitherto been to him like those fabled volumes of +magic, from which the reader could not turn away his eye, till death +were the consequence of his studies." This, too, is a pretty description +of Ellen: "Terror had at first blanched her as white as a lily.... Shame +next bore sway; and her blushing countenance, covered by her slender +white fingers, might fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, +with its alternate stripes of white and red." Its restraint is perhaps +the most remarkable trait of the novel; for though this comes of +timidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether this be to his advantage or +not, was not of the order of young genius which begins with tumid and +excessive exhibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, +breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate modes of +dealing with any intellectual problem or question requiring judgment, +and the formal taste of the period in letters, probably conspired to +this end. + + + + +IV. + + +TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. + +1828-1838. + +We have now reached the point where the concealed foundations of +Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear +above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly +rising from the depths of a solitary ocean. + +When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce entered into law, +the gateway to politics; Bridge returned to his father's estate at +Bridgton, to engage later in a large enterprise there; and other +classmates took up various activities in the midst of other men; but for +Hawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Literature had not yet +attained, in the United States, the rank of a distinct and powerful +profession. Fifteen years before, Brockden Brown had died prematurely +after a hapless struggle, worn out with overwork,--the first man who had +undertaken to live by writing in this country since its colonization. +"The North American Review," indeed, in Boston, was laying the +corner-stone of a vigorous periodical literature; and in this year of +1825 William Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit "The New York +Review," after publishing at Cambridge his first volume of poetry, "The +Ages." Irving was an author of recent but established fame, who was +drawing chiefly from the rich supplies of European manners, legend, and +history; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer-land beside Otsego Lake, +had begun to make clear his claim to a wide domain of native and +national fiction. But to a young man of reserved temper, having few or +no friends directly connected with publication, and living in a sombre, +old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were before the era of +railroads, the avenue to publicity and a definite literary career was +dark and devious enough. + +I suppose it was after his venture of "Fanshawe," that he set about the +composition of some shorter stories which he called "Seven Tales of my +Native Land." [Footnote: The motto prefixed to these was, "We are +seven."] His sister, to whom he read these, has told me that they were +very beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her, +except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea, +being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter were +certain verses, beginning,-- + + "The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race." + +Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript," while depicting a +young author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations in +trying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offered +to some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read their +answers.... One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five +novels already under examination; ... another gentleman is just giving +up business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my +book.... In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has +vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, I +should judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he +calls vast improvements, and concluding ... that he will not be +concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one honest man +among these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that no +American publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by a +known writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk." +He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; but +at last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His +name was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with Caleb +Cushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette," +in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers at +a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews was +ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius; +but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author, +exasperated, recalled the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for better +business prospects, was loath to let them go; but Hawthorne insisted, +and at last the publisher sent word, "Mr. Hawthorne's manuscript awaits +his orders." The writer received it and burned it, to the chagrin of +Andrews, who had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. + +This, at the time, must have been an incident of incalculable and +depressing importance to Hawthorne, and the intense emotion it caused +may be guessed from the utterances of the young writer in the sketch +just alluded to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light film +of sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one of the feigned +names which Hawthorne himself used at times in contributing to +periodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiest +tone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape +it.... All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, +has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The +deed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; a +long repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where they +will bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to the tales +founded on witchcraft: "I could believe, if I chose," says Oberon, "that +there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, and +know what I mean,--that conception in which I endeavored to embody the +character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written +records of witchcraft. O, I have a horror of what was created in my own +brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a +sort of material existence!' You remember how the hellish thing used to +suck away the happiness of those who ... subjected themselves to his +power." This is curious, as showing the point from which Hawthorne had +resolved to treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that the +only way to make the witchcraft delusion available in fiction was to +accept the witch as a fact, an actual being, and expend his art upon +developing the abnormal character; while other writers, who have +attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the +historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of +the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of +intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and +token of an original imagination. + +After the publication of "Fanshawe" and the destruction of his "Seven +Tales," Hawthorne found himself advanced not so much as by a single +footstep on the road to fame. "Fame!" he exclaims, in meditation; "some +very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as the +penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to +everybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are +unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens." But the fame that he +desired was, I think, only that which is the recognition by the public +that a man is on the way to truth. An outside acknowledgment of this is +invaluable even to the least vain of authors, because it assures him +that, in following his own inner impulse through every doubt and +discouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and gives him new +heart for the highest enterprises of which he is capable. To attain +this, amid the peculiar surroundings of his life, was difficult enough. +At that time, Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it has +been in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families maintained +rigorously the distinctions of class; their entertainments were +splendid, their manners magnificent, and the fame of the beautiful women +born amongst them has been confirmed by a long succession reaching into +the present day. They prescribed certain fashions, customs, punctilios, +to disregard which was social exile for the offending party; and they +were divided even among themselves, I am told, by the most inveterate +jealousies. It is said that certain people would almost have endured the +thumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. There seems to be good +authority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle, +had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it; +and it appears that there was a disposition among some of the +fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances were +made by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that it +would not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entire +equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of the +results of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible; +those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of the +Hawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had a +conviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a +certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the lady +of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books," "proud of +being proud." The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other people +as the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve which +enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that, +feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in these +facts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only very +young or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the +altered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had brought +him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developed +in him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than these +magnates. His father had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, as +well as the very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to that +unpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the rich +and powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably more +bitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, +ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him with +wearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy and +appreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might have +been given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known among +his own townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encouraging +answer reached him from more distant communities. + +In his own home there was the faith which only love can give, but +outside of it a chill drove his hopes and ardors back upon himself and +turned them into despairs. His relatives, having seen him educated by +the aid of his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to take +his share in practical affairs. But the very means adopted to train him +for a career had settled his choice of one in a direction perhaps not +wholly expected; all cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordid +and alien to him. Yet a young man just beginning his career, with no +solid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot but be sensitive to +criticism from those who have gained a right to comment by their own +special successes. As he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, +from his graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully before +the public in 1837, he must often have been dragged down by terrible +fears that perhaps the fairest period of life was being wasted, losing +forever the chance of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life," he +wrote, long after, "like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang +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." Judge in what a silence and solitary +self-communing the time must have passed, to leave a thought like this: +"To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course +of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence; as, the clocks have struck, +the dead have been buried." Or this: "A recluse like myself, or a +prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his +chamber." His Note-Books show how the sense of unreality vexed and +pursued him; and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned upon him +again and again; and how he clothed these dark visitants of his brain +with the colors of imagination, and turned them away from him in the +guise of miraculous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing "the +journal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary circumstances. +The lights and shadows that flit across it, its internal vicissitudes." +But this is almost precisely what his printed Note-Books have revealed +to us. Only now and then do we get precisely the thought that is passing +through his mind at the moment; it more often throws upon the page a +reflected image,--some strange and subtle hint for a story, the germs of +delicate fabrics long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, some +tender yet piercing inference,--like the shadows of clouds passing +quickly across a clear sky, and casting momentary glooms, and glances of +light, on the ground below. These journals do not begin until a date +seven years after "Fanshawe" was published; but it is safe to assume +that they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of the +intervening years. + +His mode of life during 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; 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. In summer he was up +shortly after sunrise, and would go down to bathe in the sea. 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. Or perhaps he would pace +the streets of the town, unseen but observing, gathering material for +something in the vein of his delicious "Night Sketches." "After a time," +he writes, "the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. +Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my +spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock shall strike +bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not made of such shadowy +materials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so +long among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal as +those within." Or, if he chose a later hour, he might go abroad to +people the deserted thoroughfares with wilder phantoms. 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. His tramps +along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahant +were productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by the +Sea-shore," or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle." "Grudge +me not the day," he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent in +seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my +companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me +his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Such +companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been +admitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal." This touches +the inmost secret of those lonely, youthful years, which moulded the +pure-hearted muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, +Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior life at this time: +"This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a +starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air I became all +soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along the +Milky Way. Here is another tale in which I wrapped myself during a dark +and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the +wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a +dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describes +shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would not +depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake and +feverish, the victim of my own enchantments!" Susan, the imaginary wife +in "The Village Uncle," is said to have had a prototype in the daughter +of a Salem fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne frequent +amusement; and I suppose that not seldom he reaped delightful +suggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individual +people of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a +polite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting now +and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, to +listen to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort of +intercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republican +fellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives the +tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will put in its +word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them!" It +was this constant searching among the common types of men, and his ready +sympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored his mind with +a variety of accurate impressions which afterward surprised observers, +in a man of habits so retired. + +His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with extensive stage-coach +lines at this time, and Hawthorne seems to have used these as antennae +to bring himself in contact with new and nutritive regions and people. A +letter, probably written in 1830, which I do not feel at liberty to +quote entire, tells something of a trip that he took with Samuel Manning +through a part of Connecticut and the Connecticut valley. The extracts +that follow give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt about +everything; and I regard them as very important in showing the obverse +of that impression of unhealthy solitude which has been so generally +received from accounts of Hawthorne hitherto published. + +"We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday ... and we were forced to +halt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fifteen miles from New +Haven. The next day being Sunday, we made a Sabbath day's journey of +seventeen miles, and put up at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapid +travelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was +(of course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went to +a Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom I +afterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of very questionable +habits.... We are now at Deerfield (though I believe my letter is dated +Greenfield) ... with our faces northward; nor shall I marvel much if +your Uncle Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two or +three bad taverns in succession.... + +"I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven I observed a +gentleman staring at me with great earnestness, after which he went into +the bar-room, I suppose to inquire who I might be. Finally, he came up +to me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family of +Stanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was +sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place they +took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and strongly +recommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students at +Yale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was +standing without my coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, +and asked me for some oats for his horse." + +It was during this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, +and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The Seven +Vagabonds." The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer +in it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across the +Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada +before the fall." The narrator himself queries by what right he came +among these wanderers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggests +that side of his nature most apt to appear in these journeys: "The free +mind that preferred its own folly to another's wisdom; the open spirit +that found companions everywhere; above all, the restless impulse that +had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments: these were my +claims to be of their society." "If there be a faculty," he also writes, +"which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing +myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with a +cheerful eye the desirableness of each." There is also one letter of +1831, sent back during an expedition in New Hampshire, which supplies +the genesis of another Twice-Told Tale, "The Canterbury Pilgrims." + +"I walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was shown over +the establishment, and dined there with a squire and a doctor, also of +the world's people. On my arrival, the first thing I saw was a jolly old +Shaker carrying an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soon +as I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It +was as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was +well furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by a +middle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful.... This +establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three miles +along the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow and +tipt with red.... On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, +and, if it were not for their ridiculous ceremonies, a man could not do +a wiser thing than to join them. Those whom I conversed with were +intelligent, and appeared happy. I spoke to them about becoming a member +of their society, but have come to no decision on that point. + +"We have had a pleasant journey enough.... I make innumerable +acquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with judges, generals, and +all the potentates of the land, discoursing about the Salem murder [that +of Mr. White], the cow-skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and the +value of horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Sam +groans bitterly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill; though this +ought to make me groan rather than him, as I have to get out and trudge +every one of them." + +The "Clippings with a Chisel" point to some further wanderings, to +Martha's Vineyard; and an uncollected sketch reveals the fact that he +had been to Niagara. It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga; +[Footnote: A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow Image +volume of the Works.] but not till some years later that he saw New +York. With these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going to +Liverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that date was passed +within New England. In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day" one sees the young +observer at work upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The +"small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst +of a long bridge," spanning an arm of the sea, refers undoubtedly to the +bridge from Salem to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over the +stream of actual life, scarcely touching it before springing up again, +like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurate +and polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actual +facts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, +far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible human +pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host of +heavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. His +attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a +Steeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a +spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, +witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing +brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and +retaining no emotion peculiar to himself." He had the longing which +every creative mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to the +utmost the possibilities of human weal or woe, suppressing his own +experience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for the +emotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with the +multifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue and +play his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantly +murmurous, moralizing "aside." He delights to let the current of action +flow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when he +again withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gatherer +at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances of +earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty +pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of +phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon." + +"What would a man do," he asks himself, in his journal, "if he were +compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never +bathe himself in cool solitude?" As yet, this bracing influence of +quietude, so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he cannot +shake off its influence so far as to enter actively and for personal +interests into any of the common pursuits even of the man who makes a +business of literature. Yet nothing impresses him more than the fact +that every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, like a +shadow. Twice, with an interval of three years between, this idea recurs +in the form of a hint for romance. "Two lovers or other persons, on the +most private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be +a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people." +The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacy +they could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, +yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two +were in the deepest solitude." This contradiction between the +_apparent_ openness that must rule one's conduct among men, and the +real secrecy that may coexist with it, even when one is most exposed to +the gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of thought based +on the falsity of appearances. If a man can be outwardly open and +inwardly reserved in a good sense, he can be so in a bad sense; so, too, +he may have the external air of great excellence and purity, while +internally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes our +perfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with intense and endless +horror. He tests it, by turning it innumerable ways, and imagining all +sorts of situations in which such contradictions of appearance and +reality might be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend who +should be true by day, and false at night. At another he suggests: "Our +body to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visage +shall express one mood, and the other half another." "A man living a +wicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one +in another." Then he perceives that this same uncertainty and +contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things in +the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things +meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become +dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A +virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees +what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself +completely into his power, and is ruined,--all in jest." Likewise, the +most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often prove +the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires some +particular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great +pest of their lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the +desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrong +and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her +lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, through +a long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly +trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evil +passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greater +evil would have come upon himself than on his victim." This theme of +self-punished revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought out +in "The Scarlet Letter." Another form in which the thought of this +pervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes to him is the frightful +fancy of people being poisoned by communion-wine. Thus does the +insincerity and corruption of man, the lie that is hidden in nearly +every life and almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, +whichever way he turns, like a serpent in his path. He is in the +position of the father confessor of whom he at one time thinks, and of +"his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with +the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins +are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent +either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of +life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, +unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, +large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as it +does that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on +himself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life-long +venom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but not with any mortal +wound. He retires in profound sorrow, acknowledging that earth holds +nothing perfect, that his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, +which, in spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing for so +many years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the hereafter alone. He +confesses to himself that "there is evil in every human heart, which may +remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may +rouse it to activity." It is not a new discovery; but from the force +with which it strikes him, we may guess the strength of his aspiration, +the fine temper of his faith in the good and the beautiful. To be driven +to this dismal conclusion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, +because he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching some +brighter truth. No; not a new discovery;--but one who approaches it with +so much sensibility _feels_ it to be new, with all the fervor which +the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true +originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, +when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitive +impressiveness. + +But, in the midst of the depression born of his immense sorrow over sin, +Hawthorne found compensations. First, in the query which he puts so +briefly: "The good deeds in an evil life,--the generous, noble, and +excellent actions done by people habitually wicked,--to ask what is to +become of them." This is the motive which has furnished novelists for +the last half-century with their most stirring and pathetic effects. It +is a sort of escape, a safety-valve for the hot fire of controversy on +the soul's fate, and offers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vast +solace to those who are trying to balance the bewildering account of +virtue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial solution of the +problem, and he enlarged upon it, toward the end of his life, in "The +Marble Faun." But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished him +the chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales," "Fancy's +Show-Box," he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, +the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul. After first +strongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's +mind, which had never been carried out,--"A scheme of guilt," he argues, +taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatly +resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.... Thus a +novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, and +fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in +projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other +half-way between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is +accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims it +for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and +acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold +more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that +men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its +attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are +dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no +such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for +good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, +therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be +incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet ... +_man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest_, +since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by +the flitting phantoms of iniquity." That is, purity is too spotless a +thing to exist in absolute perfection in a human being, who must often +feel at least the dark flush of passionate thoughts falling upon him, +however blameless of life he may be. From this lofty conception of +purity comes that equally noble humility of always feeling "his +brotherhood, even with the guiltiest." What more logical issue from the +Christian idea, what more exquisitely tender rendering of it than this? +"Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can be +clean!" was his exclamation, many years later, in that English workhouse +which he describes in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called +"Outside Glimpses of English Poverty." And it was then that he revealed +the vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretched +and loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him for +kindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he had +been its father. + +Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that still persists in +evil persons, and the deep charity which every one must feel towards +even the most abject fellow-being, Hawthorne moves forth again to trace +the maze; and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found a charm +that robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and can handle them +without danger. It is said by some that Hawthorne treats wrong and +corruption too shrinkingly, and his mood of never-lessened and acute +sensibility touching them is contrasted with that of "virile" writers +like Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to make a menagerie of +life, thrusting their heads into the very lion's mouth, or boldly +embracing the snake of sin. They are indeed superior in strong dramatic +and realistic effects; but, unvicious as may be their aim, they are not +filled with a robust morality: they deliberately choose unclean elements +to heighten the interest,--albeit using such elements with magnificent +strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet +the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as +to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy +cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the +archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing the +dragon! + +We see now how, in this early term of probation, he was finding a +philosophy and an unsectarian religiousness, which ever stirred below +the clear surface of his language like the bubbling spring at bottom of +a forest pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed late. But +the most striking thing about the "Twice-Told Tales" and the first +entries in the "American Note-Books" is their evidence of a calm and +mellow maturity. These stories are like the simple but well-devised +theme which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole composition: +they show the several tendencies which underlie all the subsequent +works. First, there are the scenes from New England history,--"Endicott +and the Red Cross," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "The Gray Champion," +the "Tales of the Province House." + +Then we have the psychological vein, in "The Prophetic Pictures," "The +Minister's Black Veil," "Dr. Heidegger," "Fancy's Show-Box"; and along +with this the current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The Haunted +Mind," and "Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ramble," again, foreshadows +his charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he should +thus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his first +works. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at once +flowing and large in its outline, and masterly in its minuteness. + +But this maturity was not won without deep suffering and long-deferred +hope. + +If actual contact with men resulted in such grave and sorrowful +reflection as we have traced, how drearily trying must have been the +climaxes of solitary thought after a long session of seclusion! And much +the larger portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute silence, a +privacy unbroken by intimate confidences and rife with exhausting and +depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe +intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have +amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing +perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. +"Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in +some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the +extracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then we get from +the same source a glimpse of the haunting sense that he is missing his +fit relation to the rest of the race, the question whether his pursuit +was not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he had +noticed,--whether it was not to be nipped by the same perversity and +contradiction that seemed to affect all things mundane. Here is one of +his proposed plots, which turns an inner light upon his own frame of +mind: "Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, +and offered to his acceptance,--as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but he +to refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to +be real, and he to be told so when too late." Is this not, in brief, +what he conceives may yet be the story of his own career? Another +occurs, in the same relation: "A man tries to be happy in love; he +cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In +domestic life the same; in politics, a seeming patriot: but still he is +sincere, and all seems like a theatre." These items are the merest +indicia of a whole history of complex emotions, which made this epoch +one of continuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Preface +prefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: "They are the +memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years." Tranquil they of +course were; and to the happy and successful man of forty-seven, the +vexing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period would seem +"not unhappy," because he could then see all the good it had contained. +I cannot agree with Edwin Whipple, who says of them, "There was audible +to the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, +which showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginative +analysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood." For +this applies to only one of the number, "The Ambitious Guest." Nor do I +find in them the "misanthropy" which he defines at some length. On the +contrary, they are, as the author says, "his attempts to open an +intercourse with the world," incited by an eager sympathy, but also +restrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. + +Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his inner life just +sketched. When his friend Miss Peabody first penetrated his retirement, +his pent-up sympathies flowed forth in a way that showed how they had +longed for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion of his +peculiar mode of living, as if there could be no understanding between +himself and another, until this had been cleared up and set aside. Among +other things, he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that he was +walking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors which reflected him +a thousand times and overwhelmed him with mortification. This gives a +peculiar insight into his sensitive condition. + +The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itself +in exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers. +Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying, +voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, +or--mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling his +way through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of that +house of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited. +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 several 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 feminine element is not +to be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold and +difficult morning of Hawthorne's life. + +If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither could +the Sunday. He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which his +family had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after +coming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not always +opened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found it +essential to join any church. + +The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of so +much lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, the +writing of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. +This was the fascination that carried him through the weary +waiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which the +fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannot +conceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me. +I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I +am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping the +realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the +world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude ... where nobody +wished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do." Alluding to this +season of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up, +he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room." +To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one of +his projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses." With +that image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in the +mirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights and +trembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales." Sober and +weighty the penumbrous atmosphere in which the young creator sits; but +how calm, thoughtful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit by +the sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies! Behind his own form we catch +the movement of mysterious shapes,--men and women wearing aspects of joy +or anger, calm or passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, +and forbidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we behold +these things; rather the awesome shadowiness of a partial eclipse; but +gleams of the healthiest sunshine withal mingle in the prevailing tint, +bringing reassurance, and receiving again a rarer value from the +contrast. There are but few among the stories of this series afterward +brought together by the author which are open to the charge of +morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the +tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness +which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" +leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding +Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these +extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so +often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about +him; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, so +gently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he mixes with even +the bitterest distillations of his dreams. Nor is the sadness of his +tone disordered or destructive, more than it is selfish; he does not +inculcate despair, nor protest against life and fate, nor indulge in +gloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct exposition of his own case is +contained in a sketch, "The Journal of a Solitary Man," not reprinted +during his life. One extract from this I will make, because it sums up, +though more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of his own +life at this epoch:-- + +"It is hard to die without one's happiness; to none more so than myself, +whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys of +life, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The very +hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long +toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the +surface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep and +warm realities, ... so that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, +have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I +must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousand +vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomed +to loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my +soul has never married itself to the soul of woman." + +The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merely +metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals +the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own +perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this +time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined +activity would have shaken off the incubus: but this is to lose sight of +the gist of the matter. The situation in itself,--the indeterminateness +and repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and +various sympathies, and his capacity for affection and +responsibility,--must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne +believed himself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, +chilled, and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion +at the beginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause for +bitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter of +option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had +begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action +presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation +which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly +mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. +If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his +genius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stunted +its growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve a +certain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; and +for this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shake +off spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against +one's genius." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I.] Thus he kept +himself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that +I have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, let +this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I have +been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and +with my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have, +less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was +perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having +been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. +For a long, long while I have been occasionally visited with a singular +dream; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have +been in England. It is, that I am still at college,--or, sometimes, even +at school,--and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably +long, and have quite failed to make such progress as my contemporaries +have done; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame and +depression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. This +dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be one +of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up for +twelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, and +left me behind." Experiences which leave effects like this must bite +their way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy! This precursive +solitude had tinged his very life-blood, and woven itself into the +secret tissues of his brain. Yet, patiently absorbing it, he wrote late +in life to a friend: "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." It was under such a guise that the test of his genius +and character came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with a +huge opposition that must somehow be made to succumb, before its own +energies can know their full strength, gain a settled footing, and make +a roadway to move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless to +others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains +untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire +personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was +of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer +world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable +devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the +influences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch in +feeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remained +perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hidden +tragedies of heart and brain. + +But another and larger purpose was not less well served by this +probation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in some +sense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to be +demonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stake +life and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain of +the highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment, +even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could be +ascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a line +of New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs, +seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well that +temperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reserve +from the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple and +rural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunate +was it that nothing called him away to connect him with European +culture, on graduating. To interpret this was the honorable office of +his classmate Longfellow, who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, +has filled the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment to be +tried was, simply, whether with books and men at his command, and +isolated from the immediate influence of Europe, this American could +evolve any new quality for the enrichment of literature. The conditions +were strictly carried out; even after he began to come in contact with +men, in the intervals of his retirement, he saw only pure American +types. A foreigner must have been a rare bird in Salem, in those days; +for the maritime element which might have brought him was still +American. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his Note-Books show, pushed +through the farming regions and made acquaintance with the men of the +soil; and probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close view +was the Monsieur S---- whom he found at Bridge's, on his visit to the +latter, in 1837, described at length in the Note-Books. So much did +Hawthorne study from these types, and so closely, that he might, had his +genius directed, have written the most homely and realistic novels of +New England life from the material which he picked up quite by the way. +But though he did not translate his observations thus, the originality +which he was continuously ripening amid such influences was radically +affected by them. They established a broad, irrepressible republican +sentiment in his mind; they assisted his natural, manly independence and +simplicity to assert themselves unaffectedly in letters; and they had +not a little to do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn for +examining with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness into +everything that came before him, without accepting prescribed opinions. +The most characteristic way, perhaps, in which this American nurture +acted was by contrast; for the universal matter-of-fact tone which he +found among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to him to maintain +a counteracting idealism. Thus, singularly enough, the most salient +feature of the new American product was its apparent denial of the +national trait of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed that +Hawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting the American +nature in fiction. These things can be done only half consciously, at +the most. Perhaps it is well that the mind on which so much depends +should not be burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how much is +expected from it by the ages. Therefore, we owe the triumphant assertion +of the American quality in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, +unfaltering, brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, +unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive that a great end +was being served by it. But, although unaware of this end at the time, +he afterward saw some of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, +he speaks thus of his old room in Union Street:-- + +"This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon +thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them +have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he +ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so +much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and _here my mind and +character were formed_; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and +here I have been despondent.... And now I begin to understand why I was +imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never +break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my +escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and my heart +might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But +living in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the dew of my +youth and the freshness of my heart." + +Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne! It was a young nation's faith in its +future which--unsuspected by any then, but always to be remembered +henceforth--had found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithful +and hopeful heart of yours! Thus was it that the young poet who, in the +sense we have observed, stood for old New England, absorbed into himself +also the atmosphere of the United States. The plant that rooted in the +past had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. In +such wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. + +I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, which +indicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" +went through. The lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 include +nearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides a quantity of +bound magazines. This gives no account of his dealings with books in the +previous five years, when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nor +does it, of course, let us know anything of what he obtained from other +sources. When Miss E. P. Peabody made his acquaintance, in 1836-37, he +had, for example, read all of Balzac that had then appeared; and there +is no record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, +giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him with one volume a +week,--not, on the whole, a meagre rate, when we consider the volumes of +magazines, the possible sources outside of the library, and the +numberless hours required for literary experiment. I do not fancy that +he plodded through books; but rather that he read with the easy energy +of a vigorous, original mind, though he also knew the taste of severe +study. "Bees," he observes in one place, "are sometimes drowned (or +suffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some writers are lost in +their collected learning." He did not find it necessary to mount upon a +pyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get the +highest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a man +of parts," precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice of +reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a +rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books +which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See +Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he +read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he +examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of +Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried +only Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local American +histories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety of +biography,--"Lives of the Philosophers," "Plutarch's Lives," biographies +of Mohammed, Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, +Baxter, Heber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brewster's "Natural +Magic" and Sir Walter Scott's essay on "Demonology and Witchcraft" are +books that one would naturally expect him to read; and he had already +begun to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which he +always had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem not +entirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but it +is a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in +"Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He dipped, also, into botany and +zooelogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary," +read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; and +was entertained by Dunlap's "History of the Arts of Design in America." +It was from this last that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures," +in the "Twice-Told Tales." Some Boston newspapers of the years 1739 to +1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News," +reprinted in "The Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked much +about reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of books +and his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there is +no more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that he +cared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, of +men, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted all three estates. + +Gradually, from the midst of the young author's obscurity, there issued +an attraction which made the world wish to know more of him. One by one, +the quiet essays and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like drops +from a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internal +movement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the dark +concamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. +The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; but +the average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when he +guessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under a +feigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great deal +better if he could come out of seclusion and make himself more like +other people. + +The first contributions were made to the "Salem Gazette" and the "New +England Magazine"; then his attempts extended to the "Boston Token and +Atlantic Souvenir," edited by S. G. Goodrich; and later, to other +periodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor (October, +1831): "I am gratified to find that all whose opinion I have heard agree +with me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen." But for +none of these early performances did Hawthorne receive any considerable +sum of money. And though his writings began at once to attract an +audience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three young ladies--of whom his +future sister-in-law, Miss Peabody, was one--were among the first +admirers; and though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps retarded +his own notoriety by assuming different names in print, [Footnote: Among +these were "Oberon" and "Ashley Allen Royce," or "The Rev. A. A. Royce." +The latter was used by him in the Democratic Review, so late as March, +1840.] they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them out of +magazines, and preserved them. But they could not discover his personal +identity. One of them who lived in Salem used constantly to wonder, in +driving about town, whether the author of her favorite tales could be +living in this or in that house; for it was known that he was a Salem +resident. Miss Peabody, who had in girlhood known something of the +Hathorne family (the name was still written either way, I am told), was +misled by the new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that Nathaniel +Hawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were especially moved by "The +Gentle Boy" when it appeared, and Miss Peabody was on the point of +addressing "The Author of 'The Gentle Boy,'" at Salem, to tell him of +the pleasure he had given. When afterward told of this, Hawthorne said, +"I wish you had! It would have been an era in my life." Soon after, the +Peabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from some one that the new +romancer was the son of the Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that her +family had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking off into +the garden of the old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, +though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy's +form dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind +therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had shown +great facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to say +that it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full of +this conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the +author, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retired +and little-visited mansion. It was the other sister into whose presence +she came, and to her she began pouring out the reason of her intrusion, +delivering at once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. + +"My brother's, you mean," was the response. + +"It _is_ your brother, then." And Miss Peabody added: "If your +brother can write like that, he has no right to be idle." + +"My brother never is idle," answered Miss Louisa, quietly. + +Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Hawthorne from the spell +of solitude, and led directly to the richest experiences of his life. +Old habits, however, were not immediately to be broken, and months +passed without any response being made to the first call. Then at last +came a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales," fresh from the press. But it was +not until the establishment of the "Democratic Review," a year or two +later, that occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne was +too shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Peabody, finally, +addressing him by letter, to inquire concerning the new periodical, for +which he had been engaged as a contributor, asked him to come with both +his sisters on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, +they came. She herself opened the door, and there before her, between +his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong, with no +appearance whatever of timidity, but, instead, an almost fierce +determination making his face stern. This was his resource for carrying +off the extreme inward tremor which he really felt. His hostess brought +out Plaxmau's designs for Dante, just received from Professor Felton of +Harvard, [Footnote: The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman's +drawings, issued in 1833.] and the party made an evening's entertainment +out of them. + +The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss Peabody's, led to +an immediate invitation of Hawthorne to dinner at another house, for the +next day. He accepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped at +the "Salem Gazette" office, full of the excitement of his new +experiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, that he was getting +dissipated. He told of the evening with Miss Peabody, where he said he +had had a delightful time, and of the dinner just achieved. "And I've +had a delightful time there, too!" he added. Mr. Foote, perceiving an +emergency, at once asked the young writer to come to his own house for +an evening. Hawthorne, thoroughly aroused, consented. When the evening +came, several ladies who had been invited assembled before the author +arrived; and among them Miss Peabody. When he reached the place he +stopped short at the drawing-room threshold, startled by the presence of +strangers, and stood perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvan +creature on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie no longer +availed him; he was stricken with dismay; his face lost color, and took +on a warm paleness. All this was in a moment; but the daughter of the +house moved forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though he +assumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very great: he stood by a +table, and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found his +hand trembling so that he was forced to put it down again. + +While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in this way, he was +approached in another by Mr. Goodrich, who induced him to go to Boston, +there to edit the "American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining +Knowledge." This work, which only continued from 1834 to September, +1837, was managed by several gentlemen under the name of the Bewick +Company. One of these was Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver; another +was Goodrich, who also, I think, had some connection with the American +Stationers' Company. The Bewick Company took its name from Thomas +Bewick, the English restorer of the art of wood-engraving, and the +magazine was to do his memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, +in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one profit. It was +a penny popular affair, containing condensed information about +innumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts were +of the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of +several editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at a +salary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got next +to nothing, and that he did not stay in the position long. There is +little in its pages to recall the identity of the editor; but in one +place he quotes as follows from Lord Bacon: "The ointment which witches +use is made of the fat of children digged from their graves, and of the +juices of smallage, cinquefoil, and wolf's-bane, mingled with the meal +of fine wheat," and hopes that none of his readers will try to compound +it. In the tale of "Young Goodman Brown," when Goody Cloyse says, "I was +all anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil and +wolf's-bane," and the Devil continues, "'Mingled with fine wheat and the +fat of a new-born babe,'--'Ah, your worship knows the recipe,' cried the +old lady, cackling aloud." A few scraps of correspondence, mostly +undated, which I have looked over, give one a new view of him in the +bustle and vexation of this brief editorial experience. He sends off +frequent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, who did some of the +condensing and compiling which was a part of the business. "I make +nothing," he says, in one, "of writing a history or biography before +dinner." At another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, but +warns his correspondent to "see that it contains nothing heterodox." At +the end of one of the briefest messages, he finds time to speak of the +cat at home. Perhaps with a memory of the days when he built +book-houses, he had taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton and +Bunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called Beelzebub and +Apollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for me," he writes. But the following +from Boston, February 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of the +situation:-- + +"I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay me +forty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept promising from +one day to another, till I do not see that he means to pay at all. I +have now broke off all intercourse with him, and never think of going +near him ... I don't feel at all obliged to him about the editorship, +for he is a stockholder and director in the Bewick Company; ... and I +defy them to get another to do for a thousand dollars what I do for five +hundred." + +Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum; and the relations +between them were resumed.. A letter of May 5, in the same year, +contains these allusions:-- + +"I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday.... He wants me to undertake a Universal +History, to contain about as much as fifty or sixty pages of the +magazine. [These were large pages.] If you are willing to write any part +of it, ... I shall agree to do it. If necessary I will come home by and +by, and concoct the plan of it with you. It need not be superior in +profundity and polish to the middling magazine articles.... I shall have +nearly a dozen articles in The Token,--mostly quite short." + +The historical project is, of course, that which resulted in the famous +"Peter Parley" work. "Our pay as historians of the universe," says a +letter written six days later, "will be about one hundred dollars, the +whole of which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but better than +the Token; because the writing is so much less difficult." He afterward +carried out the design, or a large part of it, and the book has since +sold by millions, for the benefit of others. There are various little +particulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Hawthorne, +especially if one is familiar with his "Grandfather's Chair" and "True +Stories" for children; though the book has probably undergone some +changes in successive editions. This passage about George IV. is, +however, remembered as being his: "Even when he was quite an old man, +this king cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a great +deal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, for +he might otherwise have been an excellent tailor." + +Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty dollars for four +months' editorial labor. "And, as you may well suppose," he says, "I +have undergone very grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the whole +amount shortly, I shall return to Salem, and stay there till they do." +It seems a currish fate that puts such men into the grasp of paltry and +sordid cares like these! But there is something deeper to be felt than +dissatisfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoying scheme +of harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid yet paying hack. This +deeper something is the pathos of such possibilities, and the spectacle +of so renowned and strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take his +share of worldly struggle; perfectly conscious that it is wholly beneath +his plane, but accepting it as a proper part of the mortal lot; +scornful, but industrious and enduring. You who have conceived of +Hawthorne as a soft-marrowed dweller in the dusk, fostering his own +shyness and fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well at +all this. And you, also, who discourse about the conditions essential to +the development of genius, about the _milieu_ and the +_moment_, and try to prove America a vacuum which the Muse abhors, +will do well to consider the phenomenon. "It is a poor compensation, yet +better than the Token"; so he wrote, knowing that his unmatched tales +were being coined for even a less reward than mere daily bread. He took +the conditions that were about him, and gave them a dignity by his own +fine perseverance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing of the +worst and making it the best, which has formed the history of all art. +You talk of the ages, and choose this or that era as the only fit one. +You long for a cosey niche in the past; but genius crowds time and +eternity into the present, and says to you, "Make your own century!" + +Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthorne +was winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipful +self is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed all +my articles in the last Token, with long extracts." This refers to the +'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell" +and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which has +singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," and gave three +columns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the notice +being no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward met +Hawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting his +tales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception of +a travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form the +interludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, +prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," has been published in the +"Mosses," with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." +Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary the +expense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting the +tales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridge +came to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, +himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales" +were first brought collectively before the world; and for the second +time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligation +to himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew +of his friend's interposition in the affair. + +Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a great +enterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam up +that river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, +Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described his +impressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absence +from Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot long +continue as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between high +prosperity and utter ruin." + +The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not +come through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in a +short time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketches +were reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" was +circulated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author's +name, as a temperance tract.] though Longfellow, then lately established +in his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer," +greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review," which wielded +a great influence in literary affairs. + +On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to +announce the new volume. + +"The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of a +book entitled 'Twice-Told Tales,'--of which, as a classmate, I venture +to request your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well acquainted +at college, that I can plead an absolute right to inflict my +'twice-told' tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that we +were not better known to each other, and have been glad of your success +in literature and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he +adds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you some +part of the pleasure which I have derived from your own 'Outre-Mer.' + +"Your obedient servant, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +Longfellow replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne wrote again, a long +letter picturing his mood with a fulness that shows how keenly he had +felt the honest sympathy of the poet. + +"Not to burden you with my correspondence," he said, "I have delayed a +rejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, until now. It gratifies +me that you have occasionally felt an interest in my situation; but your +quotation from Jean Paul about the 'lark's nest' makes me smile. You +would have been much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwelling +in an owl's nest; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I seldom +venture abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or other--for I +really cannot assign any reasonable why and wherefore--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. +I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I +cannot find the key to let myself out,--and if the door were open, I +should be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you have met with +troubles and changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can +assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and that +there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no share in either +its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only +dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some +unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in +the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction +all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant +remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that +future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more +tolerable than the past. + +"You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that I have led a +studious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so +desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me the +fruits of study. 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. I have +had no external excitement,--no consciousness that the public would like +what I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that they should do +so. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be ambitious of, I have been +considerably interested in literature; and if my writings had made any +decided impression, I should have been stimulated to greater exertions; +but there has been no warmth of approbation, so that I have always +written with benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in the +lack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I have +nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy to +give a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes through a +peep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, and the two or +three articles in which I have portrayed these glimpses please me better +than the others. + +"I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I +lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall +have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you +would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as +children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that +will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, +offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition +[Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing +that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I should +certainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I have +always had a desire to run round the world.... I intend in a week or +two to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in the +summer,--employing the interval in making a tour somewhere in New +England. You who have the dust of distant countries on your +'sandal-shoon' cannot imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in this +little excursion.... + +"Yours sincerely, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfellow's review of the +book, appeared; and the note of thanks which Hawthorne sent is full of +an exultation strongly in contrast with the pensive tone of the letter +just given. + +SALEM, June 19th, 1837. + +DEAR LONGFELLOW:--I have to-day 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 correctness 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.... + +Very sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +That "Evangeline" was written upon a theme suggested to Hawthorne (by a +friend who had heard it from a French Canadian [Footnote: See American +Note-Books, October 24,1839]) and by him made over to the poet, has +already been made public. Hawthorne wrote, on its appearance:---- + +"I have read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorous +to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most triumphant of all +your successes." + +Nevertheless, he gave vent to some of his admiration in a notice of the +work which he wrote for "The Salem Advertiser," a Democratic paper. + +"The story of Evangeline and her lover," he there says, "is as poetical +as the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to the heart as a +fact that has actually taken place in human life." He speaks of "its +pathos all illuminated with beauty,----so that the impression of the +poem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, and glows with the purest +sunshine where we might the least expect it, on the pauper's +death-bed.... The story is told with the simplicity of high and +exquisite art, which causes it to flow onward as naturally as the +current of a stream. Evangeline's wanderings give occasion to many +pictures both of northern and southern scenery and life: but these do +not appear as if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale; they seem to +throw their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as it +flows past them.... By this work of his maturity he has placed himself +on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of +envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, +until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, +as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than +this poem of Evangeline!" + +Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as follows:---- + +"MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:----I have been waiting and waiting in the hope of +seeing you in Cambridge.... I have been meditating upon your letter, and +pondering with friendly admiration your review of 'Evangeline,' in +connection with the subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, a +literary project arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can pay +you back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a theme for +story, in return for a theme for song. It is neither more nor less than +the history of the Acadians, _after_ their expulsion as well as +before. Felton has been making some researches in the State archives, +and offers to resign the documents into your hands. + +"Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so as to pass a night +with us, if possible, this week; if not a day and night. + +"Ever sincerely yours, + +"HENRY W. LONGFELLOW." There is nothing in our literary annals more +unique and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm recognition +of his old classmate, and the mutual courtesies to which it led. One is +reminded by it of the William Tell episode between Goethe and Schiller, +though it was in this case only the theme and nothing of material that +was transferred. + +An author now almost forgotten, Charles Fenno Hoffman, also published in +"The American Monthly Magazine," [Footnote: For March, 1838.] which he +was editing, a kindly review, which, however, underestimated the +strength of the new genius, as it was at first the general habit to do. +"Minds like Hawthorne's," he said, "seem to be the only ones suited to +an American climate.... Never can a nation be impregnated with the +literary spirit by minor authors alone.... Yet men like Hawthorne are +not without their use.".... In this same number of the magazine, by the +way, was printed Hawthorne's "Threefold Destiny," under the pseudonyme +of Ashley Allen Royce; and the song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, +is thus given:---- + + "O, man can seek the downward glance, + And each kind word,----affection's spell,---- + Eye, voice, its value can enhance; + For eye may speak, and tongue can tell. + + "But woman's love, it waits the while + To echo to another's tone; + To linger on another's smile, + Ere dare to answer with its own." + +These versicles, though they might easily be passed over as commonplace, +hold a peculiar inner radiance that perhaps issued from the dawn of a +lifelong happiness for Hawthorne at this period. + + + + +V. + + +AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. + +1838-1842. + +Hawthorne's mood at this time was one of profound dissatisfaction at 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 that I can call 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 on a table that stood +by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself +more of a man." He was now thirty-four, and the long restraint and +aloofness of the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousness +that he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and the sense of loss +in being denied his share in affairs, had become intolerable. It was +now, also, that a new phase of being was opened to him. He had become +engaged to Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. + +President Van Buren had been two years in office, 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 a lady 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 had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time been +tendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it because +he would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know," said +the lady, "that he would be very glad of employment." The result was +that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soon +after, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire further +about it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher and +gauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just before +entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore a +very dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his own +appointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher. +Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation in +office. It is not good for the human being." But he took his place, +writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839): + +"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 and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the +Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class." + +Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the election for the +Whigs, he suffered the fate of his predecessor. And here I may offer an +opinion as to Hawthorne's connection with the Democratic party. When +asked why he belonged to it, he answered that he lived in a democratic +country. "But we are all republicans alike," was the objection to his +defence. "Well," he said, "I don't understand history till it's a +hundred years old, and meantime it's safe to belong to the Democratic +party." Still, Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his less +transient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere badinage, +like that just quoted, must not be taken as really covering the ground +of his choice in politics. A man of such deep insight, accustomed to +bring it to bear upon everything impartially, was not to be influenced +by any blind and accidental preference in these questions; albeit his +actual performance of political duties was slight. I think he recognized +the human strength of the Democratic, as opposed to the theorizing and +intellectual force of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, that +with us the party of culture should be the radical party, upholding +ideas even at the expense of personal liberty; and the party of +ignorance that of order, the conservating force, careful of personal +liberty even to a fault! Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work too +rapidly here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greater +resistance to them. + +This term of service in Boston was of course irksome to Hawthorne, and +entirely suspended literary endeavors for the time. Yet "my life only is +a burden," he writes, "in the same way that it is to every toilsome +man.... But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons +of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeing +that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the +midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide." He +need not always have made the employment so severe, but the wages of the +wharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked in a day, and +Hawthorne used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the wharf +at the earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, +he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there could +not have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and the +interval served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm episode. + +That this least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a +socialistic community, seems at first inexplicable enough; but in +reality it was the most logical step he could have taken. He had +thoroughly tried seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself the +first realization of what the world actually is. Next, he entered into +the performance of definite duties and the receipt of gain, and watched +the operation of these two conditions on himself and those about him; an +experiment that taught him the evils of the system, and the necessity of +burying his better energies so long as he took part in affairs. This +raised doubts, of course, as to how he was to fit himself into the frame +of things; and while he mused upon some more generous arrangement of +society, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was started which +plainly proposed to settle the problem. Fourier had only just passed +away; the spread of his ideas was in its highest momentum. On the other +hand, the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of Emerson, +had carried men's thoughts to the very central springs of intellectual +law, while in Boston the writing and preaching of Channing roused a +practical radicalism, and called for a better application of +Christianity to affairs. The era of the Transcendentalists had come. The +Chardon Street meetings--assemblages of ardent theorists and +"come-outers" of every type, who, while their sessions lasted, held +society in their hands and moulded it like clay--were a rude +manifestation of the same deep current. In the midst of these +influences, Mr. Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy, received +an inspiration to establish a modified socialistic community on our own +soil. The Industrial Association which he proposed at West Roxbury was +wisely planned with direct reference to the emergencies of American +life; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and the +Saint Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mistakes of +Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; though it agreed with +Fourier and Owen both, as I understand, in respect of labor. In a better +and freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, the +design sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control. +His 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. It was a practical, orderly, +noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs and +institutions. "A few men and women 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." At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the young +Brownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George William +Curtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kind +of granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy a +burden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society, +flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "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." + +To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad, +the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath the +lightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to begin +repairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losing +nothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable. Because +Brook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the +meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, in +Boston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not at +first know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced as +willing to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, he +felt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if," he tells me, "the heavens +would presently be filled with angels, 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." For his personal +benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one, +to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to +secure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which should +successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body and +brain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours of +daily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like a +dragon," says Mr. Ripley. + +The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leading +aim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men, +women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildings +accommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table was +spread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The Pilgrim +House; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as The +Cottage. In The Eyrie, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great part +of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when +the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and +shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom +Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an +original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with +the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements +failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. +Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farm +would drive into Boston in carriages and wagons to the opera or the +play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes, in +The Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped them +with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, +belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, +and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns, and +hats,--which were then an innovation in feminine attire. In the season +of wood-wanderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of barberry +or hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered,--a suggestion of the +future Priscilla of "Blithedale." Some families and students came to the +farm as boarders, paying for their provision in household or field +labor, or by teaching; a method which added nothing to the funds of the +establishment, and in this way rather embarrassed it. A great deal of +individual liberty was allowed. People could eat in private or public; +and it has been said by those who were there that the unconventional +life permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was quite +unfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. When a member +wished to be absent, another would generally contrive to take his work +for the interval; and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. +Still, I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncertain air +about the enterprise, much of the time; and the more intimate unions of +some among the members who were congenial, gave rise to intermittent +jealousies in those who found no special circle. "In this way it was +very much like any small town of the same number of inhabitants," says +one of my informants. Indeed, though every one who shared in the Brook +Farm attempt seems grateful for what it taught of the dignity and the +real fellowship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons that +it could not long have continued at its best. The system of compensating +all kinds of service, skilled or otherwise, according to the time used, +excited--as some have thought--much dissatisfaction even among the +generous and enlightened people who made up the society. "I thought I +could see some incipient difficulties working in the system," writes a +lady who was there in 1841. "Questions already arose as to how much +individual freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the best +interests of the whole. Those who came there were the results of another +system of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radical +tendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shown +equal, certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of this augury +is the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly more +Fourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that another +generation might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence +among them. Theories and opinions were very openly talked over, and +practical details as well; and though this must have had its charm, yet +it would also touch uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon a +peculiar mood. In such enterprises there must always be a slight +inclination to establish a conformity to certain freedoms which really +become oppressions. Shyness was not held essential to a regenerated +state of things, and was perhaps too much disregarded; as also was +illness, an emergency not clearly provided for, which had to be met by +individual effort and self-sacrifice, after the selfish and +old-established fashion of the world. How this atmosphere affected +Hawthorne he has hinted in his romance founded on some aspects of +community life: "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." +A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow +some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face +shaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too much +of a party up there," was his answer, as he pointed toward the community +buildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sit +silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive, +where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the +young people," himself almost always holding a book before him, but +seldom turning the leaves. + +One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased +during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to +disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, +even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the +old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination +flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm +community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in +Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a +delightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his +experiment. + +"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, if +you can do anything better with them?... I am bent upon coming to see +you, this summer. Do not you remember how we used to go a-fishing +together in Raymond? Your mention of wild flowers and pickerel has given +me a longing for the woods and waters again." + +Then, in August, + +"C---- A----," writes his sister Louisa, "told me the other day that he +heard you were to do the travelling in Europe for the community." + +This design, if it existed, might well have found a place in the +Dialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne once meant to write; for this +was his only summer at Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, of +something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and +there became a rich experience," he writes, in "Blithedale." "I found +myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on +the same system." This was, in fact, his attitude; for, after passing +the winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting himself a little +while, he returned in the spring to look over the ground and perhaps +select a house-site, just before his marriage, but came to an adverse +decision. This no doubt accorded with perceptions which he was not +called upon to make public; but because he was a writer of fiction there +seems to have arisen a tacit agreement, in some quarters, to call him +insincere in his connection with this socialistic enterprise. He had not +much to gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its treasury +a thousand dollars, about the whole of his savings from the custom-house +stipend, and had next to nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, +while a niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost him nothing +but labor. The length of his stay was by no means uncommonly short, for +there was always a transient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whom +remained but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, who had +given six thousand dollars for the building of the Pilgrim House, and +hoped to end his days within it, retired forever after a very short +sojourn, not dissuaded from the theory, but convinced that the practical +application was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though a manful +effort was made, with good pecuniary success for a time, ten years +brought the final hour of failure to this millennial plan. + +Very few people who were at Brook Farm seem to have known or even to +have seen Hawthorne there, though he was elected chairman of the Finance +Committee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome presence, +his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and his hearty +participation in labor commanded a kind of reverence from some of the +members. Next to his friend George P. Bradford, one of the workers and +teachers in the community, his most frequent associates were a certain +Rev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book called +"Scenery-Shower," designed to develop a proper taste for landscape; and +one Frank Farley, who had been a pioneer in the West, a man of singular +experiences and of an original turn, who was subject to mental +derangement at times. The latter visited him at the Old Manse, +afterward, when Hawthorne was alone there, and entered actively into his +makeshift housekeeping. + +President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an acquaintance about +Hawthorne, said: "He is enthusiastic when he speaks of the aims and +self-sacrifice of some of the Brook Farm people; but when I questioned +him whether he would like to live and die in a community like that, he +confessed he was not suited to it, but said he had learned a great deal +from it. 'What, for instance?' 'Why, marketing, for one thing. I didn't +know anything about it practically, and I rode into Boston once or twice +with the men who took in things to sell, and saw how it was done.'" The +things of deepest moment which he learned were not to be stated fully in +conversation; but I suppose readers would draw the same inference from +this whimsical climax of Hawthorne's as that which has been found in +"The Blithedale Romance"; namely, that he looked on his socialistic life +as the merest jesting matter. Such, I think, is the general opinion; and +a socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the Oneida Community, has +indignantly cried out against the book, as a "poetico-sneering romance." +This study of human character, which would keep its value in any state +of society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and sane, to be +belittled to the record of a brief experiment! Hawthorne indeed, +speaking in the prefatory third person of his own aim, says: "His whole +treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of +the romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to +illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in +respect to socialism." And though he has told the story +autobiographically, it is through a character whom we ought by no means +to identify with Hawthorne in his whole mood. I have taken the liberty +of applying to Hawthorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale's +account, because they picture something known to be the case; and a +careful sympathy will find no difficulty in distinguishing how much is +real and how much assumed. Coverdale, being merely the medium for +impressions of the other characters, is necessarily light and +diaphanous, and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an advantage +to the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt to hold him up in the +air all the time, but lets him down now and then, and assumes the part +himself. The allusions to the community scheme are few, and most of them +are in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely because the hopes of the +socialists were so unduly high, he values them and still is glad of +them, though they have fallen to ruin. "In my own behalf, I rejoice that +I could once think better of the world than it deserved. It is a mistake +into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and +higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error." +Where is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensive +utterance? There is a class of two-pronged minds, which seize a pair of +facts eagerly, and let the truth drop out of sight between them. For +these it is enough that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farm +memories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in the first person, +with a few dashes of humor. + +Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold, +self-removed observation," quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph in +a letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled.... My mind will not +be abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myself +with catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter. +Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to set +seriously about literary occupation for the present." This is offered as +showing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits our +critic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of his +nature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up +into fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up his +entire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that each +should take such share of the labor as was for his own and the general +good, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A +singular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthorne +lays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had no +other motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing from +hearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually! +He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled +me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) +to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, by +delicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record, +and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the +companions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden +even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold +inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the +inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such distortion is amazing. +The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled to +get at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is the +motive? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the amusement of +making stories out of it? The holding up to one's self the stern and +secret realities of life is no such pleasing pursuit. These men are +driven to it by the divine impulse which has made them seers and +recorders. + +As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned with the same rich +human faith that fills the heart of every manly genius; and if +discouraging truth made him suffer, it was all the more because his +ideals--and at first his trust in their realization--were so generous +and so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, transferred to +the "The Blithedale Romance," show the wisdom on which his withdrawal +was based. The first relates to himself: "No sagacious man will long +retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and +progressive people, without periodically returning to the settled system +of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old +standpoint." He had too much imagination to feel safe in giving free +rein to it, in a special direction of theoretic conduct; he also +remembered that, as the old system of things was full of error, it was +possible that a new one might become so in new ways, unless watched. The +second observation touches the real weakness of the Brook Farm +institution: "It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first +questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, +self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the +advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But +to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regarded +society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than +new brotherhood._" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's +attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of men +who have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on a +grander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energy +after another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be made +effectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, and +recognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the trouble +to formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in +advance. + +The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristic +part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and rapt +enthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughing +allusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similar +to Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for the +field-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that they +were people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes with +refinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the tone +Hawthorne has given to Coverdale. + +The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little +seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the +farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of +a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been +thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at +Brook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that he +traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well to +remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote with +any one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one of +his most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of +composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he was +describing resembled in some point one or more persons of his +acquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla had +developed itself in his imagination, he found he could give her a +greater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; and +that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figure +to prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history of +Zenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds of +all readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down +and describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises to +make the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons the +character becomes quite a different thing to them from the actual +prototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no +doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that and +the atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that, +without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meeting +might have the effect of _suggesting_ it. Then he would brood over +this suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to his mind; and +thus his characters were conceived independently in a region somewhere +between himself and the people who had awakened speculation in his mind. + +He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might be +transferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the story +of a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her +aspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and the +hard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable and +morbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homely +stream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly +troubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himself +coming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summon +Hollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to find +the poor girl's body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the villagers +had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appeared +among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their +service." + +By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance" +bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. + + + + +VI. + + +THE OLD MANSE. + +1842-1846. + +There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makes +each step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of their +careers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, +Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllic +retirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy," he +says, "I felt as if there were no question to be put." + +Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his first +home. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather's +Chair," the first part of a series of sketches of New England history +for children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wiley +and Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stay +at the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also some +biographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He also +resumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review," the most brilliant +periodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and +other noted authors made their appearance. It was published at +Washington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensions +to a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, at +a fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not always +Hie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into +which he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," "The +Celestial Railroad," "The Procession of Life," "Fire Worship," "Buds and +Bird Voices," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the +"Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followed +in the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales" +was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the +"African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, +who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evidently carried +great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel +Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to +a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an +attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time +of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and +that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, +was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an +excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of +the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small +profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to +Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for +nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The +explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native +authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to +even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he +wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards +empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come +from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so +broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for +small gains." + +Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic" +some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his +"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. +A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was then +in the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser," +says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. No +American book in a long time has been so well noticed." The same firm +were now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears +in the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of another +scheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow," he writes, +"if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS.! MSS.! Mr. +Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and how +stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?" +The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mosses +from an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. This +attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows a +wider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-Told +Tales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken such +intimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommending +themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse was +assuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyed +happiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of first +possession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the +quiet course of the days, with their openings into healthful outdoor +exercise, made a perfect balance between creation and recreation. The +house in which he dwelt was itself a little island of the past, standing +intact above the flood of events; all around was a mild, cultivated +country, broken into gentle variety of "hills to live with," and touched +with just enough wildness to keep him from tiring of it: the stream that +flowed by his orchard was for him an enchanted river. He renewed the +pleasant sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, and +in winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid skates. In the +more genial months, the garden gave him pleasant employment; and in his +journal-musings, the thought gratifies him that he has come into a +primitive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manse +are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of that +immemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences has +all been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the +"Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed in +that vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, +into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrast +between the peaceful character of these first years at Concord and the +increased sombreness of some of the visions there recorded. + +The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to a +stature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on his +actual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value for +the "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. But +they, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear brown +twilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" are +the work of a man who has learned to know the world, and the atmosphere +in which they were composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of some +of them. "The Birthmark," "The Bosom Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," +and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made +up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The +Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of +awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful +and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes +almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? +The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliest +of all elements in production,--time; the brooding propensity was +indispensable to him; and, accordingly, as some of these conceptions had +occurred to him a good while before the carrying out, they received +great and almost excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, the +pervasiveness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in the +earlier tales: in this series, the idea bursts up like a long-buried +fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of Hell seem yawning +beneath us. Dismal, too, is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial," and +dreary "The Christmas Banquet," with its assembly of the supremely +wretched. In "Earth's Holocaust" we get the first result of Hawthorne's +insight into the demonianism of reformatory schemers who forget that the +centre of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this marks +out the way to "The Scarlet Letter" on the one hand, and "The Blithedale +Romance" on the other, in which the same theme assumes two widely +different phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more certainly +the central fountain of moral suggestion from which he drew his best +inspirations. The least pleasing quality of the work is, I think, its +overcharged allegorical burden. Some of the most perfect of all his +tales are here, but their very perfection makes one recoil the more at +the supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels a certain +chagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the completeness of embodiment +had given the central idea a shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorne +is most enjoyable and most true to himself when he offers us the chalice +of poetry filled to the very brim with the clear liquid of moral truth. +But, at first, there seems to have been a conflict between his aesthetic +and his ethical impulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from the +allegorical, by calling it a part of some whole which it represents. +"Allegory cannot be other than spoken consciously; whereas in the symbol +it is very possible that the general truth represented may be working +unconsciously in the writer's mind.... The advantage of symbolical +writing over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of faculties, +but simple predominance." Now in the "Allegories of the Heart," +collected in the "Mosses," there is sometimes an extreme consciousness +of the idea to be illustrated; and though the ideas are in a measure +symbolical, yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effect +to leave the artistic result quite generous and satisfying. Allegory +itself, as an echo of one's thought, is often agreeable, and pleases +through surprise; yet it is apt to be confusing, and smothers the poetic +harmony. In his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a hugely significant, +symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this partial vexation. "The +Celestial Railroad," of course, must be excepted from censure, being the +sober parody of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satirical +allegory. And in two cases, "Drowne's Wooden Image," and "The Artist of +the Beautiful," we find the most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, +the story of Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet rendered +additionally lovely by its homeliness; and the essence of all artistic +life, in the other, presented in a form that cannot be surpassed. "Mrs. +Bullfrog" is a sketch which is ludicrously puzzling, until one recalls +Hawthorne's explanation: "The story was written as a mere experiment in +that style; it did not come from any depth within me,--neither my heart +nor mind had anything to do with it." [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. II.] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark in +one direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of the +clearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales," begins in the "Mosses" +to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with the +gathering strength of imagination,--the enlarged power for bringing the +most unreal things quite into the circle of realities,--a compensating +richness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices," +"Fire Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." + +Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the +absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first +had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any +displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign +to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the +highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as +the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere +acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in +him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the +majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of +rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a +given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great +part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless +literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has +form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne +thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould. + +The "Mosses," as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for +the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current +epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of +New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his +attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly +and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he +was, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a Democratic +President. On the other hand, a writer in "The Church Review" of New +Haven, whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tilt +against him as a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, of +phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. In +like manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at the +Transcendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals +betray), Edgar Poe, a literary _Erinaceus_, wellnigh exhausted his +supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward which +he felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, in his +most high-pitched strain of personal abuse, "get a bottle of visible +ink, hang (if possible) the editor of 'The Dial,' cut Mr. Alcott, and +throw out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the 'North +American Review.'" This paper of Poe's is a laughable and pathetic case +of his professedly punctilious analysis covering the most bitter +attacks, with traces of what looks like envy, and others of a resistless +impulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against the average +mind. He begins with a discussion of originality and peculiarity: "In +one sense, to be peculiar is to be original," he says, but the true +originality is "not the uniform but the continuous peculiarity, ... +giving its own hue to everything it touches," and touching everything. +From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, which seems to make two +different things out of the same thing, he goes on to conclude that, +"the fact is, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail +of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is _not_ +original in any sense." He then attempts to show that Hawthorne's +peculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck as the source of this +idiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinuation may be the origin of Hawthorne's +effort to read some of the German author, while at the Old Manse,--an +attempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the unhappy critic brings +up his favorite charge of plagiarism; and it happens, as usual, that the +writer borrowed from is Poe himself! The similarity which he discovers +is between "Howe's Masquerade" and "William Wilson," and is based upon +fancied resemblances of situation, which have not the least foundation +in the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, +"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, written +a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:-- + +"Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that they belong to +the highest region of art,--an art subservient to genius of a very lofty +order. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had +been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent +_cliques_ who beset our literature; ... but we have been most +agreeably mistaken.... Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, +creation, imagination, originality,--a trait which, in the literature of +fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the +originality ... is but imperfectly understood.... The inventive or +original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of _tone_ as +in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in _all_ points." + +This, certainly, is making generous amends; but before he leaves the +subject, the assertion is repeated, that "he is peculiar, and _not_ +original." + +Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's represents pretty +well the want of understanding with which Hawthorne was still received +by many readers. His point of view once seized upon, nothing could be +more clear and simple than his own exposition of refined and evasive +truths; but the keen edge of his perception remained quite invisible to +some. Of the "Twice-Told Tales" Hawthorne himself wrote:-- + +"The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but it +is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design +on the writer's part to make them so.... Every sentence, so far as it +embodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody +who will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book +in a proper mood." + +But it was hard for people to find that mood, because in fact the Tales +_were_ profound. Their language was clear as crystal; but all the +more dazzlingly shone through the crystal that new light of Hawthorne's +gaze. + +After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the Manse came to an +end, and he returned to Salem, with some prospect of an office there +from the new Democratic government of Polk. It is said that President +Tyler had at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post-office, +but was induced to withdraw his name. There were local factions that +kept the matter in abeyance. The choice, in any case, lay between the +Naval Office and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne's +appointment to the latter. "Whichever it be," wrote Hawthorne, "it is to +you that I shall owe it, among so many other solid kindnesses. I have as +true friends as any man has, but you have been the friend in need and +the friend indeed." At this time he was seriously in want of some +profitable employment, for he had received almost nothing from the +magazine. It was the period of credit, and debts were hard to collect. +His journal at the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have been +told that, besides losing the value of many of his contributions to the +"Democratic," through the failure of the magazine, he had advanced money +to the publishers, which was never repaid; but this has not been +corroborated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook Farm, it is +a little doubtful. At length, he was installed as surveyor in the Salem +Custom-House, where he hoped soon to begin writing at ease. + + + + +VII. + + +THE SCARLET LETTER. + +1846-1850. + +The literary result of the four years which Hawthorne now, after long +absence, spent in his native town, was the first romance which gave him +world-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write soon was not +easy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. + +"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my +regard," he says, in "The Custom-House." "I cared not at this period for +books; they were apart from me.... A gift, a faculty, if it had not +departed, was suspended and inanimate within me." + +Readers of that charming sketch will remember the account of the +author's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet letter in an unfinished +upper room of the public building in which he labored at this time, and +how he was urged by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written an +account of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter public. The +discovery of these materials is narrated with such reassuring accuracy, +that probably a large number of people still suppose this to have been +the origin of "The Scarlet Letter." But there is no knowledge among +those immediately connected with Hawthorne of any actual relic having +been found; nor, of course, is it likely that anything besides the +manuscript memorandum should have been preserved. But I do not know that +he saw even this. The papers of Mr. Poe were probably a pure invention +of the author's. + +A strange coincidence came to light the year after the publication of +the romance. A letter from Leutze, the painter, was printed in the Art +Union Bulletin, running thus:-- + +"I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald (in an old +castle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery; it has haunted me +ever since. It was not the beauty or finish that charmed me; it was +something strange in the figures, the immense contrast between the child +and what was supposed to be her gouvernante in the garb of some severe +order; the child, a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, a +princess of some foreign land. No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter' +than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no one +else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, and +found my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicable +embroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token of +her order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hidden +by the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon +it at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as +was possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever +came to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freak +of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, the +Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please." + +A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it be +trustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it has +been verified. + +The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The name +Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an original +and isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story." + +In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice-told series printed +many years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with no +mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the +breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. +Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had +embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the +nicest art of needlework." A friend asked Hawthorne if he had +documentary evidence for this particular punishment, and he replied that +he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, though +with no attendant details. [Footnote: I may here transcribe, as a further +authority, which Hawthorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws of +Plymouth Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the events +of "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the Court and the +Authoritie thereof that whosoeuer shall committ Adultery shal bee +seuerly Punished by whipping two seueral times viz: once whiles the +Court is in being att which they are convicted of the fact, and the +second time as the Court shall order, and likewise to were two Capitall +letters viz: A D cut cut in Cloth and sewed on their vpermost garments +on their arme or backe; and if at any time they shal bee taken without +said letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be forthwith +Taken and publicly whipt."] This friend said to another at the time: "We +shall hear of that letter again, for it evidently has made a profound +impression on Hawthorne's mind." Returning to Salem, where his +historical stories and sketches had mainly been written, he reverted +naturally to the old themes; and this one doubtless took possession of +him soon after his entrance on his customs duties. But these disabled +him from following it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs got hold +of the government again, Hawthorne's literary faculty came into power +also, for he was turned out of office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, +he got to work on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the +"Mosses" he had formally renounced the short story; but "The Scarlet +Letter" proved so highly wrought a tragedy that he had fears of its +effect upon the public, if presented alone. + +"In the present case I have some doubts about the expediency, [he wrote +to Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new publisher, Ticknor,] +because, if the book is made up entirely of 'The Scarlet Letter,' it +will be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the shadows of the +story with so much light as I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping so +close to its point as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise than +by turning different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it +will weary very many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, to +stake the book entirely on this one chance?" + +His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward printed with the "The +Snow Image," and entitle the whole "Old Time Legends, together with +Sketches Experimental and Ideal." But this was abandoned. On the 4th of +February, 1850, he writes to Bridge:-- + +"I finished my book only yesterday: one end being in the press at +Boston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as you +see, the story is at least fourteen miles long.... + +"My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before April. He +speaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, +to whom I read the conclusion last night. [Footnote: This recalls an +allusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking of +Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own +pathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of +The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,--tried to read it, +rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down +on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous +state, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion while +writing it, for many months."] It broke her heart, and sent her to bed +with a grievous headache,--which I look upon as a triumphant success. +Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate on +what bowlers calls a 'ten-strike.' But I do not make any such +calculation." + +Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangible +and terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The Scarlet +Letter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of five +thousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salem +and in the region of New England history where he had won his first +triumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, received +the applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, and +speedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum," received +"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at the +same time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on the +author which it is quite worth while to record here. This was an article +in "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quarterly published at New Haven), +[Footnote: In the number for January, 1851.] written, I am told, by a +then young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical +body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous +article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking +of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet +_Lakers_ "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But +that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay +writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing +them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was +in the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism of +the Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It is +time," announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, +"that the literary world should learn that Churchmen are, in a very +large proportion, their readers and book-buyers, and that the tastes and +principles of Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those of +Puritans and Socialists." Yet, inconsistently enough, he declared that +Bay writers could not have grown to the stature of authors at all, +unless they had first shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "a +religion of indifference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as +Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied +that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a +writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. +But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he +was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing +but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest +taste. He imagines that Hawthorne "selects the intrigue of an adulterous +minister, as the groundwork of his ideal" of Puritan times, and asks, +"Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" Yet, being in some +points, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad," he +says, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an +experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And +in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is +willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss +to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a +provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the +beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: +whether he is making fun of all religion, or only giving a fair hint of +the essential sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished +at the kind of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseology, +he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "the +romance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, +like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a very +tolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, +within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found this +doctrine urged? Only once, faintly, and then in the words of one of the +chief sinners. + +"Shelley himself," says the austere critic, airing his literature, +"never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that in which the +polluted minister comforts himself with the thought, that the revenge of +the injured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 'Thou +and I never did so, Hester,' he suggests; and she responds, 'Never, +never! What we did had a consecration of its own.'" + +And these wretched and distorted consolations of two erring and +condemned souls, the righteous Churchman, with not very commendable +taste, seizes upon as the moral of the book, leaving aside the terrible +retribution which overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vain +plan of flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne defend +their excuses for themselves. Of Hester:-- + +"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These [he says] had been her teachers,--stern +and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much +amiss." + +And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmesdale must, of course, +by any pure-minded reader, be included among the errors thus taken into +her mind. + +"The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience +calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; +although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of +the most sacred of them.... Were such a man once more to fall, what plea +could be urged in extenuation of his crime? _None_; unless it avail +him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; +that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which +harrowed it." + +But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer goes on to show, +in this solemn declaration:-- + +"And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has +once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. +It may be watched and guarded.... But there is still the ruined wall, +and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his +unforgotten triumph." + +How Mr. Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is then described; but +it is also shown how Roger Chillingworth, the personified retribution of +the two sinners, fastens himself to them in all their movements, and +will be with them in any flight, however distant. + +"'Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,' said he, looking darkly at +the clergyman, 'there was no one place so secret, no high place nor +lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me.'" + +And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of +the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this +delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their +empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment of +fulfilment. + +But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient affinity of his +imagination, saw nothing of the awful truths so clearly though briefly +expressed, and finally came to the conclusion that the moral of the +whole fiction was "that the Gospel has not set the relations of man and +woman where they should be, and that a new gospel is needed to supersede +the Seventh Commandment, and the bond of matrimony." + +"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer,] is philosophized into a +natural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of marriage, which by +holding her irrevocably to her vows, as plighted to a dried-up old +book-worm, ... is viewed as making her heart an easy victim.... The sin +of her seducer, too, seems to be considered as lying, not so much in the +deed itself, as in his long concealment of it; and in fact the whole +moral of the tale is given in the words, 'Be true, he true!' as if +sincerity in sin were a virtue, and as if 'Be clean, he clean!' were not +the more fitting conclusion." + +But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious that Hawthorne probably +never dreamed of any one's requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it is +the starting-point, the very foundation, of the tragedy. The tale is a +massive argument for repentance, which is the flinging aside of +concealment, and the open and truthful acknowledgment of sin. In the +Puritan mode of dealing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem of +repentance and confession presented in the most drastic, concentrated, +and startling form; for the Puritans carried out in the severest style a +practical illustration of the consequences of moral offence. Since men +and women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse and public +admission of wrong-doing, these governors and priests determined to try +the effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. People +were set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at the +whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their ears +cropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; other +criminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that this +was only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of such +punishment were arrogating too much to themselves, and shared the office +of the fiend; that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outward +truthfulness would never build up the real inner truth of the soul;--all +this Hawthorne perceived and endeavored to portray in a form which +should be as a parable, applying its morality to the men and women of +to-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirectness. As a +study of a system of social discipline never before so expounded, it +claimed the deepest attention. And never was the capacity of sinning men +and women for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in this +romance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion was shown to be +self-analysis; that is, the conscientious view of one's self which keeps +the right or wrong of one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester was +on the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, and the +advantages of this comparative trueness are constantly made manifest. +She in a measure conquers evil and partly atones for her wrong, by the +good which she is able to do among her fellow-beings,--as much +compensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman who has once been so +essentially corrupted as she. Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of native +truth that he never allows his conscience to slumber for a moment, and +plies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent he +is better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own hands +the retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity for +his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in that +which ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, +and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, +though not coolly and maliciously false, stops short of open confession, +and in this submits himself to the most occult and corrosive influence +of his own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible consisted in +abject acknowledgment. Once announcing that he had fallen, and was +unworthy, he might have taken his place on the lower moral plane; and, +equally resigning the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hester, +he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing of some limited +good. The shock to the general belief in probity would have been great; +but the discovery that the worst had been made known, that the minister +was strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the place he no +longer was fit for, would have restored the public mind again, by +showing it that a deeper probity possible than that which it wanted to +see sustained. This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothing is so +destructive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that sincerity in +sin is a virtue, but that it is better than sin and falsehood combined. +And if anything were wanting, at first, to make this clear, there +certainly is not a particle of obscurity left by the glare of the +catastrophe, when the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that he and she +may meet after death, and spend their immortal life together, and says +that God has proved his mercy most of all by the afflictions he has laid +upon him. + +As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be revealed, it could have +been no other than that ultimate lifting up of the race into a plane of +the utmost human truthfulness, which every one who believes in the +working of all things for good, looks forward to with vague longing, but +with most certain faith. How far the Puritan organization was from this +state of applied truth, the romance shows. Nearly every note in the +range of Puritan sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. The +still unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who cannot but feel +something of mercifulness toward Hester is overruled by the harsh +exultation of other women in her open shame. We have the noble and +spotless character of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of his +death on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but much more +distinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, who, nevertheless, is +utterly incompetent to deal with the problem of a woman's lost morality. +Governor Bellingham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of the +state and its ferocious sanctions; yet in the very house with him dwells +Mistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in the secret knowledge of +widespread sin. Thus we are led to a fuller comprehension of +Chillingworth's attitude as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea of +spiritual government; and in his diabolical absorption and gloating +interest in sin, we behold an exaggerated--but logically +exaggerated--spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipitate and +personally supervise the punishments of eternity on this side of death. + +Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply to +this article in "The Church Review," though he recognized, as all +readers of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not by +any means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity for +whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. + +Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so +excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly +be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the +adroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, which +we call "plot." Passion and motive and character, having been brought +together in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; but +the individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures, +with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama +gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration, +indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evident +as is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, +long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like a +playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather +arrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this is +simply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist's +method; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that, +and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies all +Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but also +protracting the impression a little too much, at times. Yet the general +conception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating +the characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis of +the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and, +notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole work +carries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of events +is affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the +necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influences +novelists of the higher order. + +As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extended +romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in +its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the +aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was +no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure +beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself +and the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had not +so transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty, +he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious to +speculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House of +the Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the tragic +element in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentleness +of incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discovering +the writer's real measure, for a while longer. But "The Scarlet Letter" +burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent public awoke +in good earnest, and never forgot, though it speedily forgave the shock. + +There was another smaller but attendant explosion. Hawthorne's prefatory +chapter on the Custom-House incensed some of his fellow-citizens of +Salem, terribly. There seems to have been a general civic clamor against +him, on account of it, though it would be hard to find any rational +justification therefor. In reference to the affair, Hawthorne wrote at +the time:-- + +"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, and on two false +indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf." + +This refers to political machinations of the party opposed to Hawthorne +as an official: they had pledged themselves, it was understood, not to +ask for his ejection, and afterward set to work to oust him without +cause. There is reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperation +at these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoyance came upon him +when he was worn out with the excitement of composing "The Scarlet +Letter"; and this ebullition of local hostility must moreover have been +especially offensive at a moment when the public everywhere else was +receiving him with acclaim as a person whose genius entitled him to +enthusiastic recognition. Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincere +friends in Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure the +culmination of that smouldering disagreement which had harassed him in +earlier years, and had lurked in his heart in spite of the constant mild +affection which he maintained toward the town. + +But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was now to be finally +broken off. He longed for change, for the country, and for the +recreation that the Old Manse garden had given him. "I should not long +stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led +for the last few months," he wrote to Bridge. "Here I hardly go out once +a week." On this account, and because of his difficulty in writing while +in office, he did not so much regret losing his place. One of the plans +proposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the Sparhawk house, +a famous old colonial mansion on Goose Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, +which was then to be disposed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, would +have found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the neighborhood. +After his return from abroad, he made a visit to the quaint and stately +little city of Portsmouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful old +houses in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Langdon, then +occupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A memorial of that visit remains, in +this bright note from his host:-- + +PORTSMOUTH, September, 1860. + +MR. HAWTHORNE. + +MY DEAR SIR:--There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse," there is no +Romance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter." But you can +give us a "Twice-Told Tale," if you will for the second time be our +guest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. + +Very truly yours, + +CHARLES BURROUGHS. + +But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire. + + + + +VIII. + + +LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. + +1850-1853. + +In the early summer, after the publication of "The Scarlet Letter," +Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where himself and +his family were ensconced in a small red house near the Stockbridge +Bowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means of +obtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the +world to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. + +He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this time living in +Pittsfield. There was even talk of their writing something together, as +I judge from some correspondence; though this was abandoned. + +Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The House +of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for +Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow +Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short +"Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to +literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook +Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a +full current if only left free to do so. + +The industry and energy of this period are the more remarkable because +he could seldom accomplish anything in the way of composition during the +warm months. "The House of the Seven Gables" was under way by September, +1850. + +"I shan't have the new story ready," he writes to his publisher on the +1st of October, "by November, for I am never good for anything in the +literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat +such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about +me,--multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to be +sober and shabby enough after all." + +The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which he indulged one +month later is so important as to merit dwelling upon. + +"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the book +requires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also I have to +wait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in one tone, I +had only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many +passages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a +Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, +when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from +beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is +always, or always ought to be, careering on, the utmost verge of a +precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as +possible, without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that +the book ought to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter,' though I +have no idea that it will." + +By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write: "My 'House of the +Seven Gables' is, so to speak, finished; only I am hammering away a +little at the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were left +incomplete"; and at the end of that month, he despatched the manuscript +to Boston, still retaining his preference for it over the preceding work. + +"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." + +He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the critics, and +giving his own opinion time to mature:-- + +"I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and more proper and +natural for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter,'--but, for that very +reason, less likely to interest the public. Nevertheless, it appears to +have sold better than the former, and I think is move sure of retaining +the ground that it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works are +popular in England, and advises me to take out my copyright there." + +His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production to his first +great romance is no doubt one that critics will coincide with as regards +artistic completeness; though his fear that it would not succeed so well +was not confirmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to acquire +that momentum of public favor which sets in after its first immense +inertia has once been overcome. Acting on the reports from England, he +made a suggestion to his publisher; and though this at first met with +discouragement, ten months later L200 were received from a London house +for "The Blithedale Romance." English editions of his works had already +become numerous. But Hawthorne began now to receive a more ethereal and +not less welcome kind of tribute from abroad, that of praise from the +makers and markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a high +place; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross the sea; and Miss +Mitford--of whom he said, "Her sketches, long ago as I read them, are as +sweet in my memory as the scent of new hay"--sent special messages +expressive of her pleasure. + +When the "Blithedale Romance" had come out, Mr. Hawthorne sent Miss +Mitford a copy, and she wrote in reply this cordial and delightful +note:-- + +SWALLOWFIELD, August 6,1852. + +At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write again to tell +you how much I thank you for the precious volume enriched by your +handwriting, which, for its own sake and for yours, I shall treasure +carefully so long as I live. The story has your mark upon it,--the fine +tragic construction unmatched amongst living authors, the passion of the +concluding scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finish +of style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I have ever +known, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent of Miss Edgeworth, +says of your style: "His English is the richest and most intense essence +of the language I know of; his words conveying not only a meaning, but +more than they appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, +as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes of +imagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, +as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond of +bringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfect +Englishmen of our day are Americans,--Irving, Prescott, and this great +new writer, Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, dear +Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of whose works you +remind me, not by imitation, but by resemblance, is the great French +novelist, Balzac. Do you know his books? He is untranslated and +untranslatable, and it requires the greatest familiarity with French +literature to relish him thoroughly.... I doubt if he be much known +amongst you; at least I have never seen him alluded to in American +literature. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, but, +being what he is, Mrs. Browning and I used to discuss his personages +like living people, and regarded his death as a great personal calamity +to both. + +I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being well enough +to meet her in London.... How I wish, dear Mr. Hawthorne, that you were +here to meet them! The day will come, I hope. It would be good for your +books to look at Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue would +rejoice to look at you. + +Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, + +M. R. MITFORD. + +I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Herman Melville, who, +in the midst of his epistle, suddenly assumes the tone of a reviewer, +and discourses as follows, under the heading, "_The House of the Seven +Gables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne_. 16_mo. pp._ 344." + +"The contents of this book do not belie its clustering romantic title. +With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each separate gable. +This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly but still judiciously +furnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish +it. There are rich hangings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. +There is old china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet; +there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an +admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a +smell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is a +dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled _Hawthorne: +A Problem_.... + +"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest surpasses the +other work of the author. The curtains are now drawn; the sun comes in +more; genialities peep out more. Were we to particularize what has most +struck us in the deeper passages, we should point out the scene where +Clifford, for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, to +join the procession; or the scene where the Judge is left seated in his +ancestral chair. + +"Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the +finest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we +would say, that did the circumstances permit, we should like nothing +better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full +consideration and analysis of the purpose and significance of what so +strongly characterizes all of this author's writing. There is a certain +tragic phase of humanity, which, in our opinion, was never more +powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne: we mean the tragicalness of human +thought in its own unbiased, native, and profound workings. We think +that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the whole truth +ever entered more deeply than into this man's. By whole truth, we mean +the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they +strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst +to him." + +This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes to extract from +the "Pittsfield Secret Review," of which I wish further numbers could be +found. + +But chief among the prizes of this season were letters from his friends +Lowell and Holmes. The latter's I insert, because it admirably +illustrates the cordial relation which has always distinguished the +famous writers of New England,--no pleasant illusion of distance, but a +notable and praiseworthy reality. + +BOSTON, April 9, 1851. + +MY DEAR SIR:--I have been confined to my chamber and almost to my bed, +for some days since I received your note; and in the mean time I have +received what was even more welcome, the new Romance "from the Author." +While I was too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you have +been playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with the +magnetism of your imagination. + +I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long +time. I had become so set in this feeling, that but for your last two +stories I should have given up hoping, and believed that all we were to +look for in the way of spontaneous growth were such languid, lifeless, +sexless creations as in the view of certain people constitute the chief +triumphs of a sister art as manifested among us. + +But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fern +and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of +our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded and +flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a +seedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the moment +a fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us and +transfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others +analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciating +sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, of +character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayon +sketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story. +Only one word, then, this: that the solid reality and homely +truthfulness of the actual and present part of the story are blended +with its weird and ghostly shadows with consummate skill and effect; +this was perhaps the special difficulty of the story. + +I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall come up, I +trust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the MS. in question, as +a duty, with as much pleasure as many other duties afford. To say the +truth, I have as great a dread of the _Homo Caudatus_ Linn., +Anglice, the Being with a Tale, male or female, as any can have. + + "If foes they write, if friends they read me dead," + +said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I will +stipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds avoirdupois +by weight or eighteen reams by measure or "tale,"--provided there is no +locomotion in the case. The idea of visiting Albany does not enter into +my intentions. I do not know who would serve as a third or a second +member of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does not +prevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real +truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The Scarlet +Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That is +what they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classical +condition _not to leave the country except in case of invasion_, +absentees, voters by proxy, potential but not personally present +bottle-holders, I will add my name to those of Latimer, Ridley, and Co. +as a Martyr in the cause of Human Progress. + +Believe me, my dear sir, + +Yours very sincerely, + +O. W. Holmes. + +Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was also very great, and one +of the last books which he read at all was "Elsie Venner," which he had +taken up for a second time shortly before his death. + +Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless praise, or of other +comment on the new romance, he began to feel that necessity for +abstracting his attention entirely from what was said of his work in +current publications, which forces itself upon every creative mind +attempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering and unprivate +age like the present. This feeling he imparted to Bridge, and it also +appears in one or two published letters. At the same time, it must be +remembered how careful a consideration he gave to criticism; and he +wrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the "Seven Gables":-- + +"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helped +me to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish I +could feel the praise to be so fully deserved. Being better (which I +insist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have never expected it to be +so popular." + +In this same letter occurs the following:-- + +"---- ----, Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have +made his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon +(or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their +representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge +Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ----'s grandfather, and (at +least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman +in the world. There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheons +which, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in my +eye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and +thinks it monstrous that the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to rest +quietly in their graves." + +The matter here alluded to threatened to give Hawthorne almost as much +inconvenience as the tribulation which followed the appearance of "The +Custom-House." One of the complainants in this case, though objecting to +the use of the name Pyncheon, "respectfully suggests," with an ill-timed +passion for accuracy, that it should in future editions be printed with +the _e_ left out, because this was the proper mode in use by the +family. + +There has been some slight controversy as to the original of the +visionary mansion described in this romance. Mr. Hawthorne himself said +distinctly that he had no particular house in mind, and it is also a +fact that none is recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that of +the "Seven Gables." Nevertheless, one party has maintained that the old +Philip English house, pulled down many years since, was the veritable +model; and others support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. The +Curwin, called the "Witch House," appears, by an antique painting from +which photographs have been made, to have had the requisite number of +peaks at a remote date; but one side of the structure being perforce +left out of the picture, there is room for a doubt. [Footnote: It is +from one of these photographs that the cut in the new edition of +Hawthorne's Works has been developed.] + +In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection of +parts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in the +same fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter." There is, besides, a larger range +of character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed and +reticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting on +ivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being. Very noticeable is the +delicate veneration and tenderness for her with which the author seems +to inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost nothing +definite to say of her except what tends to throw a light ridicule. She +is continually contrasted with the exquisite freshness, ready grace, and +beauty of Phoebe, and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mind +of Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic perception +casts silent reproach upon her. Yet, in spite of this, she becomes in a +measure endeared to us. In the grace, and agreeableness too, with which +Hawthorne manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a unit of +measure for the beauty with which he has invested the more frightful and +tragic elements of the story. It is this triumph of beauty without +destroying the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artistic +virtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified discomfort to the +reader, yet he is entirely held within bounds by the prevailing charm of +the author's style, and by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanter +elements of the other characters are applied. At times the strong +emphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect that the villain is +too deeply dyed; but the question of equity here involved is one of the +most intricate with which novelists have to deal at all. The +well-defined opposition between good and bad forces has always been a +necessity to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life furnishes +the most absolute extremes of possession by the angel or the fiend; and +Shakespere has not scrupled to use one of these ultimate possibilities +in the person of Iago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of the +downward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's pronounced iniquity +stand without giving a glimpse of incipient evil in another quarter. +This occurs in the temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds that +he possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the latest Pyncheon +offshoot, as that which his ancestor Matthew Maule exercised over Alice +Pyncheon. The momentary mood which brings before him the absolute power +which might be his over this fair girl, opens a whole new vista of +wrong, in which the retribution would have been transferred from the +shoulders of the Pyncheons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yielded +then, he might have damned his own posterity, as Colonel Pyncheon had +_his_. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, we are made aware of +possibilities as malicious and destructive as those hereditary faults +grown to such rank maturity in the Judge; and this may be said to offer +a middle ground between the side of justice and attractiveness, and the +side of injustice and repulsiveness, on which the personages are +respectively ranged. + +The conception of a misdeed operating through several generations, and +righted at last solely by the over-toppling of unrestrained malevolence +on the one hand, and on the other by the force of upright character in +the wronged family, was a novel one at the time; this graphic depicture +of the past at work upon the present has anticipated a great deal of the +history and criticism of the following twenty-five years, in its close +conjunction of antecedent influences and cumulative effects. + +As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, this second +romance was not less remarkable than the one which preceded it. The +theme furnished by the imaginary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragic +in the Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Clifford, to a +grotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. Thence we are led to +another vein of simple, fun-breeding characterization in Uncle Venner +and Ned Higgins. The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Venner +in such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one degree of sunniness +above the dubious light in which Hepzibah stands, so that he may soften +the contrast of broad humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the "First +Customer." I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not give freer scope +to his delicious faculty for the humorous, exemplified in the "Seven +Gables." If he had let his genius career as forcibly in this direction +as it does in another, when burdened with the black weight of the dead +Judge Pyncheon, he might have secured as wide an acceptance for the book +as Dickens, with so much more melodrama and so much less art, could gain +for less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the tragic +element, and comparative neglect of the other, was in one sense an +advantage; but if in the case under discussion he had given more bulk +and saliency to the humorous quality, he might also have been more +likely to avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after that +marvellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the lifeless +Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave for +Phoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house where +Death and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too +violent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midst +of the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spread +around itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; and +it might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom to +gladness just here, and a more frequent play of the brighter mood +throughout the book. But the tragic predilection seems ultimately to +gain the day over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was so +strong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater play to humor in +later fictions, it curtailed it more and more, from the production of +the "Seven Gables" onward. + +Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after the publication of +the new book, which, as it gives another instance of the writer's keen +enjoyment of other men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life at +Lenox, I will copy at length:-- + +LENOX, April 29,1851. + +MY DEAR HOWADJI:--I ought to be ashamed (and so I really am) of not +having sooner responded to your note of more than a month ago, +accompanied as it was by the admirable "Nile Notes." The fact is, I have +been waiting to find myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that I +might pay my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of the +occasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless never will; and +now I have delayed so long, that America and England seem to have +anticipated me in their congratulations. + +I read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have felt that we +never knew anything of the Nile before. There is something beyond +descriptive power in it. You make me feel almost as if we had been there +ourselves. And then you are such a luxurious traveller.... The fragrance +of your chibonque was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot be +concealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths of +those chapters about the dancing-girls, lest they might result in +something not altogether accordant with our New England morality; and +even now I hardly know whether we escaped the peril, or were utterly +overwhelmed by it. But at any rate, those passages are gorgeous in the +utmost degree. However, I suppose you are weary of praise; and as I have +nothing else to inflict, I may as well stop here. + +S---- and the children and I are plodding onward in good health, and in +a fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite the +happiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little old +red farm-house you ever saw.... + +What shall you write next? For of course you are an author forever. I am +glad, for the sake of the public, but not particularly so for your own. + +Very soon after the issue of the "Seven Gables," another lighter +literary project was put into execution. + +"I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write within six weeks +or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical +myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; +Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; +Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." + +The "Wonder-Book" was begun on the first of June, and finished by the +middle of July; so that the intention of writing it within six weeks was +strictly carried out: certainly a rapid achievement, considering the +excellent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It is a minor +work, but a remarkable one; not its least important trait being the +perfect simplicity of its style and scope, which, nevertheless, omits +nothing essential, and preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiar +excellences come out still more distinctly when contrasted with Charles +Kingsley's "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales," published in England +five years after the appearance of the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresher +play of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing more +agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he has +thrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vine +curling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task--it was very +uncommon for him to write in the hot season--perhaps had something to do +with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was not +good. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not +suit his sea-braced temperament; and so, instead of renting Mrs. +Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he decided to leave +Berkshire with the birds; but not to go southward. Moving to West +Newton, near Boston, he remained there for the winter, writing +"Blithedale," which was put forth in 1852. + +The special characteristic of "The Blithedale Romance" seems to me to be +its appearance of unlabored ease, and a consequent breeziness of effect +distinguishing its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. +The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part of the book +that gives the same impression of almost unnecessary polish which +occasionally intervenes between one's admiration and the "Seven Gables." +On this score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of the four +completed romances. And as Hawthorne has nowhere given us more robust +and splendid characterization than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, +the work also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, which seemed +partly dispersed in the "Seven Gables," gather again in this succeeding +story; but, on the other hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as "The +Scarlet Letter." From this it is saved partly by the sylvan surrounding +and the pleasant changes of scene. In comparing it with the other works, +I find that it lets itself be best defined as a mean between extremes; +so that it ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attempered +of all. The theme is certainly as deep as that of the earlier ones, and +more tangible to the general reader than that of "The Marble Faun"; it +is also more novel than that of "The Scarlet Letter" or even the "Seven +Gables," and has an attractive air of growing simply and naturally out +of a phenomenon extremely common in New England, namely, the man who is +dominated and blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollingsworth, +through this very prepossession and absorption, is brought to the ruin +of his own scheme, and has to concentrate his charity for criminals upon +himself as the first criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. +Yet, in discussing the relative positions of these four works. I am not +sure that we can reach any decision more stable than that of mere +preference. + +There is a train of thought suggested in "Blithedale" which receives +only partial illustration in that story, touching the possible identity +of love and hate. It had evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very early +period, and would have made rich material for an entire romance, or for +several treating different phases of it. Perhaps he would have followed +out the suggestion, but for the intervention of so many years of +unproductiveness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent too +early death. + +It was while at West Newton, just before coming to the Wayside, that he +wrote a note in response to an invitation to attend the memorial meeting +at New York, in honor of the novelist, Cooper, which should be read for +its cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the tender thought +of the closing sentence. + +_To Rev. R. W. Griswold._ + +February 20,1852. + +Dear Sir:--I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible for +me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honor of +James Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present than +myself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. +Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe the +earnestness with which the literary men of our country unite in paying +honor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to hope that, in the +eyes of the public at large, American literature may henceforth acquire +a weight and value which have not heretofore been conceded to it: time +and death have begun to hallow it. + +Very respectfully yours, + +Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he had +bought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtis +was at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes of +American Authors," among which was to be included the new abode of +Hawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:-- + +CONCORD, July 14, 1852. + +MY HEAR 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 hillside 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 hillside 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 Hillside." 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. [Footnote: 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.] 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. + +The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when its +owner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment." It +characterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though the +spell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself was +small, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legend +over Ariosto's door, _Parva, sed apta mihi_. In October, 1852, he +wrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or +two, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design this +was cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in the +preceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with the +demand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of +invention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he could +produce as many books as he might have time for writing. But +circumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as he +was preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the +"Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, +urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I have +consented to do so," wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhat +reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where a +man careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting his +acquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not be +ashamed to tell the truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book +was out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried to +persuade Pierce 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." In this letter, also, he states that before +undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce; +though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly than +heroism." In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:-- + +"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." + +These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during the war. Speaking of +Pierce's indorsement of the Compromise, both as it bore hard on Northern +views and exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be more +than reciprocal, he says:-- + +"It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken +advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that +great object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least +scrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slavery +recognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom +and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the +Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into +distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into +one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years, +from the first settlement of the American wilderness until the +Revolution." + +He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, and +the good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravated +injuries from the very process designed to better their state. It is +useless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong on +either side, in the struggle which had already become formidable before +Pierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generous +motives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must be +maintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur of +achievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civil +war, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which +forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, because +it could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on the +shedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that found +shelter in the heart of Hawthorne. + +Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, in +friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements of +greatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career. +[Footnote: As a literary performance, the book is of course but slightly +characteristic; and being distasteful to the author, it is even dry. Yet +there is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The Whig journals +belabored it manfully, and exhausted the resources of those formidable +weapons, italics and small capitals, in the attempt to throw a +ridiculous light on the facts most creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne came +in for a share of the abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "new +romance"; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simonides, who was +the first poet to write for money. The other party, of course, took +quite another view of the work. A letter to Hawthorne from his elder +sister bears well upon his fidelity. "Mr. D---- has bought your Life of +Pierce, but he will not be convinced that you have told the precise +truth. I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say."] +He had not much hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, +the question of office, which he had already mooted, was definitely +brought before him. When Pierce learned that he positively would not +take an office, because to do so now might compromise him, he was +extremely troubled. He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some one +of the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But the service he +had exacted from his friend threatened to deprive Hawthorne of the very +benefit which Pierce had been most anxious he should receive. At last, +Mr. Ticknor, Hawthorne's publisher, was made the agent of Pierce's +arguments, and to them he added personal considerations which were +certainly not without weight. Literature gave but a bare subsistence, +and Hawthorne was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. +His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach that would be +made in the fortunes of his family, were he to be suddenly removed. +This, Mr. Ticknor urged, in addition to the friendly obligation which +Pierce ought to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, had +always wished to travel, and the prospect of some years in Europe was an +alluring one: the decision was made, to take the Liverpool consulship. + +The appointment was well received, though many persons professed +surprise that Hawthorne could accept it. One gentleman in public life, +however, who knew how unjust current judgments may often be, was not of +this number, as appears from his note below.-- + +SENATE CHAMBER, March 26, 1853. + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--"Good! good!" I exclaimed aloud on the floor of the +Senate as your nomination was announced. + +"Good! good!" I now write to you, on its confirmation. Nothing could be +more grateful to me. Before you go, I hope to see you. + +Ever yours, + +CHARLES SUMNER. + + + + +IX. + + +ENGLAND AND ITALY. + +1853-1860. + +It is very instructive to trace the contact of Hawthorne's mind with +Europe, as exhibited in his "English Note-Books" and "French and Italian +Note-Books." But in these records three things are especially +observable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, with an individual mood as +easily sustained, as he would enter Boston or New York. He carries no +preconception of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. +There has never been a more complete and charming presentment of a +multitude of ingenuous impressions common to many travellers of widely +differing endowment than here, at the same time that you have always +before you the finished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly +and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, +fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one a +dreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical +and even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had gone +abroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book and +in a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to +himself, sometimes the other; and occasionally they con each other's +paragraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of the first. It is +interesting to note their twofold inspection of Westminster Hall, for +example. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding its +length to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immense +barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it not +irreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "I +wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic +representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or +death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident ... +that has occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such as +this, so tapestried with recollections." But in any case it is always +apparent that the thought is colored by a New World nurture. From this +freshness of view there proceeded one result, the searching, +unembarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial criticism of +England in "Our Old Home." But it also gave rise to the second notable +quality, that exquisite apprehension of the real meaning of things +European, both institutions and popular manners and the varied products +of art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for the one end of +adding this final grace of definition which he so deftly attaches to the +monuments of that older civilization. He brings a perception so keen and +an innate sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, that +the mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmosphere upon the objects +before him invests them with a quality which we feel to be theirs, even +while we know that it could not have become _ours_ without his aid. +A breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows of the Old World, +and--I had almost said--bedims them with a film of evanescent frost-work; +yet, as that lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, a +legendary fascination in their deep-gemmed gorgeousness, which, although +we have felt it and read of it before, we never seized till now. I speak, +of course, from the American point of view; though in a great measure the +effect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy a special +appropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture of estimation and +enthusiasm which forms the medium through which Hawthorne looks at the +spectacle of transatlantic life and its surroundings. He visits the +British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated +sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, +slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with +which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes +that form the real population of Rome. + +Even there, he has much dissent to make, still; and we may not find +it at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviations +ourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is impossible not to +feel sure that within this circle of contradictions, of preference for +new frames and of his friend Thompson's pictures to all but a very few +of the old masters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthy +aesthetic sensibility which grasps the "unwritten rules of taste," the +inmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, however we may turn it, +a matter of paradox, and the moment it professes to be explained, that +moment are the gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness and +the protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses to himself as he +wanders through the galleries of Europe, are the trembling of the +needle, perfectly steadfast to the polar opposites of truth, yet +quivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial +influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this +singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index +finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone +which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a +little crude,--that very air of being the uncritical and slightly +puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful +accuracies of interpretation. + +The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation is its entire +freedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot be made to appear more +clearly than in the contrast presented by his "English Note-Books" and +"Our Old Home" to Emerson's "English Traits," and Taine's "Notes on +England." The latter writer is an acute, alert, industrious, and +picturesque comparer of his own and a neighboring country, and is +accompanied by a light battery of literary and pictorial criticism, +detached from his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other hand, +gives us probably the most masterly and startling analysis of a people +which has ever been offered in the same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, +in brilliancy and penetration of statement. But the "English Traits" is +as clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and perhaps a +little too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of England, though not +comparable to Emerson's work for analysis, has this advantage, that its +outline is more flexible and leaves room for many individual +discriminations to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. +Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign land: Hawthorne +causes us to inhale its very atmosphere, and makes the country ours for +the time being, rather than an alien area which we scrutinize in +passing. Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities that are +dominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every Englishman runs to 'The Times' +with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother," is as +epigrammatic as anything in "English Traits"; [Footnote: No one, I +think, has so well defined our relation to the English as Hawthorne, in +a casual phrase from one of his printed letters: "We stand in the light +of posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity." This, on +London, ought to become proverbial: "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 die, or go to London."] +and there is a tendency in his pages to present the national character +in a concrete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addition, +Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and renders human character +with a force and fineness which give it its true value as being, after +all, far weightier and dearer to us than the most important or famous of +congealed _results_ of character. Withal a wide and keen observer +and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these upon +us as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense of +greater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. + +It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write an English +romance, as well, or rather than an Italian one? More than half his stay +abroad was north of the Channel, and one would infer that there could +have been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England," he +wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had +been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England +just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on +the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a source of romantic +possibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But the +greater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, where +his consular duties suppressed fiction-making. [Footnote: And it was not +till he reached the villa of Montauto at Florence that he could write:-- + +"It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really 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 +Yankee-dom 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 out of all my old tracks, and am really remote."] + +Hawthorne's genius was extremely susceptible to every influence about +it. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which owes its fine +properties to the tempering of time and atmosphere, and transmits +through its strings the very thrill of sunshine that has sunk into its +wood. His utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. In +one of his letters from Florence he wrote:-- + +"Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which I could +have ready for the press in a few months if I were either in England or +America. But 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." + +But though England might be his workshop for books dreamed of in Italy, +yet the aspect of English life seems much more fittingly represented by +his less excursively imaginative side, as in "Our Old Home," than in a +romance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation; but I believe we +may much better spare the possible English romance, than we could have +foregone the actual Italian one. + +In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring and +impressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, +without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or even +by some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circle +which no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself has +even begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric +time--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his +fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--this +conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or +crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has +nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of +Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book +reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as +the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the +primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt +at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of +those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to +each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his +individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the +theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's +nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their +origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, +that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory +that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he +shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler +individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes +without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides +with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of +spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, +I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by +self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a +Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, +"it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of +intellect and soul." This idea is several times urged by Miriam and +Kenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then by +Hilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which +human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function of +the author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance of +Monte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man +repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of all +religious problems, affirming,--as one interpreter [Footnote: See an +unsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne," in the Atlantic Monthly for +September, 1868.] has said,--"the inherent freedom of man," and +illustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. Donatello is the +ideal of the childlike nature on the threshold of history who has lived +without choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence of +Miriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of the +catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual +choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely +asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his +immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety +of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis +of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and +this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatello +himself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, are +involved. There is first the reaction upon and inculpation of Miriam, +whose glance had confirmed Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, +yet enough to involve her in the doom of change and separation--of sin +in short--which falls upon the Faun. And in Hilda's case, it is the +simple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as if +she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who +are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite +meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author has +given. + +But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous and intricate study +of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's story, in a new form. Miriam is a +different woman placed in the same circumstances which made the Cenci +tragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books," Hawthorne describes the +look he caught sight of in Guido's picture,--that "of a being +unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote and +inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no +human sympathy could reach her." It was of this single insight that both +Miriam and Hilda were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, +slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIII.): "It was the +intimate consciousness of her father's guilt that threw its shadow over +her, and frightened her into" this region. Now, in the chapter called +"Beatrice," quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam and +Hilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It is evident, from the +emphasis given by the chapter-title, that this subject is very deeply +related to the theme of the romance; and no theory can explain Miriam's +passionate utterances about the copy of Guido's portrait, except that +which supposes her own situation to be that of Beatrice. This chapter is +full of the strongest hints of the fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance to +the picture, at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret of +Beatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence; her ardent defence of +Beatrice's course, as "the best virtue possible under the +circumstances," when Hilda condemns it; her suggestion that, after all, +only a woman could have painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, +and that _she herself_ has "a great mind to undertake a copy," +giving it "what it lacks";--all these things point clearly. But there is +a mass of inferential evidence, besides; many veiled allusions and +approaches to a revelation, as well as that very marked description of +the sketches in which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a "woman +acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man," and the hint, in +the description of her portrait of herself, that "she might ripen to be +what Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, and +slew him for too much adoring it." There is no need to pursue the proof +further: readers will easily find it on re-examining the book. But what +is most interesting, is to observe how Hawthorne has imagined two women +of natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a similar +pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guilt +which has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnatural +depravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of +blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam the +white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her--though +perfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam--believe +herself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime +which weighs upon the soul; but Miriam, in exactly the position of +Beatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep-colored nature than she; and +Hilda, differently affected by the same question of conscience, is a +vastly spiritualized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after the +avenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must have done, +whether there be any guilt in such avengement; but being of so different +a temperament, and having before her eyes the effect of this murder upon +the hitherto sinless Faun, the reality of her responsibility is brought +home to her. The clear conscience of Hilda confirms it. Thus by taking +two extremes on either side of Beatrice,--one, a woman less simply and +ethereally organized, and the other one who is only indirectly connected +with wrong or crime,--Hawthorne seems to extract from the problem of +Beatrice all its most subtle significance. He does not coldly condemn +Beatrice; but by re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds in +magnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful knot of crime and +its consequence, which lies inextricably tangled up within it. How +different from Shelley's use of the theme! There is certainly nothing in +the "Marble Faun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, and the +piercing outcry against the shallow but awful errors of human justice, +which uplift Shelley's drama. But Shelley stops, on the one side, with +this climax:-- + + "O plead + With famine or wind-walking pestilence, + Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man!" + +And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with Beatrice's +characterization of the parricide, + + "Which is, or is not, what men call a crime." + +Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter doubt. "The foremost +result of a broken law," he says, "is ever an ecstatic freedom." But +instead of pausing to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, he +distinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded father to be +crime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam and Donatello may work out +their purification. So that if the first part of the romance is the Fall +of Man repeated, the second part is the proem to a new Paradise +Regained; and the seclusion of the sculptor and the Faun, and their +journey together to Perugia, seasoned with Kenyon's noble and +pure-hearted advice, compose a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim's +Progress. Apt culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton and +Bunyan we found to be so suggestive! The chief means which Kenyon offers +for regeneration is that Miriam and the Faun shall abandon any hope of +mutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery in +the world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, +they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. +At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied ways +of dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happiness +for the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, +springing along a path that leads to higher ends." But he also shows, in +Donatello's final delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom of +some definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by society. Thus, +avenues of thought are opened to us on every side, which we are at +liberty to follow out; but we are not forced, as a mere theorist would +compel us, to pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. +In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of eternal law, or +pluck garlands from some new-budded bough of moral truth. The romance is +like a portal of ebony inlaid with ivory,--another gate of +dreams,--swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. But +some pause on the threshold, unused to such large liberty; and these cry +out, in the words of a well-known critic, "It begins in mystery, and +ends in mist." + +Though the book was very successful, few readers grasped the profounder +portions. It is a vast exemplar of the author's consummate charm as a +simple storyteller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascination +over all readers, notwithstanding the heavy burden of uncomprehended +truths which they were obliged to carry with them. Some critics complain +of the extent to which Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome have +been introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word wasted in the +two volumes. The "vague sense of ponderous remembrances" pressing down +and crowding out the present moment till "our individual affairs are but +half as real here as elsewhere," is essential to the perspective of the +whole; and nothing but this rich picturesqueness and variety could avail +to balance the depth of tragedy which has to be encountered; so that the +nicety of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this great +modern religious romance should thus have become also the ideal +representative of ruined Rome--the home of ruined religions--in its +aesthetic aspects. But one instance of appreciation must be recorded +here, as giving the highest pitch of that delightful literary fellowship +which Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in England. His friend +John Lothrop Motley, the historian, wrote thus of "The Marble Faun," +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. +Where, O where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and +diamonds?... 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 criticised, 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; and to those who +complain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with +a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile of +attitudes,--his ears revealed through a white nightcap,--would be +satisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really +moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile +figures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance.... 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." + +To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley has +kindly sent me a copy of the letter. + +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 loved 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 most 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.... [The allusion here is to illness in the family, +of which there had also been a protracted case in Rome]. 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, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the most opulently happy +part of Hawthorne's life. Before he left America, although he had been +writing--with several interruptions--for twenty-four years, he had only +just reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched upon the petty clamor +which his Custom-House pictures aroused, and the offensive political +attacks following the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scattered +along the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his first +efforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with which he everywhere +met in England, and the charm of highly organized society, with its +powerful artistic classes centred upon great capitals there and in +Italy, a very captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The most +serious one was the change in the consular service made during his term +at Liverpool. The consulate there was considered the most lucrative post +in the President's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to begin +with, Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to resign prospectively, so +that Hawthorne lost entirely the first five months of his tenure. These +were very valuable months, and after the new consul came into office the +dull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business continued bad +so long, that even up to 1855 little more than a living could be made in +the consulate. In February of that year a bill was passed by Congress, +remodelling the diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the salary of +the Liverpool consul at $7,500,--less than half the amount of the best +annual income from it before that time. The position was one of +importance, and involved an expensive mode of life; so that even before +this bill went into operation, though practising "as stern an economy," +he wrote home, "as ever I did in my life," Hawthorne could save but +little; and the effect of it would have been not only to prevent his +accomplishing what he took the office for, but even to have imposed loss +upon him. For, in addition to social demands, the mere necessary office +expenses (including the pay of three clerks) were very large, amounting +to some thousands yearly; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, +to whom Hawthorne could not bring himself to be indifferent, carried off +a good portion of his income. As he says, "If the government chooses to +starve the consul, a good many will starve with him." The most +irritating thing about the new law was that it merely cut down the +consular fees, without bringing the government anything; for the fees +came from business that a notary-public could perform, and the consul +would naturally decline to take it upon himself when his interest in it +was removed. Fortunately, the President was given some discretion about +the date of reappointment, and allowed the old commission to continue +for a time. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of the new +rule, to alter his mode of life materially. He now planned to give up +the place in the autumn of 1855, and go to Italy; but this was not +carried out till two years later. + +Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it his home. There had +not been want of unjust criticism of him in America, while at Liverpool. +When some shipwrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, for +whom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's (then minister) +refusing to have anything to do with the matter, a newspaper rumor was +started at home that Mr. Hawthorne would do nothing for them until +ordered to by Mr. Buchanan. + +"It sickens me," he wrote at that time, "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." + +And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend:-- + +"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be very +well contented there." + +But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many Americans under +similar circumstances, was rigorously obeyed. We shall see what sort of +reward this fidelity to country won from public opinion at home. + + + + +X. + + +THE LAST ROMANCE. + +1860-1863. + +There are in the "English Note-Books" several dismal and pathetic +records of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which it +was Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as one +might have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impression +upon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United States +government in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But though +this evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, there +was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, to +help it along, and he could effect nothing. He resolved, on returning +home, to write some articles--perhaps a volume--exposing the horrors so +calmly overlooked; but the slavery agitation, absorbing everybody, +perhaps discouraged him: the scheme was never carried out. It is a pity; +for, aside from the weight which so eminent a name might have given to a +good cause, the work would have clearly proven the quick, responsive, +practical nature of his humanity--a quality which some persons have seen +fit to deny him--in a case where no question of conflicting rights +divided his sense of duty. + +He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings of +rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856 +he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn +out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same +year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening +between the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:-- + +"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. 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." + +He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from the +beginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to be +severed, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods and +wishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and he +saw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to one +course. In the December after his return, secession began; and for more +than a year following he could not fix his attention upon literary +matters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has +told us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influence +about him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination which +overlay the fixed substance of personal character,--so that, as we have +seen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions,--it +was not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion of +hate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him, +now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination. +It was no time for quiet observation or creative revery. A new era had +broken upon us, ushered by the wild din of trumpet and cannon, and +battle-cry; an era which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. +He must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, striving vainly to +absorb the commotion into himself and to let it subside into clear visions +of the future. No hope! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any horizon +of better things. He who had schooled himself so unceasingly to feel with +utmost intensity the responsibility of each soul for any violence or crime +of others, could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by any +hypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst of that magnificent +turbulence, he was like the central quiet of a whirlpool: all the fierce +currents met there, and seemed to pause,--but only seemed. Full of +sympathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times by the same +warlike impulses, he could not give himself rein as they did, nor dared +to raise any encouraging strain in his writing, as others felt that they +might freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refined by descent and +wedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all carefully, to debate long and +compassionately. But meantime the popular sense of justice--that same +New England sentiment, of which his own was a development--cared nothing +for these fine considerations, and Hawthorne was generally condemned by +it as being warped by his old Democratic alliances into what was called +treason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native land, and suffer +bitter criticism here,--if that were all that could be granted,--rather +than to remain an unmolested exile. + +An article which he contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" in July, 1862, +gives a faint inkling of his state of mind at this time; but nothing +illustrates more clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimed +lay behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. For he there +gives the idea of something like coldness in his attitude touching the +whole great tragedy. But those who saw him daily, and knew his real +mood, have remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. +Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of the degree in +which his sympathy with his own side of the struggle sometimes mastered +him. He used to say that he only regretted that his son was too young +and himself too old to admit of either of them entering the army; and +just after the first battle of Bull Run he wrote to Mr. Lowell, at +Cambridge, declining an invitation:-- + +THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD, July 23, 1861. + +DEAR LOWELL:--I am to start, in two or three days, on an excursion +with----, who has something the matter with him, and seems to need +sea-air and change. If I alone were concerned, ... I would most gladly +put off my trip till after your dinner; but, as the case stands, I am +compelled to decline. Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dull +the edge of many a Northern appetite; but if it puts all of us into the +same grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had better have +suffered ten defeats than won this victory. + +Sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +And to another friend, in October:-- + +"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.... 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 at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper +as of yore." + +He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality," or "Septimius +Felton," which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by +him for another treatment of the same theme, called "The Dolliver +Romance." This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinished +at his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: it +contains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey +which would require too much space. The subject had been one of the +earliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with a +fountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. +One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typification +in Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot of +every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are, +equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a more +ethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us +a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth. These +relate mainly to the temptation of the artist to effect a severance of +ordinary, active human relations. (Sad to think what bitter cause the +author had to brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) The +poet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own circle of +serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life; +but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows,--if he cannot make +the light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appear +shining to posterity,--then he will fall into the treacherous pit of +selfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set of +meanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like the +cabalistic manuscript described in its pages: now it is blurred over +with deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multifarious beauties +like those that swim within the golden depth of Tieck's enchanted +goblet. The ultimate and most insistent moral is perhaps that which +brings it into comparison with Goethe's "Faust"; this, namely, that, in +order to defraud Nature of her dues, we must enter into compact with the +Devil. Both Faust and Septimius study magic in their separate ways, with +the hope of securing results denied to their kind by a common destiny; +but Faust proves infinitely the meaner of the two, since he desires only +to restore his youth, that he may engage in the mere mad joy of a lusty +existence for a few years, while Septimius seeks some mode, however +austere and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries of +world-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined egoism which lays +hold of Septimius is the same spirit incarnated in Goethe's +Mephistopheles,--_der Geist der stets verneint_. To Faust he denies +the existence of good in anything, primarily the good of that universal +knowledge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, but +through this scepticism mining his faith in all besides. To Septimius he +denies the worth of so brief a life as ours, and the good of living to +whatever end seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius might +perhaps be described as Faust at an earlier stage of development than +that in which Goethe represents him. [Footnote: Indeed, these words, +applied by Mephistopheles to Faust, suit Septimius equally well:-- + + "Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben + Der ungebaendigt immer vorwarts dringt + Und dessen uebereiltes Streben + Der Erde Freuden ueberspringt."] + +As a further point of resemblance between the two cases, it may be +noticed that the false dreams of both are dispelled by the exorcising +touch of a woman. Both have fallen into error through perceiving only +half of the truth which has hovered glimmering before them; these errors +originate in the exclusively masculine mood, the asceticism, which has +prevailed in their minds. It will be observed that, in the first +relation of Rose to Septimius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast with +this mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conservatism and +wisely practical tendency to be satisfied with life, which make her +influence so admirable a poising force to man. The subsequent alteration +of the situation, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, is +owing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact "that a heroine +must be supplied who corresponds to the idea in the lover's soul; like +Helena in the second part of Faust." [Footnote: A phase of character +rich in interest, but which I can only mention, in passing, is presented +in the person of Sybil Dacy, who here occupies very much the same place, +in some regards, as Roger Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter." The +movement of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revenge +undertaken by her, as that of "The Scarlet Letter" hangs upon the mode +of retribution sought by the physician; but her malice is directed, +characteristically, against the slayer of the young officer who had +despoiled her of her honor, and, again characteristically, she is unable +to consummate her plan, from the very tenderness of her feminine heart, +which leads her first to half sympathize with his dreams, then pity him +for the deceit she practised on him, and at last to rather love than +hate him.] + +But there is a suitable difference between the working of the womanly +element in "Faust" and in Hawthorne's romance. In the former instance it +is through the gratification of his infernal desire that the hero is +awakened from his trance of error and restored to remorse; while +Septimius's failure to accomplish his intended destiny appears to be +owing to the inability of his aspiring nature to accommodate itself to +that code of "moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. +"Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be very +fair," is the maxim taught him. "If thou love her, all is over, and thy +whole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain." How pathetic +a situation this, how much more terrible than that of Faust, when he has +reached the turning-point in his career! A nature which could accept an +earthly immortality on these terms, for the sake of his fellows, must +indeed have been a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much of +the heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel an +abstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, with the +long-sought drink standing ready for his lips, Septimius nevertheless +seeks a companion. Half unawares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, and +thenceforth, though in a way he had not anticipated, "all is over." Yet, +saved from death by the poison in which he had hoped to find the spring +of endless life, his fate appears admirably fitting. There is no picture +of Mephisto hurrying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. The +wrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, humanity,--these, +indeed, remain, and are remembered. He has undoubtedly fallen from his +first purity and earnestness, and must hereafter be content to live a +life of mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional goodness, +conventional charities, in that substantial English home of his. Could +anything be more perfectly compensatory? + +Nothing is more noticeable than the way in which, while so many +symbolisms spring up out of the story, the hero's half-crazed and +bewildered atmosphere is the one which we really accept, until the +reading is ended. By this means we are enabled to live through the whole +immortal future which he projects for himself, though he never in +reality achieves any of it. This forcing of the infinite into the +finite, we are again indebted to Mr. Higginson for emphasizing as "one +of the very greatest triumphs in all literature." "A hundred separate +tragedies," he says, "would be easier to depict than this which combines +so many in one." + +But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's mind. "Dr. +Heidegger's Experiment," in which several people are restored to youth +for an hour by a life-elixir, was published before 1837. In 1840 we have +this entry in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever here, +he would not care about his offspring." A few years afterward, in "A +Virtuoso's Collection," the elixir vitae is introduced, "in an antique +sepulchral urn," but the narrator refuses to quaff it. "'No; I desire +not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on the +earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial +something within us, that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere +of heaven to preserve it from ruin.'" But the revolt against death, and +then the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence for it, +must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, have been very early +familiar to Hawthorne; and in the course of these meditations, the +conception of deathlessness must often have floated before him. The +tradition as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought he +should never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, in 1852 [Footnote: +See ante, p. 244.]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837 +thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents, +in trying to achieve something totally impossible,--as, to make a +conquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who had +expected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The way +in which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious. +The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "The +print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a +town." By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterward +in England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, at +Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7, +and August 25, 1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that +he "should write a ghost-story for her house," and he observes that "the +legend is a good one." Only five days after first hearing it he makes a +note thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have +carried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, had +he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret +he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited +throughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my +Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he +still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family." This +clearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind, +and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and the +estate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius." Could he have +already connected the two things, the bloody footstep and this +Anglo-American interest? The next piece of history comes in the shape of +a manuscript book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawthorne had +left the consulate, and containing what must have been the earliest +sketch of the story, as he then conceived it. It begins abruptly, and +proceeds uncertainly, at the rate of a few pages each day, for about a +month. Detached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of the +proposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The chief interest seems +to lie in the project which a young American has formed, during a visit +to England, of tracing out and proving his inherited right to an old +manor-house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old hall +possesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and with this some +mystery is connected, which the writer himself does not yet seem to have +discovered. He takes a characteristic pleasure in waiting for this +suggestive footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to its +lair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon it, +indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of vague anticipation +in which he hopes to envelop the good reader. The perusal of this +singular journal, in which the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, +is absorbing beyond description. But though at times he seems to be +rapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at every point the +subtle darkness and coming terror of the theme seem to baffle the +author, and he retires, to await a more favorable moment. At its +conclusion, though he appears now to have formed a clear picture enough +of what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the underlying +thought, which he at moments dimly feels but cannot bring to light, and +without which he is unable to fuse the materials into readiness for the +mould. + +Our only information as to the course of the story between April, 1858, +and the time of writing "Septimius," must be gathered from a sketch +found among the author's papers, the date of which it is not possible to +determine with precision, though both its matter and form indicate that +it must have been written subsequently to the journal above mentioned. +Herein are curiously mingled certain features of both "Septimius" and +the "Dolliver Romance." So far as is consistent with the essential +privacy of the manuscript, I shall give a general outline of its +contents. It consists of two sections, in the second of which a lapse of +some years is implied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardly +exceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a singular, +morose old man, who inhabits a house overlooking a New England +graveyard. But though his situation resembles in this particular that of +Grandsir Dolliver, his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. +Portsoaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy-and-water and a +cloud-compelling pipe; and his study, like the doctor's chamber in +"Septimius," is tapestried with spider-webs; a particularly virulent +spider which dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, +being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. On the other +hand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that of +Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, +straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character of +Dr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver. This "grim +doctor," as he is almost invariably styled in the manuscript, seems to +have originated in Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, +spiritualist and antiquarian, of Florence, [Footnote: French and Italian +Note-Books, Vol. II.] who also probably stood as a model for Grandsir +Dolliver. Not that either of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup; +but the personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman had +some sort of affinity with the author's idea, which led him to maintain +a certain likeness between him and his own fictitious persons. As in the +case of the Florentine antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house of +the doctor, her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's adopted +daughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. There is much about her like +Pansie, of the "Dolliver" fragment, but she is still only dimly brought +out. The boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely addicted +to revery. Though his traits are but slightly indicated, he suggests in +general the character of Septimius, and may very easily have grown into +him, at a later period. At first he is much neglected by the doctor, but +afterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in questioning his mysterious +guardian as to his own origin, and the connection subsisting between +them, he secures greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints to +him the fact of his descent from an old English family, and frequent +mention is made of the ancestral hall, the threshold of which is stained +by the imprint of a bloody footstep marking the scene of some dark +tragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, +assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangers +are introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, and +connection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone is +discovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old +man had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness of +a foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, and +the children, in playing about it, discover a little silver key, which +the doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the declaration +that it is of no value. After this, the boy's education is taken in hand +by his being sent to school; but presently the doctor sickens of life, +and characteristically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die, +does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made of certain papers +which he had kept in a secret place, and these the youth now secures. +The second part describes his advent into England. He soon makes his way +to the old hall, but just as his connection with it and its inmates +begins, the manuscript terminates. + +It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at first laid in +New England, whereas the journalized sketch opened the drama in England. +From this I infer that the former was written after the return to this +country. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, after +the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before +the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note +of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on +beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with +the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the +legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no +longer write an English romance, but must give the book mainly an +American coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, too, in his thus +wavering between the two countries, which now so nearly equally divided +his affections, and striving to unite the Wayside with the far-off +English manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall into +place. The deathless man was made the hero; the English inheritance +became an inferior motive-power, on which, however, the romantic action +depends; the family papers and the silver key came well to hand for the +elucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new and deep +significance; and a "purple everlasting flower," presented in 1854 to +Mrs. Hawthorne by the gardener of Eaton Hall, blossomed out, with +supernatural splendor, as a central point in the design. The scene being +in Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revolutionary +association was natural. But the public phase of that epoch could not +assume an important place: it was sunk into the background, forming +merely a lurid field on which the figures of this most solemn and +terrific of all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. One +singular result of the historic location, however, is the use that was +now made of that tradition which Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, +concerning a boy who was chopping wood on the April morning of the +famous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the field, whom he +killed with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, +I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, +and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain.... This one +circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us +of the fight." Thus had he written, fourteen years before; and now that +sombre study furnished him with the psychology of the death-scene in the +beginning of "Septimius." + +But the romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learn +from the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home," written in July, +1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown +aside," which "will never now be accomplished." In November of that +year, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; and +in the first page of the isolated opening scene, published in July, +1864, occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from which the +good doctor had received great invigoration, and which we may well +suppose was destined to tincture the whole story. Another point from +which a connection with "Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is the +passing mention of Grandsir Dolliver's grandson Cornelius, by whom this +cordial had been compounded, he having displayed a great efficiency with +powerful drugs. Recalling that the author describes many nostrums as +having been attributed to Septimius, which he had perhaps chanced upon +in his unsuccessful attempts to distil the elixir of life, we may fairly +conjecture this posthumous character of Cornelius, this mere memory, to +be the remains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been buried +by the author under the splendid monument of a still more highly wrought +and more aspiring form of the romance. The only remaining portions of +this latest form have been printed, and are lull of a silvery and +resonant promise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romance +of Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the child +Pansie--who promised to be the author's most captivating feminine +creation--with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of +celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorseless +mournfulness of the preliminary work. In the manuscript sketch for +"Septimius" there is a note referring to a description in the "English +Note-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead and +dry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this is +caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted round +them like gigantic snakes, ... throttling the life out of them, ... and +one feels that they have _stolen the life_ that belonged to the +pines." This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of some +life being stolen in order to add to any other life more than its share, +is an idea that very clearly appears in the romance. In "Dolliver" the +same strain of feeling would probably have reappeared; but it would +there perhaps have been beautified, softened, expiated by the mutual +love of Pansie and the grandsire; each wishing to live forever, for the +other. Even in "Septimius" we can discern Hawthorne standing upon the +wayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of the unhappy hero, +tenderly diffusing the essence of his own concluding thoughts on art and +existence. Like Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his own +death, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in midmost of the melody, +leaving the strain unfinished, he labors on, prescient of the +overhanging doom. Genial and tender at times, amidst their sadness, his +reveries are nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death; and it +is not until the opening of "The Dolliver Romance" that the darkness +breaks away. Then, indeed, we feel once more the dewy freshness of the +long-past prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, +undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the dark valley appears +for a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on his +countenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this new +message that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddle +of sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out a +little way from earth. + +Only an eddying silence! And yet the air seems even now alive with his +last words. + + + + +XI. + + +PERSONALITY. + +What has thus far been developed in this essay, concerning Hawthorne's +personality, though incidental, has, I hope, served the end in +view,--that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the most +profound thought and the most graceful and humorous mental play. The +details of his early life already given show how soon the inborn honor +of his nature began to shine. The small irregularities in his college +course have seemed to me to bring him nearer and to endear him, without +in any way impairing the dignity and beauty of character which prevailed +in him from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared the average +human history in these harmless peccadilloes; for they never hurt his +integrity, and they are reminders of that old but welcome truth, that +the greatest men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. He +had many difficulties to deal with, as unpicturesque and harassing as +any we have to encounter in our daily courses,--a thing which people are +curiously prone to forget in the case of eminent authors. The way in +which he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We discover how +well the high qualities of genius were matched by those of character. + +Fragmentary anecdotes have a value, but so relative that to attempt to +construct the subject's character out of them is hazardous. Conceptions +of a man derived only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb's +ghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, are replaced +throughout the body by new ones. Likewise, the grossest errors have been +committed through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne's +writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so much +imagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and careful +imagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to be +interpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, very +inadequately representative, and often--unless read in many +lights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false +notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modest +covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing to +withdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of the +latter's unpopularity:-- + +"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it is +honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measure +out my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of the +occasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit of +it needlessly." + +Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifying +word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne +says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between +the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he +should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for +the transient embodiment of a mood! + +The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that he +must have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so many +grave thoughts and solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as he +himself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale or +an essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not what +is peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me." He +sympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mind +of the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through +life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is +called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius +who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to +describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the +abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of +_self_-study,--personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is +what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing +to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it +being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against +them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is +so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and +forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is to +excite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that the +elements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; therefore +we begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual nature +all the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any of +us. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy person. + +"You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me," his friend +George Hillard wrote to him, once. "How comes it that, with so +thoroughly healthy an organization as you have, you have such a taste +for the morbid anatomy of the human heart, and such a knowledge of it, +too? I should fancy, from your books, 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." + +This very healthiness was his qualification for his office. By virtue of +his mental integrity and absolute moral purity, he was able to handle +unhurt all disintegrated and sinful forms of character; and when souls +in trouble, persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote to +him for counsel, they recognized the healing touch of one whose pitying +immaculateness could make them well. + +She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympathy such as has +rarely been given to any man, who lived with him a life so exquisitely +fair and high, that to speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, has +written:-- + +"He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed +what a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood was +always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the +airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too +far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping +imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived +morbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumination of +his own steady cheer." + +His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his genial warmth and +ease in converse with them. He could seldom talk freely with more than +two or three, however, on account of his constitutional shyness, and +perhaps of a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind; though he possessed +a ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody: to Mrs. T---- good sense; +to Mary, good sense, with a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G----, sentiment, +romance, and nonsense." [Footnote: American Note-Books, 1837.] A +gentleman who was with him at Brook farm, and knew him well, tells me +that his presence was very attractive, and that he inspired great esteem +among all at the farm by his personal qualities. On a walking trip to +Wachusett, which they once made together, Hawthorne showed a great +interest in sitting in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen to +the talk of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in which he +was approached had a great deal to do with his response. If treated +simply and wisely, he would answer cordially; but he was entirely +dismayed, as a rule, by those who made demonstrations of admiration or +awe. "Why do they treat me so?" he asked a friend, in one case of this +sort. "Why, they're afraid of you." "But I tremble at _them_," he +said. "They think," she explained, "that you're imagining all sorts of +terrible things." "Heavens!" he answered; "if they only knew what I +_do_ think about." At one time, when he was visiting this same +friend, he was obliged to return some calls, and his companion in the +midst of conversation left him to continue it. He had previously asked +his hostess, in assumed terror, what he should talk about, and she +advised "climate." Accordingly, he turned to the naval officer whom he +was calling upon, and asked him if he had ever been to the Sandwich +Islands. "The man started," he said, on returning, "as if he had been +struck. He had evidently been there and committed some terrible crime, +which my allusion recalled. I had made a frightful mess of it. B---- led +me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary +and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation +caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a +new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis +has given an account of his demeanor on another occasion:-- + +"I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. +It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable +hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled; and I, who +listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some +time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a +little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and +his black eyes ['black' is an error] clearly burning under his black +brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent +as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a +poet,--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and +stood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. +No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversation +flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to +be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent man +imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at +his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing was +lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the +exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but +this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said +by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness +of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently +rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his +face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the +night.'" + +He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if a +man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, +because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not." And the +same writer says:---- + +"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." + +I am told that in his own home, though he was often silent, it was never +with sadness except in seasons of great illness in the house, the +prevailing effect of his manner being usually that of a cheerful and +almost humorous calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the best +descriptions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering smile"; +and of his atmosphere, when he says that at Emerson's house it seemed +always morning, but at Hawthorne's you passed into + + "A land in which it seemed always afternoon." + +Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who knew him to have +been always very impressive. He was tall and strongly built, with +beautiful and lustrous gray-blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair of +great softness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the early +engraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar fineness and delicacy, +giving unusual softness to his complexion. After his Italian sojourn 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 from 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 and almost irresolute voice." +The occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at anything +were very rare; but when these came, he manifested a strength of sway +only to be described as regal. Without the least violence, he brought a +searching sternness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying as +it did the weight of perfect self-control. 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 quite +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 habitual and informal 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 an explanation. His considerateness was always delicate and +alert, and has left in his family a reverence for qualities that have +certainly never been surpassed and not often equalled in sweetness. + +He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, but +not--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside the +Concord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and +was fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercise +was walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never even +seen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows" +with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in a +paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, +sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanac +or newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored +volumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in his +choice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for the +hour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently +by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving an +interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, +was at one time a special favorite with him. + +It begins:-- + + "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, + Places devoted to the Night, + Remote from Tumult and from Noise, + How you my restless thoughts delight!" + +And the last stanza has these lines:-- + + "O, how I solitude adore, + That element of noblest wit, + Where I have learned Apollo's lore, + Without the pains to study it."] + +An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books in +themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulate +a library of any size, but he had a passion for books. + +"There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of +all kinds," he writes in "The Old Manse." "A bound volume has a charm in +my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good +Mussulman; ... every new book or antique one may contain the 'open +sesame,'--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected +cave of Truth." + +When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a small +package of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure for +many days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, +from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordial +admirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical review +of their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test of +his own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which he +judges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind was +impressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found in +them. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did not +weakly underrate his work. "Recognition," he once said to Mr. Howells, +"makes a man very modest." + +An attempt has also been made to show that he had little interest in +animals, partly based, ludicrous as it may seem, on his bringing them +into only one of his books. In his American journals, however, there is +abundant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at the Old +Manse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he says he should not have +done it for himself; and in the Trosachs he finds a moment for pitying +some little lambs startled by the approach of his party. [Footnote: +English Note-Books (May, 1856).] I have already mentioned his fondness +for cats. It has further been said that he did not enjoy wild nature, +because in the "English Note-Books" there is no outgushing of ecstatic +description. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment of it. He could +not enter into the spectacle when hurrying through strange regions. +Among the English lakes he writes:-- + +"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me +that I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all in +the space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was a +surfeit. + +"I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who goes for the +set and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not let herself be seen +in such cases. You must patiently bide her time; and by and by, at some +unforeseen moment, she will quietly and suddenly unveil herself and for +a brief space allow you to look right into the heart of her mystery. But +if you call out to her peremptorily, 'Nature! unveil yourself this very +moment!' she only draws her veil the closer; and you may look with all +your eyes, and imagine that you see all that she can show, and yet see +nothing." + +But this was because his sensibility was so great that he drew from +little things a larger pleasure than many feel when excited by grand +ones; and knowing this deeper phase, he could not be content with the +hasty admiration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty of a +scene which he could absorb in peace was never lost upon him. 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. Nothing could be more +accurate or sensitive than the brief descriptions of nature in his +works. But there is nothing sentimental about them; partly owing to the +Anglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to seek precise and detailed +statement first of all, and partly because of a certain classic, +awe-inspired reserve, like that of Horace and Virgil. + +There was a commendable indolence in his character. It was not a +constitutional weakness, overcoming will, but the instinctive precaution +of a man whose errand it was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. +He always waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But these +intervals, of course, were richly productive of revery which afterward +entered into the creative moments. He would sometimes become deeply +abstracted in imagination; and while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter" +it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting in the room where +his wife was doing some sewing, he unconsciously took up a part of the +work and cut it into minute fragments with the scissors, without being +aware that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in the same way +gradually chipped off with a knife portions of a table, until the entire +folding-leaf was worn away by the process. The opinion was sometimes +advanced by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial labor he +might not have done so much with the pen; but in this he perhaps +underestimated the leisure in his blood, which was one of the elements +of his power. Men of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire of +ideas, and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from such a +fate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, it may have had +something to do with his comparative withdrawal from practical affairs +other than those which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave he +writes:-- + +"His error lay in supposing that this age more than any past or future +one is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a new +suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; ... and +more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in +view whether he himself should contend for it or against it." + +The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of a fatalist, but +of an optimist (if we must connect him with any "ism") who has a very +profound faith in Providence; not in any "special providence," but in +that operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies and +conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs +to a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers of +his generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of +showing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, +how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of very +great sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, by +consequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeleton +statement: the noblest element in his mood is that he believes with his +heart. A good interpreter has said that he _feels_ with his _brain_, and +_thinks_ with his _heart_, to show the completeness with which he +mingled the two elements in his meditations on existence. A warm, pure, +living sympathy pervaded all his analysis of mankind, without which that +analysis would have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view which +reckons him to have been wanting in moral enthusiasm: he had not that +kind which can crush out sympathy with suffering, for the sake of +carrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but one +cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possesses +another side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must be +remembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a suffering +poet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was +deeper than that of any scheme or system. + +His distaste for society has been declared to proceed from the fact +that, when he once became interested in people, he could no longer +chemically resolve them into material for romance. But this assumption +is also erroneous; for Hawthorne, if he felt it needful, could bring to +bear upon his best friends the same qualitative measuring skill that he +exercised on any one. I do not doubt that he knew where to place his +friends and acquaintance in the scale of relative excellence. All of us +who have not an equal analytic power with his own can at least reverence +his discretion so far as to believe that he had stand-points not open to +every one, from which he took views often more essentially just than if +he had assumed a more sweeping estimate. In other cases, where he +bestowed more friendship and confidence than the object of them +especially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple pleasure of accepting +what circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person; +although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he +often spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense," deeming it a +desirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioning +trust on his part; for he might well be called + + "As the greatest only are, + In his simplicity sublime." + +The connection between Pierce and himself involved too many +considerations to make it possible to pass them with indifference; and +he perhaps condemned certain public acts of the President, while feeling +it to be utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mistakes +with any one. As to other slighter connections, it is very likely he did +not take the trouble that might have saved him from being imposed upon. + +But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality precisely. A +poet's whole effort is to indirectly express this, by expressing the +effect of things upon him; and we may read much of Hawthorne in his +books, if we have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only a +part of himself into them; that part which best served the inexorable +law of his genius for treating life in a given light. For the rest, his +two chapters on "The Custom-House" and "The Old Manse" show us something +of his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost character +was a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundly +the impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudy +veil stretches over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. "I +have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At another time: "Lights +and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know +neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closely +into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality of +appearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities which +are all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he would +hesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his +searching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In other +persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study of +investigation from without inward,--a more healthy method. His +_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, would +of course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to +light in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inability +to define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is the +creative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whether +many of the famous delineators of character could give us a very +distinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it would +probably make them out the most uninteresting of beings. It would +certainly be divested of the special charm of their other writing. +Imagine Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar traits: +would he be able to excite even a smile? How much of his own delicious +personality could Thackeray have described without losing the zest of +his other portraitures? Hawthorne has given a kind of picture of himself +in Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that character by his +friends; but I suspect he has adroitly constructed Coverdale out of the +_appearance_ which he knew himself to make in the eyes of +associates. I do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisive +personality; for indeed he had. But the essence of the person cannot be +compressed into a few brief paragraphs, and must be slowly drawn in as a +pervasive elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In the +latter he has given as much definition of his interior self as we are +likely to get, for no one else can continue the broken jottings that he +has left, and extend them into outlines. We shall not greatly err if we +treat the hidden depths of his spirit with as much reverence as he +himself used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of those who +have studied this most careful and delicate of definers have embraced +the madness of attempting to bind him down in unhesitating, absolute +statements. He who mastered words so completely that he learned to +despise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy epithets and a +few conventional phrases. But none can ever be said to know Hawthorne +who do not leave large allowances for the unknowable. + + + + +XII. + + +POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. + +The names of Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have been so often connected +without due discrimination, that it is imperative to consider here the +actual relation between the three men. Inquiry might naturally be roused +by the circumstance that, although Hawthorne has freely been likened to +Irving in some quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are never +supposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they might aptly be cited +in illustration of the widely opposed tendencies already developed in +our brief national literature. Two things equal to the same thing are +equal to each other; and if Poe and Irving were each equal to Hawthorne, +there would be some similarity between them. But it is evident that they +are not like quantities; and we must conclude that they have been +unconsciously used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure to +gauge the greatest of the triad with. + +Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to both Poe and Irving. +Hawthorne and Irving represent a dignity and roundedness of diction +which is one of the old-fashioned merits in English writing; and because +they especially, among eminent authors of the century, have stood for +this quality, they have been supposed to stand close together. But +Irving's speech is not so much an organic part of his genius as a +preconceived method of expression which has a considerable share in +modifying his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. On the other +hand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and strongly +out of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the +slightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the +informing thought,--like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery. +The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in the +beginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that +massive power of hewing out individual character which afterward had +full swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in his +lighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "The +Mutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne's +conceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" might +have issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's own +repertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile art +than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even +in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than +Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. +Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on +endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with +that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the +construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and +symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It is a brilliant +instance of the more ideal mind asserting its commanding power, by +admirable achievements in the inferior styles,--so that even in those he +was at once ranked with the most famous practiser of them,--and then +quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one +had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a +moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of +"Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but +evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the +same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they +assuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have next +to nothing. The only phases of character which Irving has any success in +dealing with are those of credulity and prejudice. The legendary +tendency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. Both were +lovers of association, and turned naturally to the past for materials: +the New-Yorker found delightful sources of tradition or of ludicrous +invention in the past of that city, where his family held a +long-established and estimable footing; and the New-Englander, as we +have seen, drew also through the channel of descent from the dark tarn +of Puritan experience. But Irving turned his back upon everything else +when he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while Hawthorne +sought that vantage-ground only to secure a more impressive view of +humanity. There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as well +as a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is his +ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of double +meanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself, +but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid +fascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, +possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was at +once seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination were +always in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associate +with him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainly +very charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief to +turn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. He +pitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time and +locality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality, +than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almost +entirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here, +indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer of +fiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not want +reality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that we +must not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is a +Northern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke was +seen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, +and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came. When he +awoke, he described an imaginary excursion of his own, following exactly +the course which the smoke had taken. This indirect contact might +furnish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious intercourse with +the world through his books. + +It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this difference to the +greater strength of Irving's humor,--a trait, always much lauded in him. +It is without doubt a good quality. This mild, sweet radiance of an +uncontaminated and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. +But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer and far more +joyous" than Addison's. Both in style and in humor Irving has caught +something of the grace of "The Spectator"; but as in the style he +frequently falls short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in humor +I cannot see how he is to be brought at all on a level with Addison, who +is primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, but all the deeper on +that account in the lustre of his humorous displays. Addison, too, had +somewhat of the poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as of +neat satire and compact characterization. But if we looked for a pithy +embodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might call +the former a "polite writer," and the latter a profound poet: as, +indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent to +confuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos is +the great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always a +lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made +so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has won +so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there +is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an +industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, +have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now know +is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous +character,--a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of +relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our +sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears an +aspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can +is barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow of +his return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not even +suspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness of +the situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to the +bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over the +spectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written tale +is a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is a +common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life +hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out +of Rip Van Winkle's flagon." To be sure, there is a hidden moral here, +of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscured +as to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind. Such a +moral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced, +in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person of +searching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it without +injury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine what +divine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of this +theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the +case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving +given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master +comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul +that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must +admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector +of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to +forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the +discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage +in Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker +and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something +more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we +have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he +would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of +him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be +always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, +now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out +upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the +silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion +of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor +play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos +of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. +This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The +Marble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet Letter," for that does not present +Hawthorne's genius in its widest action. In one place he speaks of "the +tragic power of laughter,"--a discrimination which involves the whole +deep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to remark that +at the most affecting portions of the play "Rip Van Winkle," the +majority of the audience always laugh; this, though irritating to a +thoughtful listener, is really an involuntary tribute to the marvellous +wisdom and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and humor. +Again Hawthorne: "Human destinies look _ominous_ without some +perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray." And, elsewhere: +"There is _something more awful in happiness than in sorrow_, the +latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance +and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble +at it." These thoughts could never have occurred to Irving with the same +intensity. Now, from all this we gather inference as to the deep sources +of Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was the daughter, +and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to actual exhibition of humor, +Hawthorne's is made a diffusive medium to temper the rays of tragedy +with, and never appears in such unmixed form as that of Irving. So that +even though we must confess a smaller mental calibre in the latter, we +may gladly grant him a superiority in his special mood of fun. +An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately wrote: "Poe is a +kind of Hawthorne and _delirium tremens_." This announcement, +however, betrays a singular misapprehension. When Hawthorne's tales +first appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an intimate +and direct relation to the author's own moods; while Poe's were supposed +to be daring flights of pure imagination, or ingenious attempts to prove +theories held by the writer, but were not charged directly to his own +experience. Time has shown that the converse was the case. The psychical +conditions described by Hawthorne had only the remotest connection with +any mood of his own; they were mainly translations, into the language of +genius, of certain impressions and observations drawn from the world +around him. After his death, the Note-Books caused a general rustle of +surprise, revealing as they did the simple, wholesome nature of this +strange imaginer; yet though he there speaks--surely without prejudice, +because without the least knowledge that the world would ever hear +him--of "the objectivity" of his fictions, critics have not yet wholly +learned how far apart from himself these creations were. The observation +of some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings, +would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a concise +embodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate it +with; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like that +of Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil," or a singular +physiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based, +would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstrip +it in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, the +whole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from +_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; and +this expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and +movement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from the +outside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merely +inventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild, +arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but his +impressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid. +What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that this +quality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owing +to it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's +unfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to a +scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of his +unjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one else +could be. The fine enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadly +acid of his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have pierced +his poetry and prose, shattered their structure, and blurred their +beauty. Only four or five of his poems--"The Raven," "Ligeia," the +earlier of the two addressed "To Helen," and the sonnet to his +wife--escape being flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable error +of taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. In +criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acute +instinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as all +his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding +clever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things are +essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe to +exemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of his +thoroughly unsound mind subverted the better qualities, vitiated his +judgments with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, and +withered the most that he wrote in this direction into something very +like rubbish. We have seen, for example, how his attempt to +dispassionately examine Hawthorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ran +his own pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is suggestive +to find that the holder of such exacting doctrine about beauty, the man +also of whom pre-eminently it may be said, as Baudelaire wrote of him, +"Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great enemies," should so +completely fail to reach even the unmoral perfection which he assigned +as the highest attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of the +beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the most +loathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. This +passionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a +normal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interior +discord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, +instead of the sense of beauty,--except (as has been said) in fragments. +Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, +and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classic +antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of all +lovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. "I have imbibed +the shadows of fallen columns," he says in one of his tales, "at Balbec, +and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin." +Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, and +it is the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of the +still living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clinging +around them. Hawthorne, too, wandered much amid human ruin, but it was +not with delight in the mere fact of decay; rather with grieving over +it, and the hope to learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, +and how future structures might be made stronger by studying the sources +of failure. One of the least thoughtful remarks which I have heard +touching Hawthorne was this, that his books could not live because they +dealt with the "sick side" of human nature. As if great poets ever +refrained from dealing with it! The tenure of fame depends on whether +the writer has himself become infected with sickness. With Hawthorne +this is most certainly not the case, for the morbid phases which he +studied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the other hand, +pictured his own half-maniacal moods and diseased fancies. There is +absolutely no study of character in his stories, no dramatic +separateness of being. He looks only for fixed and inert human +quantities, with which he may juggle at will. He did not possess +insight; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud was merely a +sort of mathematical ingenuity of calculation, in which, however, he was +extraordinarily keen. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poe +must be rated almost highest among American poets, and high among +prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and +frightful energy crowded into such small compartments. Yet it would be +difficult to find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than that +which informs his tales. It is not the _representation_ of +semi-insanity that he gives: he himself is its _representative_. +Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into some sort of healthy +relation with us, he is swayed and carried away by it. His genius +flourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that it +left, are like a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyncheon in the "Seven +Gables" is Poe himself, deprived of the ability to act: in both are +found the same consummate fastidiousness, the same abnormal egotism. And +it is worth attention that when Clifford is aroused to sudden action by +Judge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his intellect is almost +precisely that brilliant but defective kind of ratiocination which Poe +so delights to display. It is crazy wildness, with a surface appearance +of accurate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne--the calm, +ardent, healthy master of imagination--is able to create the disordered +type that Poe _is_, we shall find by how much the former is greater +than the latter. + +A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical question as to Poe. He +calls him "the mad man of letters _par excellence_," and by an +ingenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe was +the victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts +to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less +given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the +necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is a +morbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; but +that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates the +perfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded with +it. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of men like +Shakespere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their temperaments, +grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, +and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparing +insight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in so +advanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more +dazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably more +unique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the true +sense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the +side of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition with +Hawthorne: although we have ranked him high in poetry and prose, +regarded simply as a dynamic substance, it must be confessed that his +prose has nothing which can be called style, nor even a manner like +Irving's very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself in +various ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for the sake of +getting off one of his pseudo-philosophical disquisitions; and, +notwithstanding many successful hits in expression, and a specious but +misleading assumption of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language is +loose, promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. + +Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary condition in common: +each shows a double side. With Poe the antithesis is between poetry and +criticism; Irving, having been brought up by Fiction as a foster-mother, +is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian, History; and +Hawthorne rests his hand from ideal design, in elaborating quiet +pictures of reality. In each case there is more or less seeming +irreconcilement between the two phases found in combination; but the +opposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the grasp with +which it is controlled by him is stronger than that of either Poe or +Irving,--again a result pronouncing him the master. + +There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. The +question of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one +in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so +relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study +of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point +of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, +German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their +component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be +called a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. +The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them is +that of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original in +American genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains a +certain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It is +not one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had the +sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, +the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, +both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of our +Revolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certain +truths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming of +separate standards in literature is a continuation of that historic +attitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of the +world, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. The +attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a +singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe +exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that +he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position +in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want +of deep literary identification with the national character in general. +But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have +been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do +with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in +Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Theophile Gautier, as a sort +of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with +the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, +comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and +the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's +position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius +under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native +Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and +"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited +literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign +audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone +secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly +wise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "English +Writers on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served in +our days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, and +every day we live a whole volume of refutation." His friendship with +Scott, also, was a delightful addition to the amenities of literature, +and shall remain a goodly and refreshing memory to us always. Yet what +he accomplished in this way for American literature at large, Irving +compensated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot be denied +that the success of "The Sketch-Book" led to an overdoing of his part in +"Bracebridge Hall." "Salmagundi" was the first step in the path of +palpable imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch-Book," +though taking some charming departures, the writer made a more refined +attempt to produce the same order of effects so perfectly attained by +the suave Queen Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollection +of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes positively annoying. It is +not that the style of Addison is precisely reproduced, of course, but +the general resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have been +without direct and conscious copying, the memory of Addisonian methods +is too apparent. Irving's real genius, which occasionally in his other +writings emits delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in this +work; and though he has the knack of using the dry point of Addison's +humor, he doesn't achieve what etchers call "the burr" that ought to +result from its use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with true +aquafortis precision, and Irving's sketches are to his as pen-and-ink +drawing to the real etching. But it was not only this lack of literary +independence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so well +satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two +nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he +had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_ +obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused +pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,--honest, pathetic Paulding, a +rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and +couldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as + + "The bard of the backwoods, + The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin." + +Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his old +coadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish, +they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude which +Irving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a page +on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually amiable toward him at first, +thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance: +"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. He +was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owed +him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us.... It was +plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everything +to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a less savage fashion +we, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with such +unjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between the +date of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home"; +the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time. + +In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a pioneer, along +with Cooper, and was in this quite different from Poe, who had no +aptitude in that way. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" is too +farcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedly +had a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local +antiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were +valuable acquisitions so far as they went. Would that they had been +wrought out with a more masterly touch; and would that Irving had +penetrated further in this direction! But, though these Hudson legends +will long keep his fame renewed, it will perhaps be chiefly as a +historian that he will be prized. His pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, +his "Mahomet," "Columbus," and "Conquest of Granada," though not too +profound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem; and his mellow and +stately narrative of Washington's life is a work of enduring excellence. +But these lie outside of our present discussion. Nor need we compare his +achievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after the review we +have been making of the latter's relation to New England. + +Poe and Irving and Hawthorne have all met with acceptance in other +countries, and their works have been translated into several languages. +Irving has exercised no perceptible influence on literature at home or +abroad; Poe has entered more or less into the workings of a school in +England and a group in France. Hawthorne's position on the Continent has +perhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstract +admiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind +than either of the others, and it is probable that his share in +inspiring noble literature in America will--as it has already begun to +show itself an important one--become vastly greater in future. It is +impossible, as we have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between these +writers. Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is beyond +dispute the more original of the two. Each, again, has something which +Hawthorne does not possess. But, if we must attempt at all to reduce so +intricate a problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three may +be stated in the equation, Poe _plus_ Irving _plus_ an unknown +quantity equals Hawthorne. + + + + +XIII. + + +THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. + +The suddenness with which Hawthorne faded away and died, when at the +zenith of his fame, is no less strange and sad and visionary now than it +was a poignant anguish then. He returned from Europe somewhat +lingeringly, as we have seen, knowing too well the difference between +the regions he was quitting and the thinner, sharper, and more wasting +atmosphere of a country where every one who has anything to give is +constantly drawn upon from every side, and has less resource for +intellectual replenishment than in other lands. His seven years in +England and Italy had, on the whole, been a period of high prosperity, +of warm and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful literary +encounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning among so many new +and suggestive scenes. And when he found himself once more on the old +ground, with the old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily in +the face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain degree of +depression would follow. Just as this reaction had set in, the breaking +out of civil war threw upon Hawthorne, before he had time to brace +himself for the shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. The +conflict of feelings which it excited on the public side has been +sketched; and that alone should have been enough to make the years of +strife a time of continuous gloom and anxiety to him; but it would be +losing sight of a very large element in his distress, not to add that he +mourned over the multitude of private griefs which were the harvest of +battle as acutely as if they had all been his own losses. His intense +imagination burned them too deeply into his heart. How can we call this +weakness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness and sympathy? +"Hawthorne's life was shortened by the war," Mr. Lowell says. Expressing +this view once, to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, I +was met with entire understanding. He told me that his own father, a +stanch Unionist, though not in military service, was as certainly +brought to his death by the war as any of the thousands who fell in +battle. In how wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply to +Hawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death,-- + + "To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed!" + +His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from the first he +foresaw that he could not outlive these trials. In April, 1862, he +visited Washington, and wrote the article "Chiefly about War Matters" +already alluded to. He has left this glimpse of himself at that time:-- + +"I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think will +be the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One charm it must +needs have,--an aspect of immortal jollity and well-to-do-ness; for +Leutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and when +he sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne; +and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutual +good-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture made a +really miraculous progress. Leutze is the best of fellows." + +The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had already begun to +give way; and though he wrote thus cheerily, he was by no means well. In +another published note there is this postscript:-- + +"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I enclose, +makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure in making me +venerable,--as if I were as old as himself." + +He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon "The Dolliver +Romance," trudging to and fro upon his hill-top, which was called, at +home, "the mount of vision." But before proceeding with that, he began +the series of essays composing "Our Old Home," not yet feeling strong +enough for the more trying exertion of fiction. But the preparation of +these, charming as they are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. +"I am delighted," he writes to his publisher, "at what you tell me +about the kind appreciation of my articles, for I feel rather gloomy +about them myself.... I cannot come to Boston to spend more than a day, +just at present. It would suit me better to come for a visit when the +spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your +hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; +though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me +somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of his +shell." + +His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" seems to have been one of +fatigue and discouragement. He had, besides, to deal with the harassing +question of the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved in this +manly and admirable letter to his publisher:-- + +"I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed my +reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, smoke cigars +over it, and see what it might be possible for me to do towards taking +it. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw +either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate +personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, +especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence +without his kindness; and if he 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. As for the literary public, it must accept my book precisely +as I think fit to give it, or let it alone." + +By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the Romance had sunk +still lower, so that he wrote:-- + +"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if ever. +There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at +the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to +be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of +writing a sunshiny book." + +And, a little later:-- + +"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." + +His inability to work has been illustrated in the numerous bulletins of +this period published by Mr. Fields: they show him at times despondent, +as in the extracts above, then again in a state of semi-resolution. At +another time there is mixed presentiment and humor in his report. + +"I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I +see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other +broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist +upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. That +trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a further +stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, lost its temper +and its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. +Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for it; +perhaps not." + +But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy shadow that makes +the flickering humor even sadder than the awesome conviction that he has +done with writing. How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, in +which he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his literary faculty! +Here he announces, finally: "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." Yet the cause was not so much the +loss of literary power, as the physical exhaustion that had already worn +him away beyond recovery. He longed for England; and possibly if he +could have gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the sense +of rest that he would have felt there, might have restored him. He had +friends in this country, however, who made attempts to break up the +disastrous condition into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of +1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, he received from his friend Mr. +Lowell this most charming invitation to come to Cambridge:-- + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--I hope you have not forgotten that during +"anniversary week" you were to make me a little anniversary by a visit? +I have been looking forward to it _ever_ so long. My plan is that +you come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club, +and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last +day of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book is +going through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here. +I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind,--red +for sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing at +all, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one is +satisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader of +taste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as +high and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that +my crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shall +present you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soon +as you arrive. + +Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you I +have looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest spring +pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds. + +Always cordially yours, + +J. R. LOWELL. + +"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," wrote Hawthorne, in +answer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighing +upon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine and +for my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but I +hope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club on +Saturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit." + +But, at the last moment, he was obliged to give it up, being detained by +a cold. And there seemed indeed a fatality which interfered with all +attempts to thwart the coming evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, +completely broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out southward +with Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at Philadelphia he began to +improve; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he had +gained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here to +dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: these +things would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditation +on Hawthorne's life which we have been following out,--a life so +beautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance of +mere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. But it was +needful to show in what way this great spirit bowed beneath the weight +of its own sympathy with a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him in +Boston, though "his aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable," +and though "he spoke as if his work were done, and he should write no +more," still "there was no failing noticeable in his conversational +powers." "There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect," wrote Dr. +Holmes, "that gave warning of so sudden an end as that which startled us +all." He passed on into the shadow as if of his own will; feeling that +his country lay in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hate +and horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look at; +welcoming--except as those dear to him were concerned--the prospect of +that death which he alone knew to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, +1864, that the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire,--whither he +had gone with Ex-President Pierce,--that Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, +it was recalled with a kind of awe that through many years of his life +Hawthorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly scribbling at +any time, of writing the number sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge of +his death, which he showed in the final days, had already begun to +manifest itself in this indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himself +felt that the number was connected with his life in some fatal way. Five +days later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, the beautiful cemetery where +he had been wont to walk among the pines, where once when living at the +Manse he had lain upon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, when Mr. +Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and said the Muses were in the woods +that day. + +A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut upon it, was placed +above him. He had wished that there should be no monument. He liked +Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant to +think and know that he did not care for a stately monument." Longfellow +and Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis Agassiz, and his friends +Pierce, and Hillard, with Ellery Channing, and other famous men, +assembled on that peaceful morning to take their places in the funeral +train. Some who had not known him in life came long distances to see +him, now, and ever afterward bore about with them the memory of his +aspect, strong and beautiful, in his last repose. The orchards were +blossoming; the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies of +the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among the flowers, had come +forth in quiet companies, to look their last on his face, so white and +quiet too. So, while the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenly +in the distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the dead +poet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we look back and listen, +Longfellow's simple, penetrating chant returns upon the ear. + +In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered in Hawthorne's +death; and no less vain the attempt to fix in a few words the +incalculable gain his life has left with us. When one remembers the +power that was unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach cold +Time and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that lay before us +all, in the continuance of his career. We look upon these few great +works, that may be numbered on the fingers of a hand, and wonder what +good end was served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that had +just begun to open. We remember the tardy recognition that kept the +fountain of his spirit so long half concealed, and the necessities that +forced him to give ten of his best years to the sterile industry of +official duties. But there are great compensations. Without the youthful +period of hopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have seen, would not have +been the unique force, the high, untrammelled thinker that he became +through that fortunate isolation; wanting the uncongenial contact of his +terms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be that he could not +have developed his genius with such balance of strength as it now shows; +and, finally, without the return to his native land, the national fibre +in him would have missed its crowning grace of conscientiousness. He +might in that case have written more books, but the very loss of these, +implying as it does his pure love of country, is an acquisition much +more positively valuable. + +There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of his activity, in +so far as it gives emphasis to that incompleteness of any verbal +statement of truth, which he was continually insisting upon with his +readers. + +Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that however many works +he might have produced, it seems unlikely that any one of them would +have failed to record some large movement in his growth; and therefore +it is perhaps to be regretted that his life could not have been made to +solely serve his genius, so that we might have had the whole sweep of +his imagination clearly exposed. As it is, he has not given us a large +variety of characters; and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certain +general likeness one to another. Phoebe, however, is quite at the +opposite pole of womanhood; Hilda is as unlike any of them as it is easy +to conceive of her being; and Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature of +unique calibre, as weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at the +same time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet captivating +fragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are embodied two widely opposed +classes of New England women. The male characters, with the exception of +Donatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as the feminine ones: +Coverdale and Kenyon come very close together, both being artistic and +both reflectors for the persons that surround them; and Dimmesdale is to +some extent the same character,--with the artistic escape closed upon +his passions, so that they turn within and ravage his heart,--arrested +and altered by Puritan influences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilish +a shape of revenge to be discussed as a human individual. Septimius, +again, is distinct; and the characterization of Westervelt, in +"Blithedale," slight as it is, is very stimulating. Perhaps, after all, +what leads us to pronounce upon the whole fictitious company a stricture +of homogeneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us each +time with a set of persons sufficiently separate from his previous ones, +does not emphasize their differences with the same amount of external +description that we habitually depend upon from a novelist. The +similarity is more in the author's mode of presentation than in the +creations themselves. + +This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearly +related with some special distinctions of his genius. He is so +fastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit his +actors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though retaining their +essential individuality, they are endowed with the author's own +delightful power of expression. This outward phasis of his work +separates it at once from that of the simple novelist, and leads us to +consider the special applicability to it of the term "romance." He had +not the realistic tendency, as we usually understand that, but he +possessed the power to create a new species of fiction. For the kind of +romance that he has left us differs from all compositions previously so +called. It is not romance in the sense of D'Urfe's or Scuderi's; it is +very far from coming within the scope of Fielding's "romances"; and it +is entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Romantic school. It +is not the romance of sentiment; nor that of incident, adventure, and +character viewed under a worldly coloring: it has not the mystic and +melodramatic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouque. There are +two things which radically isolate it from all these. The first is its +quality of revived belief. Hawthorne, as has been urged already, is a +great believer, a man who has faith; his belief goes out toward what is +most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetry +and moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progeny +is perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest +truth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a varied +and tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is what +makes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order of +novelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been credited +with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt is +superficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating fine +but only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch of +superstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his English +journal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested in +such subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, +indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the ethereal +with earthly attributes, and so make it grossly perceptible." This +observation has a still greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. +And out of this questioning belief and transmutation of superstition +into truth--for such is more exactly his method--proceeds also that +quality of value and rarity and awe-enriched significance, with which he +irradiates real life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image of +the eternal verities. + +If these things are limitations, they are also foundations of a vast +originality. Every greatness must have an outline. So that, although he +is removed from the list of novelists proper, although his spiritual +inspiration scares away a large class of sympathies, and although his +strictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and restrain his dramatic +fervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, these facts, on the other hand, +are so many trenches dug around him, fortifying his fair eminence. +Isolation and a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense as +this, belong peculiarly to American originality. But Hawthorne is the +embodiment of the youth of this country; and though he will doubtless +furnish inspiration to a long line of poets and novelists, it must be +hoped that they, likewise, will stand for other phases of its +development, to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Hawthorne is +less in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which would +merely make a school of followers. + +It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will take in the +literature of the world; but as his influence gains the ascendant in +America, by prompting new and _un_-Hawthornesque originalities, it +is likely also that it will be made manifest in England, according to +some unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be distinctly +colored by the peculiar dye in which his own pages are dipped; but the +renewed tradition of a highly organized yet simple style, and still more +the masculine tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjustment +of aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent truthfulness which +he carries with him, may be expected to become a constituent part of +very many minds widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is no +fictionist who penetrates so far into individual consciences as +Hawthorne; that many persons will be found who derive a profoundly +religious aid from his unobtrusive but commanding sympathy. In the same +way, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no +secondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words," says Heine; +"Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not so with Hawthorne's. +Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axis +of conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is one +of the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of the +world. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in private +character, but in addition his unnoticed leverage for the thought of the +age is prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a temper so +modest and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract enthusiasm +for art, place him on a plane between Shakespere and Goethe. With the +universality of the first only just budding within his mind, he has not +so clear a response to all the varying tones of lusty human life, and +the individuality in his utterance amounts, at particular instants, to +constraint. With less erudition than Goethe, but also less of the +freezing pride of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. +His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but they have the +same quick music of heart-throbs that Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is at +the same moment ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Another +generation will see more of him than we do; different interpreters will +reveal other sides. As a powerful blow suddenly descending may leave the +surface it touches unmarked, and stamp its impress on the substance +beneath, so his presence will more distinctly appear among those farther +removed from him than we. A single mind may concentrate your vision upon +him in a particular way; but the covers of any book must perforce shut +out something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow the +landscape. + +Look well at these leaves I lay before you; but having read them throw +the volume away, and contemplate the man himself. + + + + +APPENDIX I. + + +In May, 1870, an article was published in the "Portland Transcript," +giving some of the facts connected with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, as +a boy. This called out a letter from Alexandria, Va., signed "W. S.," +and purporting to come from a person who had lived at Raymond, in +boyhood, and had been a companion of Hawthorne's. He gave some little +reminiscences of that time, recalling the fact that Hawthorne had read +him some poetry founded on the Tarbox disaster, already +mentioned. [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 89.] Himself he described as +having gone to sea at twenty, and having been a wanderer ever since. In. +speaking of the date of the poetry, "We could not have been more than +ten years old," he said. This, of course, is a mistake, the accident +having happened in 1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it is +tolerably certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he was +twelve. + +The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson Cook, of +Bolster's Mills, in Maine, who had also known Hawthorne as a boy; some +poetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also found, and printed, which +afterward proved to have been written by another person; and one or two +other letters were published, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, but +concerning the Tarbox affair. After this, "W. S." wrote again from +Alexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he had come into +possession, several years before, of the manuscript book from which he +afterward sent extracts. The book, he explained, was found by a man +named Small, who had assisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a +"large mahogany bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. +This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S." met Small in +the army, in Virginia. He reported that the book--"originally a bound +blank one not ruled," and "gnawed by mice or eaten by moths on the +edges"--contained about two hundred and fifty pages, and was written +throughout, "the first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showing +in its progress a marked improvement in penmanship." The passages +reprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over the signature "W. +Sims," to the "Transcript," and published at different dates (February +11, 1871; April 22, 1871). Their appearance called out various +communications, all tending to establish their genuineness; but, beyond +the identification of localities and persons, and the approximate +establishing of dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, +however, was recalled by former residents near Raymond; and there seemed +at least much inferential proof in favor of the notes. A long silence +ensued upon the printing of the second portion; and at the end of 1871 +it was made known that Sims had died at Pensacola, Florida. The third +and last supposed extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent from +Virginia again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a person +professing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was written to +by the editors of the "Transcript," but no reply has ever been received. +A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also wrote to the Pensacola journal in +which Sims's death was announced, making inquiry as to its knowledge of +him and as to the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was ever +received from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in the +secret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war-days; and it +may be that, having enemies, he feared the notoriety to which his +contributions to journalism might expose him, and decided to die,--at +least so far as printer's ink could kill him. All these circumstances +are unfortunate, because they make the solution of doubts concerning the +early notes quite impossible, for the present. + +The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literary +skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long ago +as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an extremely +improbable one. It is not likely that an ordinary impostor would hit +upon the sort of incident selected for mention in these extracts. Even +if he drew upon circumstances of his own boyhood, transferring them to +Hawthorne's, he must possess a singularly clear memory, to recall +matters of this sort; and to invent them would require a nice +imaginative faculty. One of the first passages, touching the "son of old +Mrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne," is of a sort to +entirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole method of observation, +too, seems very characteristic. If the portion descriptive of a raft and +of the manners of the lumbermen be compared with certain memoranda in +the "American Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from somewhat +similar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seizing +characteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early notes are +fabrications, it may be that the author of them drew carefully after +passages of the maturer journal, and this among others. But the +resemblance is crossed by a greater youthfulness in the early notes, it +seems to me, which it would be hard to produce artificially. The cool +and collected style of the early journal is not improbable in a boy like +Hawthorne, who had read many books and lived much in the companionship +of older persons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of "The +Spectator" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, +Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal and "The +Spectator." The circumstance that the dates should all have been said to +be missing from the manuscript book is suspicious. Yet the last extract +has the month and year appended, August, 1819. What is more important +is, that the date of the initial inscription is given as 1816; and at +the time when this was announced it had not been ascertained even by +Hawthorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Raymond so +early. But since the publications in the "Transcript," some letters have +come to light of which I have made use; and one of these, bearing date +July 21, 1818, to which I have alluded in another connection, speaks of +Raymond from actual recollection. "Does the Pond look the same as when I +was there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thought +there was no place that I should say so much of." The furnisher of the +notes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered that +Hawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on a +statement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne +was taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed: +"Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years." I have already said that Sims +refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time when +he and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old." This, at first, +would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon the +editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis +for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain +exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. +The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the +inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one +already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes +did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, and +was confused by the statement of the "Transcript." An impostor must have +taken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "the +Widow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his +preliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciation +of the name in Raymond was Hathorn,--the first syllable exactly as the +word 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of the +spelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the +passage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic form +of the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by the +transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object in +keeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make it +available for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record as +a nucleus. + + + + +II. + + +The theme referred to in Chapter III. is given in full below. After the +earlier portion of the present essay had been stereotyped, an article by +Professor G. T. Packard, on Bowdoin College, was published in +"Scribner's Monthly," which contains this mention of Hawthorne:-- + +"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he so +dwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the world's +sensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written in the +sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an +inimitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, +was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he not +infrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment of +reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of +Hawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself +at the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted a +composition which no man in his class could equal.... When the class was +graduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having their +profiles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did he +take part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood that +he intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated his +remarkable development and enduring fame. It seems strange that among +his admirers no one has offered him a fitting tribute by founding the +Hawthorne Professorship of English Literature in the college where, +under the tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative Professor +Newman, he was stimulated to cultivate his native gift." + +DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. + +Senatum Romanorum jam primum institutum, simplicem siniul atquo +praestantissimuni fuisse sentiant onmes. Imperium fint, quod populo aec +avaritis nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretar. Lecti fuerunt senatores, +non qui ambitiose potestatem eupiere, sesl qui senectute, qui sapientia, +qui virtute bellica vel privata insigues, in republica plurimam +pollebant. Hominum consiliis virtute tam singulari praeditorum paruit +populus libenter atque senatores at patres civilius venerati. Studium +illis paternum adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam turn Romana, nec +sanctior nec beatior t'uit; iis temporibus etenim solum in publicum +commodum principes administrabant; fidemque principibus populi habetant. +Sed virtute prisca reipublierc perdita, inimicitus mutuis patres +plebesque flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populum +tyrannice saeviit, atque hostem se monstravit potiue quam custodem +reipubliere. Concitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendre, alque per +multa secula patrum plebisque contentiones historia Romana memorat; +patribus pristinam auctoriratem servare conatis, liccentiaque plebis +omnia jura spernante. Hoc modo usque ad Panieum bellum, res se habebant. +Tun pericula externa discordiam domesticam superabant, reipublicaeque +studium priscam patribus sapientiam, priscam populis reverentiam +redundit. Hae aetate omnibus virtutibus cnituit Roma. Senatus, jure +omnium consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis aequavit; +patriaeque solum amore gloria quaesita, pecunia niluii habita est. Sed +quuam Carthaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica ad +vitia pristina. Patres luxuria solum populis praestiterunt, et vestigia +eorum populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, +annus unusquisque diminuit, donce in aerate Angasti interitus nobilium +humiliumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conficerunt. Augustus +equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantum +liut sine fervore. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestates +recuperatae. Postremum species etiam amissa est. + +HATHORNE. + + +THE ROMAN SENATE. + +Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originally +constituted, was a no less simple than illustrious body. It was a +sovereignty which appeared most desirable to a populace vitiated neither +by avarice nor luxury. The senators were chosen, not from those who were +ambitious of power, but those who wielded the largest influence in the +Republic through wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. The +citizens bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with such +singular worth, and venerated the senators as fathers. The latter +exercised a paternal care. No republic ever was holier or more blessed +than that of Rome at this time; for in those days the rulers +administered for the public convenience alone, and the people had faith +in their rulers. But, the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, the +fathers and the commonalty began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, +and to seek after the possessions of others. The Senate vented its wrath +savagely upon the people, and showed itself rather the enemy than the +guardian of the Republic. The multitude was aroused by the desire of +recovering liberty, and through a very long period Roman history +recounts the contentions of the fathers and the commonalty; the fathers +attempting to preserve their old authority, and the license of the +commons scorning every law. Affairs remained in this condition until the +Punic War. Then foreign perils prevailed over domestic discord, and love +of the Republic restored to the fathers their early wisdom, to the +people their reverence. At this period, Rome shone with every virtue. +The Senate, through the rightfully obtained consent of all parties, +nearly equalized its power with the powerlessness of the commonalty; and +glory being sought solely through love of the fatherland, wealth was +regarded as of no account. But when Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, the +commonwealth returned to its former vices. The fathers were superior to +the populace only in luxury, and the populace followed in their +footsteps. From that very time, every year diminished the authority of +the Senate, until in the age of Augustus the death of the nobles and the +selection of insignificant men almost wholly destroyed its dignity. +Augustus, to be sure, restored to the fathers their ancient +magnificence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it was without +real heat. Never was the power of the senators recovered. At last even +the appearance of it vanished. + + + + +III. + + +The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. were recorded by different +hands, or in different ways at various dates, so that they have not been +made out quite satisfactorily. Some of the authors named below were +taken out a great many times, but the number of the volume is given in +only a few cases. It would seem, for example, that Voltaire's complete +works were examined by Hawthorne, if we judge by his frequent +application for some part of them, and the considerable number of +volumes actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same volume +is sometimes called for more than once. To make the matter clearer here, +I have reduced the entries to a simple list of the authors read, without +attempting to show how often a particular one was taken up. Few or none +of them were read consecutively, and the magazines placed together at +the end of my list were taken out at short intervals throughout the +different years. + + 1830. + + Oeuvres de Voltaire. + Memoire de Literature. + Liancourt. + Oeuvres de Rousseau. + Mass. Historical Collections. + Trial and Triumph of Faith. + Oeuvres de Pascal. + Varenius' Geography. + Mickle's Lucian. + Dictionnaire des Sciences. + Pamela. (Vols. I., II.) + Life of Baxter. + Tournefort's Voyage. + Swift's Works. + Hitt on Fruit-Trees. + Bibliotheca Americana. + Ames's Antiquities. + Hamilton's Works. + Gifford's Juvenal. + Allen's Biographical Dictionary. + Fenelon. + Academie Royale des Inscriptions. + Mather's Apology. + Vertol's History of Sweden. + Taylor's Sermons. + Life of Luckington. + L'an 2440. + Montague's Letters. + English Botany. (3 vols.) + Gay's Poems. + Inchbald's Theatre. + Sowerby's English Botany. + Crabbe's Borough. + Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. + Collection of Voyages (Hakluyt's?). + Lives of the Admirals. + British Zooelogy. + + 1831 + + Los Eruditos. + Connoisseur. + Camilla. + Gifford's Persius. + Bartram's Travels. + Humphrey's Works. + Voltaire. + Pennant's British Zoology. + Mandeville's Travels. + Rehearsal Transposed. + Gay's Poems. + Pompey the Little. + Shaw's General Zoology. + Philip's Poems. + Sowerby's English Botany. + Racine. + Corneille. + Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. + History of the Shakers. + The Confessional. + Calamy's Life of Baxter. + Academie Royale des Inscripts. + Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I., II., III., IV.) + Cadell's Journey through Italy and Carniola. + Cobbet's Rule in France. + Temple's Works. (Vols. I., II., III.) + Asiatic Researches. + Cochran's Tour in Siberia. + Chardin's Travels. + Brandt's History of the Reformation. + Russell's Natural History. + Aleppo. (Vol. I.) + Answer to the Fable of the Bees. + Hanway's Travels. + Memoirs of C. J. Fox. + Bayle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. II., V., VI.) + State Trials. (Vols. I., II., IV., V., VI.) + Tales of a Traveller. + Dictionnaire des Sciences. (Vol. XVII.) + Bacon's Works. (Vol. II.) + Gordon's Tacitus. + Colquhoun on the Police. + Cheyne on Health. + Pope's Homer. (Vol I.) + Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX.) + Reichard's Germany. + Oeuvres de Rousseau. + Notes on the West Indies by Prichard. + Crishull's Travels in Turkey. + + 1832-33. + + Clarendon's Tracts. + History of England. + Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. III., V., VI.) + Feltham's Resolves. + Roscoe's Sovereigns. + Histoire de l'Academie. + South America. + Savages of New Zealand. + Stackhouse's History of the Bible. + Dryden's Poems. + Tucker's Light of Nature. + History of South Carolina. + Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. + Brace's Travels. + Browne's Jamaica. + Collins's New South Wales. + Broughton's Dictionary. + Seminole War. + Shaw's Zoology. + Reverie. + Gifford's Pitt. + Curiosities of Literature. + Massinger. + Literary Recollections. + Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. + Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. + Paris and Fonblanque. + Elia. + Gardens and Menagerie. + Medical Jurisprudence. + History of Paris. + Scott's Prose Works. + Kittell's Specimens American Poetry. + Lister's Journey. + Annals of Salem. + Library of Old English Prose Writers. + Memoirs of Canning. + Miscellaneous Works of Scott. + Jefferson's Writings. + History of Andover. + Good's Book of Nature. + History of Haverhill. + Madden's Travels. (Vols. I., II.) + Riedesel's Memoirs. + Boston Newspapers (1736, 1739, 1754, 1762, 1771, 1783). + Drake's Mornings in Spring. + Drake's Evenings in Autumn. + Anecdotes of Bowyer. + Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. I., II.) + Bryan Walton's Memoirs. + Moses Mendelssohn. + Collingwood. + Felt's Annals. + Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. + Schiller. + Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols.) + Thatcher's Medical Biography. + History of Plymouth. + Crabbe's Universal Dictionary. + Lewis's History of Lynn. + A Year in Spain, by a Young American. (Vols. I., II.) + Croker's Boswell. + Deane's History of Scituate. + Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. I., II.) + Temple's Travels. (Vol. II.) + Fuller's Holy State. + Remarkables of Increase Mather. + History of Portland. (Vols. I., II.) + Practical Tourist. + Elements of Technology. + Heber's Life, by Taylor. + Ductor Substantium. + Heber's Travels in India. (Vols. I., II.) + Byron's Works. + Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. + History of Spain. + Franklin's Works. + Mental Cultivation. + + 1835. + + Life of Gouverneur Morris. + Hamilton's Progress of Society. + Twiner's Sacred History. + Encyclopaedia. + Life of Arthur Lee. + Life of Sir Humphry Davy. + Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. + Prior's Poems. (Vol. I.) + Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I., II.) + Memoirs of the Tower of London. + History of King's Chapel. + Memoirs of Dr. Burney. + Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I, II., III.) + Life of Livingstone. + + 1836. + + Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I.) + Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I.) + Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I.) + Combe on the Constitution of Man. + Babbage on Economy of Machinery. + Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. + Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I., III.) + Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design. (Vols. I., II.) + Mende's Guide to Observation of Nature. + Cobbett's Cottage Economy. + Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I.) + Practical Tourist. (Vols. I., II.) + Dick on Improvement of Society. + Bush's Life of Mohammed. + Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I.) + Gay's Poems. + Pliny's Natural History. + Coleridge's Table-Talk. + Letters from Constantinople. (Vols. I., II.) + Reynolds's Voyages. + Adventures on Columbia River, by Ross Cox. + Baine's History of Cotton Manufacture. + History of Nantucket. + Travels in South America. + Mueller's Universal History. + Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. + Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. I., II.) + Description of Trades. + Colman's Visit to England. + Ludolph's History of Ethiopia. + Griffin's Remains. + McCree's Life of Knox. + Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. + Voyage de la mer du Sud an Nord. + Biographia Literaria. + The Stranger in America. + Raumer's England in 1835. + Random Recollections of the House of Lords. + The German Student. + Sparks's American Biography. + Brewster's Natural Magic. + Prior's Life of Goldsmith. + Sparks's Washington. + Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft. + Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols.) + + 1837. + + Washington's Writings. + Martineau's Miscellany. + Wraxall's Memoirs. + Bancroft's United States History. + Rush, on the Human Voice. + Drake's Indian Biography. + Wordsworth's Poetical Works. + Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. + Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. + Bayle's Historical Memoirs of Plymouth County. + Life of Jefferson, by Tucker. + Random Recollections of the House of Commons. + Specimens of American Poetry. + + 1838. + + Life of Jefferson. + Brown's Novels. + Parr's Works. + Select Comedies. + Froissart's Ancient Chronology. + Byron's Works. + Plutarch's Lives. + London Encyclopedia of Architecture. + Gentleman's Magazine. + Monthly Magazine. + Monthly Review. + European Magazine. + Christian Examiner. + Edinburgh Magazine. + Annual Register. + Quarterly Review. + Southern Review. + Worcester's Magazine. + North American Review. + United States Service Journal. + Court Magazine. + Museum of Literature and Science. + Westminster Review. + London Monthly Magazine. + Eclectic Review. + Foreign Quarterly Review. + Blackwood's Magazine. + Metropolitan Magazine. + New England Magazine. + British Critic. + American Encyclopaedia. + Rees's Cyclopaedia. + Gifford's Juvenal. + + + + + INDEX. + + + Addison, Joseph + Allegory and symbolism + Ambitious Guest, The + America, Hawthorne's sentiment about returning to + American Magazine + American Note-Books, record of youth in + American nurture of Hawthorne's genius + American quality in literature + Andrews, Ferdinand + Apollyon, name of cat + Artist of the Beautiful, The + Atmosphere, Hawthorne's susceptibility to + Autobiographies + + Balzac's method of dealing with sin + Bancroft, George + Baudelaire + Bay writers, nickname given by Church Review + Beelzebub, Hawthorne's cat + Belief, Hawthorne's + Bewick Company + Biography, Hawthorne's feeling about + Birth-mark, The + Blithedale Romance + its relation to Brook Farm + real incident applied in + when written + remarks on + Bloody Footstep + Boston Custom-House + Boston Token, The + Bowdoin College + passage from "Fanshawe" descriptive of + Bridge, Horatio + prognostic of, concerning Hawthorne + Brig Fair American, Ballad of + Brook Farm, origin of + Hawthorne's aim in going to + length of stay there + trenchant remark upon, in Blithedale + Brown, Brockden + Buchanan, James + Buds and Bird-Voices + Bunyan, compared with Milton + with Hawthorne + Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note from, to Hawthorne + Bryant, William Cullen + + Celestial Railroad, The + Characters of Hawthorne + Chippings with a Chisel + Chorley, H. F. + Christmas Banquet, The + Church Review + attack of, on The Scarlet Letter + Cilley, Jonathan + Clarendon's History + Coleridge, S. T. + Conception of Character, Hawthorne's method of + Contact of life and death + Contradictions of critics + Cooper, J. Fenimore + Cooper Memorial letter of Hawthorne + Coverdale, Miles, origin of name + character of, how related to Hawthorne + Curtis, George William + letters from Hawthorne to + Curwin Mansion + Cushing, Caleb + Custom-House, prefatory chapter on the + excitement over it in Salem + + Democratic Review + Devil in Manuscript, The + Dickens + Dixey, William, name in Seven Gables + Doctor Heidegger's Experiment + Dolliver Romance, The + Drake, J. R. + Dramatic quality in Hawthorne + Drowne's Wooden Image + D'Urfe + + Early Notes, discovery of + passages from + Earth's Holocaust + Eccentricity in Salem + Edinburgh Review, stricture of, upon Irving + Emerson's English Traits + Endicott and The Red Cross + passage from, bearing on Scarlet Letter + Endicotts, anecdote of + English Note-Books, characteristics of + Evangeline, origin of + Hawthorne's review of + + Fame, in what way desirable + Fancy's Show-Box + Faust + "Fanshawe" + abstract of + passages from + Fearing, Master, and Hawthorne + Fielding, Henry + Fields, J. T., mistake of + Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking at + Fire worship + First Church of Salem + First publication by Hawthorne + Foote, Caleb + Fouque + French and Italian Note-Books + Froissart + + Gautier, Theophile + Goethe + Godwin, William + Goldsmith + Goodrich, S. G. + employs Hawthorne as editor + difficulties with + Grandfather's Chair + publication of + Gray Champion, The + + Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, + mother of Nathaniel Hawthorne, + piety of, her inconsolableness + at loss of her husband + Hathorne, John, judge in witchcraft + trials + Hathorne, Joseph, Benjamin, + Daniel + Hathorne, Nathaniel, father of Nathaniel, + death of; Hawthorne's + resemblance to + Hathorne, William; his persecution + of Quakers; his will + Haunted Mind, The + HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, birth of + changes spelling of name + birthplace of; childhood of; + lameness in boyhood; + fondness for cats; scholarship + of, at college; English + compositions of; Latin theme + of, (in full, Appendix); + reading of; love + of books; first printed + article of; college associations + of; literary struggles + of; pecuniary difficulties + of; Democratic sympathies + of; his inability to + distinguish tunes; social + nature of; error as to long + obscurity of; anecdotes of; + value of these in + general; his love of solitude; + healthiness of; + shyness; considerateness + for others; personal appearance; + G. W. Curtis's + reminiscence of; his simplicity + of habits; love of books; + abstraction; moral enthusiasm + of, characterized; + unsuspiciousness of; introspection + of, how exaggerated; + distaste for society, how explainable; + in what greater than + Irving; ghostly atmosphere + of; humor of; American quality of; effect of civil + war upon; death of; his + grave; burial; literary + and intellectual influence of + Heine, Heinrich + Helwyse, Gervase + Hillard, George S. + Hoffman, Charles Fenno + Hogg's Tales + Holmes, Oliver Wendell; letter + from, to Hawthorne + Horace + House of the Seven Gables, The; + Hathorne history; composition + of; originals for the + house; survey of + Howells, W. D., Hawthorne's remark + to + + Invisible struggles of genius + Irving, Washington; comparison + with Hawthorne; humor + of; attitude of, in England; + his use of native + material; his histories; + style of + + John Ingefield's Thanksgiving + Johnson, Samuel + Journal of an African Cruiser + Journal of a Solitary Man + + Kingsley's Greek Fairy-Tales + + Latin Theme of Hawthorne; + in full, Appendix + Lawrence, Lieutenant, killed off + Marblehead + Lenox, removal to + Letters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, + from college; + from Connecticut and New Hampshire; + to Longfellow; + to Bridge; + to Curtis; + to Motley; + to Lowell + Leutze + Limitations of Hawthorne + Liverpool consulate; + reduction in receipts of; + unjust criticism of Hawthorne in + Longfellow, Henry W.; + review of Twice-Told Tales; + letter to Hawthorne + Loring, Dr. G. B. + Lowell, James Russell; + letter from + + Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in boyhood + Manning, Elizabeth Clarke, Hawthorne's mother + Manning's Folly + Manning, Richard + Manning, Robert + Manning, Samuel + Manuscript sketch for Septimius + Marble Faun, The; + examination of + Marine outrages, Hawthorne's wish + to redress + Marvell, Andrew + Maturity in Hawthorne, earliness of + Maule, Thomas + Maypole of Merry Mount, The + Melville, Herman; + private review of Seven Gables by + Michael Angelo + Milton compared with Bunyan and Hawthorne + Minister's Black Veil, The + Mitford, Miss, Letter from, to Hawthorne + Mosses from an Old Manse; + first issue of; + criticism of + Motley, John Lothrop, letter of, to Hawthorne + Mozart + Mrs. Bullfrog + + New England civilization; + early character + Newman, Professor + Nomenclature of fiction + Novalis + + Oberon + Objectivity of Hawthorne + Old Apple-Dealer, The + Oliver, B. L. + Our Old Home + + Packard, Professor G. T.; + Appendix + Papers of an old Dartmoor prisoner + Paulding, J. K. + Peabody, Miss E. P., acquaintance with Hawthorne + Peabody, Miss Sophia + Peter Parley's History, written by Hawthorne + Pierce, Franklin; + Hawthorne's Life of; + (sentiments in, touching slavery; + resulting abuse of Hawthorne;) + dedication of Our Old Home to + Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's reading of; + allusions to, in his works + Plato + Plymouth Colony enactment against adultery, foot-note + Poe's criticism on Hawthorne; + similarities of, to Hawthorne; + effectiveness of; + subjectivity of; doubtful + sanity of; his ratiocination; + foreign influence of + Pope, Alexander + Procession of Life, The + Prophetic Pictures, The + Pseudonymes of Hawthorne (foot-note) + Puritan imagination + Puritans, Hawthorne's view of + Pyncheon, Clifford, how resembling Poe + Pynchons, complaints of the, against Seven Gables + + Rappaccini's Daughter + Raymond, Maine, removal to + Ripley, George + Roger Malvin's Burial + Rossetti-Morris school + Rousseau + + Salem, as a native soil; Hawthorne's + sentiment for; aspects + of; origin of name; + trade + Salem Custom-House + Sand, George + Sanity of highest genius + + Scarlet Letter; origin + of; publication of; + Leutze's coincidence; + passage compared with Bunyan; + theme of revenge in; + analysis of the romance; + as a work of art + Scotland and New England + Scott, Sir Walter; Hawthorne's + estimate of + Scuderi; Madeleine de + Sebago Lake + Sense of form in Hawthorne; + in Poe + Septimius Felton; symbolism + of; origin of + "Seven Tales of my Native Land." + Shakespere + Shelley's Latin verses; The + Cenci, compared with Marble + Faun + Sights from a Steeple + Sims, William, finder of supposed + Early Notes, Appendix + Sin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne; + how conducive to originality + Slavery, Hawthorne's sentiments + concerning + Snow Image + Sparhawk House, Kittery + "Spectator," The; extracts + from + Spenser + St. John's, John Hathorne's attack + on + Story, Joseph + Sumner, Charles, note of, to Hawthorne + Sunday at Home + Supernatural, Hawthorne's use of + Surroundings of genius assist but + do not produce it + + + Taine's Notes on England + Tales of the Province House + Tanglewood Tales + Term-Bill at College + Thackeray + Thomson, James + Thoreau's Legend of the Wayside + Tieck + Toll-Gatherer's Day + Tragedy of isolation + True Stones + Twice-Told Tales; + temperament in style of; first + collection of; second + + Union of the States, Hawthorne's + feeling about + Union Street + Upham's "Salem Witchcraft." + + Verses by Hawthorne, at college + Virgil + Virtuoso's Collection + Voltaire + + Wayside, The, purchase of + Wedding Knell, The + Weird, The, in Scotland and New + England + West Newton, removal to + Whipple, Edwin, objection to remark + of; Hawthorne's pleasure in + reviews written by + White, John, Rev. + White Old Maid, The + Widowhood, sentiment of, expressed + by Hawthorne + Winthiop, John + Witchcraft + Witch-ointment + Witch-pins + Wonder-Book + Worcester, Dr. J. E. + + Young Goodman Brown. + Youth of Hawthorne, habits in; + valuable formative results + of + + + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's A Study of Hawthorne, by George Parsons Lathrop + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + +***** This file should be named 8530.txt or 8530.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/5/3/8530/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Study Of Hawthorne + +Author: George Parsons Lathrop + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8530] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: US-ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE + +BY + +GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. + +[Illustration] + + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. POINT OF VIEW + + II. SALEM + + III. BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE + + IV. TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES + + V. AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM + + VI. THE OLD MANSE + + VII. THE SCARLET LETTER. + +VIII. LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD + + IX. ENGLAND AND ITALY + + X. THE LAST ROMANCE + + XI. PERSONALITY + + XII. POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE + +XIII. THE Loss AND THE GAIN + +APPENDIX I. + +APPENDIX II. + +APPENDIX III. + +INDEX + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE. + + + + +I. + + +POINT OF VIEW. + +This book was not designed as a biography, but is rather a portrait. +And, to speak more carefully still, it is not so much this, as my +conception of what a portrait of Hawthorne should be. For I cannot write +with the authority of one who had known him and had been formally +intrusted with the task of describing his life. On the other hand, I do +not enter upon this attempt as a mere literary performance, but have +been assisted in it by an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathy +with the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of inspiration. My +guide has been intuition, confirmed and seldom confuted by research. +Perhaps it is even a favoring fact that I should never have seen Mr. +Hawthorne; a personality so elusive as his may possibly yield its traits +more readily to one who can never obtrude actual intercourse between +himself and the mind he is meditating upon. An honest report upon +personal contact always has a value denied to the reviews of after- +comers, yet the best criticism and biography is not always that of +contemporaries. + +Our first studies will have a biographical scope, because a certain +grouping of facts is essential, to give point to the view which I am +endeavoring to present; and as Hawthorne's early life has hitherto been +but little explored, much of the material used in the earlier chapters +is now for the first time made public. The latter portion of the career +may be treated more sketchily, being already better known; though +passages will be found throughout the essay which have been developed +with some fulness, in order to maintain a correct atmosphere, +compensating any errors which mere opinions might lead to. Special +emphasis, then, must not be held to show neglect of points which my +space and scope prevent my commenting on. But the first outline +requiring our attention involves a distant retrospect. + +The history of Hawthorne's genius is in some sense a summary of all New +England history. + +From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its +activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to +dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly +enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light +and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, +in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old +colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. +Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must +not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent +deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty +influence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period of +action must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent, +and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New England +civilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdens +and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming +a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path +in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an +ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were +enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and +exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm +Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's +Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease +whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to +satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from +England multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusual +reverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, the +dependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally the +excitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity for +any aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here ever +since Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the New +World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to +uphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, +therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding +centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we +owe the high qualities of New England,--a nature which is often so +easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,--this side, +long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found +expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various +elements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's genius +revived. The sensuous substance of the early New England character had +piously surrendered to the severe maxims which religion and prudence +imposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part of +Puritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpses +through the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it has +been rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with through +Hawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustration +of it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which he +himself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from the +interior, to possess himself of the very fire which burned in men's +breasts and set their minds in movement at that epoch. In his own person +and his own blood the same elements, the same capabilities still +existed, however modified or differently ordered. The records of +Massachusetts Bay are full of suggestive incongruities between the +ideal, single-souled life which its founders hoped to lead, and the +jealousies, the opposing opinions, or the intervolved passions of +individuals and of parties, which sometimes unwittingly cloaked +themselves in religious tenets. Placing himself in the position of these +beings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies of +emotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it was +natural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between the +intense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outward +appearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source of +motive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter." It is +thus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief. +They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought so +intimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passions +sounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in our +own ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes or +situations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style, +I think,--particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales,"--a union of +vigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardedness +which verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilled +sensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which is +his by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers. +How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the past +of his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on. + +Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; as +intimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Dante +and Michael Angelo could have had their growth. It is endlessly +suggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselves +for all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and with +mysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimes +despite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterward +see could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and would +surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared +in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato; +Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris +secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled +expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the +eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to the +capital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober little +New England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in its +way hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preserved +in Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose. + +Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise than +remotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in a +figurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid, +various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificent +works of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture,--things +in which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artistic +spirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force of +contrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed many +a silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in his +person, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made to +contribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicate +perfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice still +haunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their very +strangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, and +captivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chief +and most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness of +his native earth which would at first seem to offer only denial to his +development. It is in this direction that we catch sight of the analogy +between his intellectual unfolding and that of the great Florentines. It +consists in his drawing up into himself the nourishment furnished by the +ground upon which he was born, and making the more and the less +productive elements reach a climax of characteristic beauty. One marked +difference, however, is that there was no abundant and inspiriting +municipal life of his own time which could enter into his genius: it was +the consciousness of the past of the place that affected him. He himself +has expressed as much: "This old town of Salem--my native place, though +I have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer +years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of +which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence +here.... And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within +me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be +content to call affection.... But the sentiment has likewise its moral +quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition +with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as +far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a kind of +home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the +present phase of the town." + +It is by briefly reviewing that past, then trying to reproduce in +imagination the immediate atmosphere of Hawthorne's youth, and comparing +the two, that we shall best arrive at the completion of our proposed +portrait. We have first to study the dim perspective and the suggestive +coloring of that historic background from which the author emerges, and +then to define clearly his own individual traits as they appear in his +published works and Note-Books. + +The eagerness which admirers of such a genius show, to learn all +permissible details of his personal history, is, when freed from the +vulgar and imbecile curiosity which often mars it, a sort of homage that +it is right to satisfy. It is a respect apt to be paid only to men whose +winning personal qualities have reached through their writing, and +touched a number of grateful and appreciative hearts. But two objections +may be urged against giving such details here: one is, that Hawthorne +especially disapproved the writing of a Life of himself; the other, that +the history of Salem and the works of Hawthorne are easily accessible to +any one, without intervention. + +Of the first it may frankly be said, indeed, that Hawthorne alone could +have adequately portrayed his life for us; though in the same breath it +should be added that the idea of his undertaking to do it is almost +preposterous. To such a spirit as his, the plan would have had an +exquisite absurdity about it, that might even have savored of +imposition. The mass of trivial details essential to the accurate and +consecutive account of an entire life could never have gained his +serious attention: his modesty would have made as little of them as of +boyish slate-scribblings, full of significance, fun, and character to +observers, but subjected to the sponge without a pang by their producer. +There is something natural and fine in this. I confess that to me the +spectacle presented by Goethe when dwelling on the minutest incidents of +his childhood with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning with +avaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which--like a very +different sort of Saint Charles Borromeo--he hopes to have the reverent +ages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective though +splendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, +that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried with +him inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. In +the Note-Books of Hawthorne this want is to a large extent made good. +His shrinking sensitiveness in regard to the embalming process of +biography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been of +incalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he really +was. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhat +meagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing. +There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it is +difficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive. +Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, the +physical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business; +and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the public +regard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign that +floats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtile +influence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one), +we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceiving +that the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from the +subject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography of +Shakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions of +him; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mystery +should soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne +could ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behind +the greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminent +for strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their private +lives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with those +Etruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect state +within their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were +opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever +stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer +injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, +after his so deep repose in death. + +"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil in +Manuscript," [Footnote: See the Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] +"to undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise +bestowed against the giver's conscience!... An outlaw from the +protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might +spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death!" This, to +be sure, is a heated statement, in the mouth of a young author who is +about to cast his unpublished works into the fire; but the dread +expressed here is by no means unfounded. Even the publication of +Hawthorne's Note-Books has put it in the power of various writers of the +day to assume an omniscience not altogether just, and far from +acceptable. Why, then, should further risk of this be incurred, by +issuing the present work? + +It is precisely to put a limit to misconstructions, as well as to +meet--however imperfectly--the desire of genuine appreciators, that it +has been written. If this study for a portrait fulfils its aim, it will +at least furnish an outline, fix a definite shape, within which whatever +is observed by others may find its place with a truer effect and more +fitting relation. The mistakes that have been made, indeed, are in no +wise alarming ones; and it would be difficult to find any author who has +been more carefully considered, on the whole, or with such generally +fair conclusions, as Hawthorne. Still, if one sees even minor +distortions current, it can do no harm to correct them. Besides, there +has as yet been no thorough attempt at a consistent synthetic +portraiture; and the differences of different critics' estimates need +some common ground to meet and be harmonized upon. If this can be +supplied, there will be less waste of time in future studies of the same +subject. + +It will be seen, therefore, that my book makes no pretension to the +character of a Life. The wish of Hawthorne on this point would alone be +enough, to prevent that. If such a work is to be undertaken, it should +be by another hand, in which the right to set aside this wish is much +more certainly vested than in mine. But I have thought that an earnest +sympathy with the subject might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, +after all, is the talisman which may preserve even the formal biographer +from giving that injury to his theme just spoken of. And if the insight +which guides me has any worth, it will present whatever material has +already been made public with a selection and shaping which all +researchers might not have time to bestow. + +Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I am +conscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture and +praise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame so +well established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to +the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge of +presumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the right +perspective and proportion. + +On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence enough for such +an attempt as the one now offered; the relative rank of Hawthorne, and +other distinctions touching him, seem to call for a fuller discussion +than has been given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is in no +wise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative estimation. It is +inevitable that the judgments of competent and cultivated persons should +flatly contradict each other, as well as those of incompetent persons; +and this whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the last, it +is in many respects matter of simple individual impression; and there +will always be persons of high intelligence whom it will be impossible +to make coincide with us entirely, touching even a single author. So +that the best we can do is to set about giving rational explanation of +our diverse admirations. Others will explain theirs; and in this way, +everything good having a fit showing, taste finds it easier to become +catholic. + +Whoever reverences something has a meaning. Shall he not record it? But +there are two ways in which he may express himself,--through speech and +through silence,--both of them sacred alike. Which of these we will use +on any given occasion is a question much too subtle, too surely fraught +with intuitions that cannot be formulated, to admit of arbitrary +prescription. In preferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that I +have adopted only another kind of silence. + +[Illustration] + + + + +II. + + +SALEM. + +Let us now look more closely at the local setting. To understand +Hawthorne's youth and his following development, we must at once +transport ourselves into another period, and imagine a very different +kind of life from the one we know best. It hardly occurs to readers, +that an effort should be made to imagine the influences surrounding a +man who has so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864 that he +died,--little more than a decade since. But he was born sixty years +before, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter of +the century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects; +almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations, +opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action, +these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-fold +between us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerable +space to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthorne +then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life of +Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "A +poet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much +attention.... When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to +investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morning +are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian +splendor." The bustle of American life certainly does away with "the +dews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter to +reproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with the +century. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall +view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has +fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since +as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect. +Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading +softly and easily into the past. + +You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place +wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem +impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the +streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due +understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote +themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic +events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this +stronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must +approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They +will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. +Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, +as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex +Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come +upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses +stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold +the whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, with +carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with some +simple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand +on the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that +hang long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There are quaint +gardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with iron +gracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always +with their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keeps +rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growth +caught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the right +magic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps +like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling +little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and +such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having +been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by +ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past +and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the +ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by +soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge +gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or +a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising +slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach +a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at +intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probable +aspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for +the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds of +spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspiration +that alike found expression on this soil. Off beyond the gray and +sober-tinted town is the sea, which in this perspective seems to rise +above it and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening blue; +as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great measure, bringing +first the persecuted hither and then inviting so many successive +generations forth to warlike expedition, or Revolutionary privateering +or distant commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's name +again is connected, as we shall presently notice. Then, quitting the +brimming blue, our eyes return over the "flat, unvaried surface covered +chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to +architectural beauty," with its "irregularity which is neither +picturesque nor quaint, but only tame"; and retracing the line upon +which Hawthorne has crowded the whole history of Salem, in "Main +Street," [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] we +fall to pondering upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At its +foot a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which there are +exhalations of smoke and steam. The mists of superstition that once +overhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it the +land opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest +period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as complete +as that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic webs +from one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that grow +upon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world +full of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion of +the dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obliging +Irish population has relieved the descendants of both the witches and +their exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with their own +barren little dwellings the three sides of the height facing the town. +Still, they have not ventured beyond a certain line. One small area at +the summit is wholly unencroached upon. Whether or not through fear of +some evil influence resting upon the spot, no house as yet disturbs this +space, though the thin turf has been somewhat picked away by desultory +sod-diggers. There is nothing save this squalid, lonely desolation to +commemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless deaths were here +endured. It is enough. Mere human sympathy takes us back with awful +vividness to that time when the poor victims looked their last from +this, upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and that +hopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. A terrible and fitting +place for execution, indeed! It looms up visible for many miles of lower +country around; and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall away +with such a fatal ease around it! + +The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, by +calling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoed +with bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous +"witch-pins." These are the identical little instruments which the +afflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in the +trial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused them +to be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a small +glass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at the +curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh at +the absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of what +deadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one is +hesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up +speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of some +document; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquities +elsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere large +enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelter +and make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch +House," to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy +room where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrap +of antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened on +to a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp's +nest,--as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants of +the first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of the +First Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, +though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built Essex +Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the +original framework set into a modern covering for protection,--the whole +church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this +little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been +huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single +pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some +engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I +visited the place, a party of young men and women were there, who +hopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settled +on me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before their +light laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, and +incontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She was +a pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle of +protesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily have +divined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men not +only believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young man +who had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printed +pamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages, +seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient and +worshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered +presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and their +grave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls but +soberly in.'" + +"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state." + +And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess the +sunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober. + +Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will not +let you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, on +reflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life of +to-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of our +dreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and present +thus occasioned leads to a discovery. + +In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorable +than at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds its +history in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, with +the quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants, +finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The very +meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former +condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an +incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy +of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out +before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I +passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it +was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring +thus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberated +through my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of +a vanished year! Then, in the room where I slept, there was rich and +ponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; the bed was draped and +canopied with hangings that seemed full of spells and dreamery; and +there was a mirror, tall, and swung between stately mahogany posts +spreading their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy of +Hawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley," [Footnote: See also +American Note-Books, Vol. I.; and the first chapter of The House of the +Seven Gables.] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in +procession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters as +these engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review of +local history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to +roving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangely +intimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds, +the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historic +changes of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one day +through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist of +centuries; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, at +other times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, +unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something of +primitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, and +the air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deeds +of the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this, +too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything. + +Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actual +contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of +Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of +what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame +summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from +this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a +hundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influence +itself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more salient. If +you read even now, on the ground itself, the story of the settlement and +the first century's life of Salem and the surrounding places, a delicate +suffusion of the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe facts +of the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This arises partly +from the imaginative and symbolic way of looking at things of the +founders themselves. + +John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the "Dorchester +Adventurers," established the first colony at Cape Ann, was moved to +this by the wish to establish in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place for +the fishermen who came over from Dorchester in England, so that they +might be kept under religious influences. This was the origin of Salem; +for the emigrants moved, three years later, to this spot, then called +Naumkeag. In the Indian name they afterward found a proof, as they +supposed, that the Indians were an offshoot of the Jews, because it +"proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum Keike; by +interpretation, the bosom of consolation." Later, they named it Salem, +"for the peace," as Cotton Mather says, "which they had and hoped in +it"; and when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great Pond, now +Wenham, he took as his text, "At Enon, near to Salim, because there was +much water there." This playing with names is a mere surface indication +of the ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were constantly +tracing in all their acts. Cut off by their intellectual asceticism from +any exertion of the imagination in literature, and denying themselves +all that side of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrains +the sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves by running +parallels between their own mission and that of the apostles,--a +likeness which was interchangeable at pleasure with the fancied +resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one +considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the +enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, +and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable +wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the +depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had +to struggle,--one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed +fortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality of +a special Providence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singular +way with a treacherous strand of credulity and superstition. Sometimes +one is impressed with a sense that the prodigious force by which they +subdued the knotty and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many other +more dangerous difficulties, was the ecstasy of men made morbidly strong +by excessive gloom and indifference to the present life. "When we are in +our graves," wrote Higginson, "it will be all one whether we have lived +in plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of downe or lockes of +straw." And Hawthorne speaks of the Puritan temperament as +"accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so +little." Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those that +dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast hopes at +heart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them and +before them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, and +using a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid in +their imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of their +power is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imagination +were so closely knit up with real insight, that they could not +themselves distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, their +outlook into another life, though tinged by unhealthy terrorism, was a +solid, energetic act of imagination; but when it had to deal with +intricate tangles of mind and heart, it became credulity. That lurking +unhealthiness spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judgment +entirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft delusion makes this +fearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft,"--one of the most +vigorous, true, and thorough of American histories, without which no one +can possess himself of the subject it treats,--has shown conclusively +the admirable character of the community in which that delusion broke +out, its energy, common-sense, and varied activity; but he points out +for us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagination in a matter +where religion, physiology, and affairs touched each other so closely as +in the witchcraft episode. The persecution at Salem did not come from +such deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it was +not at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecution +in England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general," +procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than three +times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; several +persons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and +Cambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capital +punishments took place there some years after the end of the trouble +here. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death for +witchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem was +heightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance +because "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action +in the absence of scientific certainty, was ... exercised in vain +attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the +elements and first principles of nature," [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and +"had reached a monstrous growth," nourished by a copious literature of +magic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humane +preachers and poets. + +The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which +accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified +in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed +in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail +of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief +of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about +witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the +material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality +which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into +this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for +any other quality in it. + + "Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd + In secret, riding through the air she comes, + Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance + With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon + Ellipses at their charms." + +_Paradise Lost_, II. 662. + +Again, in Comus:-- + + "Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, + Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost + That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, + No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, + Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." + +How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same +string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the +_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would +have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something +to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept +awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a +transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value +not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an +inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts +of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial +suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the +positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper +symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element +to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He +produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo +of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which +urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making +poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity +throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in the +poet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there is +nothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to be +the relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; and +the homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me as +an actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton's +Beelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes the +historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving an +allegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progress +seems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless +due to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in a +single and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost." Milton, by +implying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challenges +dispute; but Bunyan, in humbly confessing himself a dreamer, disarms his +reader and traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was not the +greater artist: that supposition will not even bear a moment's +contemplation; but, as it happened, his weakness was his strength. He +had but one chance. His work would have been nothing without allegory, +and the simple device of the dream--which is the refuge of a man +unskilled in composition, who feels that his figures cannot quite stand +as self-sufficient entities--happens to be as valuable to him as it was +necessary; for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light of +surprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of the story and its +assumed insubstantiality. Milton had many chances, many resources of +power to rely on; but by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticity +he loses that one among the several prizes within his reach. I do not +know that I am right, but all this seems to me to argue a certain +dividing and weakening influence exerted by the imagination which uses +religious or superstitious dread for the purposes of beauty; while that +which discourses confidently of the passage from this to another life, +with all the several stages clearly marked, and floods the whole scene +with a vivid and inartificial light from "the powers and terrors of what +is yet unseen," affects the mind with every atom of energy economized +and concentred. + +Leaving the literary question, we may bring this conclusion to bear upon +the Puritans and Salem, as their history affected Hawthorne. I have said +that a gradual suffusion of the marvellous overspreads the comparatively +arid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the proper influences; +and I have touched upon the two phases of imagination which, playing +over the facts, give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from the +contrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the lower kind of +imagination--that is, imagination deformed to credulity--would be likely +to be the more impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, +is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of New England's and +perhaps especially of Salem's colonial history, as Hawthorne turns them. +This is the dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer air +of his own reveries, has made so many people shudder on entering the +great romancer's shadowy but serene domain. + +And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, by bringing +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wide +apart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union in +this modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the +rays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches the +heavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each of +these Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no less +individual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand on +Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head of +allegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so much +of mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as was +inseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while in +Milton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact +balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhaps +outweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory +is found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes +to light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that added +such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special cases +the allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's +work; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbal +style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in the +very instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held to +the illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most +absolutely to the jewelled truth it holds,--in these very causes, I say, +the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown by +an unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It is +here that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But more +commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and the +aesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems to +be a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and +centrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again, +though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic the +tendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other. +In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement and +proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins. +However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very fact +of his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner he +chose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with the +want of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We may +say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written +such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the +"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him +something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which +Milton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive +truths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the +temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completer +harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence of +Milton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan +singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in +singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of +a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most +masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still +they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson +Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime +and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise +dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for +any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons +individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of +traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, +and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man +or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go +round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, +though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are +moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental +mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or +Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while +maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this +bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings +us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between +widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters +the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These +characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those +of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and +elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied +moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and +made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as +we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius, +Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled +strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill +them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute +intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground +connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the +relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the +chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's +resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably +modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, +combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion +for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into +the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a +modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to +Hawthorne. + +Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we +have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in +this compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with the +trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally +breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the +predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne +their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its +sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over +the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole +legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with +many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth +while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this +enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way +for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with +some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes +to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old +houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the +passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable +treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and +retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they +are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords. +One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad +about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger +of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter +strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the +light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character +of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but +these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to +the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of +mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the +occupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in +our way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible that +in a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there should +be a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differently +circumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as well +as its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, which +perhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source of +continuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable for +strong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, no +less than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become a +pronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it is +fecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to +their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the +descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the +early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and +depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily +pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether +from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me +remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and +die within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told of +persons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inherited +insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or +three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust +with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped +idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that +seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy +man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a +window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the +half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to +him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other +places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a +preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood +might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt +to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I +do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental +derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town, +having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in +sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the +privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had +compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has +reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House +of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, +takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance +that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to +meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a +proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine +outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself +to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has +called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and +home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder +individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with +almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, +and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types which +inevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. +Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, and +the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in the +romance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man, +urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham's +careful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedly +mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of +accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a +characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it +fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible +remains of the past. + +It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if not +showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks and +crannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his native +place in "The House of the Seven Gables," that the name of Thomas Maule +(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his death +by Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of a +sympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "Truth +Held Forth," published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which, +"The Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. He +seems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogether +in comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for saying +that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "the +doctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth," which contained +severe reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, +was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some time +Hawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as a +plausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters his +prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood to +drink." + +Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of the +laboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with some +comments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes in +once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a different +strain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies +to a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the +cent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in their +carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business,--good +business." It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romance +should find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the +Salem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645. + +The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge cast +such a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, and +became the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had written +the "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It is +enough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that he +searched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestion +already connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, when +remonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know of +any person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; but +the circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showing +that many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of that +half-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short +tales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were very +likely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when he +chanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables," they revived +and took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them. +That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation in +the statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most +vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable +names for the _dramatis personae._ Balzac used to look long among +the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived +character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very +rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the +discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to +the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that +Hawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his +countrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of the +settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell, +and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. Roger +Chillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine and +controversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has been +transferred, in "Blithedale," from the reign of Edward VI. to the +experimental era of Brook Farm. + +It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he could +not glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans +and of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his genius +that called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not write +philanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographies +of benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles +Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It is +the same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certain +preachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a model +apostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which would +reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain men +have certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime to +proving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence of +other things which they have no time and no supreme command to do. +Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence that +they are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of +the merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progress +from their own time to the present; and they have found a worthy +monument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more +reason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces of +our early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth and +eternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze through +Hawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogy +is the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unless +Hawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would still +have had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, were +worked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has been +able to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the race +of historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be a +satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for +assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases +constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any +other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the +insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. +Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures +of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things +seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time, +then vanish forever. + +But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be +practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had +no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and +penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which +had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the +surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and +strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely +represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously +sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling +in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of +his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of +which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic +purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat +this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements +of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But +there is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches of +assumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here and +there in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness, +which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment +about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing of +his own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actual +veneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earlier +generations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all too +tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and so +characteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that it +should not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too, +he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throws +himself into an understanding with those who look at New England and the +Puritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to +prepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by not +seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of the +reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which he +himself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this way +he really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality +and race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the most +pronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity. + +But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the +shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in +his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own +genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still +and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles +peopled. + +The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, +was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote: +This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as +Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have +substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of +the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B._, +October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with +Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, +1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, +and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "the +ten men," in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to +the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, +before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is +easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined +Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to +Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would +remove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he should +become an inhabitant of that town." He removed accordingly, and, in +1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of his +many employments for towne and countrie." Some of these lands were +situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be +the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that +portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned +the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a +"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the same +year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular +troop organized in Salem to "advance the military art." From 1636 to +1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and +Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an +assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town +a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over +twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his +famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these +various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and +in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his +efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of +twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this +year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these +"were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be +sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of +weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian +Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many +lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to +be his executioners." There was some reason for this severity, for in +crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The +captain adds: "We have no bread these three days." This early ancestor +was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who +reported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his +Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as +inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their +government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years +later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, +and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of +1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of +stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the +whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He +is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation +for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of the +Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who +glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his +political integrity." And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," +naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercy +we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, +whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and +Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make +use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do +with any foreign government." It is instructive to find what ground he +took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a +forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally +gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one +supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided +in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he that +will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters +of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the +commonwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that +Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap +barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he +resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the +copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure +New England history. + +Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that +"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, +Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a +magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the +government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall +preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a +law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most +abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be +as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could +be." His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See +"The Custom House," introductory to "The Scarlet Letter."] says that the +account of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than any +record of his better deeds, though these were many." Yet it should not +be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England +persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a +previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden +death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So +that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir +Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible +for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant +bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of +religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of +persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, +which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, +order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead its +subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the +commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to +repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death +should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the +dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, +like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too +heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes +for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to +more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after +five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility +of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various +justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was +oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only +because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of +his most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy." + +William Hathorne, however,--whatever his taste in persecution,--makes +his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give my +soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore +my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom +this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the +estate God hath given me in this world.... I do dispose of as +followeth." Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, +followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in +Salem," to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his +"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can +come over and enjoy it." Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence +for the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man who +appears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. +II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of +that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be +found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne +himself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, son +of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died +before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott +Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into +the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was the +famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," says Mr. +Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a +Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestor +calls him his _nephew_." The will says, "gr. ch."; and I suppose +the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at +hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in +years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for +it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from +this life forever. + +His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of +the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in +1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, +from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the +deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of +Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some +years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in +1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He +attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew +off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow +developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in +1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the +fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had +presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, +bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. +Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought +before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. +"She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I +might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me +to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I +did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she +should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to +torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I +repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me +to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote: +Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that +this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his +wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said +to have fallen upon the justice's posterity. + +From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position +in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet +of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he +married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished +mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the +eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In +the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne +earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in +his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may +have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to +have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member +of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a +Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with +four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, +being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase," captured by +the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. +C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, +originated the traditional career of the men of this family,--"a +gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage +puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy +of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most +eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, +and grandfather of the author. + +Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, +1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into +the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a +stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became +commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he +commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but +their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his +bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met +with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who +was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his +countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical +craft:-- + +BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER. + + The twenty-second of August, before the close of day, + All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh. + We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more, + When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan + shore. + + Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth, + Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth; + She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast, + And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause + was lost. + + Now farewell to America,--farewell our friends and wives, + We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives, + To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main, + And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. + + The wind it being leading and bore us on our way, + As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida, + When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main; + We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. + + We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight; + The contest held four glasses,[*] until the dusk of night; + Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea, + We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. + +[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four times, +--two hours.] + + Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, + All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try; + But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; + We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. + + We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale: + In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. + We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow + Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. + + Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:-- + "My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid; + All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear; + We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near." + + She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured, + And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, + When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain; + But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. + + And now the scene is altered,--the cannon ceased to roar; + We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more; + The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay, + But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. + + Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear, + Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer; + Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave, + Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave! + + Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew, + With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. + To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer! + Success to fair America and our good privateer! + +This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show +that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the +poetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappy +necessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "the +Eastern shore on board for forty leagues," in the first stanza; but it +was due to its historic and associative value to give it entire. + +Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes to +take to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to lie +in that direction. Many of these old New England seaports have +magnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessed +from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport, +and the rest,--they controlled the carrying of vast regions, and +fortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry +and reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept the +monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, +Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar; +Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee +and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and +Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, +Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean +many men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, and +has left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built, +still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinement +nurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to +the town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, who +married Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817, +leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom +House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon +Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, +however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth +began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine +the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that +his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road +to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever +winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's +head might with some reason have been thought to still hang over his +race, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition +... for many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of such +a curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share in +developing that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to his +father. + +It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of the +Seven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, with +important differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses a +special spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a property +which he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong is +done, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations is +subordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to his +own descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin. +The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but it +must be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which +doubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, is +transferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that of +Maule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule's +posterity," says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet, +honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generally +poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful +diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea +as sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to be +found, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor as +with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spoken +of--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or those +who endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round about +the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an +exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible +for any man to step." The points of resemblance here may be easily +distinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote which +recalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who had +been tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. +On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well," said +he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (he +had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is +the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based +upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate +study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and +contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort +of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not +consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, +and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds a +trait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes something +having a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproduction +nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of the +creative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables" +comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the +most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have +better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than +Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, +and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost +foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no +one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his +townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though +always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed +and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic +traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the +disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute, +admirable impartiality. + +[Illustration] + + + + +III. + + +BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE. + +1804-1828. + +With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him, +Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. + +His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons of +the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father and +son, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and the +day that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. The +elder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that his +predecessors had provided,--for they had some eight different ways of +writing, though presumably but one of pronouncing it,--and called +himself Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his only boy, +second of his three children, however, that he left the name to this +male successor, with whom it underwent a restoration to the more +picturesque and flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son of +Daniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, it is +thought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his family +suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot convey +the sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as +the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit +so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have +become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, +and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he +had a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him on +his long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with the +Puritan blood will easily understand the sort of dark, underlying +deposit of unutterable sadness that often reminds such persons of their +austere ancestry; but, in addition to this, the Hathornes had now firmly +imbibed the belief that their family was under a retributive ban for its +share in the awful severities of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. +It was not to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to us, +but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, that must often +have struck across their actions in a chilling and disastrous way. Their +ingrained reticence was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne's +fame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that fate was +making reprisals upon them. The captain's children felt this; and the +son, when grown to manhood, was said to greatly resemble his father in +appearance, as well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in the +maritime history of Salem, it is told that in the West Indies the name +grew so familiar as being that of the captain of a vessel, that it +became generic; and when a new ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Who +is the Endicott?" Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame in the +ports where they traded. At all events, some forty years after the +captain's death at Surinam, a sailor one day stopped Mr. Surveyor +Hawthorne on the steps of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if he +had not once a relative--an uncle or a father--who died in Surinam at +the date given above. He had recognized him by his likeness to the +father, of whom Nathaniel probably had no memory at all. + +But he inherited much from his mother, too. She has been described by a +gentleman who saw her in Maine, as very reserved, "a very pious woman, +and a very minute observer of religious festivals," of "feasts, fasts, +new moons, and Sabbaths," and perhaps a little inclined to superstition. +Such an influence as hers would inevitably foster in the son that strain +of reverence, and that especial purity and holiness of thought, which +pervade all that he has written. Those who knew her have said also, that +the luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so impressed people in +Hawthorne were like hers. She had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, +the daughter of Richard Manning, whose ancestors came to New England +about 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Manning, a well-known +pomologist of the same place. After the death of her husband, this +brother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but +little property: he was only thirty-two when he died. + +Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on Union +Street, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in +1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom House +of that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brick +building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne,"--as if the +future Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawing +nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house +of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The +land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house +they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, +Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was +born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union +Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American +Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME +was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated +October 4, 1840. + +"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever +needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of +which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so +interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with +as much care as I may. + +Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these go +to show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child, +quite handsome, with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of +him; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. While +quite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who was +trying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a +loud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of taking +long walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have a +companion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from +his home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must have +taken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak, +uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he should +never see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a +cabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination toward +mournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother's +care to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break out +from the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I is +going away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of the +head, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in his +mind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, +and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should take +in future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; on +these occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of his +failing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish +mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to +make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the +_denouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard +him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more +while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however, +seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak +distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard +III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always +declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone, +was,-- + + "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!" + +Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of +his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the +"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it +is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him +for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an +example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who +were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private +individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the +beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But +as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up +the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons +whose descriptions answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that +they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her +belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I +never see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking that +this may be the lost uncle." At the time of that loss Hawthorne was but +eight years old; he wrote this memorandum at fifty; and all that time +the early impression had remained intact, and the old semi-hallucination +about the uncle's being still alive hung about his mind through forty +years. When we change the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had no +very distinct interest with the father whose decease had so overclouded +his mother's life, and thwarted the deep yearnings of his own young +heart, we may begin to guess the depth and persistence of the emotions +which must have been awakened in him by this awful silence and absence +of death, so early thrown across the track of his childish life. I +conceive those lonely school-boy walks, overblown by shadow-freighting +murmurs of the pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of the +sea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, too sacred +for other companionship than that of uninquisitive Nature;--questionings +not even shaped and articulated to his own inner sense. + +Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound and tender +speculations and sad reflections the boy was moulding within himself, +this did not master him. The seed, as time went on, came to miraculous +issue; but as yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most part +happily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a house which +looked upon the garden of the widow's new abiding-place, used to see him +at play there with his sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure; and +a little incident of his school-days, at the same time that it shows how +soon he began to take a philosophical view of things, gives a hint of +his physical powers. He was put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, the +famous lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had come to +Salem and taken a school there for a few years;) and it is told of him +at this time, on the best authority, that he frequently came home with +accounts of having fought with a comrade named John Knights. + +"But why do you fight with him so often?" asked one of his sisters. + +"I can't help it," he said. "John Knights is a boy of very quarrelsome +disposition." + +Something in the judicial, reproving tone of the reply seems to hint +that Hawthorne had taken the measure of his rival, physically as well as +mentally, and had found himself more than a match for the poor fellow. +All that is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood and at +college weighs on this side; and Horatio Bridge, [Footnote: See +Prefatory Note to The Snow Image.] his classmate and most intimate +friend at Bowdoin College, tells me that, though remarkably +calm-tempered, any suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness to +give the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. + +But one of the most powerful influences acting on this healthy, +unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have been that of books. The +house in Herbert Street was well provided with them, and he was allowed +to make free choice. His selection was seldom, if ever, questioned; and +this was well, for he thus drew to himself the mysterious aliment on +which his genius throve. Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson are +mentioned among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance on +first beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indolence" seems to have +been one of his favorite poems while a boy. He is also known to have +read, before fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to have +gone through, with great diligence, the whole of "The Newgate Calendar," +which latter selection excited a good deal of comment among his family +and relatives, but no decisive opposition. A remark of his has come down +from that time, that he cared "very little for the history of the world +before the fourteenth century"; and he had a judicious shyness of what +was considered useful reading. Of the four poets there is of course but +little trace in his works; Rousseau, with his love of nature and +impressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand more directly related to +the future author's development, and "The Newgate Calendar" must have +supplied him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep ponderings +on sin and crime which almost from the first tinged the pellucid current +of his imagination. There is another book, however, early and familiarly +known to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in an +important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." + +Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him by +inheritance from his seafaring 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 his foot +is no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. "May be," 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." +This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, +already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; +though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated +distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not +yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he has +hopped out into the street once since his lameness began, and been "out +in the office and had four cakes." 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 (at +whose sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's "Speaker," +the name of which had "a classical sound in his ears," long, long +afterward, when he saw the author's tombstone in Liverpool), came to +hear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure after +this in Hawthorne's boyish 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 +stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When +tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books +for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps +erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must +have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one +would almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound body +that kept him sporting and away from reading, had devised a seemingly +harsh plan of luring him into his proper element. + +It was more likely after this episode than before, that Bunyan took that +hold upon him so fraught with consequences. He went every Sunday to his +grandmother Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon the +book; then, going to a particular three-cornered chair in a particular +corner of the room, "he would read it by the hour, without once +speaking." I have already suggested the relations of the three minds, +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect of this reading +is the allegorical turn which it gave the boy's thoughts, manifest in +many of his shorter productions while a young man; the most curious and +complete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad," in the "Mosses," +where Christian's pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad route +to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at +first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a +novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of +certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction +of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult +manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so +exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery as +Hawthorne's, which a passage like the following would make. In his +discourse with Talkative, Faithful says: "A man may cry out against sin, +of policy; but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. I +have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who can abide it well +enough in the heart, house, and conversation." + +Here is almost the motive and the moral of "The Scarlet Letter." But +Hawthorne refined upon it unspeakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, +when he perceived that there might be motives far more complex than that +of policy, a condition much more subtly counterfeiting the mien of +goodness and spirituality. Talkative replies, "You lie at a catch, I +perceive,"--meaning that he is sophistical. "No, not I," says Faithful; +"I am only for setting things right." Did not this desire of setting +things right stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's consciousness? It is not +a little singular to trace in Bunyan two or three much more direct links +with some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautiful +is shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with some +angels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellously +complete "Virtuoso's Collection," [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, +Vol. II.] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steed +Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the +warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's +analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of +Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we +can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom +Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot +refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which +recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, enough, at +least, to have given them a partially prophetic power over his +character. Mr. Great-Heart says of Mr. Fearing: "He desired much to be +alone; yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind the +screen to hear it." (So Hawthorne screened himself behind his genial +reserve.) "He also loved much to see ancient things, and to be pondering +them in his mind." What follows is not so strictly analogous throughout. +Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good a man as Fearing "should be all +his days so much in the dark." And he answers, "There are two sorts of +reasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe, +and some must weep.... And for my part, I care not at all for that +profession which begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that +the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in +tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in +tune for himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing; he +could play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter end." +Let the reader by no means imagine a moral comparison between Hawthorne +and Bunyan's Mr. Fearing. The latter, as his creator says, "was a good +man, though much down in spirit"; and Hawthorne, eminent in uprightness, +was also overcast by a behest to look for the most part at the darker +phases of human thinking and feeling; yet there could not have been the +slightest real similarity between him and the excellent but weak-kneed +Mr. Fearing, whose life is made heavy by the doubt of his inheritance in +the next world. Still, though the causes differ, it could be said of +Hawthorne, as of Master Fearing, "Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, +he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to him +a terror." I mean merely that Hawthorne may have found in this +character-sketch--Bunyan's most elaborate one, for the typical subject +of which he shows an evident fondness and leniency--something peculiarly +fascinating, which may not have been without its shaping influence for +him. But the intimate, affectionate, and lasting relation between +Bunyan's allegory and our romancer is something to be perfectly assured +of. The affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in the +"Note-Books" and the works of Hawthorne which recall and sustain it. So +late as 1854, he notes that "an American would never understand the +passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along a +by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stiles +and by-paths in our country." Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from or +alludes to other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in "The +Blithedale Romance," and several are found in "The Scarlet Letter": it +is in that romance that the most powerful suggestion of kinship between +the two imaginations occurs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview with +Hester, in the wood, he suffers the most freakish temptations to various +blasphemy on returning to the town: he meets a deacon, and desires to +utter evil suggestions concerning the communion-supper; then a pious and +exemplary old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse urges +him to whisper what then seemed to him an "unanswerable argument against +the immortality of the soul," and after muttering some incoherent words, +he sees "an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like +the _shine of the celestial city_ on her face." Then comes the most +frightful temptation of all, as he sees approaching him a maiden newly +won into his flock. "She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in +Paradise. The minister knew well that he himself was enshrined within +the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about +his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a +religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young +girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of +this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and +desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him to +condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of +evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit +betimes." Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian was +so confounded, that he did not know his own voice.... Just when he was +come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones +got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, +suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had +proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift +of these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, and +vividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element +common to both. + +For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that the +first book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen," for +which he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and +Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." The incident of Dr. Johnson's +penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he +has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it +in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly +impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared +it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this +time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not +be at a loss to find endless entertainment there. + +It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. In +June of the same year an event had taken place which must have entered +strongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young +Lawrence, of the American navy,--who had won honors for himself at +Tripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain,--had just +been promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to a +captaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake," at Boston. A +British frigate, the "Shannon," had been cruising for some time in the +neighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake," and the +valiant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he had +only just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (some +of whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement of +commissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake" +was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, and +how Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, +"Don't give up the ship." The battle was watched by crowds of people +from Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the +result. + +When the details at last reached the town, many days afterward, Captain +George Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax with +ten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his +lieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gave +itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martial +dignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannon +reverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast, +shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration over +them, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with that +spiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes at +hours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have +stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, and +imbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profound +love of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which +marked his whole maturity. + +I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathaniel +again lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. In +another brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all +these documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to find +anything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school a +little longer" before removing with his mother to the house which his +uncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant, +which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seeming +to show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency among +persons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to +establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in this +powerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular as +in intellectual development. + +It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family to +Raymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the +primitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning's +Folly." Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake, +and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is near +what has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by Robert +Manning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widow +married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's will +provided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood, +and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, the +community ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remained +untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of being +haunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more lively +aspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of the +Folly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyond +the open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, ranging +and rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distance +every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blue +of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland became +the nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one +twelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for college +preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, lies +less than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the same +county: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at +Raymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps even +deepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith of +women's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration as +this of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to +have heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remained +bereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With pathetic +energy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, +sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, I +think this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may have +impregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of +mortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifying +the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to this +exquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus +true to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in a +sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set in +an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not how +to hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims of +convenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledge +of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or later +know how much it owes to such as you! + +More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres of +the heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and, +incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one of +the Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of the +sensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably the +fact," so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lost +companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other +hand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the +departed, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with a +Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect +example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, +concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead," +[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which +I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned +and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope +and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women," +the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two +successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances +of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies +the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is +roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that the +report about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty without +the whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory +without losing the effect they make together. It is a complete +presentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence I +may remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inward +to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless +contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, +had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as +his widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dwelt +there together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake! + +Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he had +not always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16, +1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his +uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the +trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on +Lymington mountains. 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 brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me +to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is, +to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is +otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother +says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been +very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great +deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne +reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking +man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake; +"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of +solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so +perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." 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 at will through the woods of Maine!... Everything is +beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The same +writer mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the +return from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his +quiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and never +touch the shore again." I have it from his sister that he used to +declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a +mariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and the +salt spray in his blood. + +Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missed +carrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we have +explained all the fostering influences and formative forces that +surround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the +inexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not find +the right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right and +left and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannot +wholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death before +it will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to get +into a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possible +from what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whom +perception and receptivity exist in that active state which we call +genius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether the +conditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it +must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry +behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had +remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; +lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community +of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age; +yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes +they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in +his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of that +interior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment of +his outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance of +unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come +violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he +would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature +against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be +said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the +mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled +in any case. + +As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March +7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:-- + +"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. +Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in +your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, +but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my +lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the +morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A +minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a +career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. +"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at +the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was +again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest +days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will +come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note +that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a +large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I +append it. + +"I remain," he says, + "Your + Affectionate + and + Dutiful + son, + and + Most + Obedient + and + Most + Humble + Servant, + and + Most + Respectful + and + Most + Hearty + Well-wisher, + NATHANIEL HATHORNE." + +A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would +perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall +with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this +harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness +into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And +with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for +his pure young heart. + +In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the +possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, +unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been +forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he +had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this +extract:-- + +"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 for me but to be an author. How +would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by +your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?" + +But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "Early +Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland +"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs +them; [Footnote: See Appendix I.] and it has been impossible, up to this +time, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons named +in them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cumberland +County, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence of +authorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the first +leaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as +reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the book +had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning, +"with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as +good words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of the +best means of his securing for mature years command of thought and +language"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, if +true, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He did +not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly been +there, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816. +So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, though +their mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they must +cover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisher +of the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with a +date. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems also +probable that the whole series was written before the author's college +days. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's +perceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course, +and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which he +must have seen at Raymond. + +"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the +mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know +about. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great +pond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that +flies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be +miserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not +yet seen one turn to defend himself. + +"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." + +Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably her +nephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance +which ripened into "The Gentle Boy." + +"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not long +ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'Long +Reds.' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he liked +them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,--one end is very +poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was +gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and +that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it +very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato +spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would +have been called witty." + +"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read, +the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes to +Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library. + +"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 wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go +down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. +Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless +her for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are to +have a pump in the well, after this mishap. + +"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He was +in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the +half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a +second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have +supposed that he was drumming with twenty." + +"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday. +One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him down +near the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I +thought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so asked +Mr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, and +that will bring sixty-five cents,' was the answer. I ran and petitioned +mother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile that +she tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a great +spendthrift.' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (without +taking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the +butcher. + +"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter White +of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain +Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out +to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also 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. It is strange that this beautiful +body of water is called a 'Pond.' The geography tells of many in +Scotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes.' It is +not respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of +clear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of +goose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the +streams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and he +calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that Captain +Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr. +Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears and +wolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a grove +so fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. On +the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spotted +trout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, after +we got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. The +men said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the water +it would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking +hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line had +been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or have +been pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. I +am a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at the +Images, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. In +coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. +White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without +finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat, +as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats +in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man +standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more +than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at +the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of +Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the +almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light. +If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to +see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the +hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good +Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made +the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before +sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely +moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to +fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure +that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I +was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that +with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy +charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went +to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother +with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. +Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I +had found that out before. + +"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house, +that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning +Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long. +It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the +track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was +twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me +about the snakes. + +"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between +Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just +taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of the +trees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examining +closely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut off +the root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body; +saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he found +that there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake, +too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with the +axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears in +less than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and what +hunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably +true, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was here +with his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of the +Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday. + +"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two days ago, up in +Crooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swim +the faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him in +fun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit +his chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before his +friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says) +beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother this +morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercy +endureth forever.' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man just +married. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming +any more 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. + + * * * * * + +"Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds as long as +myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that he thought it a water +moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that it was a 'young sea-sarpint +sure.' Mr. Ficket, the blacksmith, begged it to take home for its skin, +as he said for buskin-strings and flail-strings. So ends my day's +fishing. + + * * * * * + +"Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have always thought +there was some mystery about it, but I can make them myself. Why did the +Israelites complain so much at having to make bricks without straw? I +should not use straw if I was a brick-maker; besides, when they are +burned in the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full of +holes. + + * * * * * + +"I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt Manning's garden, +this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, flitting among the +rose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. She will +never realize the calamity that came upon her brothers and sisters that +terrible night when her father and mother lay within a few rods of each +other, in the snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of her +loss; and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, in her +poverty, could have been." + + * * * * * + +This little girl was the child of some poor people of the neighborhood +who were frozen to death one March night, in 1819. In a letter to his +uncle Robert, March 24, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you have not +heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were froze to death +last Wednesday. They were brought out from the Cape on Saturday, and +buried from Captain Dingley's on Sunday." This determines the time of +writing the last-quoted extract from the journal. + + * * * * * + +"This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old horse, hitched +to the trough. 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 to 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 him and the meal up the Ben Ham Hill, and home, and am +now so weak that I can hardly stand. O 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, for his master might come out and see what +I was about. 'Thank you,' said he, 'a luncheon of corn with the bits in +is much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch so slowly, +that master may come before I finish it, and thrash me for eating his +corn, and you for the kindness.' I sat down on a stone out of the wind, +and waited in trouble, for fear that the miller and the owner of the +corn would come and find out what I had done. At last the horse winked +and stuck out his upper 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 shut his eyes as if to take a nap. 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 if his +master whipped him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, +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.' I asked him why he +did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. 'I did try +once,' said he, 'but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels +high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and +fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck me +over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just +before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and ready +for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike +again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I +was sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good.' 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 knew well enough what I said, for +I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language. At that moment the +brute that owned the horse came out of the store, and down the hill +towards us. I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in the +wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad picked up and a +thrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. Looking at the end of the +stick, the man bawled, 'What little devil has had my goad?' and then +began striking with all his strength; but his steed only walked, shaking +his head as he went across the bridge; and I thought I heard the ancient +Equus say as he went, 'Thrash as much as you please, for once you cannot +stab.' I went home a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the feeding +the man's corn to his horse was not stealing, and thinking that if the +miller found it out, he would have me taken down before Squire Longley. + + * * * * * + +"Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. She rode as +gracefully as a Trooper. I wish with all my heart that I was as daring a +rider, or half so graceful. + + * * * * * + +"This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and climbed up into +the pulpit. It looks like a rough place to preach from, and does not +seem so much like a pulpit when one is in it, as when viewing it from +the road below. It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought a +book and sat in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is a +point on the road known to all teamsters. They have a string of names +for reference by which they tell each other where they met +fellow-teamsters and where their loads got stuck, and I have learned +them from those who stop for drinks at the store. One meets another near +our house, and says, 'Where did you meet Bill?' 'Just this side of +Small's Brook,' or 'At the top of Gray's Pinch,' 'At the Dry Mill-Pond,' +'Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's,' 'On the long causeway,' 'At +Jeems Gowen's,' 'Coming down the Pulpit Rock Hill,' 'Coming down Tarkill +Hill.' I have heard these answers till I have them by heart, without +having any idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I have +seen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, who lives +not far away, came along and asked where I had been. On my telling him, +he said that no money would hire him to go up to that pulpit; that the +Devil used to preach from it long and long ago; that on a time when +hundreds of them were listening to one of his sermons, a great chief +laughed in the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and the +ground to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, and +every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. He +declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easily +several feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, when +instantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell as +from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. +Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near that +swamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the +road near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas Pond, +keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a wide berth. Mr. West +talked as though he believed what he said. + + * * * * * + +"A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle Richard's store, +telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but tried not to seem +interested. The story was of a house, the owner of which was suddenly +killed. Since his death the west garret-window cannot be kept closed; +though the shutters be hasped and nailed at night, they are invariably +found open the next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nails +were drawn. There is also on the farm an apple-tree, the fruit of which +the owner was particularly fond of, but since his death no one has been +able to get one of the apples. The tree hangs full nearly every year, +but whenever any individual tries to get one, stones come in all +directions as if from some secret infernal battery, or hidden catapult, +and more than once have those making the attempts been struck. What is +more strange, the tree stands in an open field, there being no shelter +near from which tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says that +it seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when the +snow is four feet deep; and, what is a mystery, there are no apples in +the spring; no one ever sees the wind blow one off, none are seen on the +snow, nor even the vestige of one on the grass under the tree; and that +children may play on the grass under and around it while it is in the +blossom, and until the fruit is large enough to tempt them, with perfect +safety; but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is full +of flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night he was +passing the house, and looking up saw the phantom walk out of the garret +window with cane in hand, making all the motions as if walking on +_terra firma_, although what appeared to be his feet were at least +six yards from the ground; and so he went walking away on nothing, and +when nearly out of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as of +twenty field-pieces, then--nothing. This story was told with seeming +earnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How strange it +is that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of hearing about the +supernatural, though it produces nervousness and fear! I should not be +willing to sleep in that garret, though I do not believe a word of the +story. + + * * * * * + +"The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs across the Great +Pond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of many +thousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor +dragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty or +thirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men +say who are familiar with such business. All the men and boys went from +the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They +have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great +body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. +A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright +windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of +the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a +yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half +a mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the rope, the +anchor thrown over, and the men on the headworks wind up the capstan and +so draw along the acres of logs. After we went down to the shore, +several of the men came out on the boom nearest to us, and, striking a +single log, pushed it under and outside; then one man with a gallon jug +slung to his back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the small +single log,--a feat that seemed almost miraculous to me. This man's name +was Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in no fear of getting soused. This +masterly kind of navigation he calls 'cuffing the rigging'; nobody could +tell me why he gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had the +jug filled with rum (the supply having run out on the headworks), and +made the voyage back the way he came. His comrades received him with +cheers, and after sinking the log and drawing it back under the boom, +proceeded to try the contents of the jug, seeming to be well satisfied +with the result of his expedition. It turned out that Murch only rode +the single log ashore to show his adroitness, for the yawl-boat came +round from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts to +where we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixed +with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called +'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea of +a Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle.' I think his real name was Wood. +The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' +pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly man +named Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, +interfered and put a stop to what was becoming something like a fight. +Mr. Thompson said that the wind would go down with the sun, and that +they must get ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, +and the raft was almost to Frye's Island. + + * * * * * + +"I have read 'Gulliver's Travels,' but do not agree with Captain Britton +that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, +and the _lies_ too _false_." + + * * * * * + +The next and last piece of this note-book was printed two years later +than the preceding items, and after the death of the person who +professed to own the manuscript, but still with the same degree of +mystery, except in the matter of date. + +"Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from Windham, Mr. M. P. Sawyer +of Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, and +Enoch White, a boy of about my own age, from White's Bridge, came up to +the Dingley Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy River +Bog, for a day's sport, fishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch proposed that +I should go with them. I needed no urging, but knew how unwillingly my +mother would consent. They could wait but a few minutes, and Uncle +Richard kindly wrote a note, asking her to be willing to gratify me +_this_ time. + +"She said, 'Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasure +would cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up hooks and +lines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous number +of biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, then +skilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-bag, +and slung over my shoulder. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, +as we walked down to the boat, as to which would catch the largest +number of fish. + +"The air was clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us along +pleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was not exactly after +us, though we made but two tacks to reach the mouth of Muddy River. The +men praised the grand view, after we got into the Great Bay. We could +see the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they were +eighty miles from us; 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. Mr. Little seems to be familiar with every +book that has ever been written, and must have a great memory. Among +other things, he said:-- + +"'Gentlemen, do you know that this should be called the sea, instead of +the Great Pond; that ships should be built here and navigate this water? +The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of which we hear so much in the New +Testament, was just about equal to the surface of our sea to-day.' + +"And then he went on to give a geographical description of the country +about the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels between places named in the +Testament and points in sight. His talk stole my attention until we were +fairly at Muddy River mouth. + +"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties into the pond +between two small sandy capes or points, only a short distance apart; +but after running up a little between them we found the bog to widen to +fifty or sixty rods in some places, and to be between two or three miles +long. People say that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles that +ever grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down with another +a little longer, and this may be repeated until the long poles are all +gone. + +"Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every part, with +the exception of a place five or six rods wide, running its whole +length, and nearly in the middle, which is called the Channel. One can +tell at first sight that it is the place for pickerel and water-snakes. + +"Mr. Deblois stated something that I never heard before as a fact in +natural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all fish, except the +trout, who is too active for him; that he is a piscatorial cannibal; but +that under all circumstances and in all places, he lives on good terms +with the water-snake. + +"We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer had +a gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as four were flying and +seemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he would frighten +them, if no more; when, to our surprise, he brought one down. The gun +was loaded with ball, and Mr. Deblois told him he could not do it again +in a million shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that he had always been a +votary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated him +handsomely. + +"We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and trolling for +pickerel; and though we saw a great many, not one offered to be caught, +but horned pouts were willing, and we caught them till it was no sport. +We found a man there who had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He was +on a raft, and had walked from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otisfield. +Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 'The next +time you come to Portland I want half a dozen of your best jewsharps; +leave them at my store at Windham Hill. I need them very badly.' + +"The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that he had just +pulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began solemnly to explore +in his pockets, and brought out six quaint jewsharps carefully tied to +pieces of corn-cobs; then he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Little, +saying, 'There they are, Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made; +I shall charge you fifty cents for them.' Mr. Little had the worst of +the joke; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out the +silver and paid the half-dollar; but they laughed at him till he told +them, if they would say no more about it, he would give them all the +brandy they could drink when they got home. + +"Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed; that he must tell Peter White +when he got to Windham Hill. + +"Mr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it for a yoke of +steers. + +"After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry knoll that +made out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The men had a variety of +eatables, and several bottles that held no eatables. The question was +started whether Enoch and I should be invited to drink, and they +concluded not to urge us, as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. +Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much +yours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drink +spirits.' + +"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and had +no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little had +been there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water, +that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of the +bog. + +"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to be +settled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number of +fish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted my +string and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I was +about turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was +the largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made +twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, and +found it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr. +Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly larger +than mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four, +and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over, +until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice +alike. + +"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you have +turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all.' The men +laughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of the +joke was. + +"Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to go over to +the next term. After starting for home, while running down the bog, Mr. +Sawyer killed three noble black ducks at one shot, but the gun was not +loaded this time with ball. Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole, and +killed a monstrous water-snake. Mr. Little measured a stick with his +hands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. If I +thought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, I never would go +into the water there again. + +"When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found a lively +breeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the Dingley Brook in +less than an hour, and then kept on like a great white bird down towards +the Cape, and for the outlet. I stood and watched the boat until it was +nearly half-way to Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helped +me to enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and greeted +mother just as the sun went out of sight behind the hills in Baldwin. +The fish were worthless, but I thought I must have something to show for +the day spent. After exhibiting them to mother and sister, and hearing +the comments as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what their +horns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that pouts were the +best of fish after they were skinned. + +"I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle Richard, who +is an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such sport, and wished me to +describe everything just as it had happened, whether witty or silly, and +give my own impressions. He has read my diary, and says that it +interested him, which is all the reward I desire. And now I add these +lines to keep in remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received in +hearing the conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. +August, 1818, Raymond." + + * * * * * + +These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if they be genuine, as in most +respects I believe they must be, will furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, +to the distinct turn which the boy's mind took toward authorship after +his return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classical culture. +We can also see in them, I think, the beginning of that painstaking +accumulation of fact, the effort to be first of all accurate, which is a +characteristic of his maturer and authenticated note-books; very +significant, too, is the dash of the supernatural and his tone +concerning it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of communing +with himself through the pen, so constant and assiduous as we know it to +have been in his later years,--even when mind and time were +preoccupied,--must have been formed early, to retain so strong a hold +upon him. But there is another reason for supposing that he had begun to +compose with care before coming from Raymond to Salem; and this is found +in the fact that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very small +and intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly paper printed +with the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed note size, and written in an +excellent style. + +The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, opens with the Editor's +Address:-- + +"Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number of the +Spectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, when he beholds a +beloved child about to embark on the troubled Ocean of public Life. +Perhaps the iron hand of Criticism may crush our humble undertaking, ere +it is strengthened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected and +forgotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the Pride and +Ornament of our Country.... We beg leave farther to remark that in order +to carry on any enterprise with spirit MONEY is absolutely necessary. +Money, although it is the root of all evil, is also the foundation of +everything great and good, and therefore our Subscribers ... will please +carefully to remember that the terms are two cents per month." + +A little further on there is this allusion to the Scriptural proverb +cited above: "We have been informed that this expression is incorrect, +and that it is the love of Money which is the 'Root of all Evil.' But +money is certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, Money is +the deepest 'Root of Evil.'" (Observe, here, the young student's pride +of reason, and the consciousness of a gift for casuistry!) Under the +head of "Domestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, the +deduction from various rumors about the monster being that "he seems to +possess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing in +different shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees a +shark, another beholds a nameless dragon." (Here, too, is the humorously +veiled distrust that always lurked beneath his dealings with the +marvellous.) In the next columns there is found an advertisement of the +Pin Society, which "will commence lending pins to any creditable person, +on Wednesday, the 23d instant. No numbers except ten, twenty, and thirty +will be lent"; and the rate of interest is to be one pin on every ten +per day. This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the editor in +person,--a combination which in these days would lay him open to +suspicions of unfair dealing. I have seen a little manuscript book +containing the remarkable constitution and by-laws of this society, in +which there were but two members; and it is really a curious study of +whimsical intricacy, the work of a mind perfectly accustomed to solitude +and fertile in resources for making monotony various and delightful. It +does not surprise one to meet with the characteristic announcement from +this editor that he has "concluded not to insert deaths and marriages +(except of very distinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see but +little use in thus giving to the world the names of the crowd who are +tying the marriage knot, and going down to the silent tomb." There is +some poetry at the end of the paper, excellent for a boy, but without +the easy inspiration of the really witty prose. + +It would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, which was also an +end, before nourishing up into the series of which I have synopsized the +first issue; for there is another Number One without date, but +apparently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments "On +Solitude," with a touch of what was real profundity in so inexperienced +a writer. "Man is naturally a sociable being," he says; "and apart from +the world there are no incitements to the pursuit of excellence; there +are no rivals to contend with; and therefore there is no improvement.... +The heart may be more pure and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposed +to the influences of the depravity of the world; but the benefit of +virtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious ones, and both +are equally lost." The "Domestic Intelligence" of this number is as +follows: "The lady of Dr. Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. +Hathorne's cat, Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies are +in a state of convalescence." Also, "Intentions of Marriage. The +beautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah Dingley will shortly be united to +Dominicus Jordan Esq." (The young author appears to have allowed himself +in this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction respecting real +persons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler of the Raymond notes. Who Miss +Keziah was I do not know, but from the name I guess her to have been a +relative, by appellation at least, through Richard Manning's wife. If +Hawthorne did not himself call Miss Dingley aunt, he may very likely +have heard her commonly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyish +association perhaps unconsciously supply him with a name for the Indian +aunt of "Septimius Felton"?) The next item is "DEATHS. We are sorry to +be under the necessity of informing our readers that no deaths of +importance have taken place, except that of the publisher of this Paper, +who died of Starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage." +Notwithstanding this discouraging incident, one of the advertisements +declares that "Employment will be given to any number of indigent Poets +and Authors at this office." But shortly afterward is inserted the +announcement that "Nathaniel Hathorne proposes to publish by +subscription a new edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will be +added a sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own +experience." + +In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of a discourse by Dr. +Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening.... With the amount of the contribution +which was taken up ... we are unacquainted, as, having no money in our +pockets, we departed before it commenced." This issue takes a despondent +view of the difficulties that beset editors. There is a clever paragraph +of "Domestic News" again. "As we know of no News," it says, "we hope our +readers will excuse us for not inserting any. The law which prohibits +paying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case." Next +we have a very arch dissertation "On Industry": "It has somewhere been +remarked that an Author does not write the worse for knowing little or +nothing of his subject. We hope the truth of this saying will be +manifest in the present article. With the benefits of Industry we are +not personally acquainted." The desperate editor winds up his week's +budget with a warning to all persons who may be displeased by +observations in the Spectator, that he is going to take fencing lessons +and practise shooting at a mark. "We also," he adds, "think it advisable +to procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the constant companion of our +peregrinations." The assumption of idleness in the essay on Industry, +just quoted, breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor-- +in apologizing for inaccuracies in the printing of his paper--enumerates +his different occupations: "In the first place we study Latin and Greek. +Secondly we write in the employment of William Manning Esq., [at that +time proprietor of an extensive line of stagecoaches]. Thirdly, we are +Secretary, Treasurer, and Manager of the 'Pin Society'; Fourthly, we are +editor of the Spectator; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own Printers, +Printing Press and Types." But the young journalist carried on his +labors unabatedly, for the term of some five weeks, and managed to make +himself very entertaining. I take from an essay "On Benevolence" a +fragment which has a touch of poetry out of his own life. Benevolence, +he says, is "to protect the fatherless, and to make the Widow's heart +sing for joy." One of the most cherishable effusions is that "On +Wealth," in which the venerable writer drops into a charmingly +confidential and reminiscent vein. "All men," he begins, "from the +highest to the lowest, desire to pursue wealth.... In process of time if +we obtain possession" of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, "we +generally find ourselves as far from being contented as at first.... +When I was a boy, I one day made an inroad into a closet, to the secret +recesses of which I had often wished to penetrate. I there discovered a +quantity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take only one, +which I put in my pocket. But those which remained were so very inviting +that it was against my conscience to leave them, and I filled my pockets +and departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas! an apple +which was unable to find space enough among its companions bounced down +upon the floor before all the Family. I was immediately searched, and +forced, very unwillingly, to deliver up all my booty." In the same +number which contains this composition appears the token of what was +doubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in literature. It is a +"Communication," of tenor following:-- + +"Mr. Editor: I have observed in some of your last papers, Essays on +Various subjects, and am very much pleased with them, and wish you to +continue them. If you will do this, you will oblige + +"MARIA LOUISA HATHORNE." + +"We hail the above communication," writes the editor with exaggerated +gratitude, "as the dawn of a happy day for us." In his next and final +issue, though (September, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces his +dissatisfaction at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, +through this "Request":-- + +"As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticise +home-manufactured publications, we most earnestly desire some of our +benevolent Readers to write a book for our special benefit. At present +we feel as we were wont to do in the days of our Boyhood, when we +possessed a Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We engage to +execute the Printing and Binding, and to procure the Paper for the Work, +free of all expense to the Author. If this request should be denied us, +we must infallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, as +they will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very unwilling to do. +We do not wish that the proposed work should be too perfect; the Author +will please to make a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon." + +In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased maturity (though +it be only by a year or two) of the lad, since the engrossing of his +records at Raymond. We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of a +steady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air of assumed +indifference, and see how easily already his humor began to play, with +that clear and sweet ripeness that warms some of his more famous pages, +like late sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and translucent +grapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation at this point would not be +complete, without recognition of the graver emotions that sometimes +throbbed beneath the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimes +must have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit with weary +movelessness, and all the pain of awakening ambition and departing +boyhood, seem to find a symbol in this stanza from the fourth +"Spectator":-- + + "Days of my youth, ye fleet away, + As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, + And scarce my infant hours are gone, + Ere manhood's troubled step comes on. + My infant hours return no more, + And all their happiness is o'er; + The stormy sea of life appears, + A scene of tumult and of tears." + +Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of sixteen did not speak +without knowledge. Various sorts of pressure from uncongenial sources +were now and then brought to bear upon him; there was present always the +galling consciousness of depending on others for support, and of being +less self-sustaining than approaching manhood made him wish to be. +Allusion has been made to his doing writing for his uncle William. "I +still continue," he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his mother at +Raymond, "to write for Uncle William, and find my salary quite +convenient for many purposes." This, to be sure, was a first approach to +self-support, and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. But +Hawthorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for maturity. An +outpouring of his thoughts on this and other matters, directed to his +sister, accompanies the letter just cited. Let us read it here as he +wrote it more than a half-century ago:-- + +DEAR SISTER:--I am very angry with you for not sending me some of your +poetry, which I consider a great piece of ingratitude. You will not see +one line of mine until you return the confidence which I have placed in +you. I have bought the 'Lord of the Isles,' and intend either to send or +to bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems. I +have read Hogg's "Tales," "Caleb Williams," "St. Lean," and +"Mandeville." I admire Godwin's novels, and intend to read them all. I +shall read the "Abbot," by the author of "Waverley," as soon as I can +hire it. I have read all Scott's novels except that. I wish I had not, +that I might have the pleasure of reading them again. Next to these I +like "Caleb Williams." I have almost given up writing poetry. No man can +be a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find this place most +"dismal," and have taken to chewing tobacco with all my might, which, I +think, raises my spirits. Say nothing of it in your letters, nor of the +"Lord of the Isles." ... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I +can scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four years +longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!" +You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to Uncle +Richard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds +it thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his +epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must conclude, as I +am in a "monstrous hurry!" + +Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE. + +P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:-- + + "She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, + She's gone to dwell in Heaven: + Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon + For dwalling out of Heaven." + +It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as I +know you would admire it. + +As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into the +obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart must +have borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this must +not be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that were +compounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last he +struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 he +went to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow and +Cheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verse +of "Morituri Salutamus,"--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe," an +anonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of the +college at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction. + +"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accurate observer +might pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of those +classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would +inform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a not +less toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments of +a more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the +polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler +cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in +general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were +understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater +could bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in the +world. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. A +few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and +these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom +they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the +fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them +in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from +both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, +to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the +benefits of civilization. + +"If this institution 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 students, indeed, ignorant +of their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their +entrance on the business of life; but they found, in after years, that +many of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes which they would +with least reluctance live over again, referred to the seat of their +early studies." + + * * * * * + +He here divides the honors pleasantly between the forest-bred and +city-trained youth, having, from his own experience, an interest in each +class. Yet I think he must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. +Horatio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more confidential +friend than Pierce, was brought up on his father's estate at Bridgton, +north of Sebago Lake; and Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, his +only other frequent companion, was a native of the New Hampshire +hill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, perhaps gathered to his +person something the look of both the seaport lads and the sturdy +mountaineers and woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to his +uncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives the measure of his +foot, for some new shoes that are to be sent; it is ten inches), but an +interior and ruling grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being a +sea-captain's son, he would naturally make his connections at college +with men who had the out-of-doors glow about them; the simple and severe +life at Raymond, too, had put him in sympathy with the people rather +than with the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of some +of the old dwellers near Raymond describe the widow and her brother +Richard as being exclusive and what was there thought "aristocratic"). +Hawthorne, Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athenaean Society, +the newer club of the two college literary unions, and the more +democratic; and the trio preserved their cordial relations intact for +forty years, sometimes amid confusions and misconstructions, or between +cross-fires of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity. +Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his grasp, but he and +his two cronies seem to have taken their curriculum very easily, though +they all came off well in the graduation. Hawthorne was a good Latinist. +The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin compositions, +even in the Freshman year, were remarkable; and Mr. Longfellow tells me +that he recalls the graceful and poetic translations which his classmate +used to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity in Greek, I +believe, but he always kept up his liking for the Latin writers. Some +years since a Latin theme of his was found, which had been delivered at +an exhibition of the Athenaean Society, in December, 1823. [Footnote: +See Appendix II.] It shows some niceties of selection, and the style is +neat; I even fancy something individual in the choice of the words +_sanctior nec beatior_, as applied to the republic, and a +distinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the _fulgor tantum fuit sine +fervore_; though a relic of this kind should not be examined too +closely, and claims the same exemption that one gives to Shelley's +school-compelled verses, _In Horologium_. + +His English compositions also excited notice. Professor Newman gave them +high commendation, and Mr. Bridge speaks of their superiority. But none +of them have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilant +suppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Hawthorne's habit as a +young man to destroy all of his own letters that he could find, on +returning home after an absence; and few records of his college life +remain. Here is a brief note, however. + +BRUNSWICK, August 12, 1823. + +MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should have +answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L---- +conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will +last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next +Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I +suppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, +and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I should +prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there is +a steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If this +be the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has no +apprehension of the boiler's bursting. + +I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to the +usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or four +pages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hope +you will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness.... + +Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE. + +This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyish +simplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personality +already unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of +Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept his +maturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatory +culture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes +toward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only two +slight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, he +recalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committee +of which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise," he says, "that +the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a +college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered +into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I +could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be +inclined to smile." But much more intimate and delightful is the +reminiscence which, in the dedicatory preface of "The Snow Image," +addressed to his friend Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody is +responsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know +not whence your faith came: but, 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 treats in +that shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering +riverward through the forest,--though you and I will never cast a line +in it again,--two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to +acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard +of, or else it had been the worse for us,--still it was your prognostic +of your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction." I have +asked Mr. Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, and he +tells me that it was an indescribable conviction, aroused by the whole +drift of his friend's mind as he saw it. Exquisite indeed must have been +that first fleeting aroma of genius; and I would that it might have been +then and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our delight. But we must +be satisfied with the quick and sympathetic insight with which +Hawthorne's friend discovered his true bent. The world owes more, +probably, to this early encouragement from a college companion than it +can ever estimate. + +Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more peculiar and +unchanging value than the mutual impressions of young men at college: +they meet at a moment when the full meaning of life just begins to +unfold itself to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two or +three traits the whole character of a comrade, where a maturer man +weighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and ends after all with a like or +dislike that is only lukewarm. Far on toward the close of life, +Hawthorne, in speaking of something told him by an English gentleman +respecting a former classmate of the latter's, wrote: "It seemed to be +one of those early impressions which a collegian gets of his +fellow-students, and which he never gets rid of, whatever the character +of the person may turn out to be in after years. I have judged several +persons in this way, and still judge them so, though the world has come +to very different opinions. Which is right,--the world, which has the +man's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who has +nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, +doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man's +mature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable or +otherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. In +this, then, we perceive one of the formative effects on Hawthorne's mind +of his stay at Brunswick. Those four years of student life gave him a +thousand eyes for observing and analyzing character. He learned then, +also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always afterward he was +singularly independent in selecting friends; often finding them even in +unpopular and out-of-the-way persons. The affinity between himself and +Bridge was ratified by forty years of close confidence; and Hawthorne +never swerved from his early loyalty to Pierce, though his faithfulness +gave him severe trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not of +those who explain this steadfastness by a theory of early prepossession +on Hawthorne's part, blinding him to Pierce's errors or defects. There +is ample proof in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, which I +have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguished +friend the President's character with his impartial and searching eye +for human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe if +he had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certain +candor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided it +seemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his old +friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought +hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the +severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid +unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was +perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old +"Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person +of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed +Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he +saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the +harsh multitude. + +Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an +apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen +or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted +with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was +especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from +college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, +his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own +imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the +papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there +for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith +the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was +not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. + +In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive, +there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplier +of events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strain +of revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion shows +that he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824 +(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty cents +for neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did its +best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings. +[Footnote: The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 1824, is +but $19.62, of which $2.36 is made up of fines. The figures give a +backward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, but show that the +disinclination of students to comply with college rules was even then +expensive. The "average of damages" is only thirty-three cents, from +which I infer that the class was not a destructive one.] Logically, +these tendencies away from essay and oratory are alien to minds destined +to produce literature; but empirically, they are otherwise. Meantime, we +get a sudden light on some of the solid points of character, apart from +genius, in this note from the college president, and the student's +parallel epistles. + +May 29, 1822. + +MRS. ELIZABETH C. HATHORNE. + +MADAM:----By note of the Executive Government of this college, it is +made my duty to request your co-operation with us in the attempt to +induce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution. He +was this day fined fifty cents for playing cards for money, last term. +He played at different times. Perhaps he might not have gained, were it +not for the influence of a student whom we have dismissed from college. +It does not appear that your son has very recently played cards; yet +your advice may be beneficial to him. I am, madam, + +Very respectfully, + +Your obedient, humble servant, + +WILLIAM ALLEN, _President_. + +The next day after this note was written (on May 30, 1822) the subject +of it wrote thus:-- + +"MY DEAR MOTHER:--I hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I have +nothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players in +college have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. +One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with +myself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the President +intends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be +the case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again detected, I +shall have the honor of being suspended; when the President asked what +we played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty cents, +although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I had told him of +that, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appears +that the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that +time was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the common +term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There was no untruth in the +case, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. +I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall not +till the last week." + +But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 1822) a few +months afterward, he touches the matter much more vigorously:-- + +"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead, +absconded, or anything worse.' [The allusion is to some reproach for a +long silence on his part.] I have involved myself in no 'foolish +scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune +I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have +been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong +drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold +good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I +have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so +severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by +the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full +as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and +would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence +playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another +into anything wrong." + +I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headed +attitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made up +his mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinks +himself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdom +of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself less +thoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitable +theory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral sense +and ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect lives +by truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:-- + +"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago to +read Hume's 'History of England,' but found it so abominably dull that I +have given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procure +books of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which I +am a member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, among +which is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed in 1819], and many +other valuable works.... Our class will be examined on Tuesday for +admittance to our Sophomore year. If any of us are found deficient, we +shall be degraded to the Freshman class again; from which misfortune may +Heaven defend me." + +But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt any, was soon +soothed; he passed on successfully through his course. Not only did he +graduate well, but he had also, as we shall see, begun to prepare +himself for his career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentary +way, his mood at graduation:-- + +"BRUNSWICK, July 14, 1825. + +"MY DEAR SISTER:--.... I am not very well pleased with Mr. Dike's report +of me. The family had before conceived much too high an opinion of my +talents, and had probably formed expectations which I shall never +realize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally 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. I do +not say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but +merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where your +partiality has led you astray. I did hope that Uncle Robert's opinion of +me was nearer to the truth, as his deportment toward me never expressed +a very high estimation of my abilities." + +Mr. Dike was a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, after +seeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. +Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, +before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anything +decisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed his +success as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture which +precipitated and made perfect the mysterious solution in which his +genius lay. The wish "to plod along with the multitude," seemingly +unambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most undyingly with +hope of achievement in art, often throw off this vapor of discontent; +they feel a prophetic thrill of that nameless suffering through which +every seeker of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, for +the sweet obscurity of the ungifted. + +Another part of this letter shows the writer's standing at college:-- + +"Did the President write to you about my part? He called me to his +study, and informed me that, though my rank in the class entitled me to +a part, yet it was contrary to the law to give me one, on account of my +neglect of declamation. As he inquired mother's name and residence, I +suppose that he intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you will +send me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with this +arrangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship, while +it saves me the mortification of making my appearance in public at +Commencement. Perhaps the family may not be so much pleased by it. Tell +me what are their sentiments on the subject. + +"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday." + +Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on the +threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young, +and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all his +shy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo such +long applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some great +thing was already a part of his life, together with that longing for +recognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of +beginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words, +which I find in "Fanshawe," drawn from the author's knowledge of his own +heart? + +"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent in +solitary study,--in conversation with the dead,--while he had scorned to +mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives. +Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world, +unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his +pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost +heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that +dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a +thousand realities." + +Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and +perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some +forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to +us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. It +is this:-- + + "The ocean hath its silent caves, + Deep, quiet, and alone; + Though there be fury on the waves, + Beneath them there is none." + +If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque +murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, +that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a +near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, +but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the +cable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much more +nearly does the writer justice:-- + +"MOONLIGHT. + + "We are beneath the dark blue sky, + And the moon is shining bright; + O, what can lift the soul so high + As the glow of a summer night; + When all the gay are hushed to sleep + And they that mourn forget to weep, + Beneath that gentle light! + + "Is there no holier, happier land + Among those distant spheres, + Where we may meet that shadow band, + The dead of other years? + Where all the day the moonbeams rest, + And where at length the souls are blest + Of those who dwell in tears? + + "O, if the happy ever leave + The bowers of bliss on high, + To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, + And wipe the tear-drop dry; + It is when moonlight sheds its ray, + More pure and beautiful than day, + And earth is like the sky." + +At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held such +strong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, +these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for a +certain independence; but there is something besides in the refined +touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne's +individuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, +was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first +fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration +of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the +Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise +on the Hills":-- + + "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke + Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," + +it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted +the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the +rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne +had as yet hardly found his appropriate element. + +In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published an +anonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe," much more nearly approaching +a novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and +Capen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate the +edition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. We +have seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. +"Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Peveril of the +Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared +while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become +the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy +between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the +people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a +common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of +both states at about the same period, and in both it has had the same +result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, +intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe +some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter +climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is +pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a +little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as +a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his +own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a +joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and +many-sided of American humorists. And, though many of the conditions of +the two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races are of +course largely dissimilar. The most salient distinction, perhaps, is +that of the Scotch being a musical and dancing nation; something from +which the New-Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him with +his Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake as a Pilgrim and not a +Covenanter, Hawthorne was by nature formed with little ear for music. It +seems strange that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight," +just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admitted an ill-timed +strain or jarring cadence into his pure, symphonious prose, should +scarcely be able to distinguish one tune from another. Yet such was the +case. But this was owing merely to the absence of the _musical_ +instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccompanied voice; and I +have been always much touched by a little incident recorded in the +"English Note-Books": "There is a woman who has several times passed +through this Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasionally to +sing songs under the windows; and last evening ... she came and sang +'Kathleen O'Moore' richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, +chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat in +our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me more +deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale +suddenly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste of +such a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a +harp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the +woman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open to +sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now than +formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps,--grievous that it should be so!--of +the superior temperance of our race. For, by one of those strange +oversights that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the door +for song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, seems to admit quite +freely two vagabonds that have no business there, Squalor and +Drunkenness. Yet notwithstanding this grave unlikeness between the two +peoples, Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeit +unwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit to Glasgow, +that in spite of the poorer classes there excelling even those of +Liverpool in filth and drunkenness, "they are a better looking people +than the English (and this is true of all classes), more intelligent of +aspect, with more regular, features." There is certainly one quality +linking the two nations together which has not yet been commented on, in +relation to Hawthorne; and this is the natural growth of the weird in +the popular mind, both here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enter +into this at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have suggested +some of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne's +fiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides +George Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with +real skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his +work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving +Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be +ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from +the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the +Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification. + +Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returned +from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visit +to Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long +before arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. The +exact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorous +whimsey, "P.'s Correspondence," which contains the essence of the best +criticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] In +allusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, or +architecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinite +variety." And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter +Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works went +out of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather than +that fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and +as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like +the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a more +earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he +was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the present +generation even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe" +there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the very +resemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent. + +The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, "in an ancient, though +not very populous settlement in a retired corner of one of the New +England States." This, no doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. +Longfellow tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of the +country around it strongly suggest the Brunswick College. The President +of Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an amiable and simple old delver in +learning, in a general way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorous +spouse rules him somewhat severely: their little bickerings supply a +strain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but quite unlike +anything in Hawthorne's later work. A young lady, named Ellen Langton, +daughter of an old friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stay +under his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, in the style +of Scott's heroines; but this sentence ends with a trace of the young +writer's quality: "If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's +beauty, it would achieve what pencil ... never could; for though the +dark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped +through them could only be seen and felt." This maiden the doctor once +took into his study, to begin a course of modern languages with her; but +she "having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrived +by the sweet charm of her voice to engage his attention," and quite +beguiled him from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two young +students at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, +handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns; +and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, +already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and +meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely +moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and +Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the +beginning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation with her. +The real action of the book, after the preliminaries, takes up only some +three days, and turns upon the attempt of a man named Butler to entice +Ellen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortune +to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated by +circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a much +more sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowing +that he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him the +opportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush of +desire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to take +advantage of her generosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellen +becomes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from the first; and +Fanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, dies before his class +graduates. It is easy to see how the sources of emotion thus opened +attracted Hawthorne. The noble and refined nature of Fanshawe, and the +mingled craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crude +embodiments of the same characteristics which he afterward treated in +modified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes,--both of them +remote and chilly,--of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, +after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of these +persons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked a +few characteristic portions of the book which suggest its tone. + +When the young lady's flight with the stranger actually takes place, +young Wolcott and President Melmoth ride together in the pursuit, and at +this point there occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable and +is better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, whom it +strongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears in it, too, which makes it +not out of place to mention that Hawthorne studied "Don Quixote" in the +original, soon after leaving college. + + * * * * * + +"'Alas, youth! these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a +doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant +and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of +the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray +Heaven, however, there he no encounter in store for us; for I utterly +forgot to provide myself with weapons.' + +"'I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight,' replied Edward, +whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. Melmoth's chivalrous +comparison. + +"'Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword,' said the divine. 'But +wherewith shall I defend myself?--my hand being empty except of this +golden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. Langton.' + +"'One of those, if you will accept it,' answered Edward, exhibiting a +brace of pistols, 'will serve to begin the conflict, before you join the +battle hand to hand.' + +"'Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly +instrument, since I know not accurately from which end proceeds the +bullet,' said Dr. Melmoth. 'But were it not better, seeing we are so +well provided with artillery, to betake ourselves, in the event of an +encounter, to some stone-wall or other place of strength?' + +"'If I may presume to advise,' said the squire, 'you, as being most +valiant and experienced, should ride forward, lance in hand (your long +staff serving for a lance), while I annoy the enemy from afar.' + +"'Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or +David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left +unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the +present age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to my +safety. But lo! who rides yonder?'" + + * * * * * + +In one place only does the author give full rein to his tragic power; +but this is a vigorous burst, and remarkable also for its sure and +trenchant analysis. During his escape with Ellen, Butler is moved to +stop at a lonely hut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her dying; +and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and yearns for +his presence, he makes himself known to her. + + * * * * * + +"At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once from her +soul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole countenance beaming with +joy, and threw her arms about his neck. A multitude of words seem +struggling for utterance; but they gave place to a low moaning sound, +and then to the silence of death. The one moment of happiness, that +recompensed years of sorrow, had been her last.... As he [Butler] +looked, the expression of enthusiastic joy that parting life had left +upon the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no +longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course +of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the +thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on +the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed +with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He +started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to +hide it from those dead eyes.... But his deep repentance for the misery +he had brought upon his parent did not produce in him a resolution to do +wrong no more. The sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made him +desperate. He felt as if no one had thenceforth a claim to justice or +compassion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned his +mother's life, and hastened her death." + + * * * * * + +What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne's works is an +intricate plot, with passages of open humor, and a rather melodramatic +tone in the conclusion. These are the result in part of the prevalent +fashion of romance, and in part of a desire to produce effects not quite +consonant with his native bent. The choice of the title, "Fanshawe," +too, seems to show a deference to the then prevalent taste for brief and +quaint-sounding names; and the motto, "Wilt thou go on with me?" from +Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the heads +of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerful +conceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume +an air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is as +evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale light +of morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, represents +that constant aspiration toward lofty moral truth which marked +Hawthorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the sinful spirit +which he afterward analyzed under many forms. The verbal style has few +marks of the maturer mould afterward impressed on it, except that there +is the preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin wording. Two +or three phrases, however, show all the limpidness and ease for which he +gained fame subsequently. For instance, when Fanshawe is first surprised +by his love for Ellen, he returns to his room to study: "The books were +around him which had hitherto been to him like those fabled volumes of +magic, from which the reader could not turn away his eye, till death +were the consequence of his studies." This, too, is a pretty description +of Ellen: "Terror had at first blanched her as white as a lily.... Shame +next bore sway; and her blushing countenance, covered by her slender +white fingers, might fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, +with its alternate stripes of white and red." Its restraint is perhaps +the most remarkable trait of the novel; for though this comes of +timidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether this be to his advantage or +not, was not of the order of young genius which begins with tumid and +excessive exhibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, +breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate modes of +dealing with any intellectual problem or question requiring judgment, +and the formal taste of the period in letters, probably conspired to +this end. + + + + +IV. + + +TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. + +1828-1838. + +We have now reached the point where the concealed foundations of +Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear +above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly +rising from the depths of a solitary ocean. + +When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce entered into law, +the gateway to politics; Bridge returned to his father's estate at +Bridgton, to engage later in a large enterprise there; and other +classmates took up various activities in the midst of other men; but for +Hawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Literature had not yet +attained, in the United States, the rank of a distinct and powerful +profession. Fifteen years before, Brockden Brown had died prematurely +after a hapless struggle, worn out with overwork,--the first man who had +undertaken to live by writing in this country since its colonization. +"The North American Review," indeed, in Boston, was laying the +corner-stone of a vigorous periodical literature; and in this year of +1825 William Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit "The New York +Review," after publishing at Cambridge his first volume of poetry, "The +Ages." Irving was an author of recent but established fame, who was +drawing chiefly from the rich supplies of European manners, legend, and +history; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer-land beside Otsego Lake, +had begun to make clear his claim to a wide domain of native and +national fiction. But to a young man of reserved temper, having few or +no friends directly connected with publication, and living in a sombre, +old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were before the era of +railroads, the avenue to publicity and a definite literary career was +dark and devious enough. + +I suppose it was after his venture of "Fanshawe," that he set about the +composition of some shorter stories which he called "Seven Tales of my +Native Land." [Footnote: The motto prefixed to these was, "We are +seven."] His sister, to whom he read these, has told me that they were +very beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her, +except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea, +being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter were +certain verses, beginning,-- + + "The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race." + +Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript," while depicting a +young author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations in +trying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offered +to some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read their +answers.... One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five +novels already under examination; ... another gentleman is just giving +up business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my +book.... In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has +vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, I +should judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he +calls vast improvements, and concluding ... that he will not be +concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one honest man +among these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that no +American publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by a +known writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk." +He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; but +at last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His +name was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with Caleb +Cushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette," +in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers at +a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews was +ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius; +but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author, +exasperated, recalled the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for better +business prospects, was loath to let them go; but Hawthorne insisted, +and at last the publisher sent word, "Mr. Hawthorne's manuscript awaits +his orders." The writer received it and burned it, to the chagrin of +Andrews, who had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. + +This, at the time, must have been an incident of incalculable and +depressing importance to Hawthorne, and the intense emotion it caused +may be guessed from the utterances of the young writer in the sketch +just alluded to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light film +of sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one of the feigned +names which Hawthorne himself used at times in contributing to +periodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiest +tone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape +it.... All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, +has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The +deed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; a +long repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where they +will bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to the tales +founded on witchcraft: "I could believe, if I chose," says Oberon, "that +there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, and +know what I mean,--that conception in which I endeavored to embody the +character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written +records of witchcraft. O, I have a horror of what was created in my own +brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a +sort of material existence!' You remember how the hellish thing used to +suck away the happiness of those who ... subjected themselves to his +power." This is curious, as showing the point from which Hawthorne had +resolved to treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that the +only way to make the witchcraft delusion available in fiction was to +accept the witch as a fact, an actual being, and expend his art upon +developing the abnormal character; while other writers, who have +attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the +historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of +the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of +intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and +token of an original imagination. + +After the publication of "Fanshawe" and the destruction of his "Seven +Tales," Hawthorne found himself advanced not so much as by a single +footstep on the road to fame. "Fame!" he exclaims, in meditation; "some +very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as the +penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to +everybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are +unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens." But the fame that he +desired was, I think, only that which is the recognition by the public +that a man is on the way to truth. An outside acknowledgment of this is +invaluable even to the least vain of authors, because it assures him +that, in following his own inner impulse through every doubt and +discouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and gives him new +heart for the highest enterprises of which he is capable. To attain +this, amid the peculiar surroundings of his life, was difficult enough. +At that time, Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it has +been in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families maintained +rigorously the distinctions of class; their entertainments were +splendid, their manners magnificent, and the fame of the beautiful women +born amongst them has been confirmed by a long succession reaching into +the present day. They prescribed certain fashions, customs, punctilios, +to disregard which was social exile for the offending party; and they +were divided even among themselves, I am told, by the most inveterate +jealousies. It is said that certain people would almost have endured the +thumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. There seems to be good +authority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle, +had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it; +and it appears that there was a disposition among some of the +fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances were +made by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that it +would not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entire +equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of the +results of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible; +those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of the +Hawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had a +conviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a +certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the lady +of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books," "proud of +being proud." The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other people +as the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve which +enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that, +feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in these +facts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only very +young or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the +altered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had brought +him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developed +in him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than these +magnates. His father had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, as +well as the very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to that +unpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the rich +and powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably more +bitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, +ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him with +wearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy and +appreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might have +been given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known among +his own townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encouraging +answer reached him from more distant communities. + +In his own home there was the faith which only love can give, but +outside of it a chill drove his hopes and ardors back upon himself and +turned them into despairs. His relatives, having seen him educated by +the aid of his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to take +his share in practical affairs. But the very means adopted to train him +for a career had settled his choice of one in a direction perhaps not +wholly expected; all cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordid +and alien to him. Yet a young man just beginning his career, with no +solid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot but be sensitive to +criticism from those who have gained a right to comment by their own +special successes. As he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, +from his graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully before +the public in 1837, he must often have been dragged down by terrible +fears that perhaps the fairest period of life was being wasted, losing +forever the chance of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life," he +wrote, long after, "like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang +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." Judge in what a silence and solitary +self-communing the time must have passed, to leave a thought like this: +"To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course +of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence; as, the clocks have struck, +the dead have been buried." Or this: "A recluse like myself, or a +prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his +chamber." His Note-Books show how the sense of unreality vexed and +pursued him; and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned upon him +again and again; and how he clothed these dark visitants of his brain +with the colors of imagination, and turned them away from him in the +guise of miraculous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing "the +journal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary circumstances. +The lights and shadows that flit across it, its internal vicissitudes." +But this is almost precisely what his printed Note-Books have revealed +to us. Only now and then do we get precisely the thought that is passing +through his mind at the moment; it more often throws upon the page a +reflected image,--some strange and subtle hint for a story, the germs of +delicate fabrics long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, some +tender yet piercing inference,--like the shadows of clouds passing +quickly across a clear sky, and casting momentary glooms, and glances of +light, on the ground below. These journals do not begin until a date +seven years after "Fanshawe" was published; but it is safe to assume +that they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of the +intervening years. + +His mode of life during 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; 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. In summer he was up +shortly after sunrise, and would go down to bathe in the sea. 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. Or perhaps he would pace +the streets of the town, unseen but observing, gathering material for +something in the vein of his delicious "Night Sketches." "After a time," +he writes, "the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. +Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my +spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock shall strike +bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not made of such shadowy +materials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so +long among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal as +those within." Or, if he chose a later hour, he might go abroad to +people the deserted thoroughfares with wilder phantoms. 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. His tramps +along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahant +were productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by the +Sea-shore," or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle." "Grudge +me not the day," he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent in +seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my +companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me +his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Such +companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been +admitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal." This touches +the inmost secret of those lonely, youthful years, which moulded the +pure-hearted muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, +Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior life at this time: +"This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a +starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air I became all +soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along the +Milky Way. Here is another tale in which I wrapped myself during a dark +and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the +wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a +dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describes +shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would not +depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake and +feverish, the victim of my own enchantments!" Susan, the imaginary wife +in "The Village Uncle," is said to have had a prototype in the daughter +of a Salem fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne frequent +amusement; and I suppose that not seldom he reaped delightful +suggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individual +people of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a +polite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting now +and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, to +listen to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort of +intercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republican +fellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives the +tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will put in its +word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them!" It +was this constant searching among the common types of men, and his ready +sympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored his mind with +a variety of accurate impressions which afterward surprised observers, +in a man of habits so retired. + +His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with extensive stage-coach +lines at this time, and Hawthorne seems to have used these as antennae +to bring himself in contact with new and nutritive regions and people. A +letter, probably written in 1830, which I do not feel at liberty to +quote entire, tells something of a trip that he took with Samuel Manning +through a part of Connecticut and the Connecticut valley. The extracts +that follow give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt about +everything; and I regard them as very important in showing the obverse +of that impression of unhealthy solitude which has been so generally +received from accounts of Hawthorne hitherto published. + +"We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday ... and we were forced to +halt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fifteen miles from New +Haven. The next day being Sunday, we made a Sabbath day's journey of +seventeen miles, and put up at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapid +travelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was +(of course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went to +a Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom I +afterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of very questionable +habits.... We are now at Deerfield (though I believe my letter is dated +Greenfield) ... with our faces northward; nor shall I marvel much if +your Uncle Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two or +three bad taverns in succession.... + +"I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven I observed a +gentleman staring at me with great earnestness, after which he went into +the bar-room, I suppose to inquire who I might be. Finally, he came up +to me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family of +Stanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was +sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place they +took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and strongly +recommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students at +Yale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was +standing without my coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, +and asked me for some oats for his horse." + +It was during this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, +and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The Seven +Vagabonds." The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer +in it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across the +Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada +before the fall." The narrator himself queries by what right he came +among these wanderers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggests +that side of his nature most apt to appear in these journeys: "The free +mind that preferred its own folly to another's wisdom; the open spirit +that found companions everywhere; above all, the restless impulse that +had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments: these were my +claims to be of their society." "If there be a faculty," he also writes, +"which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing +myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with a +cheerful eye the desirableness of each." There is also one letter of +1831, sent back during an expedition in New Hampshire, which supplies +the genesis of another Twice-Told Tale, "The Canterbury Pilgrims." + +"I walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was shown over +the establishment, and dined there with a squire and a doctor, also of +the world's people. On my arrival, the first thing I saw was a jolly old +Shaker carrying an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soon +as I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It +was as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was +well furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by a +middle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful.... This +establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three miles +along the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow and +tipt with red.... On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, +and, if it were not for their ridiculous ceremonies, a man could not do +a wiser thing than to join them. Those whom I conversed with were +intelligent, and appeared happy. I spoke to them about becoming a member +of their society, but have come to no decision on that point. + +"We have had a pleasant journey enough.... I make innumerable +acquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with judges, generals, and +all the potentates of the land, discoursing about the Salem murder [that +of Mr. White], the cow-skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and the +value of horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Sam +groans bitterly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill; though this +ought to make me groan rather than him, as I have to get out and trudge +every one of them." + +The "Clippings with a Chisel" point to some further wanderings, to +Martha's Vineyard; and an uncollected sketch reveals the fact that he +had been to Niagara. It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga; +[Footnote: A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow Image +volume of the Works.] but not till some years later that he saw New +York. With these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going to +Liverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that date was passed +within New England. In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day" one sees the young +observer at work upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The +"small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst +of a long bridge," spanning an arm of the sea, refers undoubtedly to the +bridge from Salem to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over the +stream of actual life, scarcely touching it before springing up again, +like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurate +and polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actual +facts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, +far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible human +pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host of +heavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. His +attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a +Steeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a +spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, +witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing +brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and +retaining no emotion peculiar to himself." He had the longing which +every creative mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to the +utmost the possibilities of human weal or woe, suppressing his own +experience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for the +emotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with the +multifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue and +play his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantly +murmurous, moralizing "aside." He delights to let the current of action +flow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when he +again withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gatherer +at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances of +earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty +pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of +phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon." + +"What would a man do," he asks himself, in his journal, "if he were +compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never +bathe himself in cool solitude?" As yet, this bracing influence of +quietude, so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he cannot +shake off its influence so far as to enter actively and for personal +interests into any of the common pursuits even of the man who makes a +business of literature. Yet nothing impresses him more than the fact +that every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, like a +shadow. Twice, with an interval of three years between, this idea recurs +in the form of a hint for romance. "Two lovers or other persons, on the +most private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be +a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people." +The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacy +they could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, +yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two +were in the deepest solitude." This contradiction between the +_apparent_ openness that must rule one's conduct among men, and the +real secrecy that may coexist with it, even when one is most exposed to +the gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of thought based +on the falsity of appearances. If a man can be outwardly open and +inwardly reserved in a good sense, he can be so in a bad sense; so, too, +he may have the external air of great excellence and purity, while +internally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes our +perfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with intense and endless +horror. He tests it, by turning it innumerable ways, and imagining all +sorts of situations in which such contradictions of appearance and +reality might be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend who +should be true by day, and false at night. At another he suggests: "Our +body to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visage +shall express one mood, and the other half another." "A man living a +wicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one +in another." Then he perceives that this same uncertainty and +contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things in +the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things +meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become +dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A +virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees +what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself +completely into his power, and is ruined,--all in jest." Likewise, the +most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often prove +the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires some +particular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great +pest of their lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the +desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrong +and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her +lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, through +a long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly +trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evil +passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greater +evil would have come upon himself than on his victim." This theme of +self-punished revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought out +in "The Scarlet Letter." Another form in which the thought of this +pervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes to him is the frightful +fancy of people being poisoned by communion-wine. Thus does the +insincerity and corruption of man, the lie that is hidden in nearly +every life and almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, +whichever way he turns, like a serpent in his path. He is in the +position of the father confessor of whom he at one time thinks, and of +"his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with +the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins +are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent +either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of +life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, +unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, +large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as it +does that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on +himself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life-long +venom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but not with any mortal +wound. He retires in profound sorrow, acknowledging that earth holds +nothing perfect, that his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, +which, in spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing for so +many years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the hereafter alone. He +confesses to himself that "there is evil in every human heart, which may +remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may +rouse it to activity." It is not a new discovery; but from the force +with which it strikes him, we may guess the strength of his aspiration, +the fine temper of his faith in the good and the beautiful. To be driven +to this dismal conclusion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, +because he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching some +brighter truth. No; not a new discovery;--but one who approaches it with +so much sensibility _feels_ it to be new, with all the fervor which +the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true +originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, +when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitive +impressiveness. + +But, in the midst of the depression born of his immense sorrow over sin, +Hawthorne found compensations. First, in the query which he puts so +briefly: "The good deeds in an evil life,--the generous, noble, and +excellent actions done by people habitually wicked,--to ask what is to +become of them." This is the motive which has furnished novelists for +the last half-century with their most stirring and pathetic effects. It +is a sort of escape, a safety-valve for the hot fire of controversy on +the soul's fate, and offers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vast +solace to those who are trying to balance the bewildering account of +virtue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial solution of the +problem, and he enlarged upon it, toward the end of his life, in "The +Marble Faun." But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished him +the chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales," "Fancy's +Show-Box," he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, +the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul. After first +strongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's +mind, which had never been carried out,--"A scheme of guilt," he argues, +taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatly +resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.... Thus a +novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, and +fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in +projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other +half-way between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is +accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims it +for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and +acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold +more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that +men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its +attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are +dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no +such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for +good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, +therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be +incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet ... +_man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest_, +since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by +the flitting phantoms of iniquity." That is, purity is too spotless a +thing to exist in absolute perfection in a human being, who must often +feel at least the dark flush of passionate thoughts falling upon him, +however blameless of life he may be. From this lofty conception of +purity comes that equally noble humility of always feeling "his +brotherhood, even with the guiltiest." What more logical issue from the +Christian idea, what more exquisitely tender rendering of it than this? +"Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can be +clean!" was his exclamation, many years later, in that English workhouse +which he describes in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called +"Outside Glimpses of English Poverty." And it was then that he revealed +the vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretched +and loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him for +kindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he had +been its father. + +Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that still persists in +evil persons, and the deep charity which every one must feel towards +even the most abject fellow-being, Hawthorne moves forth again to trace +the maze; and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found a charm +that robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and can handle them +without danger. It is said by some that Hawthorne treats wrong and +corruption too shrinkingly, and his mood of never-lessened and acute +sensibility touching them is contrasted with that of "virile" writers +like Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to make a menagerie of +life, thrusting their heads into the very lion's mouth, or boldly +embracing the snake of sin. They are indeed superior in strong dramatic +and realistic effects; but, unvicious as may be their aim, they are not +filled with a robust morality: they deliberately choose unclean elements +to heighten the interest,--albeit using such elements with magnificent +strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet +the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as +to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy +cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the +archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing the +dragon! + +We see now how, in this early term of probation, he was finding a +philosophy and an unsectarian religiousness, which ever stirred below +the clear surface of his language like the bubbling spring at bottom of +a forest pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed late. But +the most striking thing about the "Twice-Told Tales" and the first +entries in the "American Note-Books" is their evidence of a calm and +mellow maturity. These stories are like the simple but well-devised +theme which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole composition: +they show the several tendencies which underlie all the subsequent +works. First, there are the scenes from New England history,--"Endicott +and the Red Cross," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "The Gray Champion," +the "Tales of the Province House." + +Then we have the psychological vein, in "The Prophetic Pictures," "The +Minister's Black Veil," "Dr. Heidegger," "Fancy's Show-Box"; and along +with this the current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The Haunted +Mind," and "Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ramble," again, foreshadows +his charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he should +thus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his first +works. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at once +flowing and large in its outline, and masterly in its minuteness. + +But this maturity was not won without deep suffering and long-deferred +hope. + +If actual contact with men resulted in such grave and sorrowful +reflection as we have traced, how drearily trying must have been the +climaxes of solitary thought after a long session of seclusion! And much +the larger portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute silence, a +privacy unbroken by intimate confidences and rife with exhausting and +depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe +intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have +amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing +perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. +"Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in +some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the +extracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then we get from +the same source a glimpse of the haunting sense that he is missing his +fit relation to the rest of the race, the question whether his pursuit +was not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he had +noticed,--whether it was not to be nipped by the same perversity and +contradiction that seemed to affect all things mundane. Here is one of +his proposed plots, which turns an inner light upon his own frame of +mind: "Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, +and offered to his acceptance,--as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but he +to refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to +be real, and he to be told so when too late." Is this not, in brief, +what he conceives may yet be the story of his own career? Another +occurs, in the same relation: "A man tries to be happy in love; he +cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In +domestic life the same; in politics, a seeming patriot: but still he is +sincere, and all seems like a theatre." These items are the merest +indicia of a whole history of complex emotions, which made this epoch +one of continuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Preface +prefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: "They are the +memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years." Tranquil they of +course were; and to the happy and successful man of forty-seven, the +vexing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period would seem +"not unhappy," because he could then see all the good it had contained. +I cannot agree with Edwin Whipple, who says of them, "There was audible +to the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, +which showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginative +analysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood." For +this applies to only one of the number, "The Ambitious Guest." Nor do I +find in them the "misanthropy" which he defines at some length. On the +contrary, they are, as the author says, "his attempts to open an +intercourse with the world," incited by an eager sympathy, but also +restrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. + +Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his inner life just +sketched. When his friend Miss Peabody first penetrated his retirement, +his pent-up sympathies flowed forth in a way that showed how they had +longed for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion of his +peculiar mode of living, as if there could be no understanding between +himself and another, until this had been cleared up and set aside. Among +other things, he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that he was +walking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors which reflected him +a thousand times and overwhelmed him with mortification. This gives a +peculiar insight into his sensitive condition. + +The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itself +in exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers. +Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying, +voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, or-- +mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling his +way through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of that +house of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited. +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 several 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 feminine element is not +to be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold and +difficult morning of Hawthorne's life. + +If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither could +the Sunday. He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which his +family had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after +coming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not always +opened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found it +essential to join any church. + +The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of so +much lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, the +writing of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. +This was the fascination that carried him through the weary +waiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which the +fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannot +conceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me. +I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I +am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping the +realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the +world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude ... where nobody +wished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do." Alluding to this +season of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up, +he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room." +To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one of +his projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses." With +that image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in the +mirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights and +trembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales." Sober and +weighty the penumbrous atmosphere in which the young creator sits; but +how calm, thoughtful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit by +the sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies! Behind his own form we catch +the movement of mysterious shapes,--men and women wearing aspects of joy +or anger, calm or passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, +and forbidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we behold +these things; rather the awesome shadowiness of a partial eclipse; but +gleams of the healthiest sunshine withal mingle in the prevailing tint, +bringing reassurance, and receiving again a rarer value from the +contrast. There are but few among the stories of this series afterward +brought together by the author which are open to the charge of +morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the +tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness +which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" +leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding +Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these +extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so +often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about +him; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, so +gently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he mixes with even +the bitterest distillations of his dreams. Nor is the sadness of his +tone disordered or destructive, more than it is selfish; he does not +inculcate despair, nor protest against life and fate, nor indulge in +gloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct exposition of his own case is +contained in a sketch, "The Journal of a Solitary Man," not reprinted +during his life. One extract from this I will make, because it sums up, +though more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of his own +life at this epoch:-- + +"It is hard to die without one's happiness; to none more so than myself, +whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys of +life, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The very +hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long +toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the +surface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep and +warm realities, ... so that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, +have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I +must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousand +vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomed +to loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my +soul has never married itself to the soul of woman." + +The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merely +metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals +the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own +perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this +time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined +activity would have shaken off the incubus: but this is to lose sight of +the gist of the matter. The situation in itself,--the indeterminateness +and repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and +various sympathies, and his capacity for affection and responsibility,-- +must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne believed +himself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, chilled, +and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion at the +beginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause for +bitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter of +option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had +begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action +presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation +which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly +mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. +If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his +genius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stunted +its growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve a +certain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; and +for this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shake +off spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against +one's genius." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I.] Thus he kept +himself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that +I have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, let +this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I have +been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and +with my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have, +less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was +perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having +been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. +For a long, long while I have been occasionally visited with a singular +dream; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have +been in England. It is, that I am still at college,--or, sometimes, even +at school,--and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably +long, and have quite failed to make such progress as my contemporaries +have done; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame and +depression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. This +dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be one +of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up for +twelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, and +left me behind." Experiences which leave effects like this must bite +their way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy! This precursive +solitude had tinged his very life-blood, and woven itself into the +secret tissues of his brain. Yet, patiently absorbing it, he wrote late +in life to a friend: "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." It was under such a guise that the test of his genius +and character came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with a +huge opposition that must somehow be made to succumb, before its own +energies can know their full strength, gain a settled footing, and make +a roadway to move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless to +others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains +untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire +personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was +of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer +world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable +devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the +influences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch in +feeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remained +perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hidden +tragedies of heart and brain. + +But another and larger purpose was not less well served by this +probation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in some +sense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to be +demonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stake +life and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain of +the highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment, +even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could be +ascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a line +of New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs, +seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well that +temperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reserve +from the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple and +rural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunate +was it that nothing called him away to connect him with European +culture, on graduating. To interpret this was the honorable office of +his classmate Longfellow, who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, +has filled the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment to be +tried was, simply, whether with books and men at his command, and +isolated from the immediate influence of Europe, this American could +evolve any new quality for the enrichment of literature. The conditions +were strictly carried out; even after he began to come in contact with +men, in the intervals of his retirement, he saw only pure American +types. A foreigner must have been a rare bird in Salem, in those days; +for the maritime element which might have brought him was still +American. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his Note-Books show, pushed +through the farming regions and made acquaintance with the men of the +soil; and probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close view +was the Monsieur S---- whom he found at Bridge's, on his visit to the +latter, in 1837, described at length in the Note-Books. So much did +Hawthorne study from these types, and so closely, that he might, had his +genius directed, have written the most homely and realistic novels of +New England life from the material which he picked up quite by the way. +But though he did not translate his observations thus, the originality +which he was continuously ripening amid such influences was radically +affected by them. They established a broad, irrepressible republican +sentiment in his mind; they assisted his natural, manly independence and +simplicity to assert themselves unaffectedly in letters; and they had +not a little to do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn for +examining with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness into +everything that came before him, without accepting prescribed opinions. +The most characteristic way, perhaps, in which this American nurture +acted was by contrast; for the universal matter-of-fact tone which he +found among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to him to maintain +a counteracting idealism. Thus, singularly enough, the most salient +feature of the new American product was its apparent denial of the +national trait of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed that +Hawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting the American +nature in fiction. These things can be done only half consciously, at +the most. Perhaps it is well that the mind on which so much depends +should not be burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how much is +expected from it by the ages. Therefore, we owe the triumphant assertion +of the American quality in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, +unfaltering, brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, +unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive that a great end +was being served by it. But, although unaware of this end at the time, +he afterward saw some of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, +he speaks thus of his old room in Union Street:-- + +"This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon +thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them +have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he +ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so +much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and _here my mind and +character were formed_; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and +here I have been despondent.... And now I begin to understand why I was +imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never +break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my +escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and my heart +might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But +living in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the dew of my +youth and the freshness of my heart." + +Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne! It was a young nation's faith in its +future which--unsuspected by any then, but always to be remembered +henceforth--had found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithful +and hopeful heart of yours! Thus was it that the young poet who, in the +sense we have observed, stood for old New England, absorbed into himself +also the atmosphere of the United States. The plant that rooted in the +past had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. In +such wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. + +I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, which +indicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" +went through. The lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 include +nearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides a quantity of +bound magazines. This gives no account of his dealings with books in the +previous five years, when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nor +does it, of course, let us know anything of what he obtained from other +sources. When Miss E. P. Peabody made his acquaintance, in 1836-37, he +had, for example, read all of Balzac that had then appeared; and there +is no record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, +giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him with one volume a +week,--not, on the whole, a meagre rate, when we consider the volumes of +magazines, the possible sources outside of the library, and the +numberless hours required for literary experiment. I do not fancy that +he plodded through books; but rather that he read with the easy energy +of a vigorous, original mind, though he also knew the taste of severe +study. "Bees," he observes in one place, "are sometimes drowned (or +suffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some writers are lost in +their collected learning." He did not find it necessary to mount upon a +pyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get the +highest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a man +of parts," precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice of +reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a +rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books +which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See +Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he +read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he +examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of +Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried +only Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local American +histories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety of +biography,--"Lives of the Philosophers," "Plutarch's Lives," biographies +of Mohammed, Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, +Baxter, Heber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brewster's "Natural +Magic" and Sir Walter Scott's essay on "Demonology and Witchcraft" are +books that one would naturally expect him to read; and he had already +begun to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which he +always had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem not +entirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but it +is a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in +"Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He dipped, also, into botany and +zooelogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary," +read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; and +was entertained by Dunlap's "History of the Arts of Design in America." +It was from this last that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures," +in the "Twice-Told Tales." Some Boston newspapers of the years 1739 to +1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News," +reprinted in "The Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked much +about reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of books +and his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there is +no more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that he +cared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, of +men, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted all three estates. + +Gradually, from the midst of the young author's obscurity, there issued +an attraction which made the world wish to know more of him. One by one, +the quiet essays and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like drops +from a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internal +movement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the dark +concamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. +The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; but +the average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when he +guessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under a +feigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great deal +better if he could come out of seclusion and make himself more like +other people. + +The first contributions were made to the "Salem Gazette" and the "New +England Magazine"; then his attempts extended to the "Boston Token and +Atlantic Souvenir," edited by S. G. Goodrich; and later, to other +periodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor (October, +1831): "I am gratified to find that all whose opinion I have heard agree +with me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen." But for +none of these early performances did Hawthorne receive any considerable +sum of money. And though his writings began at once to attract an +audience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three young ladies--of whom his +future sister-in-law, Miss Peabody, was one--were among the first +admirers; and though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps retarded +his own notoriety by assuming different names in print, [Footnote: Among +these were "Oberon" and "Ashley Allen Royce," or "The Rev. A. A. Royce." +The latter was used by him in the Democratic Review, so late as March, +1840.] they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them out of +magazines, and preserved them. But they could not discover his personal +identity. One of them who lived in Salem used constantly to wonder, in +driving about town, whether the author of her favorite tales could be +living in this or in that house; for it was known that he was a Salem +resident. Miss Peabody, who had in girlhood known something of the +Hathorne family (the name was still written either way, I am told), was +misled by the new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that Nathaniel +Hawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were especially moved by "The +Gentle Boy" when it appeared, and Miss Peabody was on the point of +addressing "The Author of 'The Gentle Boy,'" at Salem, to tell him of +the pleasure he had given. When afterward told of this, Hawthorne said, +"I wish you had! It would have been an era in my life." Soon after, the +Peabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from some one that the new +romancer was the son of the Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that her +family had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking off into +the garden of the old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, +though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy's +form dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind +therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had shown +great facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to say +that it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full of +this conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the +author, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retired +and little-visited mansion. It was the other sister into whose presence +she came, and to her she began pouring out the reason of her intrusion, +delivering at once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. + +"My brother's, you mean," was the response. + +"It _is_ your brother, then." And Miss Peabody added: "If your +brother can write like that, he has no right to be idle." + +"My brother never is idle," answered Miss Louisa, quietly. + +Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Hawthorne from the spell +of solitude, and led directly to the richest experiences of his life. +Old habits, however, were not immediately to be broken, and months +passed without any response being made to the first call. Then at last +came a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales," fresh from the press. But it was +not until the establishment of the "Democratic Review," a year or two +later, that occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne was +too shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Peabody, finally, +addressing him by letter, to inquire concerning the new periodical, for +which he had been engaged as a contributor, asked him to come with both +his sisters on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, +they came. She herself opened the door, and there before her, between +his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong, with no +appearance whatever of timidity, but, instead, an almost fierce +determination making his face stern. This was his resource for carrying +off the extreme inward tremor which he really felt. His hostess brought +out Plaxmau's designs for Dante, just received from Professor Felton of +Harvard, [Footnote: The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman's +drawings, issued in 1833.] and the party made an evening's entertainment +out of them. + +The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss Peabody's, led to +an immediate invitation of Hawthorne to dinner at another house, for the +next day. He accepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped at +the "Salem Gazette" office, full of the excitement of his new +experiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, that he was getting +dissipated. He told of the evening with Miss Peabody, where he said he +had had a delightful time, and of the dinner just achieved. "And I've +had a delightful time there, too!" he added. Mr. Foote, perceiving an +emergency, at once asked the young writer to come to his own house for +an evening. Hawthorne, thoroughly aroused, consented. When the evening +came, several ladies who had been invited assembled before the author +arrived; and among them Miss Peabody. When he reached the place he +stopped short at the drawing-room threshold, startled by the presence of +strangers, and stood perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvan +creature on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie no longer +availed him; he was stricken with dismay; his face lost color, and took +on a warm paleness. All this was in a moment; but the daughter of the +house moved forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though he +assumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very great: he stood by a +table, and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found his +hand trembling so that he was forced to put it down again. + +While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in this way, he was +approached in another by Mr. Goodrich, who induced him to go to Boston, +there to edit the "American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining +Knowledge." This work, which only continued from 1834 to September, +1837, was managed by several gentlemen under the name of the Bewick +Company. One of these was Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver; another +was Goodrich, who also, I think, had some connection with the American +Stationers' Company. The Bewick Company took its name from Thomas +Bewick, the English restorer of the art of wood-engraving, and the +magazine was to do his memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, +in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one profit. It was +a penny popular affair, containing condensed information about +innumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts were +of the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of +several editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at a +salary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got next +to nothing, and that he did not stay in the position long. There is +little in its pages to recall the identity of the editor; but in one +place he quotes as follows from Lord Bacon: "The ointment which witches +use is made of the fat of children digged from their graves, and of the +juices of smallage, cinquefoil, and wolf's-bane, mingled with the meal +of fine wheat," and hopes that none of his readers will try to compound +it. In the tale of "Young Goodman Brown," when Goody Cloyse says, "I was +all anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil and +wolf's-bane," and the Devil continues, "'Mingled with fine wheat and the +fat of a new-born babe,'--'Ah, your worship knows the recipe,' cried the +old lady, cackling aloud." A few scraps of correspondence, mostly +undated, which I have looked over, give one a new view of him in the +bustle and vexation of this brief editorial experience. He sends off +frequent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, who did some of the +condensing and compiling which was a part of the business. "I make +nothing," he says, in one, "of writing a history or biography before +dinner." At another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, but +warns his correspondent to "see that it contains nothing heterodox." At +the end of one of the briefest messages, he finds time to speak of the +cat at home. Perhaps with a memory of the days when he built +book-houses, he had taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton and +Bunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called Beelzebub and +Apollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for me," he writes. But the following +from Boston, February 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of the +situation:-- + +"I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay me +forty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept promising from +one day to another, till I do not see that he means to pay at all. I +have now broke off all intercourse with him, and never think of going +near him ... I don't feel at all obliged to him about the editorship, +for he is a stockholder and director in the Bewick Company; ... and I +defy them to get another to do for a thousand dollars what I do for five +hundred." + +Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum; and the relations +between them were resumed.. A letter of May 5, in the same year, +contains these allusions:-- + +"I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday.... He wants me to undertake a Universal +History, to contain about as much as fifty or sixty pages of the +magazine. [These were large pages.] If you are willing to write any part +of it, ... I shall agree to do it. If necessary I will come home by and +by, and concoct the plan of it with you. It need not be superior in +profundity and polish to the middling magazine articles.... I shall have +nearly a dozen articles in The Token,--mostly quite short." + +The historical project is, of course, that which resulted in the famous +"Peter Parley" work. "Our pay as historians of the universe," says a +letter written six days later, "will be about one hundred dollars, the +whole of which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but better than +the Token; because the writing is so much less difficult." He afterward +carried out the design, or a large part of it, and the book has since +sold by millions, for the benefit of others. There are various little +particulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Hawthorne, +especially if one is familiar with his "Grandfather's Chair" and "True +Stories" for children; though the book has probably undergone some +changes in successive editions. This passage about George IV. is, +however, remembered as being his: "Even when he was quite an old man, +this king cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a great +deal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, for +he might otherwise have been an excellent tailor." + +Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty dollars for four +months' editorial labor. "And, as you may well suppose," he says, "I +have undergone very grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the whole +amount shortly, I shall return to Salem, and stay there till they do." +It seems a currish fate that puts such men into the grasp of paltry and +sordid cares like these! But there is something deeper to be felt than +dissatisfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoying scheme +of harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid yet paying hack. This +deeper something is the pathos of such possibilities, and the spectacle +of so renowned and strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take his +share of worldly struggle; perfectly conscious that it is wholly beneath +his plane, but accepting it as a proper part of the mortal lot; +scornful, but industrious and enduring. You who have conceived of +Hawthorne as a soft-marrowed dweller in the dusk, fostering his own +shyness and fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well at +all this. And you, also, who discourse about the conditions essential to +the development of genius, about the _milieu_ and the +_moment_, and try to prove America a vacuum which the Muse abhors, +will do well to consider the phenomenon. "It is a poor compensation, yet +better than the Token"; so he wrote, knowing that his unmatched tales +were being coined for even a less reward than mere daily bread. He took +the conditions that were about him, and gave them a dignity by his own +fine perseverance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing of the +worst and making it the best, which has formed the history of all art. +You talk of the ages, and choose this or that era as the only fit one. +You long for a cosey niche in the past; but genius crowds time and +eternity into the present, and says to you, "Make your own century!" + +Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthorne +was winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipful +self is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed all +my articles in the last Token, with long extracts." This refers to the +'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell" +and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which has +singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," and gave three +columns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the notice +being no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward met +Hawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting his +tales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception of +a travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form the +interludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, +prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," has been published in the +"Mosses," with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." +Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary the +expense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting the +tales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridge +came to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, +himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales" +were first brought collectively before the world; and for the second +time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligation +to himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew +of his friend's interposition in the affair. + +Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a great +enterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam up +that river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, +Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described his +impressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absence +from Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot long +continue as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between high +prosperity and utter ruin." + +The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not +come through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in a +short time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketches +were reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" was +circulated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author's +name, as a temperance tract.] though Longfellow, then lately established +in his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer," +greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review," which wielded +a great influence in literary affairs. + +On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to +announce the new volume. + +"The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of a +book entitled 'Twice-Told Tales,'--of which, as a classmate, I venture +to request your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well acquainted +at college, that I can plead an absolute right to inflict my +'twice-told' tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that we +were not better known to each other, and have been glad of your success +in literature and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he +adds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you some +part of the pleasure which I have derived from your own 'Outre-Mer.' + +"Your obedient servant, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +Longfellow replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne wrote again, a long +letter picturing his mood with a fulness that shows how keenly he had +felt the honest sympathy of the poet. + +"Not to burden you with my correspondence," he said, "I have delayed a +rejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, until now. It gratifies +me that you have occasionally felt an interest in my situation; but your +quotation from Jean Paul about the 'lark's nest' makes me smile. You +would have been much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwelling +in an owl's nest; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I seldom +venture abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or other--for I +really cannot assign any reasonable why and wherefore--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. +I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I +cannot find the key to let myself out,--and if the door were open, I +should be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you have met with +troubles and changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can +assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and that +there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no share in either +its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only +dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some +unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in +the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction +all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant +remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that +future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more +tolerable than the past. + +"You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that I have led a +studious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so +desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me the +fruits of study. 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. I have +had no external excitement,--no consciousness that the public would like +what I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that they should do +so. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be ambitious of, I have been +considerably interested in literature; and if my writings had made any +decided impression, I should have been stimulated to greater exertions; +but there has been no warmth of approbation, so that I have always +written with benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in the +lack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I have +nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy to +give a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes through a +peep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, and the two or +three articles in which I have portrayed these glimpses please me better +than the others. + +"I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I +lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall +have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you +would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as +children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that +will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, +offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition +[Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing +that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I should +certainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I have +always had a desire to run round the world.... I intend in a week or +two to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in the +summer,--employing the interval in making a tour somewhere in New +England. You who have the dust of distant countries on your +'sandal-shoon' cannot imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in this +little excursion.... + +"Yours sincerely, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfellow's review of the +book, appeared; and the note of thanks which Hawthorne sent is full of +an exultation strongly in contrast with the pensive tone of the letter +just given. + +SALEM, June 19th, 1837. + +DEAR LONGFELLOW:--I have to-day 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 correctness 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.... + +Very sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +That "Evangeline" was written upon a theme suggested to Hawthorne (by a +friend who had heard it from a French Canadian [Footnote: See American +Note-Books, October 24,1839]) and by him made over to the poet, has +already been made public. Hawthorne wrote, on its appearance:---- + +"I have read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorous +to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most triumphant of all +your successes." + +Nevertheless, he gave vent to some of his admiration in a notice of the +work which he wrote for "The Salem Advertiser," a Democratic paper. + +"The story of Evangeline and her lover," he there says, "is as poetical +as the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to the heart as a +fact that has actually taken place in human life." He speaks of "its +pathos all illuminated with beauty,----so that the impression of the +poem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, and glows with the purest +sunshine where we might the least expect it, on the pauper's +death-bed.... The story is told with the simplicity of high and +exquisite art, which causes it to flow onward as naturally as the +current of a stream. Evangeline's wanderings give occasion to many +pictures both of northern and southern scenery and life: but these do +not appear as if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale; they seem to +throw their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as it +flows past them.... By this work of his maturity he has placed himself +on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of +envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, +until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, +as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than +this poem of Evangeline!" + +Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as follows:---- + +"MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:----I have been waiting and waiting in the hope of +seeing you in Cambridge.... I have been meditating upon your letter, and +pondering with friendly admiration your review of 'Evangeline,' in +connection with the subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, a +literary project arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can pay +you back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a theme for +story, in return for a theme for song. It is neither more nor less than +the history of the Acadians, _after_ their expulsion as well as +before. Felton has been making some researches in the State archives, +and offers to resign the documents into your hands. + +"Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so as to pass a night +with us, if possible, this week; if not a day and night. + +"Ever sincerely yours, + +"HENRY W. LONGFELLOW." There is nothing in our literary annals more +unique and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm recognition +of his old classmate, and the mutual courtesies to which it led. One is +reminded by it of the William Tell episode between Goethe and Schiller, +though it was in this case only the theme and nothing of material that +was transferred. + +An author now almost forgotten, Charles Fenno Hoffman, also published in +"The American Monthly Magazine," [Footnote: For March, 1838.] which he +was editing, a kindly review, which, however, underestimated the +strength of the new genius, as it was at first the general habit to do. +"Minds like Hawthorne's," he said, "seem to be the only ones suited to +an American climate.... Never can a nation be impregnated with the +literary spirit by minor authors alone.... Yet men like Hawthorne are +not without their use.".... In this same number of the magazine, by the +way, was printed Hawthorne's "Threefold Destiny," under the pseudonyme +of Ashley Allen Royce; and the song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, +is thus given:---- + + "O, man can seek the downward glance, + And each kind word,----affection's spell,---- + Eye, voice, its value can enhance; + For eye may speak, and tongue can tell. + + "But woman's love, it waits the while + To echo to another's tone; + To linger on another's smile, + Ere dare to answer with its own." + +These versicles, though they might easily be passed over as commonplace, +hold a peculiar inner radiance that perhaps issued from the dawn of a +lifelong happiness for Hawthorne at this period. + + + + +V. + + +AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. + +1838-1842. + +Hawthorne's mood at this time was one of profound dissatisfaction at 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 that I can call 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 on a table that stood +by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself +more of a man." He was now thirty-four, and the long restraint and +aloofness of the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousness +that he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and the sense of loss +in being denied his share in affairs, had become intolerable. It was +now, also, that a new phase of being was opened to him. He had become +engaged to Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. + +President Van Buren had been two years in office, 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 a lady 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 had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time been +tendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it because +he would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know," said +the lady, "that he would be very glad of employment." The result was +that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soon +after, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire further +about it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher and +gauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just before +entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore a +very dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his own +appointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher. +Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation in +office. It is not good for the human being." But he took his place, +writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839): + +"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 and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the +Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class." + +Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the election for the +Whigs, he suffered the fate of his predecessor. And here I may offer an +opinion as to Hawthorne's connection with the Democratic party. When +asked why he belonged to it, he answered that he lived in a democratic +country. "But we are all republicans alike," was the objection to his +defence. "Well," he said, "I don't understand history till it's a +hundred years old, and meantime it's safe to belong to the Democratic +party." Still, Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his less +transient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere badinage, +like that just quoted, must not be taken as really covering the ground +of his choice in politics. A man of such deep insight, accustomed to +bring it to bear upon everything impartially, was not to be influenced +by any blind and accidental preference in these questions; albeit his +actual performance of political duties was slight. I think he recognized +the human strength of the Democratic, as opposed to the theorizing and +intellectual force of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, that +with us the party of culture should be the radical party, upholding +ideas even at the expense of personal liberty; and the party of +ignorance that of order, the conservating force, careful of personal +liberty even to a fault! Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work too +rapidly here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greater +resistance to them. + +This term of service in Boston was of course irksome to Hawthorne, and +entirely suspended literary endeavors for the time. Yet "my life only is +a burden," he writes, "in the same way that it is to every toilsome +man.... But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons +of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeing +that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the +midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide." He +need not always have made the employment so severe, but the wages of the +wharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked in a day, and +Hawthorne used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the wharf +at the earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, +he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there could +not have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and the +interval served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm episode. + +That this least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a +socialistic community, seems at first inexplicable enough; but in +reality it was the most logical step he could have taken. He had +thoroughly tried seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself the +first realization of what the world actually is. Next, he entered into +the performance of definite duties and the receipt of gain, and watched +the operation of these two conditions on himself and those about him; an +experiment that taught him the evils of the system, and the necessity of +burying his better energies so long as he took part in affairs. This +raised doubts, of course, as to how he was to fit himself into the frame +of things; and while he mused upon some more generous arrangement of +society, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was started which +plainly proposed to settle the problem. Fourier had only just passed +away; the spread of his ideas was in its highest momentum. On the other +hand, the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of Emerson, +had carried men's thoughts to the very central springs of intellectual +law, while in Boston the writing and preaching of Channing roused a +practical radicalism, and called for a better application of +Christianity to affairs. The era of the Transcendentalists had come. The +Chardon Street meetings--assemblages of ardent theorists and +"come-outers" of every type, who, while their sessions lasted, held +society in their hands and moulded it like clay--were a rude +manifestation of the same deep current. In the midst of these +influences, Mr. Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy, received +an inspiration to establish a modified socialistic community on our own +soil. The Industrial Association which he proposed at West Roxbury was +wisely planned with direct reference to the emergencies of American +life; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and the +Saint Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mistakes of +Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; though it agreed with +Fourier and Owen both, as I understand, in respect of labor. In a better +and freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, the +design sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control. +His 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. It was a practical, orderly, +noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs and +institutions. "A few men and women 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." At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the young +Brownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George William +Curtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kind +of granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy a +burden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society, +flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "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." + +To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad, +the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath the +lightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to begin +repairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losing +nothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable. Because +Brook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the +meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, in +Boston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not at +first know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced as +willing to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, he +felt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if," he tells me, "the heavens +would presently be filled with angels, 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." For his personal +benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one, +to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to +secure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which should +successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body and +brain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours of +daily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like a +dragon," says Mr. Ripley. + +The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leading +aim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men, +women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildings +accommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table was +spread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The Pilgrim +House; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as The +Cottage. In The Eyrie, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great part +of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when +the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and +shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom +Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an +original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with +the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements +failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. +Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farm +would drive into Boston in carriages and wagons to the opera or the +play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes, in +The Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped them +with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, +belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, +and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns, and +hats,--which were then an innovation in feminine attire. In the season +of wood-wanderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of barberry +or hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered,--a suggestion of the +future Priscilla of "Blithedale." Some families and students came to the +farm as boarders, paying for their provision in household or field +labor, or by teaching; a method which added nothing to the funds of the +establishment, and in this way rather embarrassed it. A great deal of +individual liberty was allowed. People could eat in private or public; +and it has been said by those who were there that the unconventional +life permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was quite +unfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. When a member +wished to be absent, another would generally contrive to take his work +for the interval; and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. +Still, I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncertain air +about the enterprise, much of the time; and the more intimate unions of +some among the members who were congenial, gave rise to intermittent +jealousies in those who found no special circle. "In this way it was +very much like any small town of the same number of inhabitants," says +one of my informants. Indeed, though every one who shared in the Brook +Farm attempt seems grateful for what it taught of the dignity and the +real fellowship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons that +it could not long have continued at its best. The system of compensating +all kinds of service, skilled or otherwise, according to the time used, +excited--as some have thought--much dissatisfaction even among the +generous and enlightened people who made up the society. "I thought I +could see some incipient difficulties working in the system," writes a +lady who was there in 1841. "Questions already arose as to how much +individual freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the best +interests of the whole. Those who came there were the results of another +system of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radical +tendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shown +equal, certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of this augury +is the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly more +Fourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that another +generation might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence +among them. Theories and opinions were very openly talked over, and +practical details as well; and though this must have had its charm, yet +it would also touch uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon a +peculiar mood. In such enterprises there must always he a slight +inclination to establish a conformity to certain freedoms which really +become oppressions. Shyness was not held essential to a regenerated +state of things, and was perhaps too much disregarded; as also was +illness, an emergency not clearly provided for, which had to be met by +individual effort and self-sacrifice, after the selfish and +old-established fashion of the world. How this atmosphere affected +Hawthorne he has hinted in his romance founded on some aspects of +community life: "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." +A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow +some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face +shaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too much +of a party up there," was his answer, as he pointed toward the community +buildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sit +silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive, +where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the +young people," himself almost always holding a book before him, but +seldom turning the leaves. + +One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased +during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to +disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, +even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the +old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination +flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm +community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in +Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a +delightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his +experiment. + +"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, if +you can do anything better with them?... I am bent upon coming to see +you, this summer. Do not you remember how we used to go a-fishing +together in Raymond? Your mention of wild flowers and pickerel has given +me a longing for the woods and waters again." + +Then, in August, + +"C---- A----," writes his sister Louisa, "told me the other day that he +heard you were to do the travelling in Europe for the community." + +This design, if it existed, might well have found a place in the +Dialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne once meant to write; for this +was his only summer at Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, of +something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and +there became a rich experience," he writes, in "Blithedale." "I found +myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on +the same system." This was, in fact, his attitude; for, after passing +the winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting himself a little +while, he returned in the spring to look over the ground and perhaps +select a house-site, just before his marriage, but came to an adverse +decision. This no doubt accorded with perceptions which he was not +called upon to make public; but because he was a writer of fiction there +seems to have arisen a tacit agreement, in some quarters, to call him +insincere in his connection with this socialistic enterprise. He had not +much to gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its treasury +a thousand dollars, about the whole of his savings from the custom-house +stipend, and had next to nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, +while a niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost him nothing +but labor. The length of his stay was by no means uncommonly short, for +there was always a transient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whom +remained but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, who had +given six thousand dollars for the building of the Pilgrim House, and +hoped to end his days within it, retired forever after a very short +sojourn, not dissuaded from the theory, but convinced that the practical +application was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though a manful +effort was made, with good pecuniary success for a time, ten years +brought the final hour of failure to this millennial plan. + +Very few people who were at Brook Farm seem to have known or even to +have seen Hawthorne there, though he was elected chairman of the Finance +Committee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome presence, +his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and his hearty +participation in labor commanded a kind of reverence from some of the +members. Next to his friend George P. Bradford, one of the workers and +teachers in the community, his most frequent associates were a certain +Rev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book called +"Scenery-Shower," designed to develop a proper taste for landscape; and +one Frank Farley, who had been a pioneer in the West, a man of singular +experiences and of an original turn, who was subject to mental +derangement at times. The latter visited him at the Old Manse, +afterward, when Hawthorne was alone there, and entered actively into his +makeshift housekeeping. + +President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an acquaintance about +Hawthorne, said: "He is enthusiastic when he speaks of the aims and +self-sacrifice of some of the Brook Farm people; but when I questioned +him whether he would like to live and die in a community like that, he +confessed he was not suited to it, but said he had learned a great deal +from it. 'What, for instance?' 'Why, marketing, for one thing. I didn't +know anything about it practically, and I rode into Boston once or twice +with the men who took in things to sell, and saw how it was done.'" The +things of deepest moment which he learned were not to be stated fully in +conversation; but I suppose readers would draw the same inference from +this whimsical climax of Hawthorne's as that which has been found in +"The Blithedale Romance"; namely, that he looked on his socialistic life +as the merest jesting matter. Such, I think, is the general opinion; and +a socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the Oneida Community, has +indignantly cried out against the book, as a "poetico-sneering romance." +This study of human character, which would keep its value in any state +of society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and sane, to be +belittled to the record of a brief experiment! Hawthorne indeed, +speaking in the prefatory third person of his own aim, says: "His whole +treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of +the romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to +illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in +respect to socialism." And though he has told the story +autobiographically, it is through a character whom we ought by no means +to identify with Hawthorne in his whole mood. I have taken the liberty +of applying to Hawthorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale's +account, because they picture something known to be the case; and a +careful sympathy will find no difficulty in distinguishing how much is +real and how much assumed. Coverdale, being merely the medium for +impressions of the other characters, is necessarily light and +diaphanous, and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an advantage +to the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt to hold him up in the +air all the time, but lets him down now and then, and assumes the part +himself. The allusions to the community scheme are few, and most of them +are in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely because the hopes of the +socialists were so unduly high, he values them and still is glad of +them, though they have fallen to ruin. "In my own behalf, I rejoice that +I could once think better of the world than it deserved. It is a mistake +into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and +higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error." +Where is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensive +utterance? There is a class of two-pronged minds, which seize a pair of +facts eagerly, and let the truth drop out of sight between them. For +these it is enough that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farm +memories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in the first person, +with a few dashes of humor. + +Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold, +self-removed observation," quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph in +a letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled.... My mind will not +be abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myself +with catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter. +Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to set +seriously about literary occupation for the present." This is offered as +showing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits our +critic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of his +nature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up +into fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up his +entire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that each +should take such share of the labor as was for his own and the general +good, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A +singular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthorne +lays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had no +other motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing from +hearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually! +He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled +me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) +to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, by +delicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record, +and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the +companions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden +even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold +inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the +inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such distortion is amazing. +The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled to +get at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is the +motive? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the amusement of +making stories out of it? The holding up to one's self the stern and +secret realities of life is no such pleasing pursuit. These men are +driven to it by the divine impulse which has made them seers and +recorders. + +As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned with the same rich +human faith that fills the heart of every manly genius; and if +discouraging truth made him suffer, it was all the more because his +ideals--and at first his trust in their realization--were so generous +and so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, transferred to +the "The Blithedale Romance," show the wisdom on which his withdrawal +was based. The first relates to himself: "No sagacious man will long +retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and +progressive people, without periodically returning to the settled system +of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old +standpoint." He had too much imagination to feel safe in giving free +rein to it, in a special direction of theoretic conduct; he also +remembered that, as the old system of things was full of error, it was +possible that a new one might become so in new ways, unless watched. The +second observation touches the real weakness of the Brook Farm +institution: "It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first +questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, +self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the +advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But +to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regarded +society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than +new brotherhood._" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's +attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of men +who have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on a +grander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energy +after another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be made +effectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, and +recognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the trouble +to formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in +advance. + +The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristic +part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and rapt +enthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughing +allusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similar +to Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for the +field-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that they +were people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes with +refinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the tone +Hawthorne has given to Coverdale. + +The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little +seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the +farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of +a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been +thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at +Brook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that he +traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well to +remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote with +any one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one of +his most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of +composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he was +describing resembled in some point one or more persons of his +acquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla had +developed itself in his imagination, he found he could give her a +greater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; and +that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figure +to prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history of +Zenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds of +all readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down +and describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises to +make the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons the +character becomes quite a different thing to them from the actual +prototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no +doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that and +the atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that, +without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meeting +might have the effect of _suggesting_ it. Then he would brood over +this suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to his mind; and +thus his characters were conceived independently in a region somewhere +between himself and the people who had awakened speculation in his mind. + +He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might be +transferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the story +of a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her +aspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and the +hard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable and +morbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homely +stream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly +troubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himself +coming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summon +Hollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to find +the poor girl's body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the villagers +had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appeared +among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their +service." + +By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance" +bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. + + + + +VI. + + +THE OLD MANSE. + +1842-1846. + +There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makes +each step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of their +careers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, +Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllic +retirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy," he +says, "I felt as if there were no question to be put." + +Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his first +home. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather's +Chair," the first part of a series of sketches of New England history +for children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wiley +and Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stay +at the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also some +biographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He also +resumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review," the most brilliant +periodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and +other noted authors made their appearance. It was published at +Washington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensions +to a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, at +a fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not always +Hie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into +which he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," "The +Celestial Railroad," "The Procession of Life," "Fire Worship," "Buds and +Bird Voices," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the +"Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followed +in the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales" +was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the +"African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, +who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evidently carried +great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel +Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to +a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an +attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time +of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and +that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, +was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an +excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of +the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small +profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to +Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for +nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The +explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native +authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to +even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he +wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards +empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come +from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so +broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for +small gains." + +Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic" +some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his +"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. +A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was then +in the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser," +says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. No +American book in a long time has been so well noticed." The same firm +were now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears +in the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of another +scheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow," he writes, +"if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS.! MSS.! Mr. +Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and how +stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?" +The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mosses +from an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. This +attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows a +wider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-Told +Tales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken such +intimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommending +themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse was +assuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyed +happiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of first +possession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the +quiet course of the days, with their openings into healthful outdoor +exercise, made a perfect balance between creation and recreation. The +house in which he dwelt was itself a little island of the past, standing +intact above the flood of events; all around was a mild, cultivated +country, broken into gentle variety of "hills to live with," and touched +with just enough wildness to keep him from tiring of it: the stream that +flowed by his orchard was for him an enchanted river. He renewed the +pleasant sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, and +in winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid skates. In the +more genial months, the garden gave him pleasant employment; and in his +journal-musings, the thought gratifies him that he has come into a +primitive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manse +are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of that +immemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences has +all been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the +"Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed in +that vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, +into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrast +between the peaceful character of these first years at Concord and the +increased sombreness of some of the visions there recorded. + +The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to a +stature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on his +actual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value for +the "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. But +they, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear brown +twilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" are +the work of a man who has learned to know the world, and the atmosphere +in which they were composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of some +of them. "The Birthmark," "The Bosom Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," +and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made +up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The +Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of +awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful +and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes +almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? +The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliest +of all elements in production,--time; the brooding propensity was +indispensable to him; and, accordingly, as some of these conceptions had +occurred to him a good while before the carrying out, they received +great and almost excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, the +pervasiveness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in the +earlier tales: in this series, the idea bursts up like a long-buried +fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of Hell seem yawning +beneath us. Dismal, too, is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial," and +dreary "The Christmas Banquet," with its assembly of the supremely +wretched. In "Earth's Holocaust" we get the first result of Hawthorne's +insight into the demonianism of reformatory schemers who forget that the +centre of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this marks +out the way to "The Scarlet Letter" on the one hand, and "The Blithedale +Romance" on the other, in which the same theme assumes two widely +different phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more certainly +the central fountain of moral suggestion from which he drew his best +inspirations. The least pleasing quality of the work is, I think, its +overcharged allegorical burden. Some of the most perfect of all his +tales are here, but their very perfection makes one recoil the more at +the supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels a certain +chagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the completeness of embodiment +had given the central idea a shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorne +is most enjoyable and most true to himself when he offers us the chalice +of poetry filled to the very brim with the clear liquid of moral truth. +But, at first, there seems to have been a conflict between his aesthetic +and his ethical impulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from the +allegorical, by calling it a part of some whole which it represents. +"Allegory cannot be other than spoken consciously; whereas in the symbol +it is very possible that the general truth represented may be working +unconsciously in the writer's mind.... The advantage of symbolical +writing over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of faculties, +but simple predominance." Now in the "Allegories of the Heart," +collected in the "Mosses," there is sometimes an extreme consciousness +of the idea to be illustrated; and though the ideas are in a measure +symbolical, yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effect +to leave the artistic result quite generous and satisfying. Allegory +itself, as an echo of one's thought, is often agreeable, and pleases +through surprise; yet it is apt to be confusing, and smothers the poetic +harmony. In his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a hugely significant, +symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this partial vexation. "The +Celestial Railroad," of course, must be excepted from censure, being the +sober parody of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satirical +allegory. And in two cases, "Drowne's Wooden Image," and "The Artist of +the Beautiful," we find the most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, +the story of Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet rendered +additionally lovely by its homeliness; and the essence of all artistic +life, in the other, presented in a form that cannot be surpassed. "Mrs. +Bullfrog" is a sketch which is ludicrously puzzling, until one recalls +Hawthorne's explanation: "The story was written as a mere experiment in +that style; it did not come from any depth within me,--neither my heart +nor mind had anything to do with it." [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. II.] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark in +one direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of the +clearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales," begins in the "Mosses" +to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with the +gathering strength of imagination,--the enlarged power for bringing the +most unreal things quite into the circle of realities,--a compensating +richness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices," +"Fire Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." + +Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the +absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first +had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any +displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign +to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the +highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as +the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere +acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in +him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the +majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of +rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a +given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great +part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless +literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has +form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne +thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould. + +The "Mosses," as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for +the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current +epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of +New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his +attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly +and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he +was, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a Democratic +President. On the other hand, a writer in "The Church Review" of New +Haven, whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tilt +against him as a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, of +phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. In +like manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at the +Transcendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals +betray), Edgar Poe, a literary _Erinaceus_, wellnigh exhausted his +supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward which +he felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, in his +most high-pitched strain of personal abuse, "get a bottle of visible +ink, hang (if possible) the editor of 'The Dial,' cut Mr. Alcott, and +throw out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the 'North +American Review.'" This paper of Poe's is a laughable and pathetic case +of his professedly punctilious analysis covering the most bitter +attacks, with traces of what looks like envy, and others of a resistless +impulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against the average +mind. He begins with a discussion of originality and peculiarity: "In +one sense, to be peculiar is to be original," he says, but the true +originality is "not the uniform but the continuous peculiarity, ... +giving its own hue to everything it touches," and touching everything. +From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, which seems to make two +different things out of the same thing, he goes on to conclude that, +"the fact is, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail +of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is _not_ +original in any sense." He then attempts to show that Hawthorne's +peculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck as the source of this +idiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinuation may be the origin of Hawthorne's +effort to read some of the German author, while at the Old Manse,--an +attempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the unhappy critic brings +up his favorite charge of plagiarism; and it happens, as usual, that the +writer borrowed from is Poe himself! The similarity which he discovers +is between "Howe's Masquerade" and "William Wilson," and is based upon +fancied resemblances of situation, which have not the least foundation +in the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, +"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, written +a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:-- + +"Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that they belong to +the highest region of art,--an art subservient to genius of a very lofty +order. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had +been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent +_cliques_ who beset our literature; ... but we have been most +agreeably mistaken.... Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, +creation, imagination, originality,--a trait which, in the literature of +fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the +originality ... is but imperfectly understood.... The inventive or +original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of _tone_ as +in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in _all_ points." + +This, certainly, is making generous amends; but before he leaves the +subject, the assertion is repeated, that "he is peculiar, and _not_ +original." + +Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's represents pretty +well the want of understanding with which Hawthorne was still received +by many readers. His point of view once seized upon, nothing could be +more clear and simple than his own exposition of refined and evasive +truths; but the keen edge of his perception remained quite invisible to +some. Of the "Twice-Told Tales" Hawthorne himself wrote:-- + +"The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but it +is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design +on the writer's part to make them so.... Every sentence, so far as it +embodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody +who will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book +in a proper mood." + +But it was hard for people to find that mood, because in fact the Tales +_were_ profound. Their language was clear as crystal; but all the +more dazzlingly shone through the crystal that new light of Hawthorne's +gaze. + +After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the Manse came to an +end, and he returned to Salem, with some prospect of an office there +from the new Democratic government of Polk. It is said that President +Tyler had at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post-office, +but was induced to withdraw his name. There were local factions that +kept the matter in abeyance. The choice, in any case, lay between the +Naval Office and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne's +appointment to the latter. "Whichever it be," wrote Hawthorne, "it is to +you that I shall owe it, among so many other solid kindnesses. I have as +true friends as any man has, but you have been the friend in need and +the friend indeed." At this time he was seriously in want of some +profitable employment, for he had received almost nothing from the +magazine. It was the period of credit, and debts were hard to collect. +His journal at the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have been +told that, besides losing the value of many of his contributions to the +"Democratic," through the failure of the magazine, he had advanced money +to the publishers, which was never repaid; but this has not been +corroborated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook Farm, it is +a little doubtful. At length, he was installed as surveyor in the Salem +Custom-House, where he hoped soon to begin writing at ease. + + + + +VII. + + +THE SCARLET LETTER. + +1846-1850. + +The literary result of the four years which Hawthorne now, after long +absence, spent in his native town, was the first romance which gave him +world-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write soon was not +easy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. + +"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my +regard," he says, in "The Custom-House." "I cared not at this period for +books; they were apart from me.... A gift, a faculty, if it had not +departed, was suspended and inanimate within me." + +Readers of that charming sketch will remember the account of the +author's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet letter in an unfinished +upper room of the public building in which he labored at this time, and +how he was urged by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written an +account of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter public. The +discovery of these materials is narrated with such reassuring accuracy, +that probably a large number of people still suppose this to have been +the origin of "The Scarlet Letter." But there is no knowledge among +those immediately connected with Hawthorne of any actual relic having +been found; nor, of course, is it likely that anything besides the +manuscript memorandum should have been preserved. But I do not know that +he saw even this. The papers of Mr. Poe were probably a pure invention +of the author's. + +A strange coincidence came to light the year after the publication of +the romance. A letter from Leutze, the painter, was printed in the Art +Union Bulletin, running thus:-- + +"I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald (in an old +castle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery; it has haunted me +ever since. It was not the beauty or finish that charmed me; it was +something strange in the figures, the immense contrast between the child +and what was supposed to be her gouvernante in the garb of some severe +order; the child, a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, a +princess of some foreign land. No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter' +than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no one +else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, and +found my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicable +embroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token of +her order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hidden +by the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon +it at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as +was possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever +came to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freak +of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, the +Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please." + +A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it be +trustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it has +been verified. + +The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The name +Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an original +and isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story." + +In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice-told series printed +many years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with no +mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the +breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. +Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had +embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the +nicest art of needlework." A friend asked Hawthorne if he had +documentary evidence for this particular punishment, and he replied that +he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, though +with no attendant details. [Footnote: I may here transcribe, as a further +authority, which Hawthorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws of +Plymouth Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the events +of "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the Court and the +Authoritie thereof that whosoeuer shall committ Adultery shal bee +seuerly Punished by whipping two seueral times viz: once whiles the +Court is in being att which they are convicted of the fact, and the +second time as the Court shall order, and likewise to were two Capitall +letters viz: A D cut cut in Cloth and sewed on their vpermost garments +on their arme or backe; and if at any time they shal bee taken without +said letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be forthwith +Taken and publicly whipt."] This friend said to another at the time: "We +shall hear of that letter again, for it evidently has made a profound +impression on Hawthorne's mind." Returning to Salem, where his +historical stories and sketches had mainly been written, he reverted +naturally to the old themes; and this one doubtless took possession of +him soon after his entrance on his customs duties. But these disabled +him from following it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs got hold +of the government again, Hawthorne's literary faculty came into power +also, for he was turned out of office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, +he got to work on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the +"Mosses" he had formally renounced the short story; but "The Scarlet +Letter" proved so highly wrought a tragedy that he had fears of its +effect upon the public, if presented alone. + +"In the present case I have some doubts about the expediency, [he wrote +to Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new publisher, Ticknor,] +because, if the book is made up entirely of 'The Scarlet Letter,' it +will be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the shadows of the +story with so much light as I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping so +close to its point as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise than +by turning different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it +will weary very many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, to +stake the book entirely on this one chance?" + +His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward printed with the "The +Snow Image," and entitle the whole "Old Time Legends, together with +Sketches Experimental and Ideal." But this was abandoned. On the 4th of +February, 1850, he writes to Bridge:-- + +"I finished my book only yesterday: one end being in the press at +Boston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as you +see, the story is at least fourteen miles long.... + +"My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before April. He +speaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, +to whom I read the conclusion last night. [Footnote: This recalls an +allusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking of +Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own +pathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of +The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,--tried to read it, +rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down +on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous +state, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion while +writing it, for many months."] It broke her heart, and sent her to bed +with a grievous headache,--which I look upon as a triumphant success. +Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate on +what bowlers calls a 'ten-strike.' But I do not make any such +calculation." + +Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangible +and terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The Scarlet +Letter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of five +thousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salem +and in the region of New England history where he had won his first +triumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, received +the applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, and +speedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum," received +"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at the +same time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on the +author which it is quite worth while to record here. This was an article +in "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quarterly published at New Haven), +[Footnote: In the number for January, 1851.] written, I am told, by a +then young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical +body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous +article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking +of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet +_Lakers_ "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But +that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay +writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing +them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was +in the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism of +the Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It is +time," announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, +"that the literary world should learn that Churchmen are, in a very +large proportion, their readers and book-buyers, and that the tastes and +principles of Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those of +Puritans and Socialists." Yet, inconsistently enough, he declared that +Bay writers could not have grown to the stature of authors at all, +unless they had first shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "a +religion of indifference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as +Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied +that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a +writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. +But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he +was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing +but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest +taste. He imagines that Hawthorne "selects the intrigue of an adulterous +minister, as the groundwork of his ideal" of Puritan times, and asks, +"Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" Yet, being in some +points, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad," he +says, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an +experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And +in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is +willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss +to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a +provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the +beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: +whether he is making fun of all religion, or only giving a fair hint of +the essential sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished +at the kind of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseology, +he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "the +romance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, +like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a very +tolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, +within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found this +doctrine urged? Only once, faintly, and then in the words of one of the +chief sinners. + +"Shelley himself," says the austere critic, airing his literature, +"never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that in which the +polluted minister comforts himself with the thought, that the revenge of +the injured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 'Thou +and I never did so, Hester,' he suggests; and she responds, 'Never, +never! What we did had a consecration of its own.'" + +And these wretched and distorted consolations of two erring and +condemned souls, the righteous Churchman, with not very commendable +taste, seizes upon as the moral of the book, leaving aside the terrible +retribution which overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vain +plan of flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne defend +their excuses for themselves. Of Hester:-- + +"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These [he says] had been her teachers,--stern +and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much +amiss." + +And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmesdale must, of course, +by any pure-minded reader, be included among the errors thus taken into +her mind. + +"The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience +calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; +although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of +the most sacred of them.... Were such a man once more to fall, what plea +could be urged in extenuation of his crime? _None_; unless it avail +him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; +that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which +harrowed it." + +But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer goes on to show, +in this solemn declaration:-- + +"And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has +once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. +It may be watched and guarded.... But there is still the ruined wall, +and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his +unforgotten triumph." + +How Mr. Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is then described; but +it is also shown how Roger Chillingworth, the personified retribution of +the two sinners, fastens himself to them in all their movements, and +will be with them in any flight, however distant. + +"'Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,' said he, looking darkly at +the clergyman, 'there was no one place so secret, no high place nor +lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me.'" + +And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of +the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this +delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their +empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment of +fulfilment. + +But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient affinity of his +imagination, saw nothing of the awful truths so clearly though briefly +expressed, and finally came to the conclusion that the moral of the +whole fiction was "that the Gospel has not set the relations of man and +woman where they should be, and that a new gospel is needed to supersede +the Seventh Commandment, and the bond of matrimony." + +"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer,] is philosophized into a +natural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of marriage, which by +holding her irrevocably to her vows, as plighted to a dried-up old +book-worm, ... is viewed as making her heart an easy victim.... The sin +of her seducer, too, seems to be considered as lying, not so much in the +deed itself, as in his long concealment of it; and in fact the whole +moral of the tale is given in the words, 'Be true, he true!' as if +sincerity in sin were a virtue, and as if 'Be clean, he clean!' were not +the more fitting conclusion." + +But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious that Hawthorne probably +never dreamed of any one's requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it is +the starting-point, the very foundation, of the tragedy. The tale is a +massive argument for repentance, which is the flinging aside of +concealment, and the open and truthful acknowledgment of sin. In the +Puritan mode of dealing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem of +repentance and confession presented in the most drastic, concentrated, +and startling form; for the Puritans carried out in the severest style a +practical illustration of the consequences of moral offence. Since men +and women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse and public +admission of wrong-doing, these governors and priests determined to try +the effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. People +were set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at the +whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their ears +cropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; other +criminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that this +was only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of such +punishment were arrogating too much to themselves, and shared the office +of the fiend; that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outward +truthfulness would never build up the real inner truth of the soul;--all +this Hawthorne perceived and endeavored to portray in a form which +should be as a parable, applying its morality to the men and women of +to-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirectness. As a +study of a system of social discipline never before so expounded, it +claimed the deepest attention. And never was the capacity of sinning men +and women for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in this +romance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion was shown to be +self-analysis; that is, the conscientious view of one's self which keeps +the right or wrong of one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester was +on the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, and the +advantages of this comparative trueness are constantly made manifest. +She in a measure conquers evil and partly atones for her wrong, by the +good which she is able to do among her fellow-beings,--as much +compensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman who has once been so +essentially corrupted as she. Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of native +truth that he never allows his conscience to slumber for a moment, and +plies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent he +is better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own hands +the retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity for +his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in that +which ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, +and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, +though not coolly and maliciously false, stops short of open confession, +and in this submits himself to the most occult and corrosive influence +of his own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible consisted in +abject acknowledgment. Once announcing that he had fallen, and was +unworthy, he might have taken his place on the lower moral plane; and, +equally resigning the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hester, +he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing of some limited +good. The shock to the general belief in probity would have been great; +but the discovery that the worst had been made known, that the minister +was strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the place he no +longer was fit for, would have restored the public mind again, by +showing it that a deeper probity possible than that which it wanted to +see sustained. This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothing is so +destructive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that sincerity in +sin is a virtue, but that it is better than sin and falsehood combined. +And if anything were wanting, at first, to make this clear, there +certainly is not a particle of obscurity left by the glare of the +catastrophe, when the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that he and she +may meet after death, and spend their immortal life together, and says +that God has proved his mercy most of all by the afflictions he has laid +upon him. + +As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be revealed, it could have +been no other than that ultimate lifting up of the race into a plane of +the utmost human truthfulness, which every one who believes in the +working of all things for good, looks forward to with vague longing, but +with most certain faith. How far the Puritan organization was from this +state of applied truth, the romance shows. Nearly every note in the +range of Puritan sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. The +still unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who cannot but feel +something of mercifulness toward Hester is overruled by the harsh +exultation of other women in her open shame. We have the noble and +spotless character of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of his +death on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but much more +distinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, who, nevertheless, is +utterly incompetent to deal with the problem of a woman's lost morality. +Governor Bellingham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of the +state and its ferocious sanctions; yet in the very house with him dwells +Mistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in the secret knowledge of +widespread sin. Thus we are led to a fuller comprehension of +Chillingworth's attitude as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea of +spiritual government; and in his diabolical absorption and gloating +interest in sin, we behold an exaggerated--but logically +exaggerated--spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipitate and +personally supervise the punishments of eternity on this side of death. + +Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply to +this article in "The Church Review," though he recognized, as all +readers of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not by +any means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity for +whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. + +Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so +excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly +be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the +adroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, which +we call "plot." Passion and motive and character, having been brought +together in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; but +the individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures, +with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama +gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration, +indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evident +as is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, +long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like a +playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather +arrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this is +simply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist's +method; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that, +and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies all +Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but also +protracting the impression a little too much, at times. Yet the general +conception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating +the characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis of +the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and, +notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole work +carries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of events +is affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the +necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influences +novelists of the higher order. + +As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extended +romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in +its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the +aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was +no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure +beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself +and the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had not +so transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty, +he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious to +speculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House of +the Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the tragic +element in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentleness +of incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discovering +the writer's real measure, for a while longer. But "The Scarlet Letter" +burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent public awoke +in good earnest, and never forgot, though it speedily forgave the shock. + +There was another smaller but attendant explosion. Hawthorne's prefatory +chapter on the Custom-House incensed some of his fellow-citizens of +Salem, terribly. There seems to have been a general civic clamor against +him, on account of it, though it would be hard to find any rational +justification therefor. In reference to the affair, Hawthorne wrote at +the time:-- + +"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, and on two false +indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf." + +This refers to political machinations of the party opposed to Hawthorne +as an official: they had pledged themselves, it was understood, not to +ask for his ejection, and afterward set to work to oust him without +cause. There is reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperation +at these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoyance came upon him +when he was worn out with the excitement of composing "The Scarlet +Letter"; and this ebullition of local hostility must moreover have been +especially offensive at a moment when the public everywhere else was +receiving him with acclaim as a person whose genius entitled him to +enthusiastic recognition. Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincere +friends in Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure the +culmination of that smouldering disagreement which had harassed him in +earlier years, and had lurked in his heart in spite of the constant mild +affection which he maintained toward the town. + +But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was now to be finally +broken off. He longed for change, for the country, and for the +recreation that the Old Manse garden had given him. "I should not long +stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led +for the last few months," he wrote to Bridge. "Here I hardly go out once +a week." On this account, and because of his difficulty in writing while +in office, he did not so much regret losing his place. One of the plans +proposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the Sparhawk house, +a famous old colonial mansion on Goose Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, +which was then to be disposed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, would +have found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the neighborhood. +After his return from abroad, he made a visit to the quaint and stately +little city of Portsmouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful old +houses in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Langdon, then +occupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A memorial of that visit remains, in +this bright note from his host:-- + +PORTSMOUTH, September, 1860. + +MR. HAWTHORNE. + +MY DEAR SIR:--There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse," there is no +Romance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter." But you can +give us a "Twice-Told Tale," if you will for the second time be our +guest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. + +Very truly yours, + +CHARLES BURROUGHS. + +But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire. + + + + +VIII. + + +LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. + +1850-1853. + +In the early summer, after the publication of "The Scarlet Letter," +Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where himself and +his family were ensconced in a small red house near the Stockbridge +Bowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means of +obtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the +world to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. + +He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this time living in +Pittsfield. There was even talk of their writing something together, as +I judge from some correspondence; though this was abandoned. + +Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The House +of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for +Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow +Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short +"Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to +literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook +Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a +full current if only left free to do so. + +The industry and energy of this period are the more remarkable because +he could seldom accomplish anything in the way of composition during the +warm months. "The House of the Seven Gables" was under way by September, +1850. + +"I shan't have the new story ready," he writes to his publisher on the +1st of October, "by November, for I am never good for anything in the +literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat +such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about +me,--multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to be +sober and shabby enough after all." + +The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which he indulged one +month later is so important as to merit dwelling upon. + +"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the book +requires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also I have to +wait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in one tone, I +had only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many +passages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a +Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, +when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from +beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is +always, or always ought to be, careering on, the utmost verge of a +precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as +possible, without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that +the book ought to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter,' though I +have no idea that it will." + +By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write: "My 'House of the +Seven Gables' is, so to speak, finished; only I am hammering away a +little at the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were left +incomplete"; and at the end of that month, he despatched the manuscript +to Boston, still retaining his preference for it over the preceding work. + +"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." + +He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the critics, and +giving his own opinion time to mature:-- + +"I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and more proper and +natural for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter,'--but, for that very +reason, less likely to interest the public. Nevertheless, it appears to +have sold better than the former, and I think is move sure of retaining +the ground that it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works are +popular in England, and advises me to take out my copyright there." + +His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production to his first +great romance is no doubt one that critics will coincide with as regards +artistic completeness; though his fear that it would not succeed so well +was not confirmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to acquire +that momentum of public favor which sets in after its first immense +inertia has once been overcome. Acting on the reports from England, he +made a suggestion to his publisher; and though this at first met with +discouragement, ten months later L200 were received from a London house +for "The Blithedale Romance." English editions of his works had already +become numerous. But Hawthorne began now to receive a more ethereal and +not less welcome kind of tribute from abroad, that of praise from the +makers and markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a high +place; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross the sea; and Miss +Mitford--of whom he said, "Her sketches, long ago as I read them, are as +sweet in my memory as the scent of new hay"--sent special messages +expressive of her pleasure. + +When the "Blithedale Romance" had come out, Mr. Hawthorne sent Miss +Mitford a copy, and she wrote in reply this cordial and delightful +note:-- + +SWALLOWFIELD, August 6,1852. + +At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write again to tell +you how much I thank you for the precious volume enriched by your +handwriting, which, for its own sake and for yours, I shall treasure +carefully so long as I live. The story has your mark upon it,--the fine +tragic construction unmatched amongst living authors, the passion of the +concluding scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finish +of style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I have ever +known, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent of Miss Edgeworth, +says of your style: "His English is the richest and most intense essence +of the language I know of; his words conveying not only a meaning, but +more than they appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, +as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes of +imagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, +as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond of +bringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfect +Englishmen of our day are Americans,--Irving, Prescott, and this great +new writer, Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, dear +Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of whose works you +remind me, not by imitation, but by resemblance, is the great French +novelist, Balzac. Do you know his books? He is untranslated and +untranslatable, and it requires the greatest familiarity with French +literature to relish him thoroughly.... I doubt if he be much known +amongst you; at least I have never seen him alluded to in American +literature. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, but, +being what he is, Mrs. Browning and I used to discuss his personages +like living people, and regarded his death as a great personal calamity +to both. + +I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being well enough +to meet her in London.... How I wish, dear Mr. Hawthorne, that you were +here to meet them! The day will come, I hope. It would be good for your +books to look at Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue would +rejoice to look at you. + +Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, + +M. R. MITFORD. + +I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Herman Melville, who, +in the midst of his epistle, suddenly assumes the tone of a reviewer, +and discourses as follows, under the heading, "_The House of the Seven +Gables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne_. 16_mo. pp._ 344." + +"The contents of this book do not belie its clustering romantic title. +With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each separate gable. +This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly but still judiciously +furnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish +it. There are rich hangings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. +There is old china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet; +there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an +admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a +smell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is a +dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled _Hawthorne: +A Problem_.... + +"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest surpasses the +other work of the author. The curtains are now drawn; the sun comes in +more; genialities peep out more. Were we to particularize what has most +struck us in the deeper passages, we should point out the scene where +Clifford, for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, to +join the procession; or the scene where the Judge is left seated in his +ancestral chair. + +"Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the +finest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we +would say, that did the circumstances permit, we should like nothing +better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full +consideration and analysis of the purpose and significance of what so +strongly characterizes all of this author's writing. There is a certain +tragic phase of humanity, which, in our opinion, was never more +powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne: we mean the tragicalness of human +thought in its own unbiased, native, and profound workings. We think +that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the whole truth +ever entered more deeply than into this man's. By whole truth, we mean +the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they +strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst +to him." + +This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes to extract from +the "Pittsfield Secret Review," of which I wish further numbers could be +found. + +But chief among the prizes of this season were letters from his friends +Lowell and Holmes. The latter's I insert, because it admirably +illustrates the cordial relation which has always distinguished the +famous writers of New England,--no pleasant illusion of distance, but a +notable and praiseworthy reality. + +BOSTON, April 9, 1851. + +MY DEAR SIR:--I have been confined to my chamber and almost to my bed, +for some days since I received your note; and in the mean time I have +received what was even more welcome, the new Romance "from the Author." +While I was too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you have +been playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with the +magnetism of your imagination. + +I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long +time. I had become so set in this feeling, that but for your last two +stories I should have given up hoping, and believed that all we were to +look for in the way of spontaneous growth were such languid, lifeless, +sexless creations as in the view of certain people constitute the chief +triumphs of a sister art as manifested among us. + +But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fern +and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of +our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded and +flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a +seedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the moment +a fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us and +transfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others +analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciating +sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, of +character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayon +sketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story. +Only one word, then, this: that the solid reality and homely +truthfulness of the actual and present part of the story are blended +with its weird and ghostly shadows with consummate skill and effect; +this was perhaps the special difficulty of the story. + +I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall come up, I +trust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the MS. in question, as +a duty, with as much pleasure as many other duties afford. To say the +truth, I have as great a dread of the _Homo Caudatus_ Linn., +Anglice, the Being with a Tale, male or female, as any can have. + + "If foes they write, if friends they read me dead," + +said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I will +stipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds avoirdupois +by weight or eighteen reams by measure or "tale,"--provided there is no +locomotion in the case. The idea of visiting Albany does not enter into +my intentions. I do not know who would serve as a third or a second +member of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does not +prevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real +truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The Scarlet +Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That is +what they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classical +condition _not to leave the country except in case of invasion_, +absentees, voters by proxy, potential but not personally present +bottle-holders, I will add my name to those of Latimer, Ridley, and Co. +as a Martyr in the cause of Human Progress. + +Believe me, my dear sir, + +Yours very sincerely, + +O. W. Holmes. + +Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was also very great, and one +of the last books which he read at all was "Elsie Venner," which he had +taken up for a second time shortly before his death. + +Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless praise, or of other +comment on the new romance, he began to feel that necessity for +abstracting his attention entirely from what was said of his work in +current publications, which forces itself upon every creative mind +attempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering and unprivate +age like the present. This feeling he imparted to Bridge, and it also +appears in one or two published letters. At the same time, it must be +remembered how careful a consideration he gave to criticism; and he +wrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the "Seven Gables":-- + +"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helped +me to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish I +could feel the praise to be so fully deserved. Being better (which I +insist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have never expected it to be +so popular." + +In this same letter occurs the following:-- + +"---- ----, Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have +made his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon +(or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their +representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge +Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ----'s grandfather, and (at +least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman +in the world. There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheons +which, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in my +eye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and +thinks it monstrous that the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to rest +quietly in their graves." + +The matter here alluded to threatened to give Hawthorne almost as much +inconvenience as the tribulation which followed the appearance of "The +Custom-House." One of the complainants in this case, though objecting to +the use of the name Pyncheon, "respectfully suggests," with an ill-timed +passion for accuracy, that it should in future editions be printed with +the _e_ left out, because this was the proper mode in use by the +family. + +There has been some slight controversy as to the original of the +visionary mansion described in this romance. Mr. Hawthorne himself said +distinctly that he had no particular house in mind, and it is also a +fact that none is recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that of +the "Seven Gables." Nevertheless, one party has maintained that the old +Philip English house, pulled down many years since, was the veritable +model; and others support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. The +Curwin, called the "Witch House," appears, by an antique painting from +which photographs have been made, to have had the requisite number of +peaks at a remote date; but one side of the structure being perforce +left out of the picture, there is room for a doubt. [Footnote: It is +from one of these photographs that the cut in the new edition of +Hawthorne's Works has been developed.] + +In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection of +parts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in the +same fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter." There is, besides, a larger range +of character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed and +reticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting on +ivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being. Very noticeable is the +delicate veneration and tenderness for her with which the author seems +to inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost nothing +definite to say of her except what tends to throw a light ridicule. She +is continually contrasted with the exquisite freshness, ready grace, and +beauty of Phoebe, and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mind +of Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic perception +casts silent reproach upon her. Yet, in spite of this, she becomes in a +measure endeared to us. In the grace, and agreeableness too, with which +Hawthorne manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a unit of +measure for the beauty with which he has invested the more frightful and +tragic elements of the story. It is this triumph of beauty without +destroying the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artistic +virtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified discomfort to the +reader, yet he is entirely held within bounds by the prevailing charm of +the author's style, and by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanter +elements of the other characters are applied. At times the strong +emphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect that the villain is +too deeply dyed; but the question of equity here involved is one of the +most intricate with which novelists have to deal at all. The +well-defined opposition between good and bad forces has always been a +necessity to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life furnishes +the most absolute extremes of possession by the angel or the fiend; and +Shakespere has not scrupled to use one of these ultimate possibilities +in the person of Iago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of the +downward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's pronounced iniquity +stand without giving a glimpse of incipient evil in another quarter. +This occurs in the temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds that +he possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the latest Pyncheon +offshoot, as that which his ancestor Matthew Maule exercised over Alice +Pyncheon. The momentary mood which brings before him the absolute power +which might be his over this fair girl, opens a whole new vista of +wrong, in which the retribution would have been transferred from the +shoulders of the Pyncheons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yielded +then, he might have damned his own posterity, as Colonel Pyncheon had +_his_. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, we are made aware of +possibilities as malicious and destructive as those hereditary faults +grown to such rank maturity in the Judge; and this may be said to offer +a middle ground between the side of justice and attractiveness, and the +side of injustice and repulsiveness, on which the personages are +respectively ranged. + +The conception of a misdeed operating through several generations, and +righted at last solely by the over-toppling of unrestrained malevolence +on the one hand, and on the other by the force of upright character in +the wronged family, was a novel one at the time; this graphic depicture +of the past at work upon the present has anticipated a great deal of the +history and criticism of the following twenty-five years, in its close +conjunction of antecedent influences and cumulative effects. + +As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, this second +romance was not less remarkable than the one which preceded it. The +theme furnished by the imaginary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragic +in the Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Clifford, to a +grotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. Thence we are led to +another vein of simple, fun-breeding characterization in Uncle Venner +and Ned Higgins. The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Venner +in such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one degree of sunniness +above the dubious light in which Hepzibah stands, so that he may soften +the contrast of broad humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the "First +Customer." I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not give freer scope +to his delicious faculty for the humorous, exemplified in the "Seven +Gables." If he had let his genius career as forcibly in this direction +as it does in another, when burdened with the black weight of the dead +Judge Pyncheon, he might have secured as wide an acceptance for the book +as Dickens, with so much more melodrama and so much less art, could gain +for less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the tragic +element, and comparative neglect of the other, was in one sense an +advantage; but if in the case under discussion he had given more bulk +and saliency to the humorous quality, he might also have been more +likely to avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after that +marvellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the lifeless +Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave for +Phoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house where +Death and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too +violent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midst +of the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spread +around itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; and +it might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom to +gladness just here, and a more frequent play of the brighter mood +throughout the book. But the tragic predilection seems ultimately to +gain the day over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was so +strong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater play to humor in +later fictions, it curtailed it more and more, from the production of +the "Seven Gables" onward. + +Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after the publication of +the new book, which, as it gives another instance of the writer's keen +enjoyment of other men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life at +Lenox, I will copy at length:-- + +LENOX, April 29,1851. + +MY DEAR HOWADJI:--I ought to be ashamed (and so I really am) of not +having sooner responded to your note of more than a month ago, +accompanied as it was by the admirable "Nile Notes." The fact is, I have +been waiting to find myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that I +might pay my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of the +occasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless never will; and +now I have delayed so long, that America and England seem to have +anticipated me in their congratulations. + +I read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have felt that we +never knew anything of the Nile before. There is something beyond +descriptive power in it. You make me feel almost as if we had been there +ourselves. And then you are such a luxurious traveller.... The fragrance +of your chibonque was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot be +concealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths of +those chapters about the dancing-girls, lest they might result in +something not altogether accordant with our New England morality; and +even now I hardly know whether we escaped the peril, or were utterly +overwhelmed by it. But at any rate, those passages are gorgeous in the +utmost degree. However, I suppose you are weary of praise; and as I have +nothing else to inflict, I may as well stop here. + +S---- and the children and I are plodding onward in good health, and in +a fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite the +happiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little old +red farm-house you ever saw.... + +What shall you write next? For of course you are an author forever. I am +glad, for the sake of the public, but not particularly so for your own. + +Very soon after the issue of the "Seven Gables," another lighter +literary project was put into execution. + +"I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write within six weeks +or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical +myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; +Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; +Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." + +The "Wonder-Book" was begun on the first of June, and finished by the +middle of July; so that the intention of writing it within six weeks was +strictly carried out: certainly a rapid achievement, considering the +excellent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It is a minor +work, but a remarkable one; not its least important trait being the +perfect simplicity of its style and scope, which, nevertheless, omits +nothing essential, and preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiar +excellences come out still more distinctly when contrasted with Charles +Kingsley's "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales," published in England +five years after the appearance of the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresher +play of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing more +agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he has +thrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vine +curling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task--it was very +uncommon for him to write in the hot season--perhaps had something to do +with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was not +good. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not +suit his sea-braced temperament; and so, instead of renting Mrs. +Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he decided to leave +Berkshire with the birds; but not to go southward. Moving to West +Newton, near Boston, he remained there for the winter, writing +"Blithedale," which was put forth in 1852. + +The special characteristic of "The Blithedale Romance" seems to me to be +its appearance of unlabored ease, and a consequent breeziness of effect +distinguishing its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. +The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part of the book +that gives the same impression of almost unnecessary polish which +occasionally intervenes between one's admiration and the "Seven Gables." +On this score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of the four +completed romances. And as Hawthorne has nowhere given us more robust +and splendid characterization than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, +the work also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, which seemed +partly dispersed in the "Seven Gables," gather again in this succeeding +story; but, on the other hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as "The +Scarlet Letter." From this it is saved partly by the sylvan surrounding +and the pleasant changes of scene. In comparing it with the other works, +I find that it lets itself be best defined as a mean between extremes; +so that it ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attempered +of all. The theme is certainly as deep as that of the earlier ones, and +more tangible to the general reader than that of "The Marble Faun"; it +is also more novel than that of "The Scarlet Letter" or even the "Seven +Gables," and has an attractive air of growing simply and naturally out +of a phenomenon extremely common in New England, namely, the man who is +dominated and blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollingsworth, +through this very prepossession and absorption, is brought to the ruin +of his own scheme, and has to concentrate his charity for criminals upon +himself as the first criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. +Yet, in discussing the relative positions of these four works. I am not +sure that we can reach any decision more stable than that of mere +preference. + +There is a train of thought suggested in "Blithedale" which receives +only partial illustration in that story, touching the possible identity +of love and hate. It had evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very early +period, and would have made rich material for an entire romance, or for +several treating different phases of it. Perhaps he would have followed +out the suggestion, but for the intervention of so many years of +unproductiveness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent too +early death. + +It was while at West Newton, just before coming to the Wayside, that he +wrote a note in response to an invitation to attend the memorial meeting +at New York, in honor of the novelist, Cooper, which should be read for +its cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the tender thought +of the closing sentence. + +_To Rev. R. W. Griswold._ + +February 20,1852. + +Dear Sir:--I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible for +me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honor of +James Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present than +myself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. +Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe the +earnestness with which the literary men of our country unite in paying +honor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to hope that, in the +eyes of the public at large, American literature may henceforth acquire +a weight and value which have not heretofore been conceded to it: time +and death have begun to hallow it. + +Very respectfully yours, + +Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he had +bought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtis +was at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes of +American Authors," among which was to be included the new abode of +Hawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:-- + +CONCORD, July 14, 1852. + +MY HEAR 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 hillside 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 hillside 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 Hillside." 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. [Footnote: 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.] 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. + +The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when its +owner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment." It +characterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though the +spell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself was +small, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legend +over Ariosto's door, _Parva, sed apta mihi_. In October, 1852, he +wrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or +two, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design this +was cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in the +preceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with the +demand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of +invention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he could +produce as many books as he might have time for writing. But +circumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as he +was preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the +"Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, +urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I have +consented to do so," wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhat +reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where a +man careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting his +acquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not be +ashamed to tell the truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book +was out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried to +persuade Pierce 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." In this letter, also, he states that before +undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce; +though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly than +heroism." In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:-- + +"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." + +These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during the war. Speaking of +Pierce's indorsement of the Compromise, both as it bore hard on Northern +views and exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be more +than reciprocal, he says:-- + +"It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken +advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that +great object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least +scrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slavery +recognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom +and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the +Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into +distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into +one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years, +from the first settlement of the American wilderness until the +Revolution." + +He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, and +the good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravated +injuries from the very process designed to better their state. It is +useless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong on +either side, in the struggle which had already become formidable before +Pierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generous +motives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must be +maintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur of +achievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civil +war, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which +forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, because +it could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on the +shedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that found +shelter in the heart of Hawthorne. + +Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, in +friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements of +greatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career. +[Footnote: As a literary performance, the book is of course but slightly +characteristic; and being distasteful to the author, it is even dry. Yet +there is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The Whig journals +belabored it manfully, and exhausted the resources of those formidable +weapons, italics and small capitals, in the attempt to throw a +ridiculous light on the facts most creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne came +in for a share of the abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "new +romance"; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simonides, who was +the first poet to write for money. The other party, of course, took +quite another view of the work. A letter to Hawthorne from his elder +sister bears well upon his fidelity. "Mr. D---- has bought your Life of +Pierce, but he will not be convinced that you have told the precise +truth. I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say."] +He had not much hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, +the question of office, which he had already mooted, was definitely +brought before him. When Pierce learned that he positively would not +take an office, because to do so now might compromise him, he was +extremely troubled. He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some one +of the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But the service he +had exacted from his friend threatened to deprive Hawthorne of the very +benefit which Pierce had been most anxious he should receive. At last, +Mr. Ticknor, Hawthorne's publisher, was made the agent of Pierce's +arguments, and to them he added personal considerations which were +certainly not without weight. Literature gave but a bare subsistence, +and Hawthorne was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. +His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach that would be +made in the fortunes of his family, were he to be suddenly removed. +This, Mr. Ticknor urged, in addition to the friendly obligation which +Pierce ought to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, had +always wished to travel, and the prospect of some years in Europe was an +alluring one: the decision was made, to take the Liverpool consulship. + +The appointment was well received, though many persons professed +surprise that Hawthorne could accept it. One gentleman in public life, +however, who knew how unjust current judgments may often be, was not of +this number, as appears from his note below.-- + +SENATE CHAMBER, March 26, 1853. + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--"Good! good!" I exclaimed aloud on the floor of the +Senate as your nomination was announced. + +"Good! good!" I now write to you, on its confirmation. Nothing could be +more grateful to me. Before you go, I hope to see you. + +Ever yours, + +CHARLES SUMNER. + + + + +IX. + + +ENGLAND AND ITALY. + +1853-1860. + +It is very instructive to trace the contact of Hawthorne's mind with +Europe, as exhibited in his "English Note-Books" and "French and Italian +Note-Books." But in these records three things are especially +observable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, with an individual mood as +easily sustained, as he would enter Boston or New York. He carries no +preconception of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. +There has never been a more complete and charming presentment of a +multitude of ingenuous impressions common to many travellers of widely +differing endowment than here, at the same time that you have always +before you the finished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly +and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, +fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one a +dreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical +and even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had gone +abroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book and +in a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to +himself, sometimes the other; and occasionally they con each other's +paragraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of the first. It is +interesting to note their twofold inspection of Westminster Hall, for +example. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding its +length to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immense +barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it not +irreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "I +wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic +representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or +death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident ... +that has occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such as +this, so tapestried with recollections." But in any case it is always +apparent that the thought is colored by a New World nurture. From this +freshness of view there proceeded one result, the searching, +unembarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial criticism of +England in "Our Old Home." But it also gave rise to the second notable +quality, that exquisite apprehension of the real meaning of things +European, both institutions and popular manners and the varied products +of art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for the one end of +adding this final grace of definition which he so deftly attaches to the +monuments of that older civilization. He brings a perception so keen and +an innate sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, that +the mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmosphere upon the objects +before him invests them with a quality which we feel to be theirs, even +while we know that it could not have become _ours_ without his aid. +A breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows of the Old World, +and--I had almost said--bedims them with a film of evanescent frost-work; +yet, as that lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, a +legendary fascination in their deep-gemmed gorgeousness, which, although +we have felt it and read of it before, we never seized till now. I speak, +of course, from the American point of view; though in a great measure the +effect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy a special +appropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture of estimation and +enthusiasm which forms the medium through which Hawthorne looks at the +spectacle of transatlantic life and its surroundings. He visits the +British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated +sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, +slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with +which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes +that form the real population of Rome. + +Even there, he has much dissent to make, still; and we may not find +it at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviations +ourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is impossible not to +feel sure that within this circle of contradictions, of preference for +new frames and of his friend Thompson's pictures to all but a very few +of the old masters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthy +aesthetic sensibility which grasps the "unwritten rules of taste," the +inmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, however we may turn it, +a matter of paradox, and the moment it professes to be explained, that +moment are the gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness and +the protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses to himself as he +wanders through the galleries of Europe, are the trembling of the +needle, perfectly steadfast to the polar opposites of truth, yet +quivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial +influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this +singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index +finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone +which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a +little crude,--that very air of being the uncritical and slightly +puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful +accuracies of interpretation. + +The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation is its entire +freedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot be made to appear more +clearly than in the contrast presented by his "English Note-Books" and +"Our Old Home" to Emerson's "English Traits," and Taine's "Notes on +England." The latter writer is an acute, alert, industrious, and +picturesque comparer of his own and a neighboring country, and is +accompanied by a light battery of literary and pictorial criticism, +detached from his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other hand, +gives us probably the most masterly and startling analysis of a people +which has ever been offered in the same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, +in brilliancy and penetration of statement. But the "English Traits" is +as clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and perhaps a +little too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of England, though not +comparable to Emerson's work for analysis, has this advantage, that its +outline is more flexible and leaves room for many individual +discriminations to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. +Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign land: Hawthorne +causes us to inhale its very atmosphere, and makes the country ours for +the time being, rather than an alien area which we scrutinize in +passing. Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities that are +dominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every Englishman runs to 'The Times' +with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother," is as +epigrammatic as anything in "English Traits"; [Footnote: No one, I +think, has so well defined our relation to the English as Hawthorne, in +a casual phrase from one of his printed letters: "We stand in the light +of posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity." This, on +London, ought to become proverbial: "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 die, or go to London."] +and there is a tendency in his pages to present the national character +in a concrete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addition, +Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and renders human character +with a force and fineness which give it its true value as being, after +all, far weightier and dearer to us than the most important or famous of +congealed _results_ of character. Withal a wide and keen observer +and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these upon +us as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense of +greater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. + +It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write an English +romance, as well, or rather than an Italian one? More than half his stay +abroad was north of the Channel, and one would infer that there could +have been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England," he +wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had +been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England +just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on +the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a source of romantic +possibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But the +greater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, where +his consular duties suppressed fiction-making. [Footnote: And it was not +till he reached the villa of Montauto at Florence that he could write:-- + +"It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really 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 +Yankee-dom 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 out of all my old tracks, and am really remote."] + +Hawthorne's genius was extremely susceptible to every influence about +it. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which owes its fine +properties to the tempering of time and atmosphere, and transmits +through its strings the very thrill of sunshine that has sunk into its +wood. His utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. In +one of his letters from Florence he wrote:-- + +"Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which I could +have ready for the press in a few months if I were either in England or +America. But 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." + +But though England might be his workshop for books dreamed of in Italy, +yet the aspect of English life seems much more fittingly represented by +his less excursively imaginative side, as in "Our Old Home," than in a +romance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation; but I believe we +may much better spare the possible English romance, than we could have +foregone the actual Italian one. + +In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring and +impressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, +without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or even +by some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circle +which no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself has +even begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric +time--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his +fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--this +conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or +crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has +nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of +Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book +reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as +the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the +primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt +at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of +those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to +each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his +individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the +theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's +nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their +origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, +that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory +that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he +shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler +individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes +without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides +with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of +spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, +I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by +self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a +Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, +"it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of +intellect and soul." This idea is several times urged by Miriam and +Kenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then by +Hilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which +human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function of +the author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance of +Monte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man +repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of all +religious problems, affirming,--as one interpreter [Footnote: See an +unsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne," in the Atlantic Monthly for +September, 1868.] has said,--"the inherent freedom of man," and +illustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. Donatello is the +ideal of the childlike nature on the threshold of history who has lived +without choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence of +Miriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of the +catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual +choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely +asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his +immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety +of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis +of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and +this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatello +himself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, are +involved. There is first the reaction upon and inculpation of Miriam, +whose glance had confirmed Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, +yet enough to involve her in the doom of change and separation--of sin +in short--which falls upon the Faun. And in Hilda's case, it is the +simple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as if +she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who +are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite +meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author has +given. + +But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous and intricate study +of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's story, in a new form. Miriam is a +different woman placed in the same circumstances which made the Cenci +tragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books," Hawthorne describes the +look he caught sight of in Guido's picture,--that "of a being +unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote and +inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no +human sympathy could reach her." It was of this single insight that both +Miriam and Hilda were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, +slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIII.): "It was the +intimate consciousness of her father's guilt that threw its shadow over +her, and frightened her into" this region. Now, in the chapter called +"Beatrice," quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam and +Hilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It is evident, from the +emphasis given by the chapter-title, that this subject is very deeply +related to the theme of the romance; and no theory can explain Miriam's +passionate utterances about the copy of Guido's portrait, except that +which supposes her own situation to be that of Beatrice. This chapter is +full of the strongest hints of the fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance to +the picture, at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret of +Beatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence; her ardent defence of +Beatrice's course, as "the best virtue possible under the +circumstances," when Hilda condemns it; her suggestion that, after all, +only a woman could have painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, +and that _she herself_ has "a great mind to undertake a copy," +giving it "what it lacks";--all these things point clearly. But there is +a mass of inferential evidence, besides; many veiled allusions and +approaches to a revelation, as well as that very marked description of +the sketches in which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a "woman +acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man," and the hint, in +the description of her portrait of herself, that "she might ripen to be +what Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, and +slew him for too much adoring it." There is no need to pursue the proof +further: readers will easily find it on re-examining the book. But what +is most interesting, is to observe how Hawthorne has imagined two women +of natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a similar +pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guilt +which has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnatural +depravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of +blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam the +white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her--though +perfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam--believe +herself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime +which weighs upon the soul; but Miriam, in exactly the position of +Beatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep-colored nature than she; and +Hilda, differently affected by the same question of conscience, is a +vastly spiritualized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after the +avenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must have done, +whether there be any guilt in such avengement; but being of so different +a temperament, and having before her eyes the effect of this murder upon +the hitherto sinless Faun, the reality of her responsibility is brought +home to her. The clear conscience of Hilda confirms it. Thus by taking +two extremes on either side of Beatrice,--one, a woman less simply and +ethereally organized, and the other one who is only indirectly connected +with wrong or crime,--Hawthorne seems to extract from the problem of +Beatrice all its most subtle significance. He does not coldly condemn +Beatrice; but by re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds in +magnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful knot of crime and +its consequence, which lies inextricably tangled up within it. How +different from Shelley's use of the theme! There is certainly nothing in +the "Marble Faun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, and the +piercing outcry against the shallow but awful errors of human justice, +which uplift Shelley's drama. But Shelley stops, on the one side, with +this climax:-- + + "O plead + With famine or wind-walking pestilence, + Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man!" + +And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with Beatrice's +characterization of the parricide, + + "Which is, or is not, what men call a crime." + +Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter doubt. "The foremost +result of a broken law," he says, "is ever an ecstatic freedom." But +instead of pausing to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, he +distinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded father to be +crime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam and Donatello may work out +their purification. So that if the first part of the romance is the Fall +of Man repeated, the second part is the proem to a new Paradise +Regained; and the seclusion of the sculptor and the Faun, and their +journey together to Perugia, seasoned with Kenyon's noble and +pure-hearted advice, compose a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim's +Progress. Apt culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton and +Bunyan we found to be so suggestive! The chief means which Kenyon offers +for regeneration is that Miriam and the Faun shall abandon any hope of +mutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery in +the world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, +they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. +At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied ways +of dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happiness +for the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, +springing along a path that leads to higher ends." But he also shows, in +Donatello's final delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom of +some definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by society. Thus, +avenues of thought are opened to us on every side, which we are at +liberty to follow out; but we are not forced, as a mere theorist would +compel us, to pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. +In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of eternal law, or +pluck garlands from some new-budded bough of moral truth. The romance is +like a portal of ebony inlaid with ivory,--another gate of +dreams,--swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. But +some pause on the threshold, unused to such large liberty; and these cry +out, in the words of a well-known critic, "It begins in mystery, and +ends in mist." + +Though the book was very successful, few readers grasped the profounder +portions. It is a vast exemplar of the author's consummate charm as a +simple storyteller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascination +over all readers, notwithstanding the heavy burden of uncomprehended +truths which they were obliged to carry with them. Some critics complain +of the extent to which Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome have +been introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word wasted in the +two volumes. The "vague sense of ponderous remembrances" pressing down +and crowding out the present moment till "our individual affairs are but +half as real here as elsewhere," is essential to the perspective of the +whole; and nothing but this rich picturesqueness and variety could avail +to balance the depth of tragedy which has to be encountered; so that the +nicety of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this great +modern religious romance should thus have become also the ideal +representative of ruined Rome--the home of ruined religions--in its +aesthetic aspects. But one instance of appreciation must be recorded +here, as giving the highest pitch of that delightful literary fellowship +which Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in England. His friend +John Lothrop Motley, the historian, wrote thus of "The Marble Faun," +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. +Where, O where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and +diamonds?... 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 criticised, 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; and to those who +complain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with +a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile of +attitudes,--his ears revealed through a white nightcap,--would be +satisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really +moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile +figures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance.... 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." + +To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley has +kindly sent me a copy of the letter. + +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 loved 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 most 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.... [The allusion here is to illness in the family, +of which there had also been a protracted case in Rome]. 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, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the most opulently happy +part of Hawthorne's life. Before he left America, although he had been +writing--with several interruptions--for twenty-four years, he had only +just reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched upon the petty clamor +which his Custom-House pictures aroused, and the offensive political +attacks following the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scattered +along the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his first +efforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with which he everywhere +met in England, and the charm of highly organized society, with its +powerful artistic classes centred upon great capitals there and in +Italy, a very captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The most +serious one was the change in the consular service made during his term +at Liverpool. The consulate there was considered the most lucrative post +in the President's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to begin +with, Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to resign prospectively, so +that Hawthorne lost entirely the first five months of his tenure. These +were very valuable months, and after the new consul came into office the +dull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business continued bad +so long, that even up to 1855 little more than a living could be made in +the consulate. In February of that year a bill was passed by Congress, +remodelling the diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the salary of +the Liverpool consul at $7,500,--less than half the amount of the best +annual income from it before that time. The position was one of +importance, and involved an expensive mode of life; so that even before +this bill went into operation, though practising "as stern an economy," +he wrote home, "as ever I did in my life," Hawthorne could save but +little; and the effect of it would have been not only to prevent his +accomplishing what he took the office for, but even to have imposed loss +upon him. For, in addition to social demands, the mere necessary office +expenses (including the pay of three clerks) were very large, amounting +to some thousands yearly; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, +to whom Hawthorne could not bring himself to be indifferent, carried off +a good portion of his income. As he says, "If the government chooses to +starve the consul, a good many will starve with him." The most +irritating thing about the new law was that it merely cut down the +consular fees, without bringing the government anything; for the fees +came from business that a notary-public could perform, and the consul +would naturally decline to take it upon himself when his interest in it +was removed. Fortunately, the President was given some discretion about +the date of reappointment, and allowed the old commission to continue +for a time. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of the new +rule, to alter his mode of life materially. He now planned to give up +the place in the autumn of 1855, and go to Italy; but this was not +carried out till two years later. + +Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it his home. There had +not been want of unjust criticism of him in America, while at Liverpool. +When some shipwrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, for +whom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's (then minister) +refusing to have anything to do with the matter, a newspaper rumor was +started at home that Mr. Hawthorne would do nothing for them until +ordered to by Mr. Buchanan. + +"It sickens me," he wrote at that time, "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." + +And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend:-- + +"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be very +well contented there." + +But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many Americans under +similar circumstances, was rigorously obeyed. We shall see what sort of +reward this fidelity to country won from public opinion at home. + + + + +X. + + +THE LAST ROMANCE. + +1860-1863. + +There are in the "English Note-Books" several dismal and pathetic +records of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which it +was Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as one +might have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impression +upon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United States +government in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But though +this evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, there +was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, to +help it along, and he could effect nothing. He resolved, on returning +home, to write some articles--perhaps a volume--exposing the horrors so +calmly overlooked; but the slavery agitation, absorbing everybody, +perhaps discouraged him: the scheme was never carried out. It is a pity; +for, aside from the weight which so eminent a name might have given to a +good cause, the work would have clearly proven the quick, responsive, +practical nature of his humanity--a quality which some persons have seen +fit to deny him--in a case where no question of conflicting rights +divided his sense of duty. + +He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings of +rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856 +he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn +out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same +year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening +between the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:-- + +"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. 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." + +He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from the +beginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to be +severed, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods and +wishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and he +saw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to one +course. In the December after his return, secession began; and for more +than a year following he could not fix his attention upon literary +matters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has +told us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influence +about him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination which +overlay the fixed substance of personal character,--so that, as we have +seen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions,--it +was not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion of +hate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him, +now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination. +It was no time for quiet observation or creative revery. A new era had +broken upon us, ushered by the wild din of trumpet and cannon, and +battle-cry; an era which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. +He must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, striving vainly to +absorb the commotion into himself and to let it subside into clear visions +of the future. No hope! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any horizon +of better things. He who had schooled himself so unceasingly to feel with +utmost intensity the responsibility of each soul for any violence or crime +of others, could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by any +hypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst of that magnificent +turbulence, he was like the central quiet of a whirlpool: all the fierce +currents met there, and seemed to pause,--but only seemed. Full of +sympathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times by the same +warlike impulses, he could not give himself rein as they did, nor dared +to raise any encouraging strain in his writing, as others felt that they +might freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refined by descent and +wedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all carefully, to debate long and +compassionately. But meantime the popular sense of justice--that same +New England sentiment, of which his own was a development--cared nothing +for these fine considerations, and Hawthorne was generally condemned by +it as being warped by his old Democratic alliances into what was called +treason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native land, and suffer +bitter criticism here,--if that were all that could be granted,--rather +than to remain an unmolested exile. + +An article which he contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" in July, 1862, +gives a faint inkling of his state of mind at this time; but nothing +illustrates more clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimed +lay behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. For he there +gives the idea of something like coldness in his attitude touching the +whole great tragedy. But those who saw him daily, and knew his real +mood, have remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. +Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of the degree in +which his sympathy with his own side of the struggle sometimes mastered +him. He used to say that he only regretted that his son was too young +and himself too old to admit of either of them entering the army; and +just after the first battle of Bull Run he wrote to Mr. Lowell, at +Cambridge, declining an invitation:-- + +THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD, July 23, 1861. + +DEAR LOWELL:--I am to start, in two or three days, on an excursion +with----, who has something the matter with him, and seems to need +sea-air and change. If I alone were concerned, ... I would most gladly +put off my trip till after your dinner; but, as the case stands, I am +compelled to decline. Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dull +the edge of many a Northern appetite; but if it puts all of us into the +same grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had better have +suffered ten defeats than won this victory. + +Sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +And to another friend, in October:-- + +"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.... 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 at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper +as of yore." + +He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality," or "Septimius +Felton," which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by +him for another treatment of the same theme, called "The Dolliver +Romance." This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinished +at his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: it +contains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey +which would require too much space. The subject had been one of the +earliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with a +fountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. +One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typification +in Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot of +every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are, +equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a more +ethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us +a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth. These +relate mainly to the temptation of the artist to effect a severance of +ordinary, active human relations. (Sad to think what bitter cause the +author had to brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) The +poet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own circle of +serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life; +but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows,--if he cannot make +the light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appear +shining to posterity,--then he will fall into the treacherous pit of +selfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set of +meanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like the +cabalistic manuscript described in its pages: now it is blurred over +with deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multifarious beauties +like those that swim within the golden depth of Tieck's enchanted +goblet. The ultimate and most insistent moral is perhaps that which +brings it into comparison with Goethe's "Faust"; this, namely, that, in +order to defraud Nature of her dues, we must enter into compact with the +Devil. Both Faust and Septimius study magic in their separate ways, with +the hope of securing results denied to their kind by a common destiny; +but Faust proves infinitely the meaner of the two, since he desires only +to restore his youth, that he may engage in the mere mad joy of a lusty +existence for a few years, while Septimius seeks some mode, however +austere and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries of +world-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined egoism which lays +hold of Septimius is the same spirit incarnated in Goethe's +Mephistopheles,--_der Geist der stets verneint_. To Faust he denies +the existence of good in anything, primarily the good of that universal +knowledge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, but +through this scepticism mining his faith in all besides. To Septimius he +denies the worth of so brief a life as ours, and the good of living to +whatever end seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius might +perhaps be described as Faust at an earlier stage of development than +that in which Goethe represents him. [Footnote: Indeed, these words, +applied by Mephistopheles to Faust, suit Septimius equally well:-- + + "Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben + Der ungebaendigt immer vorwarts dringt + Und dessen uebereiltes Streben + Der Erde Freuden ueberspringt."] + +As a further point of resemblance between the two cases, it may be +noticed that the false dreams of both are dispelled by the exorcising +touch of a woman. Both have fallen into error through perceiving only +half of the truth which has hovered glimmering before them; these errors +originate in the exclusively masculine mood, the asceticism, which has +prevailed in their minds. It will be observed that, in the first +relation of Rose to Septimius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast with +this mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conservatism and +wisely practical tendency to be satisfied with life, which make her +influence so admirable a poising force to man. The subsequent alteration +of the situation, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, is +owing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact "that a heroine +must be supplied who corresponds to the idea in the lover's soul; like +Helena in the second part of Faust." [Footnote: A phase of character +rich in interest, but which I can only mention, in passing, is presented +in the person of Sybil Dacy, who here occupies very much the same place, +in some regards, as Roger Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter." The +movement of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revenge +undertaken by her, as that of "The Scarlet Letter" hangs upon the mode +of retribution sought by the physician; but her malice is directed, +characteristically, against the slayer of the young officer who had +despoiled her of her honor, and, again characteristically, she is unable +to consummate her plan, from the very tenderness of her feminine heart, +which leads her first to half sympathize with his dreams, then pity him +for the deceit she practised on him, and at last to rather love than +hate him.] + +But there is a suitable difference between the working of the womanly +element in "Faust" and in Hawthorne's romance. In the former instance it +is through the gratification of his infernal desire that the hero is +awakened from his trance of error and restored to remorse; while +Septimius's failure to accomplish his intended destiny appears to be +owing to the inability of his aspiring nature to accommodate itself to +that code of "moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. +"Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be very +fair," is the maxim taught him. "If thou love her, all is over, and thy +whole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain." How pathetic +a situation this, how much more terrible than that of Faust, when he has +reached the turning-point in his career! A nature which could accept an +earthly immortality on these terms, for the sake of his fellows, must +indeed have been a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much of +the heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel an +abstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, with the +long-sought drink standing ready for his lips, Septimius nevertheless +seeks a companion. Half unawares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, and +thenceforth, though in a way he had not anticipated, "all is over." Yet, +saved from death by the poison in which he had hoped to find the spring +of endless life, his fate appears admirably fitting. There is no picture +of Mephisto hurrying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. The +wrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, humanity,--these, +indeed, remain, and are remembered. He has undoubtedly fallen from his +first purity and earnestness, and must hereafter be content to live a +life of mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional goodness, +conventional charities, in that substantial English home of his. Could +anything be more perfectly compensatory? + +Nothing is more noticeable than the way in which, while so many +symbolisms spring up out of the story, the hero's half-crazed and +bewildered atmosphere is the one which we really accept, until the +reading is ended. By this means we are enabled to live through the whole +immortal future which he projects for himself, though he never in +reality achieves any of it. This forcing of the infinite into the +finite, we are again indebted to Mr. Higginson for emphasizing as "one +of the very greatest triumphs in all literature." "A hundred separate +tragedies," he says, "would be easier to depict than this which combines +so many in one." + +But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's mind. "Dr. +Heidegger's Experiment," in which several people are restored to youth +for an hour by a life-elixir, was published before 1837. In 1840 we have +this entry in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever here, +he would not care about his offspring." A few years afterward, in "A +Virtuoso's Collection," the elixir vitae is introduced, "in an antique +sepulchral urn," but the narrator refuses to quaff it. "'No; I desire +not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on the +earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial +something within us, that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere +of heaven to preserve it from ruin.'" But the revolt against death, and +then the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence for it, +must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, have been very early +familiar to Hawthorne; and in the course of these meditations, the +conception of deathlessness must often have floated before him. The +tradition as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought he +should never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, in 1852 [Footnote: +See ante, p. 244.]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837 +thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents, +in trying to achieve something totally impossible,--as, to make a +conquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who had +expected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The way +in which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious. +The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "The +print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a +town." By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterward +in England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, at +Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7, +and August 25, 1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that +he "should write a ghost-story for her house," and he observes that "the +legend is a good one." Only five days after first hearing it he makes a +note thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have +carried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, had +he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret +he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited +throughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my +Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he +still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family." This +clearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind, +and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and the +estate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius." Could he have +already connected the two things, the bloody footstep and this +Anglo-American interest? The next piece of history comes in the shape of +a manuscript book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawthorne had +left the consulate, and containing what must have been the earliest +sketch of the story, as he then conceived it. It begins abruptly, and +proceeds uncertainly, at the rate of a few pages each day, for about a +month. Detached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of the +proposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The chief interest seems +to lie in the project which a young American has formed, during a visit +to England, of tracing out and proving his inherited right to an old +manor-house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old hall +possesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and with this some +mystery is connected, which the writer himself does not yet seem to have +discovered. He takes a characteristic pleasure in waiting for this +suggestive footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to its +lair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon it, +indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of vague anticipation +in which he hopes to envelop the good reader. The perusal of this +singular journal, in which the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, +is absorbing beyond description. But though at times he seems to be +rapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at every point the +subtle darkness and coming terror of the theme seem to baffle the +author, and he retires, to await a more favorable moment. At its +conclusion, though he appears now to have formed a clear picture enough +of what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the underlying +thought, which he at moments dimly feels but cannot bring to light, and +without which he is unable to fuse the materials into readiness for the +mould. + +Our only information as to the course of the story between April, 1858, +and the time of writing "Septimius," must be gathered from a sketch +found among the author's papers, the date of which it is not possible to +determine with precision, though both its matter and form indicate that +it must have been written subsequently to the journal above mentioned. +Herein are curiously mingled certain features of both "Septimius" and +the "Dolliver Romance." So far as is consistent with the essential +privacy of the manuscript, I shall give a general outline of its +contents. It consists of two sections, in the second of which a lapse of +some years is implied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardly +exceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a singular, +morose old man, who inhabits a house overlooking a New England +graveyard. But though his situation resembles in this particular that of +Grandsir Dolliver, his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. +Portsoaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy-and-water and a +cloud-compelling pipe; and his study, like the doctor's chamber in +"Septimius," is tapestried with spider-webs; a particularly virulent +spider which dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, +being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. On the other +hand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that of +Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, +straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character of +Dr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver. This "grim +doctor," as he is almost invariably styled in the manuscript, seems to +have originated in Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, +spiritualist and antiquarian, of Florence, [Footnote: French and Italian +Note-Books, Vol. II.] who also probably stood as a model for Grandsir +Dolliver. Not that either of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup; +but the personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman had +some sort of affinity with the author's idea, which led him to maintain +a certain likeness between him and his own fictitious persons. As in the +case of the Florentine antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house of +the doctor, her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's adopted +daughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. There is much about her like +Pansie, of the "Dolliver" fragment, but she is still only dimly brought +out. The boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely addicted +to revery. Though his traits are but slightly indicated, he suggests in +general the character of Septimius, and may very easily have grown into +him, at a later period. At first he is much neglected by the doctor, but +afterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in questioning his mysterious +guardian as to his own origin, and the connection subsisting between +them, he secures greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints to +him the fact of his descent from an old English family, and frequent +mention is made of the ancestral hall, the threshold of which is stained +by the imprint of a bloody footstep marking the scene of some dark +tragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, +assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangers +are introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, and +connection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone is +discovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old +man had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness of +a foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, and +the children, in playing about it, discover a little silver key, which +the doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the declaration +that it is of no value. After this, the boy's education is taken in hand +by his being sent to school; but presently the doctor sickens of life, +and characteristically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die, +does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made of certain papers +which he had kept in a secret place, and these the youth now secures. +The second part describes his advent into England. He soon makes his way +to the old hall, but just as his connection with it and its inmates +begins, the manuscript terminates. + +It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at first laid in +New England, whereas the journalized sketch opened the drama in England. +From this I infer that the former was written after the return to this +country. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, after +the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before +the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note +of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on +beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with +the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the +legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no +longer write an English romance, but must give the book mainly an +American coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, too, in his thus +wavering between the two countries, which now so nearly equally divided +his affections, and striving to unite the Wayside with the far-off +English manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall into +place. The deathless man was made the hero; the English inheritance +became an inferior motive-power, on which, however, the romantic action +depends; the family papers and the silver key came well to hand for the +elucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new and deep +significance; and a "purple everlasting flower," presented in 1854 to +Mrs. Hawthorne by the gardener of Eaton Hall, blossomed out, with +supernatural splendor, as a central point in the design. The scene being +in Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revolutionary +association was natural. But the public phase of that epoch could not +assume an important place: it was sunk into the background, forming +merely a lurid field on which the figures of this most solemn and +terrific of all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. One +singular result of the historic location, however, is the use that was +now made of that tradition which Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, +concerning a boy who was chopping wood on the April morning of the +famous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the field, whom he +killed with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, +I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, +and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain.... This one +circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us +of the fight." Thus had he written, fourteen years before; and now that +sombre study furnished him with the psychology of the death-scene in the +beginning of "Septimius." + +But the romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learn +from the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home," written in July, +1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown +aside," which "will never now be accomplished." In November of that +year, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; and +in the first page of the isolated opening scene, published in July, +1864, occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from which the +good doctor had received great invigoration, and which we may well +suppose was destined to tincture the whole story. Another point from +which a connection with "Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is the +passing mention of Grandsir Dolliver's grandson Cornelius, by whom this +cordial had been compounded, he having displayed a great efficiency with +powerful drugs. Recalling that the author describes many nostrums as +having been attributed to Septimius, which he had perhaps chanced upon +in his unsuccessful attempts to distil the elixir of life, we may fairly +conjecture this posthumous character of Cornelius, this mere memory, to +be the remains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been buried +by the author under the splendid monument of a still more highly wrought +and more aspiring form of the romance. The only remaining portions of +this latest form have been printed, and are lull of a silvery and +resonant promise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romance +of Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the child +Pansie--who promised to be the author's most captivating feminine +creation--with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of +celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorseless +mournfulness of the preliminary work. In the manuscript sketch for +"Septimius" there is a note referring to a description in the "English +Note-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead and +dry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this is +caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted round +them like gigantic snakes, ... throttling the life out of them, ... and +one feels that they have _stolen the life_ that belonged to the +pines." This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of some +life being stolen in order to add to any other life more than its share, +is an idea that very clearly appears in the romance. In "Dolliver" the +same strain of feeling would probably have reappeared; but it would +there perhaps have been beautified, softened, expiated by the mutual +love of Pansie and the grandsire; each wishing to live forever, for the +other. Even in "Septimius" we can discern Hawthorne standing upon the +wayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of the unhappy hero, +tenderly diffusing the essence of his own concluding thoughts on art and +existence. Like Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his own +death, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in midmost of the melody, +leaving the strain unfinished, he labors on, prescient of the +overhanging doom. Genial and tender at times, amidst their sadness, his +reveries are nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death; and it +is not until the opening of "The Dolliver Romance" that the darkness +breaks away. Then, indeed, we feel once more the dewy freshness of the +long-past prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, +undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the dark valley appears +for a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on his +countenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this new +message that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddle +of sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out a +little way from earth. + +Only an eddying silence! And yet the air seems even now alive with his +last words. + + + + +XI. + + +PERSONALITY. + +What has thus far been developed in this essay, concerning Hawthorne's +personality, though incidental, has, I hope, served the end in +view,--that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the most +profound thought and the most graceful and humorous mental play. The +details of his early life already given show how soon the inborn honor +of his nature began to shine. The small irregularities in his college +course have seemed to me to bring him nearer and to endear him, without +in any way impairing the dignity and beauty of character which prevailed +in him from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared the average +human history in these harmless peccadilloes; for they never hurt his +integrity, and they are reminders of that old but welcome truth, that +the greatest men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. He +had many difficulties to deal with, as unpicturesque and harassing as +any we have to encounter in our daily courses,--a thing which people are +curiously prone to forget in the case of eminent authors. The way in +which he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We discover how +well the high qualities of genius were matched by those of character. + +Fragmentary anecdotes have a value, but so relative that to attempt to +construct the subject's character out of them is hazardous. Conceptions +of a man derived only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb's +ghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, are replaced +throughout the body by new ones. Likewise, the grossest errors have been +committed through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne's +writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so much +imagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and careful +imagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to be +interpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, very +inadequately representative, and often--unless read in many +lights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false +notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modest +covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing to +withdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of the +latter's unpopularity:-- + +"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it is +honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measure +out my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of the +occasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit of +it needlessly." + +Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifying +word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne +says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between +the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he +should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for +the transient embodiment of a mood! + +The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that he +must have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so many +grave thoughts and solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as he +himself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale or +an essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not what +is peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me." He +sympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mind +of the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through +life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is +called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius +who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to +describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the +abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of +_self_-study,--personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is +what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing +to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it +being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against +them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is +so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and +forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is to +excite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that the +elements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; therefore +we begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual nature +all the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any of +us. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy person. + +"You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me," his friend +George Hillard wrote to him, once. "How comes it that, with so +thoroughly healthy an organization as you have, you have such a taste +for the morbid anatomy of the human heart, and such a knowledge of it, +too? I should fancy, from your books, 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." + +This very healthiness was his qualification for his office. By virtue of +his mental integrity and absolute moral purity, he was able to handle +unhurt all disintegrated and sinful forms of character; and when souls +in trouble, persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote to +him for counsel, they recognized the healing touch of one whose pitying +immaculateness could make them well. + +She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympathy such as has +rarely been given to any man, who lived with him a life so exquisitely +fair and high, that to speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, has +written:-- + +"He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed +what a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood was +always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the +airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too +far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping +imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived +morbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumination of +his own steady cheer." + +His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his genial warmth and +ease in converse with them. He could seldom talk freely with more than +two or three, however, on account of his constitutional shyness, and +perhaps of a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind; though he possessed +a ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody: to Mrs. T---- good sense; +to Mary, good sense, with a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G----, sentiment, +romance, and nonsense." [Footnote: American Note-Books, 1837.] A +gentleman who was with him at Brook farm, and knew him well, tells me +that his presence was very attractive, and that he inspired great esteem +among all at the farm by his personal qualities. On a walking trip to +Wachusett, which they once made together, Hawthorne showed a great +interest in sitting in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen to +the talk of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in which he +was approached had a great deal to do with his response. If treated +simply and wisely, he would answer cordially; but he was entirely +dismayed, as a rule, by those who made demonstrations of admiration or +awe. "Why do they treat me so?" he asked a friend, in one case of this +sort. "Why, they're afraid of you." "But I tremble at _them_," he +said. "They think," she explained, "that you're imagining all sorts of +terrible things." "Heavens!" he answered; "if they only knew what I +_do_ think about." At one time, when he was visiting this same +friend, he was obliged to return some calls, and his companion in the +midst of conversation left him to continue it. He had previously asked +his hostess, in assumed terror, what he should talk about, and she +advised "climate." Accordingly, he turned to the naval officer whom he +was calling upon, and asked him if he had ever been to the Sandwich +Islands. "The man started," he said, on returning, "as if he had been +struck. He had evidently been there and committed some terrible crime, +which my allusion recalled. I had made a frightful mess of it. B---- led +me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary +and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation +caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a +new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis +has given an account of his demeanor on another occasion:-- + +"I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. +It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable +hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled; and I, who +listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some +time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a +little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and +his black eyes ['black' is an error] clearly burning under his black +brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent +as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a +poet,--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and +stood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. +No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversation +flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to +be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent man +imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at +his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing was +lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the +exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but +this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said +by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness +of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently +rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his +face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the +night.'" + +He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if a +man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, +because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not." And the +same writer says:---- + +"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." + +I am told that in his own home, though he was often silent, it was never +with sadness except in seasons of great illness in the house, the +prevailing effect of his manner being usually that of a cheerful and +almost humorous calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the best +descriptions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering smile"; +and of his atmosphere, when he says that at Emerson's house it seemed +always morning, but at Hawthorne's you passed into + + "A land in which it seemed always afternoon." + +Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who knew him to have +been always very impressive. He was tall and strongly built, with +beautiful and lustrous gray-blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair of +great softness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the early +engraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar fineness and delicacy, +giving unusual softness to his complexion. After his Italian sojourn 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 from 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 and almost irresolute voice." +The occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at anything +were very rare; but when these came, he manifested a strength of sway +only to be described as regal. Without the least violence, he brought a +searching sternness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying as +it did the weight of perfect self-control. 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 quite +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 habitual and informal 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 an explanation. His considerateness was always delicate and +alert, and has left in his family a reverence for qualities that have +certainly never been surpassed and not often equalled in sweetness. + +He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, but +not--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside the +Concord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and +was fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercise +was walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never even +seen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows" +with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in a +paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, +sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanac +or newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored +volumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in his +choice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for the +hour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently +by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving an +interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, +was at one time a special favorite with him. + +It begins:-- + + "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, + Places devoted to the Night, + Remote from Tumult and from Noise, + How you my restless thoughts delight!" + +And the last stanza has these lines:-- + + "O, how I solitude adore, + That element of noblest wit, + Where I have learned Apollo's lore, + Without the pains to study it."] + +An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books in +themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulate +a library of any size, but he had a passion for books. + +"There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of +all kinds," he writes in "The Old Manse." "A bound volume has a charm in +my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good +Mussulman; ... every new book or antique one may contain the 'open +sesame,'--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected +cave of Truth." + +When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a small +package of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure for +many days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, +from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordial +admirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical review +of their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test of +his own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which he +judges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind was +impressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found in +them. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did not +weakly underrate his work. "Recognition," he once said to Mr. Howells, +"makes a man very modest." + +An attempt has also been made to show that he had little interest in +animals, partly based, ludicrous as it may seem, on his bringing them +into only one of his books. In his American journals, however, there is +abundant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at the Old +Manse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he says he should not have +done it for himself; and in the Trosachs he finds a moment for pitying +some little lambs startled by the approach of his party. [Footnote: +English Note-Books (May, 1856).] I have already mentioned his fondness +for cats. It has further been said that he did not enjoy wild nature, +because in the "English Note-Books" there is no outgushing of ecstatic +description. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment of it. He could +not enter into the spectacle when hurrying through strange regions. +Among the English lakes he writes:-- + +"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me +that I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all in +the space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was a +surfeit. + +"I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who goes for the +set and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not let herself be seen +in such cases. You must patiently bide her time; and by and by, at some +unforeseen moment, she will quietly and suddenly unveil herself and for +a brief space allow you to look right into the heart of her mystery. But +if you call out to her peremptorily, 'Nature! unveil yourself this very +moment!' she only draws her veil the closer; and you may look with all +your eyes, and imagine that you see all that she can show, and yet see +nothing." + +But this was because his sensibility was so great that he drew from +little things a larger pleasure than many feel when excited by grand +ones; and knowing this deeper phase, he could not be content with the +hasty admiration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty of a +scene which he could absorb in peace was never lost upon him. 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. Nothing could be more +accurate or sensitive than the brief descriptions of nature in his +works. But there is nothing sentimental about them; partly owing to the +Anglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to seek precise and detailed +statement first of all, and partly because of a certain classic, +awe-inspired reserve, like that of Horace and Virgil. + +There was a commendable indolence in his character. It was not a +constitutional weakness, overcoming will, but the instinctive precaution +of a man whose errand it was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. +He always waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But these +intervals, of course, were richly productive of revery which afterward +entered into the creative moments. He would sometimes become deeply +abstracted in imagination; and while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter" +it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting in the room where +his wife was doing some sewing, he unconsciously took up a part of the +work and cut it into minute fragments with the scissors, without being +aware that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in the same way +gradually chipped off with a knife portions of a table, until the entire +folding-leaf was worn away by the process. The opinion was sometimes +advanced by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial labor he +might not have done so much with the pen; but in this he perhaps +underestimated the leisure in his blood, which was one of the elements +of his power. Men of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire of +ideas, and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from such a +fate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, it may have had +something to do with his comparative withdrawal from practical affairs +other than those which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave he +writes:-- + +"His error lay in supposing that this age more than any past or future +one is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a new +suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; ... and +more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in +view whether he himself should contend for it or against it." + +The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of a fatalist, but +of an optimist (if we must connect him with any "ism") who has a very +profound faith in Providence; not in any "special providence," but in +that operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies and +conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs +to a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers of +his generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of +showing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, +how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of very +great sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, by +consequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeleton +statement: the noblest element in his mood is that he believes with his +heart. A good interpreter has said that he _feels_ with his _brain_, and +_thinks_ with his _heart_, to show the completeness with which he +mingled the two elements in his meditations on existence. A warm, pure, +living sympathy pervaded all his analysis of mankind, without which that +analysis would have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view which +reckons him to have been wanting in moral enthusiasm: he had not that +kind which can crush out sympathy with suffering, for the sake of +carrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but one +cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possesses +another side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must be +remembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a suffering +poet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was +deeper than that of any scheme or system. + +His distaste for society has been declared to proceed from the fact +that, when he once became interested in people, he could no longer +chemically resolve them into material for romance. But this assumption +is also erroneous; for Hawthorne, if he felt it needful, could bring to +bear upon his best friends the same qualitative measuring skill that he +exercised on any one. I do not doubt that he knew where to place his +friends and acquaintance in the scale of relative excellence. All of us +who have not an equal analytic power with his own can at least reverence +his discretion so far as to believe that he had stand-points not open to +every one, from which he took views often more essentially just than if +he had assumed a more sweeping estimate. In other cases, where he +bestowed more friendship and confidence than the object of them +especially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple pleasure of accepting +what circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person; +although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he +often spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense," deeming it a +desirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioning +trust on his part; for he might well be called + + "As the greatest only are, + In his simplicity sublime." + +The connection between Pierce and himself involved too many +considerations to make it possible to pass them with indifference; and +he perhaps condemned certain public acts of the President, while feeling +it to be utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mistakes +with any one. As to other slighter connections, it is very likely he did +not take the trouble that might have saved him from being imposed upon. + +But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality precisely. A +poet's whole effort is to indirectly express this, by expressing the +effect of things upon him; and we may read much of Hawthorne in his +books, if we have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only a +part of himself into them; that part which best served the inexorable +law of his genius for treating life in a given light. For the rest, his +two chapters on "The Custom-House" and "The Old Manse" show us something +of his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost character +was a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundly +the impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudy +veil stretches over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. "I +have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At another time: "Lights +and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know +neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closely +into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality of +appearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities which +are all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he would +hesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his +searching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In other +persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study of +investigation from without inward,--a more healthy method. His +_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, would +of course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to +light in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inability +to define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is the +creative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whether +many of the famous delineators of character could give us a very +distinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it would +probably make them out the most uninteresting of beings. It would +certainly be divested of the special charm of their other writing. +Imagine Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar traits: +would he be able to excite even a smile? How much of his own delicious +personality could Thackeray have described without losing the zest of +his other portraitures? Hawthorne has given a kind of picture of himself +in Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that character by his +friends; but I suspect he has adroitly constructed Coverdale out of the +_appearance_ which he knew himself to make in the eyes of +associates. I do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisive +personality; for indeed he had. But the essence of the person cannot be +compressed into a few brief paragraphs, and must be slowly drawn in as a +pervasive elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In the +latter he has given as much definition of his interior self as we are +likely to get, for no one else can continue the broken jottings that he +has left, and extend them into outlines. We shall not greatly err if we +treat the hidden depths of his spirit with as much reverence as he +himself used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of those who +have studied this most careful and delicate of definers have embraced +the madness of attempting to bind him down in unhesitating, absolute +statements. He who mastered words so completely that he learned to +despise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy epithets and a +few conventional phrases. But none can ever be said to know Hawthorne +who do not leave large allowances for the unknowable. + + + + +XII. + + +POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. + +The names of Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have been so often connected +without due discrimination, that it is imperative to consider here the +actual relation between the three men. Inquiry might naturally be roused +by the circumstance that, although Hawthorne has freely been likened to +Irving in some quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are never +supposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they might aptly be cited +in illustration of the widely opposed tendencies already developed in +our brief national literature. Two things equal to the same thing are +equal to each other; and if Poe and Irving were each equal to Hawthorne, +there would be some similarity between them. But it is evident that they +are not like quantities; and we must conclude that they have been +unconsciously used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure to +gauge the greatest of the triad with. + +Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to both Poe and Irving. +Hawthorne and Irving represent a dignity and roundedness of diction +which is one of the old-fashioned merits in English writing; and because +they especially, among eminent authors of the century, have stood for +this quality, they have been supposed to stand close together. But +Irving's speech is not so much an organic part of his genius as a +preconceived method of expression which has a considerable share in +modifying his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. On the other +hand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and strongly +out of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the +slightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the +informing thought,--like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery. +The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in the +beginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that +massive power of hewing out individual character which afterward had +full swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in his +lighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "The +Mutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne's +conceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" might +have issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's own +repertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile art +than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even +in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than +Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. +Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on +endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with +that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the +construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and +symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It is a brilliant +instance of the more ideal mind asserting its commanding power, by +admirable achievements in the inferior styles,--so that even in those he +was at once ranked with the most famous practiser of them,--and then +quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one +had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a +moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of +"Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but +evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the +same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they +assuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have next +to nothing. The only phases of character which Irving has any success in +dealing with are those of credulity and prejudice. The legendary +tendency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. Both were +lovers of association, and turned naturally to the past for materials: +the New-Yorker found delightful sources of tradition or of ludicrous +invention in the past of that city, where his family held a +long-established and estimable footing; and the New-Englander, as we +have seen, drew also through the channel of descent from the dark tarn +of Puritan experience. But Irving turned his back upon everything else +when he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while Hawthorne +sought that vantage-ground only to secure a more impressive view of +humanity. There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as well +as a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is his +ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of double +meanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself, +but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid +fascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, +possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was at +once seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination were +always in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associate +with him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainly +very charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief to +turn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. He +pitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time and +locality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality, +than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almost +entirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here, +indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer of +fiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not want +reality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that we +must not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is a +Northern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke was +seen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, +and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came. When he +awoke, he described an imaginary excursion of his own, following exactly +the course which the smoke had taken. This indirect contact might +furnish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious intercourse with +the world through his books. + +It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this difference to the +greater strength of Irving's humor,--a trait, always much lauded in him. +It is without doubt a good quality. This mild, sweet radiance of an +uncontaminated and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. +But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer and far more +joyous" than Addison's. Both in style and in humor Irving has caught +something of the grace of "The Spectator"; but as in the style he +frequently falls short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in humor +I cannot see how he is to be brought at all on a level with Addison, who +is primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, but all the deeper on +that account in the lustre of his humorous displays. Addison, too, had +somewhat of the poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as of +neat satire and compact characterization. But if we looked for a pithy +embodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might call +the former a "polite writer," and the latter a profound poet: as, +indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent to +confuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos is +the great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always a +lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made +so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has won +so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there +is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an +industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, +have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now know +is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous +character,--a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of +relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our +sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears an +aspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can +is barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow of +his return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not even +suspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness of +the situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to the +bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over the +spectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written tale +is a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is a +common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life +hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out +of Rip Van Winkle's flagon." To be sure, there is a hidden moral here, +of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscured +as to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind. Such a +moral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced, +in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person of +searching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it without +injury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine what +divine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of this +theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the +case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving +given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master +comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul +that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must +admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector +of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to +forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the +discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage +in Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker +and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something +more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we +have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he +would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of +him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be +always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, +now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out +upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the +silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion +of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor +play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos +of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. +This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The +Marble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet Letter," for that does not present +Hawthorne's genius in its widest action. In one place he speaks of "the +tragic power of laughter,"--a discrimination which involves the whole +deep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to remark that +at the most affecting portions of the play "Rip Van Winkle," the +majority of the audience always laugh; this, though irritating to a +thoughtful listener, is really an involuntary tribute to the marvellous +wisdom and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and humor. +Again Hawthorne: "Human destinies look _ominous_ without some +perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray." And, elsewhere: +"There is _something more awful in happiness than in sorrow_, the +latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance +and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble +at it." These thoughts could never have occurred to Irving with the same +intensity. Now, from all this we gather inference as to the deep sources +of Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was the daughter, +and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to actual exhibition of humor, +Hawthorne's is made a diffusive medium to temper the rays of tragedy +with, and never appears in such unmixed form as that of Irving. So that +even though we must confess a smaller mental calibre in the latter, we +may gladly grant him a superiority in his special mood of fun. +An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately wrote: "Poe is a +kind of Hawthorne and _delirium tremens_." This announcement, +however, betrays a singular misapprehension. When Hawthorne's tales +first appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an intimate +and direct relation to the author's own moods; while Poe's were supposed +to be daring flights of pure imagination, or ingenious attempts to prove +theories held by the writer, but were not charged directly to his own +experience. Time has shown that the converse was the case. The psychical +conditions described by Hawthorne had only the remotest connection with +any mood of his own; they were mainly translations, into the language of +genius, of certain impressions and observations drawn from the world +around him. After his death, the Note-Books caused a general rustle of +surprise, revealing as they did the simple, wholesome nature of this +strange imaginer; yet though he there speaks--surely without prejudice, +because without the least knowledge that the world would ever hear +him--of "the objectivity" of his fictions, critics have not yet wholly +learned how far apart from himself these creations were. The observation +of some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings, +would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a concise +embodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate it +with; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like that +of Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil," or a singular +physiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based, +would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstrip +it in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, the +whole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from +_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; and +this expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and +movement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from the +outside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merely +inventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild, +arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but his +impressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid. +What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that this +quality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owing +to it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's +unfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to a +scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of his +unjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one else +could be. The fine enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadly +acid of his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have pierced +his poetry and prose, shattered their structure, and blurred their +beauty. Only four or five of his poems--"The Raven," "Ligeia," the +earlier of the two addressed "To Helen," and the sonnet to his +wife--escape being flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable error +of taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. In +criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acute +instinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as all +his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding +clever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things are +essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe to +exemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of his +thoroughly unsound mind subverted the better qualities, vitiated his +judgments with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, and +withered the most that he wrote in this direction into something very +like rubbish. We have seen, for example, how his attempt to +dispassionately examine Hawthorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ran +his own pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is suggestive +to find that the holder of such exacting doctrine about beauty, the man +also of whom pre-eminently it may be said, as Baudelaire wrote of him, +"Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great enemies," should so +completely fail to reach even the unmoral perfection which he assigned +as the highest attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of the +beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the most +loathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. This +passionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a +normal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interior +discord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, +instead of the sense of beauty,--except (as has been said) in fragments. +Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, +and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classic +antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of all +lovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. "I have imbibed +the shadows of fallen columns," he says in one of his tales, "at Balbec, +and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin." +Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, and +it is the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of the +still living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clinging +around them. Hawthorne, too, wandered much amid human ruin, but it was +not with delight in the mere fact of decay; rather with grieving over +it, and the hope to learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, +and how future structures might be made stronger by studying the sources +of failure. One of the least thoughtful remarks which I have heard +touching Hawthorne was this, that his books could not live because they +dealt with the "sick side" of human nature. As if great poets ever +refrained from dealing with it! The tenure of fame depends on whether +the writer has himself become infected with sickness. With Hawthorne +this is most certainly not the case, for the morbid phases which he +studied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the other hand, +pictured his own half-maniacal moods and diseased fancies. There is +absolutely no study of character in his stories, no dramatic +separateness of being. He looks only for fixed and inert human +quantities, with which he may juggle at will. He did not possess +insight; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud was merely a +sort of mathematical ingenuity of calculation, in which, however, he was +extraordinarily keen. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poe +must be rated almost highest among American poets, and high among +prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and +frightful energy crowded into such small compartments. Yet it would be +difficult to find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than that +which informs his tales. It is not the _representation_ of +semi-insanity that he gives: he himself is its _representative_. +Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into some sort of healthy +relation with us, he is swayed and carried away by it. His genius +flourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that it +left, are like a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyncheon in the "Seven +Gables" is Poe himself, deprived of the ability to act: in both are +found the same consummate fastidiousness, the same abnormal egotism. And +it is worth attention that when Clifford is aroused to sudden action by +Judge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his intellect is almost +precisely that brilliant but defective kind of ratiocination which Poe +so delights to display. It is crazy wildness, with a surface appearance +of accurate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne--the calm, +ardent, healthy master of imagination--is able to create the disordered +type that Poe _is_, we shall find by how much the former is greater +than the latter. + +A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical question as to Poe. He +calls him "the mad man of letters _par excellence_," and by an +ingenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe was +the victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts +to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less +given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the +necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is a +morbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; but +that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates the +perfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded with +it. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of men like +Shakespere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their temperaments, +grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, +and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparing +insight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in so +advanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more +dazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably more +unique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the true +sense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the +side of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition with +Hawthorne: although we have ranked him high in poetry and prose, +regarded simply as a dynamic substance, it must be confessed that his +prose has nothing which can be called style, nor even a manner like +Irving's very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself in +various ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for the sake of +getting off one of his pseudo-philosophical disquisitions; and, +notwithstanding many successful hits in expression, and a specious but +misleading assumption of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language is +loose, promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. + +Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary condition in common: +each shows a double side. With Poe the antithesis is between poetry and +criticism; Irving, having been brought up by Fiction as a foster-mother, +is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian, History; and +Hawthorne rests his hand from ideal design, in elaborating quiet +pictures of reality. In each case there is more or less seeming +irreconcilement between the two phases found in combination; but the +opposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the grasp with +which it is controlled by him is stronger than that of either Poe or +Irving,--again a result pronouncing him the master. + +There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. The +question of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one +in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so +relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study +of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point +of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, +German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their +component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be +called a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. +The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them is +that of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original in +American genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains a +certain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It is +not one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had the +sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, +the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, +both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of our +Revolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certain +truths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming of +separate standards in literature is a continuation of that historic +attitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of the +world, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. The +attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a +singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe +exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that +he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position +in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want +of deep literary identification with the national character in general. +But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have +been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do +with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in +Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Theophile Gautier, as a sort +of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with +the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, +comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and +the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's +position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius +under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native +Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and +"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited +literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign +audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone +secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly +wise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "English +Writers on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served in +our days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, and +every day we live a whole volume of refutation." His friendship with +Scott, also, was a delightful addition to the amenities of literature, +and shall remain a goodly and refreshing memory to us always. Yet what +he accomplished in this way for American literature at large, Irving +compensated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot be denied +that the success of "The Sketch-Book" led to an overdoing of his part in +"Bracebridge Hall." "Salmagundi" was the first step in the path of +palpable imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch-Book," +though taking some charming departures, the writer made a more refined +attempt to produce the same order of effects so perfectly attained by +the suave Queen Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollection +of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes positively annoying. It is +not that the style of Addison is precisely reproduced, of course, but +the general resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have been +without direct and conscious copying, the memory of Addisonian methods +is too apparent. Irving's real genius, which occasionally in his other +writings emits delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in this +work; and though he has the knack of using the dry point of Addison's +humor, he doesn't achieve what etchers call "the burr" that ought to +result from its use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with true +aquafortis precision, and Irving's sketches are to his as pen-and-ink +drawing to the real etching. But it was not only this lack of literary +independence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so well +satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two +nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he +had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_ +obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused +pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,--honest, pathetic Paulding, a +rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and +couldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as + + "The bard of the backwoods, + The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin." + +Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his old +coadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish, +they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude which +Irving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a page +on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually amiable toward him at first, +thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance: +"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. He +was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owed +him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us.... It was +plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everything +to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a less savage fashion +we, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with such +unjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between the +date of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home"; +the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time. + +In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a pioneer, along +with Cooper, and was in this quite different from Poe, who had no +aptitude in that way. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" is too +farcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedly +had a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local +antiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were +valuable acquisitions so far as they went. Would that they had been +wrought out with a more masterly touch; and would that Irving had +penetrated further in this direction! But, though these Hudson legends +will long keep his fame renewed, it will perhaps be chiefly as a +historian that he will be prized. His pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, +his "Mahomet," "Columbus," and "Conquest of Granada," though not too +profound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem; and his mellow and +stately narrative of Washington's life is a work of enduring excellence. +But these lie outside of our present discussion. Nor need we compare his +achievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after the review we +have been making of the latter's relation to New England. + +Poe and Irving and Hawthorne have all met with acceptance in other +countries, and their works have been translated into several languages. +Irving has exercised no perceptible influence on literature at home or +abroad; Poe has entered more or less into the workings of a school in +England and a group in France. Hawthorne's position on the Continent has +perhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstract +admiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind +than either of the others, and it is probable that his share in +inspiring noble literature in America will--as it has already begun to +show itself an important one--become vastly greater in future. It is +impossible, as we have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between these +writers. Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is beyond +dispute the more original of the two. Each, again, has something which +Hawthorne does not possess. But, if we must attempt at all to reduce so +intricate a problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three may +be stated in the equation, Poe _plus_ Irving _plus_ an unknown +quantity equals Hawthorne. + + + + +XIII. + + +THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. + +The suddenness with which Hawthorne faded away and died, when at the +zenith of his fame, is no less strange and sad and visionary now than it +was a poignant anguish then. He returned from Europe somewhat +lingeringly, as we have seen, knowing too well the difference between +the regions he was quitting and the thinner, sharper, and more wasting +atmosphere of a country where every one who has anything to give is +constantly drawn upon from every side, and has less resource for +intellectual replenishment than in other lands. His seven years in +England and Italy had, on the whole, been a period of high prosperity, +of warm and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful literary +encounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning among so many new +and suggestive scenes. And when he found himself once more on the old +ground, with the old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily in +the face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain degree of +depression would follow. Just as this reaction had set in, the breaking +out of civil war threw upon Hawthorne, before he had time to brace +himself for the shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. The +conflict of feelings which it excited on the public side has been +sketched; and that alone should have been enough to make the years of +strife a time of continuous gloom and anxiety to him; but it would be +losing sight of a very large element in his distress, not to add that he +mourned over the multitude of private griefs which were the harvest of +battle as acutely as if they had all been his own losses. His intense +imagination burned them too deeply into his heart. How can we call this +weakness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness and sympathy? +"Hawthorne's life was shortened by the war," Mr. Lowell says. Expressing +this view once, to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, I +was met with entire understanding. He told me that his own father, a +stanch Unionist, though not in military service, was as certainly +brought to his death by the war as any of the thousands who fell in +battle. In how wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply to +Hawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death,-- + + "To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed!" + +His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from the first he +foresaw that he could not outlive these trials. In April, 1862, he +visited Washington, and wrote the article "Chiefly about War Matters" +already alluded to. He has left this glimpse of himself at that time:-- + +"I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think will +be the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One charm it must +needs have,--an aspect of immortal jollity and well-to-do-ness; for +Leutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and when +he sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne; +and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutual +good-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture made a +really miraculous progress. Leutze is the best of fellows." + +The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had already begun to +give way; and though he wrote thus cheerily, he was by no means well. In +another published note there is this postscript:-- + +"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I enclose, +makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure in making me +venerable,--as if I were as old as himself." + +He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon "The Dolliver +Romance," trudging to and fro upon his hill-top, which was called, at +home, "the mount of vision." But before proceeding with that, he began +the series of essays composing "Our Old Home," not yet feeling strong +enough for the more trying exertion of fiction. But the preparation of +these, charming as they are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. +"I am delighted," he writes to his publisher, "at what you tell me +about the kind appreciation of my articles, for I feel rather gloomy +about them myself.... I cannot come to Boston to spend more than a day, +just at present. It would suit me better to come for a visit when the +spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your +hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; +though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me +somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of his +shell." + +His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" seems to have been one of +fatigue and discouragement. He had, besides, to deal with the harassing +question of the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved in this +manly and admirable letter to his publisher:-- + +"I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed my +reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, smoke cigars +over it, and see what it might be possible for me to do towards taking +it. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw +either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate +personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, +especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence +without his kindness; and if he 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. As for the literary public, it must accept my book precisely +as I think fit to give it, or let it alone." + +By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the Romance had sunk +still lower, so that he wrote:-- + +"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if ever. +There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at +the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to +be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of +writing a sunshiny book." + +And, a little later:-- + +"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." + +His inability to work has been illustrated in the numerous bulletins of +this period published by Mr. Fields: they show him at times despondent, +as in the extracts above, then again in a state of semi-resolution. At +another time there is mixed presentiment and humor in his report. + +"I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I +see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other +broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist +upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. That +trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a further +stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, lost its temper +and its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. +Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for it; +perhaps not." + +But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy shadow that makes +the flickering humor even sadder than the awesome conviction that he has +done with writing. How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, in +which he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his literary faculty! +Here he announces, finally: "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." Yet the cause was not so much the +loss of literary power, as the physical exhaustion that had already worn +him away beyond recovery. He longed for England; and possibly if he +could have gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the sense +of rest that he would have felt there, might have restored him. He had +friends in this country, however, who made attempts to break up the +disastrous condition into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of +1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, he received from his friend Mr. +Lowell this most charming invitation to come to Cambridge:-- + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--I hope you have not forgotten that during +"anniversary week" you were to make me a little anniversary by a visit? +I have been looking forward to it _ever_ so long. My plan is that +you come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club, +and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last +day of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book is +going through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here. +I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind,--red +for sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing at +all, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one is +satisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader of +taste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as +high and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that +my crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shall +present you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soon +as you arrive. + +Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you I +have looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest spring +pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds. + +Always cordially yours, + +J. R. LOWELL. + +"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," wrote Hawthorne, in +answer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighing +upon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine and +for my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but I +hope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club on +Saturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit." + +But, at the last moment, he was obliged to give it up, being detained by +a cold. And there seemed indeed a fatality which interfered with all +attempts to thwart the coming evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, +completely broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out southward +with Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at Philadelphia he began to +improve; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he had +gained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here to +dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: these +things would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditation +on Hawthorne's life which we have been following out,--a life so +beautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance of +mere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. But it was +needful to show in what way this great spirit bowed beneath the weight +of its own sympathy with a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him in +Boston, though "his aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable," +and though "he spoke as if his work were done, and he should write no +more," still "there was no failing noticeable in his conversational +powers." "There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect," wrote Dr. +Holmes, "that gave warning of so sudden an end as that which startled us +all." He passed on into the shadow as if of his own will; feeling that +his country lay in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hate +and horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look at; +welcoming--except as those dear to him were concerned--the prospect of +that death which he alone knew to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, +1864, that the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire,--whither he +had gone with Ex-President Pierce,--that Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, +it was recalled with a kind of awe that through many years of his life +Hawthorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly scribbling at +any time, of writing the number sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge of +his death, which he showed in the final days, had already begun to +manifest itself in this indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himself +felt that the number was connected with his life in some fatal way. Five +days later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, the beautiful cemetery where +he had been wont to walk among the pines, where once when living at the +Manse he had lain upon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, when Mr. +Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and said the Muses were in the woods +that day. + +A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut upon it, was placed +above him. He had wished that there should be no monument. He liked +Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant to +think and know that he did not care for a stately monument." Longfellow +and Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis Agassiz, and his friends +Pierce, and Hillard, with Ellery Channing, and other famous men, +assembled on that peaceful morning to take their places in the funeral +train. Some who had not known him in life came long distances to see +him, now, and ever afterward bore about with them the memory of his +aspect, strong and beautiful, in his last repose. The orchards were +blossoming; the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies of +the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among the flowers, had come +forth in quiet companies, to look their last on his face, so white and +quiet too. So, while the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenly +in the distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the dead +poet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we look back and listen, +Longfellow's simple, penetrating chant returns upon the ear. + +In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered in Hawthorne's +death; and no less vain the attempt to fix in a few words the +incalculable gain his life has left with us. When one remembers the +power that was unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach cold +Time and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that lay before us +all, in the continuance of his career. We look upon these few great +works, that may be numbered on the fingers of a hand, and wonder what +good end was served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that had +just begun to open. We remember the tardy recognition that kept the +fountain of his spirit so long half concealed, and the necessities that +forced him to give ten of his best years to the sterile industry of +official duties. But there are great compensations. Without the youthful +period of hopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have seen, would not have +been the unique force, the high, untrammelled thinker that be became +through that fortunate isolation; wanting the uncongenial contact of his +terms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be that he could not +have developed his genius with such balance of strength as it now shows; +and, finally, without the return to his native land, the national fibre +in him would have missed its crowning grace of conscientiousness. He +might in that case have written more books, but the very loss of these, +implying as it does his pure love of country, is an acquisition much +more positively valuable. + +There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of his activity, in +so far as it gives emphasis to that incompleteness of any verbal +statement of truth, which he was continually insisting upon with his +readers. + +Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that however many works +he might have produced, it seems unlikely that any one of them would +have failed to record some large movement in his growth; and therefore +it is perhaps to be regretted that his life could not have been made to +solely serve his genius, so that we might have had the whole sweep of +his imagination clearly exposed. As it is, he has not given us a large +variety of characters; and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certain +general likeness one to another. Phoebe, however, is quite at the +opposite pole of womanhood; Hilda is as unlike any of them as it is easy +to conceive of her being; and Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature of +unique calibre, as weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at the +same time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet captivating +fragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are embodied two widely opposed +classes of New England women. The male characters, with the exception of +Donatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as the feminine ones: +Coverdale and Kenyon come very close together, both being artistic and +both reflectors for the persons that surround them; and Dimmesdale is to +some extent the same character,--with the artistic escape closed upon +his passions, so that they turn within and ravage his heart,--arrested +and altered by Puritan influences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilish +a shape of revenge to be discussed as a human individual. Septimius, +again, is distinct; and the characterization of Westervelt, in +"Blithedale," slight as it is, is very stimulating. Perhaps, after all, +what leads us to pronounce upon the whole fictitious company a stricture +of homogeneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us each +time with a set of persons sufficiently separate from his previous ones, +does not emphasize their differences with the same amount of external +description that we habitually depend upon from a novelist. The +similarity is more in the author's mode of presentation than in the +creations themselves. + +This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearly +related with some special distinctions of his genius. He is so +fastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit his +actors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though retaining their +essential individuality, they are endowed with the author's own +delightful power of expression. This outward phasis of his work +separates it at once from that of the simple novelist, and leads us to +consider the special applicability to it of the term "romance." He had +not the realistic tendency, as we usually understand that, but he +possessed the power to create a new species of fiction. For the kind of +romance that he has left us differs from all compositions previously so +called. It is not romance in the sense of D'Urfe's or Scuderi's; it is +very far from coming within the scope of Fielding's "romances"; and it +is entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Romantic school. It +is not the romance of sentiment; nor that of incident, adventure, and +character viewed under a worldly coloring: it has not the mystic and +melodramatic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouque. There are +two things which radically isolate it from all these. The first is its +quality of revived belief. Hawthorne, as has been urged already, is a +great believer, a man who has faith; his belief goes out toward what is +most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetry +and moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progeny +is perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest +truth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a varied +and tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is what +makes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order of +novelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been credited +with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt is +superficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating fine +but only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch of +superstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his English +journal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested in +such subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, +indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the ethereal +with earthly attributes, and so make it grossly perceptible." This +observation has a still greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. +And out of this questioning belief and transmutation of superstition +into truth--for such is more exactly his method--proceeds also that +quality of value and rarity and awe-enriched significance, with which he +irradiates real life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image of +the eternal verities. + +If these things are limitations, they are also foundations of a vast +originality. Every greatness must have an outline. So that, although he +is removed from the list of novelists proper, although his spiritual +inspiration scares away a large class of sympathies, and although his +strictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and restrain his dramatic +fervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, these facts, on the other hand, +are so many trenches dug around him, fortifying his fair eminence. +Isolation and a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense as +this, belong peculiarly to American originality. But Hawthorne is the +embodiment of the youth of this country; and though he will doubtless +furnish inspiration to a long line of poets and novelists, it must be +hoped that they, likewise, will stand for other phases of its +development, to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Hawthorne is +less in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which would +merely make a school of followers. + +It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will take in the +literature of the world; but as his influence gains the ascendant in +America, by prompting new and _un_-Hawthornesque originalities, it +is likely also that it will be made manifest in England, according to +some unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be distinctly +colored by the peculiar dye in which his own pages are dipped; but the +renewed tradition of a highly organized yet simple style, and still more +the masculine tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjustment +of aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent truthfulness which +he carries with him, may be expected to become a constituent part of +very many minds widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is no +fictionist who penetrates so far into individual consciences as +Hawthorne; that many persons will be found who derive a profoundly +religious aid from his unobtrusive but commanding sympathy. In the same +way, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no +secondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words," says Heine; +"Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not so with Hawthorne's. +Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axis +of conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is one +of the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of the +world. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in private +character, but in addition his unnoticed leverage for the thought of the +age is prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a temper so +modest and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract enthusiasm +for art, place him on a plane between Shakespere and Goethe. With the +universality of the first only just budding within his mind, he has not +so clear a response to all the varying tones of lusty human life, and +the individuality in his utterance amounts, at particular instants, to +constraint. With less erudition than Goethe, but also less of the +freezing pride of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. +His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but they have the +same quick music of heart-throbs that Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is at +the same moment ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Another +generation will see more of him than we do; different interpreters will +reveal other sides. As a powerful blow suddenly descending may leave the +surface it touches unmarked, and stamp its impress on the substance +beneath, so his presence will more distinctly appear among those farther +removed from him than we. A single mind may concentrate your vision upon +him in a particular way; but the covers of any book must perforce shut +out something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow the +landscape. + +Look well at these leaves I lay before you; but having read them throw +the volume away, and contemplate the man himself. + + + + +APPENDIX I. + + +In May, 1870, an article was published in the "Portland Transcript," +giving some of the facts connected with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, as +a boy. This called out a letter from Alexandria, Va., signed "W. S.," +and purporting to come from a person who had lived at Raymond, in +boyhood, and had been a companion of Hawthorne's. He gave some little +reminiscences of that time, recalling the fact that Hawthorne had read +him some poetry founded on the Tarbox disaster, already +mentioned. [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 89.] Himself he described as +having gone to sea at twenty, and having been a wanderer ever since. In. +speaking of the date of the poetry, "We could not have been more than +ten years old," he said. This, of course, is a mistake, the accident +having happened in 1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it is +tolerably certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he was +twelve. + +The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson Cook, of +Bolster's Mills, in Maine, who had also known Hawthorne as a boy; some +poetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also found, and printed, which +afterward proved to have been written by another person; and one or two +other letters were published, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, but +concerning the Tarbox affair. After this, "W. S." wrote again from +Alexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he had come into +possession, several years before, of the manuscript book from which he +afterward sent extracts. The book, he explained, was found by a man +named Small, who had assisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a +"large mahogany bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. +This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S." met Small in +the army, in Virginia. He reported that the book--"originally a bound +blank one not ruled," and "gnawed by mice or eaten by moths on the +edges"--contained about two hundred and fifty pages, and was written +throughout, "the first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showing +in its progress a marked improvement in penmanship." The passages +reprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over the signature "W. +Sims," to the "Transcript," and published at different dates (February +11, 1871; April 22, 1871). Their appearance called out various +communications, all tending to establish their genuineness; but, beyond +the identification of localities and persons, and the approximate +establishing of dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, +however, was recalled by former residents near Raymond; and there seemed +at least much inferential proof in favor of the notes. A long silence +ensued upon the printing of the second portion; and at the end of 1871 +it was made known that Sims had died at Pensacola, Florida. The third +and last supposed extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent from +Virginia again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a person +professing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was written to +by the editors of the "Transcript," but no reply has ever been received. +A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also wrote to the Pensacola journal in +which Sims's death was announced, making inquiry as to its knowledge of +him and as to the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was ever +received from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in the +secret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war-days; and it +may be that, having enemies, he feared the notoriety to which his +contributions to journalism might expose him, and decided to die,--at +least so far as printer's ink could kill him. All these circumstances +are unfortunate, because they make the solution of doubts concerning the +early notes quite impossible, for the present. + +The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literary +skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long ago +as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an extremely +improbable one. It is not likely that an ordinary impostor would hit +upon the sort of incident selected for mention in these extracts. Even +if he drew upon circumstances of his own boyhood, transferring them to +Hawthorne's, he must possess a singularly clear memory, to recall +matters of this sort; and to invent them would require a nice +imaginative faculty. One of the first passages, touching the "son of old +Mrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne," is of a sort to +entirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole method of observation, +too, seems very characteristic. If the portion descriptive of a raft and +of the manners of the lumbermen be compared with certain memoranda in +the "American Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from somewhat +similar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seizing +characteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early notes are +fabrications, it may be that the author of them drew carefully after +passages of the maturer journal, and this among others. But the +resemblance is crossed by a greater youthfulness in the early notes, it +seems to me, which it would be hard to produce artificially. The cool +and collected style of the early journal is not improbable in a boy like +Hawthorne, who had read many books and lived much in the companionship +of older persons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of "The +Spectator" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, +Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal and "The +Spectator." The circumstance that the dates should all have been said to +be missing from the manuscript book is suspicious. Yet the last extract +has the month and year appended, August, 1819. What is more important +is, that the date of the initial inscription is given as 1816; and at +the time when this was announced it had not been ascertained even by +Hawthorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Raymond so +early. But since the publications in the "Transcript," some letters have +come to light of which I have made use; and one of these, bearing date +July 21, 1818, to which I have alluded in another connection, speaks of +Raymond from actual recollection. "Does the Pond look the same as when I +was there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thought +there was no place that I should say so much of." The furnisher of the +notes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered that +Hawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on a +statement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne +was taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed: +"Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years." I have already said that Sims +refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time when +he and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old." This, at first, +would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon the +editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis +for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain +exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. +The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the +inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one +already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes +did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, and +was confused by the statement of the "Transcript." An impostor must have +taken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "the +Widow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his +preliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciation +of the name in Raymond was Hathorn,--the first syllable exactly as the +word 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of the +spelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the +passage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic form +of the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by the +transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object in +keeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make it +available for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record as +a nucleus. + + + + +II. + + +The theme referred to in Chapter III. is given in full below. After the +earlier portion of the present essay had been stereotyped, an article by +Professor G. T. Packard, on Bowdoin College, was published in +"Scribner's Monthly," which contains this mention of Hawthorne:-- + +"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he so +dwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the world's +sensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written in the +sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an +inimitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, +was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he not +infrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment of +reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of +Hawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself +at the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted a +composition which no man in his class could equal.... When the class was +graduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having their +profiles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did he +take part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood that +he intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated his +remarkable development and enduring fame. It seems strange that among +his admirers no one has offered him a fitting tribute by founding the +Hawthorne Professorship of English Literature in the college where, +under the tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative Professor +Newman, he was stimulated to cultivate his native gift." + +DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. + +Senatum Romanorum jam primum institutum, simplicem siniul atquo +praestantissimuni fuisse sentiant onmes. Imperium fint, quod populo aec +avaritis nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretar. Lecti fuerunt senatores, +non qui ambitiose potestatem eupiere, sesl qui senectute, qui sapientia, +qui virtute bellica vel privata insigues, in republica plurimam +pollebant. Hominum consiliis virtute tam singulari praeditorum paruit +populus libenter atque senatores at patres civilius venerati. Studium +illis paternum adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam turn Romana, nec +sanctior nec beatior t'uit; iis temporibus etenim solum in publicum +commodum principes administrabant; fidemque principibus populi habetant. +Sed virtute prisca reipublierc perdita, inimicitus mutuis patres +plebesque flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populum +tyrannice saeviit, atque hostem se monstravit potiue quam custodem +reipubliere. Concitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendre, alque per +multa secula patrum plebisque contentiones historia Romana memorat; +patribus pristinam auctoriratem servare conatis, liccentiaque plebis +omnia jura spernante. Hoc modo usque ad Panieum bellum, res se habebant. +Tun pericula externa discordiam domesticam superabant, reipublicaeque +studium priscam patribus sapientiam, priscam populis reverentiam +redundit. Hae aetate omnibus virtutibus cnituit Roma. Senatus, jure +omnium consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis aequavit; +patriaeque solum amore gloria quaesita, pecunia niluii habita est. Sed +quuam Carthaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica ad +vitia pristina. Patres luxuria solum populis praestiterunt, et vestigia +eorum populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, +annus unusquisque diminuit, donce in aerate Angasti interitus nobilium +humiliumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conficerunt. Augustus +equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantum +liut sine fervore. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestates +recuperatae. Postremum species etiam amissa est. + +HATHORNE. + + +THE ROMAN SENATE. + +Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originally +constituted, was a no less simple than illustrious body. It was a +sovereignty which appeared most desirable to a populace vitiated neither +by avarice nor luxury. The senators were chosen, not from those who were +ambitious of power, but those who wielded the largest influence in the +Republic through wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. The +citizens bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with such +singular worth, and venerated the senators as fathers. The latter +exercised a paternal care. No republic ever was holier or more blessed +than that of Rome at this time; for in those days the rulers +administered for the public convenience alone, and the people had faith +in their rulers. But, the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, the +fathers and the commonalty began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, +and to seek after the possessions of others. The Senate vented its wrath +savagely upon the people, and showed itself rather the enemy than the +guardian of the Republic. The multitude was aroused by the desire of +recovering liberty, and through a very long period Roman history +recounts the contentions of the fathers and the commonalty; the fathers +attempting to preserve their old authority, and the license of the +commons scorning every law. Affairs remained in this condition until the +Punic War. Then foreign perils prevailed over domestic discord, and love +of the Republic restored to the fathers their early wisdom, to the +people their reverence. At this period, Rome shone with every virtue. +The Senate, through the rightfully obtained consent of all parties, +nearly equalized its power with the powerlessness of the commonalty; and +glory being sought solely through love of the fatherland, wealth was +regarded as of no account. But when Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, the +commonwealth returned to its former vices. The fathers were superior to +the populace only in luxury, and the populace followed in their +footsteps. From that very time, every year diminished the authority of +the Senate, until in the age of Augustus the death of the nobles and the +selection of insignificant men almost wholly destroyed its dignity. +Augustus, to be sure, restored to the fathers their ancient +magnificence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it was without +real heat. Never was the power of the senators recovered. At last even +the appearance of it vanished. + + + + +III. + + +The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. were recorded by different +hands, or in different ways at various dates, so that they have not been +made out quite satisfactorily. Some of the authors named below were +taken out a great many times, but the number of the volume is given in +only a few cases. It would seem, for example, that Voltaire's complete +works were examined by Hawthorne, if we judge by his frequent +application for some part of them, and the considerable number of +volumes actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same volume +is sometimes called for more than once. To make the matter clearer here, +I have reduced the entries to a simple list of the authors read, without +attempting to show how often a particular one was taken up. Few or none +of them were read consecutively, and the magazines placed together at +the end of my list were taken out at short intervals throughout the +different years. + +1830. + +Oeuvres de Voltaire. +Memoire de Literature. +Liancourt. +Oeuvres de Rousseau. +Mass. Historical Collections. +Trial and Triumph of Faith. +Oeuvres de Pascal. +Varenius' Geography. +Mickle's Lucian. +Dictionnaire des Sciences. +Pamela. (Vols. I., II.) +Life of Baxter. +Tournefort's Voyage. +Swift's Works. +Hitt on Fruit-Trees. +Bibliotheca Americana. +Ames's Antiquities. +Hamilton's Works. +Gifford's Juvenal. +Allen's Biographical Dictionary. +Fenelon. +Academie Royale des Inscriptions. +Mather's Apology. +Vertol's History of Sweden. +Taylor's Sermons. +Life of Luckington. +L'an 2440. +Montague's Letters. +English Botany. (3 vols.) +Gay's Poems. +Inchbald's Theatre. +Sowerby's English Botany. +Crabbe's Borough. +Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. +Collection of Voyages (Hakluyt's?). +Lives of the Admirals. +British Zooelogy. + +1831 + +Los Eruditos. +Connoisseur. +Camilla. +Gifford's Persius. +Bartram's Travels. +Humphrey's Works. +Voltaire. +Pennant's British Zoology. +Mandeville's Travels. +Rehearsal Transposed. +Gay's Poems. +Pompey the Little. +Shaw's General Zoology. +Philip's Poems. +Sowerby's English Botany. +Racine. +Corneille. +Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. +History of the Shakers. +The Confessional. +Calamy's Life of Baxter. +Academie Royale des Inscripts. +Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I., II., III., IV.) +Cadell's Journey through Italy and Carniola. +Cobbet's Rule in France. +Temple's Works. (Vols. I., II., III.) +Asiatic Researches. +Cochran's Tour in Siberia. +Chardin's Travels. +Brandt's History of the Reformation. +Russell's Natural History. +Aleppo. (Vol. I.) +Answer to the Fable of the Bees. +Hanway's Travels. +Memoirs of C. J. Fox. +Bayle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. II., V., VI.) +State Trials. (Vols. I., II., IV., V., VI.) +Tales of a Traveller. +Dictionnaire des Sciences. (Vol. XVII.) +Bacon's Works. (Vol. II.) +Gordon's Tacitus. +Colquhoun on the Police. +Cheyne on Health. +Pope's Homer. (Vol I.) +Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX.) +Reichard's Germany. +Oeuvres de Rousseau. +Notes on the West Indies by Prichard. +Crishull's Travels in Turkey. + +1832-33. + +Clarendon's Tracts. +History of England. +Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. III., V., VI.) +Feltham's Resolves. +Roscoe's Sovereigns. +Histoire de l'Academie. +South America. +Savages of New Zealand. +Stackhouse's History of the Bible. +Dryden's Poems. +Tucker's Light of Nature. +History of South Carolina. +Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. +Brace's Travels. +Browne's Jamaica. +Collins's New South Wales. +Broughton's Dictionary. +Seminole War. +Shaw's Zoology. +Reverie. +Gifford's Pitt. +Curiosities of Literature. +Massinger. +Literary Recollections. +Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. +Paris and Fonblanque. +Elia. +Gardens and Menagerie. +Medical Jurisprudence. +History of Paris. +Scott's Prose Works. +Kittell's Specimens American Poetry. +Lister's Journey. +Annals of Salem. +Library of Old English Prose Writers. +Memoirs of Canning. +Miscellaneous Works of Scott. +Jefferson's Writings. +History of Andover. +Good's Book of Nature. +History of Haverhill. +Madden's Travels. (Vols. I., II.) +Riedesel's Memoirs. +Boston Newspapers (1736, 1739, 1754, 1762, 1771, 1783). +Drake's Mornings in Spring. +Drake's Evenings in Autumn. +Anecdotes of Bowyer. +Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. I., II.) +Bryan Walton's Memoirs. +Moses Mendelssohn. +Collingwood. +Felt's Annals. +Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. +Schiller. +Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols.) +Thatcher's Medical Biography. +History of Plymouth. +Crabbe's Universal Dictionary. +Lewis's History of Lynn. +A Year in Spain, by a Young American. (Vols. I., II.) +Croker's Boswell. +Deane's History of Scituate. +Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. I., II.) +Temple's Travels. (Vol. II.) +Fuller's Holy State. +Remarkables of Increase Mather. +History of Portland. (Vols. I., II.) +Practical Tourist. +Elements of Technology. +Heber's Life, by Taylor. +Ductor Substantium. +Heber's Travels in India. (Vols. I., II.) +Byron's Works. +Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. +History of Spain. +Franklin's Works. +Mental Cultivation. + +1835. + +Life of Gouverneur Morris. +Hamilton's Progress of Society. +Twiner's Sacred History. +Encyclopaedia. +Life of Arthur Lee. +Life of Sir Humphry Davy. +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. +Prior's Poems. (Vol. I.) +Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I., II.) +Memoirs of the Tower of London. +History of King's Chapel. +Memoirs of Dr. Burney. +Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I, II., III.) +Life of Livingstone. + +1836. + +Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I.) +Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I.) +Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I.) +Combe on the Constitution of Man. +Babbage on Economy of Machinery. +Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. +Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I., III.) +Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design. (Vols. I., II.) +Mende's Guide to Observation of Nature. +Cobbett's Cottage Economy. +Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I.) +Practical Tourist. (Vols. I., II.) +Dick on Improvement of Society. +Bush's Life of Mohammed. +Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I.) +Gay's Poems. +Pliny's Natural History. +Coleridge's Table-Talk. +Letters from Constantinople. (Vols. I., II.) +Reynolds's Voyages. +Adventures on Columbia River, by Ross Cox. +Baine's History of Cotton Manufacture. +History of Nantucket. +Travels in South America. +Mueller's Universal History. +Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. +Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. I., II.) +Description of Trades. +Colman's Visit to England. +Ludolph's History of Ethiopia. +Griffin's Remains. +McCree's Life of Knox. +Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. +Voyage de la mer du Sud an Nord. +Biographia Literaria. +The Stranger in America. +Raumer's England in 1835. +Random Recollections of the House of Lords. +The German Student. +Sparks's American Biography. +Brewster's Natural Magic. +Prior's Life of Goldsmith. +Sparks's Washington. +Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft. +Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols.) + +1837. + +Washington's Writings. +Martineau's Miscellany. +Wraxall's Memoirs. +Bancroft's United States History. +Rush, on the Human Voice. +Drake's Indian Biography. +Wordsworth's Poetical Works. +Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. +Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. +Bayle's Historical Memoirs of Plymouth County. +Life of Jefferson, by Tucker. +Random Recollections of the House of Commons. +Specimens of American Poetry. + +1838. + +Life of Jefferson. +Brown's Novels. +Parr's Works. +Select Comedies. +Froissart's Ancient Chronology. +Byron's Works. +Plutarch's Lives. +London Encyclopedia of Architecture. +Gentleman's Magazine. +Monthly Magazine. +Monthly Review. +European Magazine. +Christian Examiner. +Edinburgh Magazine. +Annual Register. +Quarterly Review. +Southern Review. +Worcester's Magazine. +North American Review. +United States Service Journal. +Court Magazine. +Museum of Literature and Science. +Westminster Review. +London Monthly Magazine. +Eclectic Review. +Foreign Quarterly Review. +Blackwood's Magazine. +Metropolitan Magazine. +New England Magazine. +British Critic. +American Encyclopaedia. +Rees's Cyclopaedia. +Gifford's Juvenal. + + + + +INDEX. + + +Addison, Joseph +Allegory and symbolism +Ambitious Guest, The +America, Hawthorne's sentiment about returning to +American Magazine +American Note-Books, record of youth in +American nurture of Hawthorne's genius +American quality in literature +Andrews, Ferdinand +Apollyon, name of cat +Artist of the Beautiful, The +Atmosphere, Hawthorne's susceptibility to +Autobiographies + +Balzac's method of dealing with sin +Bancroft, George +Baudelaire +Bay writers, nickname given by Church Review +Beelzebub, Hawthorne's cat +Belief, Hawthorne's +Bewick Company +Biography, Hawthorne's feeling about +Birth-mark, The +Blithedale Romance + its relation to Brook Farm + real incident applied in + when written + remarks on +Bloody Footstep +Boston Custom-House +Boston Token, The +Bowdoin College + passage from "Fanshawe" descriptive of +Bridge, Horatio + prognostic of, concerning Hawthorne +Brig Fair American, Ballad of +Brook Farm, origin of + Hawthorne's aim in going to + length of stay there + trenchant remark upon, in Blithedale +Brown, Brockden +Buchanan, James +Buds and Bird-Voices +Bunyan, compared with Milton + with Hawthorne +Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note from, to Hawthorne +Bryant, William Cullen + +Celestial Railroad, The +Characters of Hawthorne +Chippings with a Chisel +Chorley, H. F. +Christmas Banquet, The +Church Review + attack of, on The Scarlet Letter +Cilley, Jonathan +Clarendon's History +Coleridge, S. T. +Conception of Character, Hawthorne's method of +Contact of life and death +Contradictions of critics +Cooper, J. Fenimore +Cooper Memorial letter of Hawthorne +Coverdale, Miles, origin of name + character of, how related to Hawthorne +Curtis, George William + letters from Hawthorne to +Curwin Mansion +Cushing, Caleb +Custom-House, prefatory chapter on the + excitement over it in Salem + +Democratic Review +Devil in Manuscript, The +Dickens +Dixey, William, name in Seven Gables +Doctor Heidegger's Experiment +Dolliver Romance, The +Drake, J. R. +Dramatic quality in Hawthorne +Drowne's Wooden Image +D'Urfe + +Early Notes, discovery of + passages from +Earth's Holocaust +Eccentricity in Salem +Edinburgh Review, stricture of, upon Irving +Emerson's English Traits +Endicott and The Red Cross + passage from, bearing on Scarlet Letter +Endicotts, anecdote of +English Note-Books, characteristics of +Evangeline, origin of + Hawthorne's review of + +Fame, in what way desirable +Fancy's Show-Box +Faust +"Fanshawe" + abstract of + passages from +Fearing, Master, and Hawthorne +Fielding, Henry +Fields, J. T., mistake of +Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking at +Fire worship +First Church of Salem +First publication by Hawthorne +Foote, Caleb +Fouque +French and Italian Note-Books +Froissart + +Gautier, Theophile +Goethe +Godwin, William +Goldsmith +Goodrich, S. G. + employs Hawthorne as editor + difficulties with +Grandfather's Chair + publication of +Gray Champion, The + +Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, + mother of Nathaniel Hawthorne, + piety of, her inconsolableness + at loss of her husband +Hathorne, John, judge in witchcraft + trials +Hathorne, Joseph, Benjamin, + Daniel +Hathorne, Nathaniel, father of Nathaniel, + death of; Hawthorne's + resemblance to +Hathorne, William; his persecution + of Quakers; his will +Haunted Mind, The +HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, birth of + changes spelling of name + birthplace of; childhood of; + lameness in boyhood; + fondness for cats; scholarship + of, at college; English + compositions of; Latin theme + of, (in full, Appendix); + reading of; love + of books; first printed + article of; college associations + of; literary struggles + of; pecuniary difficulties + of; Democratic sympathies + of; his inability to + distinguish tunes; social + nature of; error as to long + obscurity of; anecdotes of; + value of these in + general; his love of solitude; + healthiness of; + shyness; considerateness + for others; personal appearance; + G. W. Curtis's + reminiscence of; his simplicity + of habits; love of books; + abstraction; moral enthusiasm + of, characterized; + unsuspiciousness of; introspection + of, how exaggerated; + distaste for society, how explainable; + in what greater than + Irving; ghostly atmosphere + of; humor of; American quality of; effect of civil + war upon; death of; his + grave; burial; literary + and intellectual influence of +Heine, Heinrich +Helwyse, Gervase +Hillard, George S. +Hoffman, Charles Fenno +Hogg's Tales +Holmes, Oliver Wendell; letter + from, to Hawthorne +Horace +House of the Seven Gables, The; + Hathorne history; composition + of; originals for the + house; survey of +Howells, W. D., Hawthorne's remark + to + +Invisible struggles of genius +Irving, Washington; comparison + with Hawthorne; humor + of; attitude of, in England; + his use of native + material; his histories; + style of + +John Ingefield's Thanksgiving +Johnson, Samuel +Journal of an African Cruiser +Journal of a Solitary Man + +Kingsley's Greek Fairy-Tales + +Latin Theme of Hawthorne; + in full, Appendix +Lawrence, Lieutenant, killed off + Marblehead +Lenox, removal to +Letters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, + from college; + from Connecticut and New Hampshire; + to Longfellow; + to Bridge; + to Curtis; + to Motley; + to Lowell +Leutze +Limitations of Hawthorne +Liverpool consulate; + reduction in receipts of; + unjust criticism of Hawthorne in +Longfellow, Henry W.; + review of Twice-Told Tales; + letter to Hawthorne +Loring, Dr. G. B. +Lowell, James Russell; + letter from + +Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in boyhood +Manning, Elizabeth Clarke, Hawthorne's mother +Manning's Folly +Manning, Richard +Manning, Robert +Manning, Samuel +Manuscript sketch for Septimius +Marble Faun, The; + examination of +Marine outrages, Hawthorne's wish +to redress +Marvell, Andrew +Maturity in Hawthorne, earliness of +Maule, Thomas +Maypole of Merry Mount, The +Melville, Herman; + private review of Seven Gables by +Michael Angelo +Milton compared with Bunyan and Hawthorne +Minister's Black Veil, The +Mitford, Miss, Letter from, to Hawthorne +Mosses from an Old Manse; + first issue of; + criticism of +Motley, John Lothrop, letter of, to Hawthorne +Mozart +Mrs. Bullfrog + +New England civilization; + early character +Newman, Professor +Nomenclature of fiction +Novalis + +Oberon +Objectivity of Hawthorne +Old Apple-Dealer, The +Oliver, B. L. +Our Old Home + +Packard, Professor G. T.; + Appendix +Papers of an old Dartmoor prisoner +Paulding, J. K. +Peabody, Miss E. P., acquaintance with Hawthorne +Peabody, Miss Sophia +Peter Parley's History, written by Hawthorne +Pierce, Franklin; + Hawthorne's Life of; + (sentiments in, touching slavery; + resulting abuse of Hawthorne;) + dedication of Our Old Home to +Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's reading of; + allusions to, in his works +Plato +Plymouth Colony enactment against adultery, foot-note +Poe's criticism on Hawthorne; +similarities of, to Hawthorne; + effectiveness of; + subjectivity of; doubtful + sanity of; his ratiocination; + foreign influence of +Pope, Alexander +Procession of Life, The +Prophetic Pictures, The +Pseudonymes of Hawthorne (foot-note) +Puritan imagination +Puritans, Hawthorne's view of +Pyncheon, Clifford, how resembling Poe +Pynchons, complaints of the, against Seven Gables + +Rappaccini's Daughter +Raymond, Maine, removal to +Ripley, George +Roger Malvin's Burial +Rossetti-Morris school +Rousseau + +Salem, as a native soil; Hawthorne's + sentiment for; aspects + of; origin of name; + trade +Salem Custom-House +Sand, George +Sanity of highest genius + +Scarlet Letter; origin + of; publication of; + Leutze's coincidence; + passage compared with Bunyan; + theme of revenge in; + analysis of the romance; + as a work of art +Scotland and New England +Scott, Sir Walter; Hawthorne's + estimate of +Scuderi; Madeleine de +Sebago Lake +Sense of form in Hawthorne; + in Poe +Septimius Felton; symbolism + of; origin of +"Seven Tales of my Native Land." +Shakespere +Shelley's Latin verses; The + Cenci, compared with Marble + Faun +Sights from a Steeple +Sims, William, finder of supposed + Early Notes, Appendix +Sin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne; + how conducive to originality +Slavery, Hawthorne's sentiments + concerning +Snow Image +Sparhawk House, Kittery + "Spectator," The; extracts + from +Spenser +St. John's, John Hathorne's attack + on +Story, Joseph +Sumner, Charles, note of, to Hawthorne +Sunday at Home +Supernatural, Hawthorne's use of +Surroundings of genius assist but + do not produce it + + +Taine's Notes on England +Tales of the Province House +Tanglewood Tales +Term-Bill at College +Thackeray +Thomson, James +Thoreau's Legend of the Wayside +Tieck +Toll-Gatherer's Day +Tragedy of isolation +True Stones +Twice-Told Tales; + temperament in style of; first + collection of; second + +Union of the States, Hawthorne's + feeling about +Union Street +Upham's "Salem Witchcraft." + +Verses by Hawthorne, at college +Virgil +Virtuoso's Collection +Voltaire + +Wayside, The, purchase of +Wedding Knell, The +Weird, The, in Scotland and New + England +West Newton, removal to +Whipple, Edwin, objection to remark + of; Hawthorne's pleasure in + reviews written by +White, John, Rev. +White Old Maid, The +Widowhood, sentiment of, expressed + by Hawthorne +Winthiop, John +Witchcraft +Witch-ointment +Witch-pins +Wonder-Book +Worcester, Dr. J. E. + +Young Goodman Brown. +Youth of Hawthorne, habits in; + valuable formative results + of + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + +This file should be named 7sthw10.txt or 7sthw10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7sthw11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7sthw10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Study Of Hawthorne + +Author: George Parsons Lathrop + +Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8530] +[This file was first posted on July 20, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + + + + +E-text prepared by Eric Eldred, Tonya Allen, Charles Franks, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE + +BY + +GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP. + +[Illustration] + + + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + I. POINT OF VIEW + + II. SALEM + + III. BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE + + IV. TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES + + V. AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM + + VI. THE OLD MANSE + + VII. THE SCARLET LETTER. + +VIII. LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD + + IX. ENGLAND AND ITALY + + X. THE LAST ROMANCE + + XI. PERSONALITY + + XII. POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE + +XIII. THE Loss AND THE GAIN + +APPENDIX I. + +APPENDIX II. + +APPENDIX III. + +INDEX + + + + +A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE. + + + + +I. + + +POINT OF VIEW. + +This book was not designed as a biography, but is rather a portrait. +And, to speak more carefully still, it is not so much this, as my +conception of what a portrait of Hawthorne should be. For I cannot write +with the authority of one who had known him and had been formally +intrusted with the task of describing his life. On the other hand, I do +not enter upon this attempt as a mere literary performance, but have +been assisted in it by an inward impulse, a consciousness of sympathy +with the subject, which I may perhaps consider a sort of inspiration. My +guide has been intuition, confirmed and seldom confuted by research. +Perhaps it is even a favoring fact that I should never have seen Mr. +Hawthorne; a personality so elusive as his may possibly yield its traits +more readily to one who can never obtrude actual intercourse between +himself and the mind he is meditating upon. An honest report upon +personal contact always has a value denied to the reviews of after- +comers, yet the best criticism and biography is not always that of +contemporaries. + +Our first studies will have a biographical scope, because a certain +grouping of facts is essential, to give point to the view which I am +endeavoring to present; and as Hawthorne's early life has hitherto been +but little explored, much of the material used in the earlier chapters +is now for the first time made public. The latter portion of the career +may be treated more sketchily, being already better known; though +passages will be found throughout the essay which have been developed +with some fulness, in order to maintain a correct atmosphere, +compensating any errors which mere opinions might lead to. Special +emphasis, then, must not be held to show neglect of points which my +space and scope prevent my commenting on. But the first outline +requiring our attention involves a distant retrospect. + +The history of Hawthorne's genius is in some sense a summary of all New +England history. + +From amid a simple, practical, energetic community, remarkable for its +activity in affairs of state and religion, but by no means given to +dreaming, this fair flower of American genius rose up unexpectedly +enough, breaking the cold New England sod for the emission of a light +and fragrance as pure and pensive as that of the arbutus in our woods, +in spring. The flower, however, sprang from seed that rooted in the old +colonial life of the sternly imaginative pilgrims and Puritans. +Thrusting itself up into view through the drift of a later day, it must +not be confounded with other growths nourished only by that more recent +deposit; though the surface-drift had of course its own weighty +influence in the nourishment of it. The artistic results of a period of +action must sometimes be looked for at a point of time long subsequent, +and this was especially sure to be so in the first phases of New England +civilization. The settlers in this region, in addition to the burdens +and obstacles proper to pioneers, had to deal with the cares of forming +a model state and of laying out for posterity a straight and solid path +in which it might walk with due rectitude. All this was in itself an +ample enough subject to occupy their powerful imaginations. They were +enacting a kind of sacred epic, the dangers and the dignity and +exaltation of which they felt most fervently. The Bible, the Bay Psalm +Book, Bunyan, and Milton, the poems of George Wither, Baxter's Saint's +Rest, and some controversial pamphlets, would suffice to appease +whatever yearnings the immense experiment of their lives failed to +satisfy. Gradually, of course, the native press and new-comers from +England multiplied books in a community which held letters in unusual +reverence. But the continuous work of subduing a new country, the +dependence upon the mother-land for general literature, and finally the +excitements of the Revolutionary period, deferred the opportunity for +any aesthetic expression of the forces that had been at work here ever +since Winthrop stepped from the Arbella on to the shore of the New +World, with noble manliness and sturdy statesmanship enough in him to +uphold the whole future of a great people. When Hawthorne came, +therefore, his utterance was a culmination of the two preceding +centuries. An entire side of the richly endowed human nature to which we +owe the high qualities of New England,--a nature which is often so +easily disposed of as meagre, cold, narrow, and austere,--this side, +long suppressed and thrown into shade by the more active front, found +expression at last in these pages so curiously compounded of various +elements, answering to those traits of the past which Hawthorne's genius +revived. The sensuous substance of the early New England character had +piously surrendered to the severe maxims which religion and prudence +imposed; and so complete was its suppression, that all this part of +Puritan nature missed recording itself, except by chance glimpses +through the history of the times. For this voluntary oblivion it has +been rarely compensated in the immortality it meets with through +Hawthorne. Not that he set himself with forethought to the illustration +of it; but, in studying as poet and dramatist the past from which he +himself had issued, he sought, naturally, to light it up from the +interior, to possess himself of the very fire which burned in men's +breasts and set their minds in movement at that epoch. In his own person +and his own blood the same elements, the same capabilities still +existed, however modified or differently ordered. The records of +Massachusetts Bay are full of suggestive incongruities between the +ideal, single-souled life which its founders hoped to lead, and the +jealousies, the opposing opinions, or the intervolved passions of +individuals and of parties, which sometimes unwittingly cloaked +themselves in religious tenets. Placing himself in the position of these +beings, then, and conscious of all the strong and various potencies of +emotion which his own nature, inherited from them, held in curb, it was +natural that Hawthorne should give weight to this contrast between the +intense, prisoned life of shut sensibilities and the formal outward +appearance to which it was moulded. This, indeed, is the source of +motive in much of his writing; notably so in "The Scarlet Letter." It is +thus that his figures get their tremendous and often terrible relief. +They are seen as close as we see our faces in a glass, and brought so +intimately into our consciousness that the throbbing of their passions +sounds like the mysterious, internal beating of our own hearts in our +own ears. And even when he is not dealing directly with themes or +situations closely related to that life, there may be felt in his style, +I think,--particularly in that of the "Twice-Told Tales,"--a union of +vigorous freedom, and graceful, shy restraint, a mingling of guardedness +which verges on severity with a quick and delicately thrilled +sensibility for all that is rich and beautiful and generous, which is +his by right of inheritance from the race of Non-conformist colonizers. +How subtile and various this sympathy is, between himself and the past +of his people, we shall see more clearly as we go on. + +Salem was, in fact, Hawthorne's native soil, in all senses; as +intimately and perfectly so as Florence was the only soil in which Dante +and Michael Angelo could have had their growth. It is endlessly +suggestive, this way that historic cities have of expressing themselves +for all time in the persons of one or two men. Silently and with +mysterious precision, the genius comes to birth and ripens--sometimes +despite all sorts of discouragement--into a full bloom which we afterward +see could not have reached its maturity at any other time, and would +surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared +in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato; +Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris +secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled +expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the +eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, in giving place to the +capital of the Anglo-Saxon race today. In like manner the sober little +New England town which has played a so much more obscure, though in its +way hardly less significant part, sits quietly enshrined and preserved +in Hawthorne's singularly imperishable prose. + +Of course, Salem is not to be compared with Florence otherwise than +remotely or partially. Florence was naturally the City of Flowers, in a +figurative sense as well as in the common meaning. Its splendid, +various, and full-pulsed life found spontaneous issue in magnificent +works of art, in architecture, painting, poetry, and sculpture,--things +in which New England was quite sterile. Salem evolved the artistic +spirit indirectly, and embodied itself in Hawthorne by the force of +contrast: the weariness of unadorned life which must have oppressed many +a silent soul before him at last gathered force for a revolt in his +person, and the very dearth which had previously reigned was made to +contribute to the beauty of his achievement. The unique and delicate +perfume of surprise with which his genius issued from its crevice still +haunts his romances. A quality of homeliness dwells in their very +strangeness and rarity which endears them to us unspeakably, and +captivates the foreign sense as well; so that one of Hawthorne's chief +and most enduring charms is in a measure due to that very barrenness of +his native earth which would at first seem to offer only denial to his +development. It is in this direction that we catch sight of the analogy +between his intellectual unfolding and that of the great Florentines. It +consists in his drawing up into himself the nourishment furnished by the +ground upon which he was born, and making the more and the less +productive elements reach a climax of characteristic beauty. One marked +difference, however, is that there was no abundant and inspiriting +municipal life of his own time which could enter into his genius: it was +the consciousness of the past of the place that affected him. He himself +has expressed as much: "This old town of Salem--my native place, though +I have dwelt much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer +years--possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of +which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence +here.... And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within +me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be +content to call affection.... But the sentiment has likewise its moral +quality. The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition +with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as +far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a kind of +home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the +present phase of the town." + +It is by briefly reviewing that past, then trying to reproduce in +imagination the immediate atmosphere of Hawthorne's youth, and comparing +the two, that we shall best arrive at the completion of our proposed +portrait. We have first to study the dim perspective and the suggestive +coloring of that historic background from which the author emerges, and +then to define clearly his own individual traits as they appear in his +published works and Note-Books. + +The eagerness which admirers of such a genius show, to learn all +permissible details of his personal history, is, when freed from the +vulgar and imbecile curiosity which often mars it, a sort of homage that +it is right to satisfy. It is a respect apt to be paid only to men whose +winning personal qualities have reached through their writing, and +touched a number of grateful and appreciative hearts. But two objections +may be urged against giving such details here: one is, that Hawthorne +especially disapproved the writing of a Life of himself; the other, that +the history of Salem and the works of Hawthorne are easily accessible to +any one, without intervention. + +Of the first it may frankly be said, indeed, that Hawthorne alone could +have adequately portrayed his life for us; though in the same breath it +should be added that the idea of his undertaking to do it is almost +preposterous. To such a spirit as his, the plan would have had an +exquisite absurdity about it, that might even have savored of +imposition. The mass of trivial details essential to the accurate and +consecutive account of an entire life could never have gained his +serious attention: his modesty would have made as little of them as of +boyish slate-scribblings, full of significance, fun, and character to +observers, but subjected to the sponge without a pang by their producer. +There is something natural and fine in this. I confess that to me the +spectacle presented by Goethe when dwelling on the minutest incidents of +his childhood with senile vanity and persistence, and fashioning with +avaricious care the silver shrine and crystal case in which--like a very +different sort of Saint Charles Borromeo--he hopes to have the reverent +ages view him, is one which increases my sense of his defective though +splendid personality. And yet I cannot suppress the opposite feeling, +that the man of note who lets his riches of reminiscence be buried with +him inflicts a loss on the world which it is hard to take resignedly. In +the Note-Books of Hawthorne this want is to a large extent made good. +His shrinking sensitiveness in regard to the embalming process of +biography is in these somewhat abated, so that they have been of +incalculable use in assisting the popular eye to see him as he really +was. Other material for illustration of his daily life is somewhat +meagre; and yet, on one account, this is perhaps a cause for rejoicing. +There is a halo about every man of large poetic genius which it is +difficult for the world to wholly miss seeing, while he is alive. +Afterward, when the biographer comes, we find the actual dimensions, the +physical outline, more insisted upon. That is the biographer's business; +and it is not altogether his fault, though partly so, that the public +regard is thus turned away from the peculiar but impalpable sign that +floats above the poet's actual stature. But, under this subtile +influence, forgetting that old, luminous hallucination (if it be one), +we suddenly feel the want of it, are dissatisfied; and, not perceiving +that the cause lies largely with us, we fall to detracting from the +subject. Thus it is fortunate that we have no regular biography of +Shakespere authoritative enough to fade our own private conceptions of +him; and it is not an unmixed ill that some degree of similar mystery +should soften and give tone to the life of Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne +could ever be seriously disadvantaged by a complete record; for behind +the greatness of the writer, in this case, there stands a person eminent +for strength and loveliness as few men are eminent in their private +lives. But it is with dead authors somewhat as it proved with those +Etruscan warriors, who, seen through an eyehole lying in perfect state +within their tombs, crumbled to a powder when the sepulchres were +opened. The contact of life and death is too unsympathetic. Whatever +stuff the writer be made of, it seems inevitable that he should suffer +injury from exposure to the busy and prying light of subsequent life, +after his so deep repose in death. + +"Would you have me a damned author?" exclaims Oberon, in "The Devil in +Manuscript," [Footnote: See the Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] +"to undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and cold neglect, and faint praise +bestowed against the giver's conscience!... An outlaw from the +protection of the grave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might +spurn, unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death!" This, to +be sure, is a heated statement, in the mouth of a young author who is +about to cast his unpublished works into the fire; but the dread +expressed here is by no means unfounded. Even the publication of +Hawthorne's Note-Books has put it in the power of various writers of the +day to assume an omniscience not altogether just, and far from +acceptable. Why, then, should further risk of this be incurred, by +issuing the present work? + +It is precisely to put a limit to misconstructions, as well as to +meet--however imperfectly--the desire of genuine appreciators, that it +has been written. If this study for a portrait fulfils its aim, it will +at least furnish an outline, fix a definite shape, within which whatever +is observed by others may find its place with a truer effect and more +fitting relation. The mistakes that have been made, indeed, are in no +wise alarming ones; and it would be difficult to find any author who has +been more carefully considered, on the whole, or with such generally +fair conclusions, as Hawthorne. Still, if one sees even minor +distortions current, it can do no harm to correct them. Besides, there +has as yet been no thorough attempt at a consistent synthetic +portraiture; and the differences of different critics' estimates need +some common ground to meet and be harmonized upon. If this can be +supplied, there will be less waste of time in future studies of the same +subject. + +It will be seen, therefore, that my book makes no pretension to the +character of a Life. The wish of Hawthorne on this point would alone be +enough, to prevent that. If such a work is to be undertaken, it should +be by another hand, in which the right to set aside this wish is much +more certainly vested than in mine. But I have thought that an earnest +sympathy with the subject might sanction the present essay. Sympathy, +after all, is the talisman which may preserve even the formal biographer +from giving that injury to his theme just spoken of. And if the insight +which guides me has any worth, it will present whatever material has +already been made public with a selection and shaping which all +researchers might not have time to bestow. + +Still, I am quite alive to the difficulties of my task; and I am +conscious that the work may to some appear supererogatory. Stricture and +praise are, it will perhaps be said, equally impertinent to a fame so +well established. Neither have I any rash hope of adding a single ray to +the light of Hawthorne's high standing. But I do not fear the charge of +presumption. Time, if not the present reader, will supply the right +perspective and proportion. + +On the ground of critical duty there is surely defence enough for such +an attempt as the one now offered; the relative rank of Hawthorne, and +other distinctions touching him, seem to call for a fuller discussion +than has been given them. I hope to prove, however, that my aim is in no +wise a partisan one. Criticism is appreciative estimation. It is +inevitable that the judgments of competent and cultivated persons should +flatly contradict each other, as well as those of incompetent persons; +and this whether they are coeval or of different dates. At the last, it +is in many respects matter of simple individual impression; and there +will always be persons of high intelligence whom it will be impossible +to make coincide with us entirely, touching even a single author. So +that the best we can do is to set about giving rational explanation of +our diverse admirations. Others will explain theirs; and in this way, +everything good having a fit showing, taste finds it easier to become +catholic. + +Whoever reverences something has a meaning. Shall he not record it? But +there are two ways in which he may express himself,--through speech and +through silence,--both of them sacred alike. Which of these we will use +on any given occasion is a question much too subtle, too surely fraught +with intuitions that cannot be formulated, to admit of arbitrary +prescription. In preferring, here, the form of speech, I feel that I +have adopted only another kind of silence. + +[Illustration] + + + + +II. + + +SALEM. + +Let us now look more closely at the local setting. To understand +Hawthorne's youth and his following development, we must at once +transport ourselves into another period, and imagine a very different +kind of life from the one we know best. It hardly occurs to readers, +that an effort should be made to imagine the influences surrounding a +man who has so recently passed away as Hawthorne. It was in 1864 that he +died,--little more than a decade since. But he was born sixty years +before, which places his boyhood and early youth in the first quarter of +the century. The lapse since then has been a long one in its effects; +almost portentously so. The alterations in manners, relations, +opportunities, have been great. Restless and rapid in their action, +these changes have multiplied the mystery of distance a hundred-fold +between us and that earlier time; so that there is really a considerable +space to be traversed before we can stand in thought where Hawthorne +then stood in fact. Goldsmith says, in that passage of the Life of +Parnell which Irving so aptly quotes in his biography of the writer: "A +poet while living is seldom an object sufficiently great to attract much +attention.... When his fame is increased by time, it is then too late to +investigate the peculiarities of his disposition; the dews of morning +are past, and we vainly try to continue the chase by the meridian +splendor." The bustle of American life certainly does away with "the +dews of morning" very promptly; and it is not quite a simple matter to +reproduce the first growth of a life which began almost with the +century. But there are resources for doing so. To begin with, we shall +view Salem as it is. Vigorous and thriving still, the place has +fortunately not drifted so far from its moorings of seventy years since +as to take us out of our bearings, in considering its present aspect. +Pace its quiet, thoroughfares awhile, and you will find them leading +softly and easily into the past. + +You arrive in the ordinary way, by railroad, and at first the place +wears a disappointingly commonplace aspect. It does not seem +impressively venerable; hacks and horse-cars rattle and tinkle along the +streets, people go about their affairs in the usual way, without any due +understanding that they ought to be picturesque and should devote +themselves to falling into effective groups posed in vistas of historic +events. Is antiquity, then, afraid to assert itself, even here in this +stronghold, so far as to appear upon the street? No. But one must +approach these old towns with reverence, to get at their secrets. They +will not yield inspiration or meaning save to an imaginative effort. +Under the influence of that, the faded past, traced in sympathetic ink, +as it were, revives and starts into distinctness. Passing down Essex +Street, or striking off from its modest bustle a little way, we come +upon shy, ungainly relics of other times. Gray gambrel-roofed houses +stand out here and there, with thick-throated chimneys that seem to hold +the whole together. Again you pass buildings of a statelier cast, with +carved pilasters on the front and arched doorways bordered with some +simple, dainty line of carving; old plaster-covered urns, perhaps, stand +on the brick garden-wall, and the plaster is peeling off in flakes that +hang long and reluctant before falling to the ground. There are quaint +gardens everywhere, with sometimes an entrance arched with iron +gracefully wrought by some forgotten colonial Quentin Matsys, and always +with their paths bordered by prim and fragrant box, and grass that keeps +rich and green in an Old World way, by virtue of some secret of growth +caught from fresher centuries than ours. If your steps have the right +magic in them, you will encounter presently one of the ancient pumps +like to the Town Pump from which Hawthorne drew that clear and sparkling +little stream of revery and picture which has flowed into so many and +such distant nooks, though the pump itself has now disappeared, having +been directly in the line of the railroad. But, best of all, by +ascending Witch Hill you may get a good historic outlook over the past +and the present of the place. Looking down from here you behold the +ancient city spread before you, rich in chimneys and overshadowed by +soft elms. At one point a dark, strong steeple lifts itself like a huge +gravestone above the surrounding houses, terminating in a square top or +a blunt dome; and yonder is another, more ideal in its look, rising +slight and fine, and with many ascents and alternating pauses, to reach +a delicate pinnacle at great height in the air. It is lighted at +intervals with many-paned and glittering windows, and wears a probable +aspect of being the one which the young dreamer would have chosen for +the standpoint of his "Sights from a Steeple"; and the two kinds of +spire seem to typify well the Puritan gloom and the Puritan aspiration +that alike found expression on this soil. Off beyond the gray and +sober-tinted town is the sea, which in this perspective seems to rise +above it and to dominate the place with its dim, half-threatening blue; +as indeed it has always ruled its destinies in great measure, bringing +first the persecuted hither and then inviting so many successive +generations forth to warlike expedition, or Revolutionary privateering +or distant commercial enterprise. With the sea, too, Hawthorne's name +again is connected, as we shall presently notice. Then, quitting the +brimming blue, our eyes return over the "flat, unvaried surface covered +chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to +architectural beauty," with its "irregularity which is neither +picturesque nor quaint, but only tame"; and retracing the line upon +which Hawthorne has crowded the whole history of Salem, in "Main +Street," [Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] we +fall to pondering upon the deeds that gave this hill its name. At its +foot a number of tanneries and mills are grouped, from which there are +exhalations of smoke and steam. The mists of superstition that once +overhung the spot seem at last to have taken on that form. Behind it the +land opens out and falls away in a barren tract known from the earliest +period as the Great Pastures, where a solitude reigns almost as complete +as that of the primitive settlement, and where, swinging cabalistic webs +from one to another of the arbor-vitae and dwarf-pine trees that grow +upon it, spiders enough still abide to furnish familiars for a world +full of witches. But here on the hill there is no special suggestion of +the dark memory that broods upon it when seen in history. An obliging +Irish population has relieved the descendants of both the witches and +their exterminators from an awkward task, by covering with their own +barren little dwellings the three sides of the height facing the town. +Still, they have not ventured beyond a certain line. One small area at +the summit is wholly unencroached upon. Whether or not through fear of +some evil influence resting upon the spot, no house as yet disturbs this +space, though the thin turf has been somewhat picked away by desultory +sod-diggers. There is nothing save this squalid, lonely desolation to +commemorate the fact that such unhappy and needless deaths were here +endured. It is enough. Mere human sympathy takes us back with awful +vividness to that time when the poor victims looked their last from +this, upon the bleak boundary-hills of the inland horizon and that +hopeless semicircle of the sea on the other side. A terrible and fitting +place for execution, indeed! It looms up visible for many miles of lower +country around; and as you stand upon the top, earth seems to fall away +with such a fatal ease around it! + +The stranger is naturally drawn hence to the Court House, where, by +calling a clerk from his routine in a room fairly lined and stuccoed +with bundles of legal papers, he may get a glimpse of the famous +"witch-pins." These are the identical little instruments which the +afflicted children drew from different parts of their dress, in the +trial-room, declaring that some one of the accused had just caused them +to be sharply inserted into their persons. The pins are kept in a small +glass bottle, and are thin and rudely made; and as one looks at the +curious, homely little relics, it is hard to know whether to laugh at +the absurdly insignificant sight, or shudder at the thought of what +deadly harm they worked in the hands of the bewitched. So, while one is +hesitating, one gives the bottle back to the clerk, who locks it up +speedily, and at the next instant is absorbed in the drawing up of some +document; leaving the intruder free to pursue his search for antiquities +elsewhere. But the monuments and remains of the past are nowhere large +enough, in our American towns, to furnish the pilgrim a complete shelter +and make an atmosphere of their own. The old Curwin Mansion, or "Witch +House," to be sure, with its jutting upper story, and its dark and grimy +room where witch-trials are rumored to have been held, is a solid scrap +of antique gloom; but an ephemeral druggist's shop has been fastened on +to a corner of the old building, and clings there like a wasp's +nest,--as subversive, too, of quiet contemplation. The descendants of +the first settlers have with pious care preserved the remains of the +First Church of Salem, and the plain little temple may still be seen, +though hidden away in the rear of the solid, brick-built Essex +Institute. Yet, after all, it is only the skeleton of the thing, the +original framework set into a modern covering for protection,--the whole +church being about as large as a small drawing-room only. Into this +little space a few dumb and shrinking witnesses of the past have been +huddled: the old communion-table, two ancient harpsichords, a single +pew-door, a wooden samp-mortar, and a huge, half-ruinous loom; and some +engraved portraits of ancient ministers hang upon the walls. When I +visited the place, a party of young men and women were there, who +hopelessly scattered any slight dust of revery that might have settled +on me from the ancient beams, and sent the ghosts fleeing before their +light laughter. The young women fingered the old harpsichords, and +incontinently thrummed upon them; and one cried, "Play a waltz!" She was +a pretty creature; and, as her gay tone mingled with the rattle of +protesting strings in the worn-out instrument, one might easily have +divined how dire a fate would have been hers, in the days when men not +only believed in bewitchment, but made it punishable. Then a young man +who had clung for guidance amid her spells to the little printed +pamphlet that describes the church, read aloud from its pages, +seriously: "'Nowhere else in this land may one find so ancient and +worshipful a shrine. Within these walls, silent with the remembered +presence of Endicott, Skelton, Higginson, Roger Williams, and their +grave compeers, the very day seems haunted, and the sunshine falls but +soberly in.'" + +"O don't!" besought the siren, again. "We're not in a solemn state." + +And, whether it was the spell of her voice or not, I confess the +sunshine did not seem to me either haunted or sober. + +Thus, all through Salem, you encounter a perverse fate which will not +let you be alone with the elusive spirit of the past. Yet, on +reflection, why should it? This perverse fate is simply the life of +to-day, which has certainly an equal right to the soil with that of our +dreams and memories. And before long the conflict of past and present +thus occasioned leads to a discovery. + +In the first place, it transpires that the atmosphere is more favorable +than at first appears for backward-reaching revery. The town holds its +history in reverence, and a good many slight traces of antiquity, with +the quiet respect maintained for them in the minds of the inhabitants, +finally make a strong cumulative attack on the imagination. The very +meagreness and minuteness of the physical witnesses to a former +condition of things cease to discourage, and actually become an +incitement more effective than bulkier relics might impart. The delicacy +of suggestion lends a zest to your dream; and the sober streets open out +before you into vistas of austere reminiscence. The first night that I +passed in Salem, I heard a church-bell ringing loudly, and asked what it +was. It was the nine-o'clock bell; and it had been appointed to ring +thus every night, a hundred years ago or more. How it reverberated +through my mind, till every brain-cell seemed like the empty chamber of +a vanished year! Then, in the room where I slept, there was rich and +ponderous furniture of the fashion of eld; the bed was draped and +canopied with hangings that seemed full of spells and dreamery; and +there was a mirror, tall, and swung between stately mahogany posts +spreading their feet out on the floor, which recalled that fancy of +Hawthorne's, in the tale of "Old Esther Dudley," [Footnote: See also +American Note-Books, Vol. I.; and the first chapter of The House of the +Seven Gables.] about perished dames and grandees made to sweep in +procession through "the inner world" of a glass. Such small matters as +these engage the fancy, and lead it back through a systematic review of +local history with unlooked-for nimbleness. Gradually the mind gets to +roving among scenes imaged as if by memory, and bearing some strangely +intimate relation to the actual scenes before one. The drift of clouds, +the sifting of sudden light from the sky, acquire the import of historic +changes of adversity and prosperity. The spires of Salem, seen one day +through a semi-shrouding rain, appeared to loom up through the mist of +centuries; and the real antiquity of sunlight shone out upon me, at +other times, with cunning quietude, from the weather-worn wood of old, +unpainted houses. Every hour was full of yesterdays. Something of +primitive strangeness and adventure seemed to settle into my mood, and +the air teemed with anticipation of a startling event; as if the deeds +of the past were continually on the eve of returning. With all this, +too, a certain gray shadow of unreality stole over everything. + +Then one becomes aware that this frame of mind, produced by actual +contact with Salem, is subtly akin to the mood from which so many of +Hawthorne's visions were projected. A flickering semblance, perhaps, of +what to him must have been a constant though subdued and dreamy flame +summoning him to potent incantation over the abyss of time; but from +this it was easy to conceive it deepened and intensified in him a +hundred-fold. Moreover, in his youth and growing-time, the influence +itself was stronger, the suggestive aspect of the town more salient. If +you read even now, on the ground itself, the story of the settlement and +the first century's life of Salem and the surrounding places, a delicate +suffusion of the marvellous will insensibly steal over the severe facts +of the record, giving them a half-legendary color. This arises partly +from the imaginative and symbolic way of looking at things of the +founders themselves. + +John White, the English Puritan divine, who, with the "Dorchester +Adventurers," established the first colony at Cape Ann, was moved to +this by the wish to establish in Massachusetts Bay a resting-place for +the fishermen who came over from Dorchester in England, so that they +might be kept under religious influences. This was the origin of Salem; +for the emigrants moved, three years later, to this spot, then called +Naumkeag. In the Indian name they afterward found a proof, as they +supposed, that the Indians were an offshoot of the Jews, because it +"proves to be perfect Hebrew, being called Nahum Keike; by +interpretation, the bosom of consolation." Later, they named it Salem, +"for the peace," as Cotton Mather says, "which they had and hoped in +it"; and when Hugh Peters on one occasion preached at Great Pond, now +Wenham, he took as his text, "At Enon, near to Salim, because there was +much water there." This playing with names is a mere surface indication +of the ever-present scriptural analogy which these men were constantly +tracing in all their acts. Cut off by their intellectual asceticism from +any exertion of the imagination in literature, and denying themselves +all that side of life which at once develops and rhythmically restrains +the sense of earthly beauty, they compensated themselves by running +parallels between their own mission and that of the apostles,--a +likeness which was interchangeable at pleasure with the fancied +resemblance of their condition to that of the Israelites. When one +considers the remoteness of the field from their native shores, the +enormous energy needful to collect the proper elements for a population, +and to provide artificers with the means of work; the almost impassable +wildness of the woods; the repeated leagues of hostile Indians; the +depletions by sickness; and the internal dissensions with which they had +to struggle,--one cannot wonder that they invested their own unsurpassed +fortitude, and their genius for government and war, with the quality of +a special Providence. But their faith was inwoven in the most singular +way with a treacherous strand of credulity and superstition. Sometimes +one is impressed with a sense that the prodigious force by which they +subdued the knotty and forest-fettered land, and overcame so many other +more dangerous difficulties, was the ecstasy of men made morbidly strong +by excessive gloom and indifference to the present life. "When we are in +our graves," wrote Higginson, "it will be all one whether we have lived +in plenty or penury, whether we have died in a bed of downe or lockes of +straw." And Hawthorne speaks of the Puritan temperament as +"accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so +little." Yet, though they were not, as Winthrop says, "of those that +dreame of perfection in this world," they surely had vast hopes at +heart, and the fire of repressed imagination played around them and +before them as a vital and guiding gleam, of untold value to them, and +using a mysterious power in their affairs. They were something morbid in +their imaginings, but that this morbid habit was a chief source of their +power is a mistaken theory. It is true that their errors of imagination +were so closely knit up with real insight, that they could not +themselves distinguish between the two. Their religious faith, their +outlook into another life, though tinged by unhealthy terrorism, was a +solid, energetic act of imagination; but when it had to deal with +intricate tangles of mind and heart, it became credulity. That lurking +unhealthiness spread from the centre, and soon overcame their judgment +entirely. The bodeful glare of the witchcraft delusion makes this +fearfully clear. Mr. Upham, in his "Salem Witchcraft,"--one of the most +vigorous, true, and thorough of American histories, without which no one +can possess himself of the subject it treats,--has shown conclusively +the admirable character of the community in which that delusion broke +out, its energy, common-sense, and varied activity; but he points out +for us also the perilous state of the Puritan imagination in a matter +where religion, physiology, and affairs touched each other so closely as +in the witchcraft episode. The persecution at Salem did not come from +such deep degeneration as has been assumed for its source, and it was +not at the time at all a result of uncommon bigotry. In the persecution +in England in 1645-46, Matthew Hopkins, the "witch-finder-general," +procured the death, "in one year and in one county, of more than three +times as many as suffered in Salem during the whole delusion"; several +persons were tried by water ordeal, and drowned, in Suffolk, Essex, and +Cambridgeshire, at the same time with the Salem executions; and capital +punishments took place there some years after the end of the trouble +here. It is well known, also, that persons were put to death for +witchcraft in two other American colonies. The excess in Salem was +heightened by a well-planned imposture, but found quick sustenance +because "the imagination, called necessarily into extraordinary action +in the absence of scientific certainty, was ... exercised in vain +attempts to discover, unassisted by observation and experiment, the +elements and first principles of nature," [Footnote: Upham, I. 382] and +"had reached a monstrous growth," nourished by a copious literature of +magic and demonology, and by the opinions of the most eminent and humane +preachers and poets. + +The imagination which makes beauty out of evil, and that which +accumulates from it the utmost intensity of terror, are well exemplified +in Milton and Bunyan. Doubtless Milton's richly cultured faith, clothed +in lustrous language as in princely silks that overhang his chain-mail +of ample learning and argument, was as intense as the unlettered belief +of Bunyan; and perhaps he shared the prevalent opinions about +witchcraft; yet when he touches upon the superstitious element, the +material used is so transfused with the pictorial and poetic quality +which Milton has distilled from the common belief, and then poured into +this _image_ of the common belief, that I am not sure he cared for +any other quality in it. + + "Nor uglier follow the night-hag, when, call'd + In secret, riding through the air she comes, + Lured by the smell of infant blood, to dance + With Lapland witches, while the laboring moon + Ellipses at their charms." + +_Paradise Lost_, II. 662. + +Again, in Comus:-- + + "Some say, no evil thing that walks by night, + Blue meagre hag, or stubborn, unlaid ghost + That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, + No goblin, or swart faery of the mine, + Hath hurtful power o'er true virginity." + +How near these passages come to Shakespere, where he touches the same +string! And is it not clear that both poets exulted so in the +_beauty_ born among dark, earthy depths of fear, that they would +have rejected any and every horror which failed to contribute something +to the beautiful? Indeed, it may easily be that such high spirits accept +awful traditions and cruel theologies, merely because they possess a +transmuting touch which gives these things a secret and relative value +not intrinsically theirs; because they find here something to satisfy an +inward demand for immense expansions of thought, a desire for all sorts +of proportioned and balanced extremes. This is no superficial +suggestion, though it may seem so. But in such cases it is not the +positive horror and its direct effect which attract the poet: a deeper +symbolism and an effect both aesthetic and moral recommend the element +to him. With Milton, however, there follows a curious result. He +produces his manufactured myth of Sin and Death and his ludicrous Limbo +of Vanity with a gravity and earnestness as convincing as those which +urge home any part of his theme; yet we are aware that he is only making +poetic pretence of belief; so that a certain distrust of his sincerity +throughout creeps in, as we read. How much, we ask, is allegory in the +poet's own estimation, and how much real belief? Now in Bunyan there is +nothing of this doubt. Though the author declares his narrative to be +the relation of a dream, the figment becomes absolute fact to us; and +the homely realism of Giant Despair gives him a firmer hold upon me as +an actual existence, than all the splendid characterization of Milton's +Beelzebub can gain. Even Apollyon is more real. Milton assumes the +historic air of the epic poet, Bunyan admits that he is giving an +allegory; yet of the two the humble recorder of Christian's progress +seems the more worthy of credit. Something of this effect is doubtless +due to art: the "Pilgrim's Progress" is more adequately couched in a +single and consistent strain than the "Paradise Lost." Milton, by +implying veracity and then vaporing off into allegory, challenges +dispute; but Bunyan, in humbly confessing himself a dreamer, disarms his +reader and traps him into entire assent. Certainly Bunyan was not the +greater artist: that supposition will not even bear a moment's +contemplation; but, as it happened, his weakness was his strength. He +had but one chance. His work would have been nothing without allegory, +and the simple device of the dream--which is the refuge of a man +unskilled in composition, who feels that his figures cannot quite stand +as self-sufficient entities--happens to be as valuable to him as it was +necessary; for the plea of unreality brings out, in the strong light of +surprise, a contrast between the sincere substance of the story and its +assumed insubstantiality. Milton had many chances, many resources of +power to rely on; but by grasping boldly at the effect of authenticity +he loses that one among the several prizes within his reach. I do not +know that I am right, but all this seems to me to argue a certain +dividing and weakening influence exerted by the imagination which uses +religious or superstitious dread for the purposes of beauty; while that +which discourses confidently of the passage from this to another life, +with all the several stages clearly marked, and floods the whole scene +with a vivid and inartificial light from "the powers and terrors of what +is yet unseen," affects the mind with every atom of energy economized +and concentred. + +Leaving the literary question, we may bring this conclusion to bear upon +the Puritans and Salem, as their history affected Hawthorne. I have said +that a gradual suffusion of the marvellous overspreads the comparatively +arid annals of the town, if one reviews them amid the proper influences; +and I have touched upon the two phases of imagination which, playing +over the facts, give them this atmosphere. Now if what I guess from the +contrast between Milton and Bunyan be true, the lower kind of +imagination--that is, imagination deformed to credulity--would be likely +to be the more impressive. This uncanny quality of superstition, then, +is the one which insensibly exudes from the pages of New England's and +perhaps especially of Salem's colonial history, as Hawthorne turns them. +This is the dank effluence that, mingling with the sweeter and freer air +of his own reveries, has made so many people shudder on entering the +great romancer's shadowy but serene domain. + +And just here it is advisable to triangulate our ground, by bringing +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wide +apart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union in +this modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the +rays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches the +heavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each of +these Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no less +individual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand on +Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head of +allegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so much +of mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as was +inseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while in +Milton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact +balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhaps +outweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory +is found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes +to light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that added +such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special cases +the allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's +work; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbal +style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in the +very instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held to +the illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most +absolutely to the jewelled truth it holds,--in these very causes, I say, +the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown by +an unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It is +here that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But more +commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and the +aesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems to +be a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and +centrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again, +though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic the +tendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other. +In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement and +proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins. +However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very fact +of his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner he +chose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with the +want of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We may +say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written +such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the +"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him +something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which +Milton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive +truths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the +temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completer +harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence of +Milton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan +singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in +singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of +a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most +masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still +they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson +Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime +and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise +dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for +any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons +individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of +traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being, +and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man +or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go +round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital, +though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are +moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental +mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or +Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while +maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this +bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings +us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between +widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters +the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These +characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those +of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and +elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied +moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and +made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as +we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius, +Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled +strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill +them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute +intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground +connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the +relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the +chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's +resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably +modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton, +combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion +for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into +the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a +modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to +Hawthorne. + +Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we +have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in +this compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with the +trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally +breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the +predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne +their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its +sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over +the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole +legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with +many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth +while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this +enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way +for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with +some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes +to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old +houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the +passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable +treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and +retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they +are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords. +One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad +about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger +of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter +strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the +light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character +of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but +these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to +the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of +mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the +occupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in +our way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible that +in a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there should +be a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differently +circumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as well +as its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, which +perhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source of +continuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable for +strong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, no +less than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become a +pronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it is +fecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to +their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the +descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the +early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and +depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily +pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether +from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me +remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and +die within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told of +persons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inherited +insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or +three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust +with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped +idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that +seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy +man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a +window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the +half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to +him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other +places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a +preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood +might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt +to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I +do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental +derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town, +having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in +sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the +privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had +compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has +reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House +of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance, +takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance +that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to +meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a +proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine +outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself +to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has +called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and +home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder +individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with +almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon, +and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types which +inevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place. +Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, and +the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in the +romance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man, +urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham's +careful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedly +mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of +accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a +characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it +fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible +remains of the past. + +It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if not +showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks and +crannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his native +place in "The House of the Seven Gables," that the name of Thomas Maule +(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his death +by Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of a +sympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "Truth +Held Forth," published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which, +"The Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. He +seems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogether +in comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for saying +that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "the +doctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth," which contained +severe reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers, +was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some time +Hawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as a +plausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters his +prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood to +drink." + +Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of the +laboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with some +comments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes in +once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a different +strain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies +to a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the +cent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in their +carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business,--good +business." It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romance +should find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the +Salem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645. + +The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge cast +such a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, and +became the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had written +the "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It is +enough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that he +searched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestion +already connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, when +remonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know of +any person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; but +the circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showing +that many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of that +half-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short +tales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were very +likely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when he +chanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables," they revived +and took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them. +That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation in +the statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most +vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable +names for the _dramatis personae._ Balzac used to look long among +the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived +character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very +rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the +discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to +the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that +Hawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his +countrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of the +settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell, +and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. Roger +Chillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine and +controversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has been +transferred, in "Blithedale," from the reign of Edward VI. to the +experimental era of Brook Farm. + +It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he could +not glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans +and of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his genius +that called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not write +philanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographies +of benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles +Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It is +the same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certain +preachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a model +apostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which would +reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain men +have certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime to +proving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence of +other things which they have no time and no supreme command to do. +Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence that +they are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of +the merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progress +from their own time to the present; and they have found a worthy +monument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more +reason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces of +our early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth and +eternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze through +Hawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogy +is the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unless +Hawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would still +have had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, were +worked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has been +able to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the race +of historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be a +satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for +assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases +constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any +other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the +insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature. +Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures +of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things +seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time, +then vanish forever. + +But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be +practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had +no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and +penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which +had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the +surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and +strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely +represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously +sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling +in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of +his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of +which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic +purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat +this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements +of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But +there is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches of +assumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here and +there in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness, +which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment +about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing of +his own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actual +veneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earlier +generations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all too +tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and so +characteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that it +should not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too, +he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throws +himself into an understanding with those who look at New England and the +Puritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to +prepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by not +seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of the +reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which he +himself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this way +he really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality +and race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the most +pronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity. + +But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the +shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in +his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own +genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still +and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles +peopled. + +The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, +was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote: +This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as +Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have +substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of +the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (_A. N. B._, +October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with +Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, +1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, +and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of "the +ten men," in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to +the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, +before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is +easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined +Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to +Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would +remove hither, considering that "it was a public benefit that he should +become an inhabitant of that town." He removed accordingly, and, in +1638, he had additional lands granted to him "in consideration of his +many employments for towne and countrie." Some of these lands were +situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be +the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that +portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned +the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a +"company of adventurers" for trading among the French; and in the same +year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular +troop organized in Salem to "advance the military art." From 1636 to +1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and +Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an +assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town +a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over +twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his +famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these +various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and +in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his +efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of +twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this +year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these +"were found to have been perfidious," and were sent to Boston, to be +sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of +weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: "We catched an Indian +Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many +lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to +be his executioners." There was some reason for this severity, for in +crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The +captain adds: "We have no bread these three days." This early ancestor +was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who +reported concerning the "patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his +Majesty" of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as +inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their +government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years +later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, +and apologized for certain "unadvised" expressions; but the committee of +1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of +stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the +whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He +is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation +for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as "the most eloquent man of the +Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who +glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his +political integrity." And Johnson, in his "Wonder-Working Providence," +naming the chief props of the state, says: "Yet through the Lord's mercy +we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, +whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and +Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make +use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do +with any foreign government." It is instructive to find what ground he +took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a +forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally +gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one +supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided +in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that "he that +will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters +of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the +commonwealth." Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that +Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap +barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he +resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the +copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure +New England history. + +Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that +"Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, +Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a +magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the +government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall +preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a +law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most +abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be +as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could +be." His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See +"The Custom House," introductory to "The Scarlet Letter."] says that the +account of this incident "will last longer, it is to be feared, than any +record of his better deeds, though these were many." Yet it should not +be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England +persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a +previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden +death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So +that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir +Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible +for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant +bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of +religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of +persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, +which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, +order, and piety, and--not content with banishment--should lead its +subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the +commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to +repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death +should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the +dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, +like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too +heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes +for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to +more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after +five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility +of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various +justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was +oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only +because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of +his most exquisite tales, "The Gentle Boy." + +William Hathorne, however,--whatever his taste in persecution,--makes +his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: "_Imprimis_, I give my +soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore +my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom +this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the +estate God hath given me in this world.... I do dispose of as +followeth." Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, +followed by "all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in +Salem," to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his +"farm at Groton" to "Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can +come over and enjoy it." Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence +for the curious. _Gervase Helwyse_ is the name of the young man who +appears in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. +II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of +that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be +found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne +himself. He there tells of the marriage of one _Gervase Elwes_, son +of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died +before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott +Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into +the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. "He was the +famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him," says Mr. +Hawthorne, "through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a +Hawthorne." He then refers to William's devise, and says: "My ancestor +calls him his _nephew_." The will says, "gr. ch."; and I suppose +the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at +hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in +years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for +it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from +this life forever. + +His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of +the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in +1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, +from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the +deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of +Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some +years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in +1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He +attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew +off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow +developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in +1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the +fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had +presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, +bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. +Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought +before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. +"She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I +might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me +to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I +did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she +should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to +torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I +repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me +to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room." [Footnote: +Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that +this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his +wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said +to have fallen upon the justice's posterity. + +From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position +in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet +of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he +married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished +mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the +eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In +the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne +earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in +his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may +have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to +have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member +of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a +Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with +four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, +being one of the crew of an American privateer, "The Chase," captured by +the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. +C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, +originated the traditional career of the men of this family,--"a +gray-headed shipmaster in each generation," as the often-quoted passage +puts it, "retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy +of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast." But the most +eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, +and grandfather of the author. + +Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, +1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into +the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a +stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became +commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he +commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but +their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his +bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met +with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who +was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his +countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical +craft:-- + +BRIG "FAIR AMERICAN": DANIEL HATHORNE, COMMANDER. + + The twenty-second of August, before the close of day, + All hands on board our privateer, we got her under weigh. + We kept the Eastern shore on board for forty leagues or more, + When our departure took for sea, from the Isle of Monhegan + shore. + + Bold Hathorne was commander, a man of real worth, + Old England's cruel tyranny induced him to go forth; + She with relentless fury was plundering all the coast, + And thought because her strength was great, our glorious cause + was lost. + + Now farewell to America,--farewell our friends and wives, + We trust in Heaven's peculiar care, for to protect their lives, + To prosper our intended cruise upon the raging main, + And to preserve our dearest friends till we return again. + + The wind it being leading and bore us on our way, + As far unto the Eastward as the Gulf of Florida, + When we fell in with a British ship hound homeward from the main; + We gave her two bow-chasers, and she returned the same. + + We hauled up our courses and prepared for fight; + The contest held four glasses,[*] until the dusk of night; + Then having sprung our mainmast, and had so large a sea, + We dropped astern, and left our chase till the returning day. + +[* The time consumed in the emptying of a half-hour glass four times, +--two hours.] + + Next day we fished our mainmast, the ship still being nigh, + All hands was for engaging, our chance once more to try; + But wind and sea being boisterous, our cannon would not bear; + We thought it quite imprudent, and so we left her there. + + We cruised to the Eastward, near the coast of Portuigale: + In longitude of twenty-seven we saw a lofty sail. + We gave her chase, and soon perceived she was a British scow + Standing for fair America with troops for General Howe. + + Our captain did inspect her with glasses, and he said:-- + "My boys, she means to fight us, but be you not afraid; + All hands repair to quarters, see everything is clear; + We'll give him a broadside, my boys, as soon as she comes near." + + She was prepared with nettings, and her men were well secured, + And bore directly for us, and put us close on board, + When the cannons roared like thunder, and the muskets fired amain; + But soon we were alongside, and grappled to her chain. + + And now the scene is altered,--the cannon ceased to roar; + We fought with swords and boarding-pikes one glass and something more; + The British pride and glory no longer dared to stay, + But cut the Yankee grappling, and quickly bore away. + + Our case was not so desperate, as plainly might appear, + Yet sudden death did enter on board our privateer; + Mahany, Clew, and Clemmans, the valiant and the brave, + Fell glorious in the contest, and met a watery grave! + + Ten other men were wounded, among our warlike crew, + With them our noble captain, to whom all praise is due. + To him and all our officers let's give a hearty cheer! + Success to fair America and our good privateer! + +This ballad is as long as the cruise, and the rhythm of it seems to show +that the writer had not quite got his sea-legs on, in boarding the +poetic craft. Especially is he to be commiserated on that unhappy +necessity to which the length of the verse compels him, of keeping "the +Eastern shore on board for forty leagues," in the first stanza; but it +was due to its historic and associative value to give it entire. + +Perhaps, after all, it was a shrewd insight that caused the Hathornes to +take to the sea. Salem's greatest glory was destined for a term to lie +in that direction. Many of these old New England seaports have +magnificent recollections of a commercial grandeur hardly to be guessed +from their aspect to-day. Castine, Portsmouth, Wiscasset, Newburyport, +and the rest,--they controlled the carrying of vast regions, and +fortune's wheel whirled amid their wharves and warehouses with a merry +and reassuring sound. Each town had its special trade, and kept the +monopoly. Portsmouth and Newburyport ruled the trade with Martinique, +Guadaloupe, and Porto Rico, sending out fish and bringing back sugar; +Gloucester bargained with the West Indies for rum, and brought coffee +and dye-stuffs from Surinam; Marblehead had the Bilboa business; and +Salem, most opulent of all, usurped the Sumatra, African, East Indian, +Brazilian, and Cayenne commerce. By these new avenues over the ocean +many men brought home wealth that literally made princes of them, and +has left permanent traces in the solid and stately homes they built, +still crowded with precious heirlooms, as well as in the refinement +nurtured therein, and the thrifty yet generous character they gave to +the town. Among these successful merchants was Simon Forrester, who +married Nathaniel Hawthorne's great-aunt Rachel, and died in 1817, +leaving an immense property. Him Hawthorne speaks of in "The Custom +House"; alluding to "old King Derby, old Billy Gray, old Simon +Forrester, and many another magnate of his day; whose powdered head, +however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain-pile of wealth +began to dwindle." But Nathaniel's family neither helped to undermine +the heap, nor accumulated a rival one. However good the forecast that +his immediate ancestors had made, as to the quickest and broadest road +to wealth, they travelled long in the wake of success without ever +winning it, themselves. The malediction that fell on Justice Hathorne's +head might with some reason have been thought to still hang over his +race, as Hawthorne suggests that its "dreary and unprosperous condition +... for many a long year back" would show. Indeed, the tradition of such +a curse was kept alive in his family, and perhaps it had its share in +developing that sadness and reticence which seem to have belonged to his +father. + +It is plain from these circumstances how the idea of "The House of the +Seven Gables" evolved itself from the history of his own family, with +important differences. The person who is cursed, in the romance, uses a +special spite toward a single victim, in order to get hold of a property +which he bequeaths to his own heirs. Thus a double and treble wrong is +done, and the notion of a curse working upon successive generations is +subordinate to the conception of the injury which a man entails to his +own descendants by forcing on them a stately house founded upon a sin. +The parallel of the Hathorne decline in fortune is carried out; but it +must be observed that the peculiar separateness and shyness, which +doubtless came to be in some degree a trait of all the Hathornes, is +transferred in the book from the family of the accursed to that of +Maule, the utterer of the evil prophecy. "As for Matthew Maule's +posterity," says the romancer, "to all appearance they were a quiet, +honest, well-meaning race of people"; but "they were generally +poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful +diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea +as sailors before the mast"; and "so long as any of the race were to be +found, they had been marked out from other men--not strikingly, nor as +with a sharp line, but with an effect that was felt, rather than spoken +of--by an hereditary character of reserve. Their companions, or those +who endeavored to become such, grew conscious of a circle round about +the Maules, within the sanctity or the spell of which, in spite of an +exterior of sufficient frankness and good-fellowship, it was impossible +for any man to step." The points of resemblance here may be easily +distinguished. In the "American Note-Books" occurs an anecdote which +recalls the climax of the romance. It concerns Philip English, who had +been tried for witchcraft by John Hathorne, and became his bitter enemy. +On his death-bed, he consented to forgive him; "But if I get well," said +he, "I'll be damned if I forgive him!" One of English's daughters (he +had no sons) afterward married a son of John Hathorne. How masterly is +the touch of the artist's crayon in this imaginative creation, based +upon the mental and moral anatomy of actual beings! It is a delicate +study of the true creative art to follow out this romantic shape, and +contrast it with the real creatures and incidents to which it has a sort +of likeness. With perfect choice, the artist selects, probably not +consciously, but through association, whatever he likes from the real, +and deviates from it precisely where he feels this to be fitting; adds a +trait here, and transfers another there; and thus completes something +having a unity and inspiration of its own, neither a simple reproduction +nor an unmixed invention, the most subtile and harmonious product of the +creative power. It is in this way that "The House of the Seven Gables" +comes to be not merely fancifully a romance typical of Salem, but in the +most essentially true way representative of it. Surely no one could have +better right to thus embody the characteristics of the town than +Hawthorne, whose early ancestors had helped to magnify it and defend it, +and whose nearer progenitors had in their fallen fortunes almost +foreshadowed the mercantile decline of the long-lived capital. Surely no +one can be less open to criticism for illustrating various phases of his +townsmen's character and exposing in this book, as elsewhere, though +always mildly, the gloomier traits of the founders, than this deep-eyed +and gentle man, whose forefathers notably possessed "all the Puritanic +traits, both good and evil," and who uses what is as much to the +disadvantage of his own blood as to that of others, with such absolute, +admirable impartiality. + +[Illustration] + + + + +III. + + +BOYHOOD.--COLLEGE DAYS.--FANSHAWE. + +1804-1828. + +With such antecedents behind him, and such associations awaiting him, +Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, July 4, 1804. + +His father, the captain of a trading-vessel, was one of three sons of +the privateersman Daniel, and was born in 1776; so that both father and +son, it happens, are associated by time of birth with the year and the +day that American independence has made honorable and immemorial. The +elder Nathaniel wore his surname in one of several fashions that his +predecessors had provided,--for they had some eight different ways of +writing, though presumably but one of pronouncing it,--and called +himself Hathorne. It was not long after the birth of his only boy, +second of his three children, however, that he left the name to this +male successor, with whom it underwent a restoration to the more +picturesque and flowered form of Hawthorne. Nathaniel, the son of +Daniel, died in Surinam, in the spring of 1808, of a fever, it is +thought, and left his widow stricken with a lifelong grief, his family +suddenly overwhelmed with sorrow and solitude. I think I cannot convey +the sadness of this more fully than by simply saying it. Yet sombre as +the event is, it seems a fit overture to the opening life of this spirit +so nobly sad whom we are about to study. The tradition seems to have +become established that Captain Nathaniel was inclined to melancholy, +and very reticent; also, that though he was an admirable shipmaster, he +had a vigorous appetite for reading, and carried many books with him on +his long voyages. Those who know the inheritances that come with the +Puritan blood will easily understand the sort of dark, underlying +deposit of unutterable sadness that often reminds such persons of their +austere ancestry; but, in addition to this, the Hathornes had now firmly +imbibed the belief that their family was under a retributive ban for its +share in the awful severities of the Quaker and the witchcraft periods. +It was not to them the symbolic and picturesque thing that it is to us, +but a real overhanging, intermittent oppressiveness, that must often +have struck across their actions in a chilling and disastrous way. Their +ingrained reticence was in itself, when contrasted with Major Hathorne's +fame in oratory, a sort of corroboration of the idea that fate was +making reprisals upon them. The captain's children felt this; and the +son, when grown to manhood, was said to greatly resemble his father in +appearance, as well. Of the Endicotts, who also figured largely in the +maritime history of Salem, it is told that in the West Indies the name +grew so familiar as being that of the captain of a vessel, that it +became generic; and when a new ship arrived, the natives would ask, "Who +is the Endicott?" Very likely the Hathornes had as fixed a fame in the +ports where they traded. At all events, some forty years after the +captain's death at Surinam, a sailor one day stopped Mr. Surveyor +Hawthorne on the steps of the Salem Custom House, and asked him if he +had not once a relative--an uncle or a father--who died in Surinam at +the date given above. He had recognized him by his likeness to the +father, of whom Nathaniel probably had no memory at all. + +But he inherited much from his mother, too. She has been described by a +gentleman who saw her in Maine, as very reserved, "a very pious woman, +and a very minute observer of religious festivals," of "feasts, fasts, +new moons, and Sabbaths," and perhaps a little inclined to superstition. +Such an influence as hers would inevitably foster in the son that strain +of reverence, and that especial purity and holiness of thought, which +pervade all that he has written. Those who knew her have said also, that +the luminous, gray, magnificent eyes that so impressed people in +Hawthorne were like hers. She had been Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, +the daughter of Richard Manning, whose ancestors came to New England +about 1680, and sister of Richard and of Robert Manning, a well-known +pomologist of the same place. After the death of her husband, this +brother Robert came to her assistance, Captain Hathorne having left but +little property: he was only thirty-two when he died. + +Nathaniel had been born in a solid, old-fashioned little house on Union +Street, which very appropriately faced the old shipyard of the town in +1760; and it appears that in the year before his birth, the Custom House +of that time had been removed to a spot "opposite the long brick +building owned by W. S. Gray, and Benjamin H. Hathorne,"--as if the +future Surveyor's association with the revenue were already drawing +nearer to him. The widow now moved with her little family to the house +of her father, in Herbert Street, the next one eastward from Union. The +land belonging to this ran through to Union Street, adjoining the house +they had left; and from his top-floor study here, in later years, +Hawthorne could look down on the less lofty roof under which he was +born. The Herbert Street house, however, was spoken of as being on Union +Street, and it is that one which is meant in a passage of the "American +Note-Books" (October 25, 1838), which says, "In this dismal chamber FAME +was won," as likewise in the longer revery in the same volume, dated +October 4, 1840. + +"Certainly," the sister of Hawthorne writes to me of him, "no man ever +needed less a formal biography." But the earlier portion of his life, of +which so little record has been made public, must needs bear so +interesting a relation to his later career, that I shall examine it with +as much care as I may. + +Very few details of his early boyhood have been preserved; but these go +to show that his individuality soon appeared. "He was a pleasant child, +quite handsome, with golden curls," is almost the first news we have of +him; but his mastering sense of beauty soon made itself known. While +quite a little fellow, he is reported to have said of a woman who was +trying to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a +loud voice!" When still a very young school-boy, he was fond of taking +long walks entirely by himself; was seldom or never known to have a +companion; and in especial, haunted Legg's Hill, a place some miles from +his home. The impression of his mother's loss and loneliness must have +taken deep and irremovable hold upon his heart; the wide, bleak, +uncomprehended fact that his father would never return, that he should +never see him, seems to have sunk into his childish reveries like a +cabalistic spell, turning thought and feeling and imagination toward +mournful and mysterious things. Before he had passed from his mother's +care to that of the schoolmaster, it is known that he would break out +from the midst of childish broodings, and exclaim, "There, mother! I is +going away to sea, some time"; then, with an ominous shaking of the +head, "and I'll never come back again!" The same refrain lurked in his +mind when, a little older, he would tell his sisters fantastic tales, +and give them imaginary accounts of long journeys, which he should take +in future, in the course of which he flew at will through the air; on +these occasions he always ended with the same hopeless prophecy of his +failing to return. No doubt, also, there was a little spice of boyish +mischief in this; and something of the fictionist, for it enabled him to +make a strong impression on his audience. He brought out the +_dénouement_ in such a way as to seem--so one of those who heard +him has written--to enjoin upon them "the advice to value him the more +while he stayed with" them. This choice of the lugubrious, however, +seems to have been native to him; for almost before he could speak +distinctly he is reported to have caught up certain lines of "Richard +III." which he had heard read; and his favorite among them, always +declaimed on the most unexpected occasions and in his loudest tone, +was,-- + + "Stand back, my Lord, and let the coffin pass!" + +Though he has nowhere made allusion to the distant and sudden death of +his father, Hawthorne has mentioned an uncle lost at sea, in the +"English Notes," [Footnote: June 30, 1854]--a startling passage. "If it +is not known how and when a man dies," he says "it makes a ghost of him +for many years thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an +example; also the Emperor Frederic [Barbarossa] and other famous men who +were thought to be alive ages after their disappearance. So with private +individuals. I had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about the +beginning of the War of 1812, and has never returned to this hour. But +as long as his mother lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up +the hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories of persons +whose descriptions answered to his. Some people actually affirmed that +they had seen him in various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her +belief was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even to this day I +never see his name, which is no very uncommon one, without thinking that +this may be the lost uncle." At the time of that loss Hawthorne was but +eight years old; he wrote this memorandum at fifty; and all that time +the early impression had remained intact, and the old semi-hallucination +about the uncle's being still alive hung about his mind through forty +years. When we change the case, and replace the uncle in whom he had no +very distinct interest with the father whose decease had so overclouded +his mother's life, and thwarted the deep yearnings of his own young +heart, we may begin to guess the depth and persistence of the emotions +which must have been awakened in him by this awful silence and absence +of death, so early thrown across the track of his childish life. I +conceive those lonely school-boy walks, overblown by shadow-freighting +murmurs of the pine and accompanied by the far-off, muffled roll of the +sea, to have been full of questionings too deep for words, too sacred +for other companionship than that of uninquisitive Nature;--questionings +not even shaped and articulated to his own inner sense. + +Yet, whatever half-created, formless world of profound and tender +speculations and sad reflections the boy was moulding within himself, +this did not master him. The seed, as time went on, came to miraculous +issue; but as yet the boy remained, healthily and for the most part +happily, a boy still. A lady who, as a child, lived in a house which +looked upon the garden of the widow's new abiding-place, used to see him +at play there with his sisters, a graceful but sturdy little figure; and +a little incident of his school-days, at the same time that it shows how +soon he began to take a philosophical view of things, gives a hint of +his physical powers. He was put to study under Dr. J. E. Worcester, the +famous lexicographer, (who, on graduating at Yale, in 1811, had come to +Salem and taken a school there for a few years;) and it is told of him +at this time, on the best authority, that he frequently came home with +accounts of having fought with a comrade named John Knights. + +"But why do you fight with him so often?" asked one of his sisters. + +"I can't help it," he said. "John Knights is a boy of very quarrelsome +disposition." + +Something in the judicial, reproving tone of the reply seems to hint +that Hawthorne had taken the measure of his rival, physically as well as +mentally, and had found himself more than a match for the poor fellow. +All that is known of his bodily strength in maturer boyhood and at +college weighs on this side; and Horatio Bridge, [Footnote: See +Prefatory Note to The Snow Image.] his classmate and most intimate +friend at Bowdoin College, tells me that, though remarkably +calm-tempered, any suspicion of disrespect roused him into readiness to +give the sort of punishment that his athletic frame warranted. + +But one of the most powerful influences acting on this healthy, +unsuspected, un-self-suspecting genius must have been that of books. The +house in Herbert Street was well provided with them, and he was allowed +to make free choice. His selection was seldom, if ever, questioned; and +this was well, for he thus drew to himself the mysterious aliment on +which his genius throve. Shakespere, Milton, Pope, and Thomson are +mentioned among the first authors with whom he made acquaintance on +first beginning to read; and "The Castle of Indolence" seems to have +been one of his favorite poems while a boy. He is also known to have +read, before fourteen, more or less of Rousseau's works, and to have +gone through, with great diligence, the whole of "The Newgate Calendar," +which latter selection excited a good deal of comment among his family +and relatives, but no decisive opposition. A remark of his has come down +from that time, that he cared "very little for the history of the world +before the fourteenth century"; and he had a judicious shyness of what +was considered useful reading. Of the four poets there is of course but +little trace in his works; Rousseau, with his love of nature and +impressive abundance of emotion, seems to stand more directly related to +the future author's development, and "The Newgate Calendar" must have +supplied him with the most weighty suggestions for those deep ponderings +on sin and crime which almost from the first tinged the pellucid current +of his imagination. There is another book, however, early and familiarly +known to him, which indisputably affected the bent of his genius in an +important degree. This is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." + +Being a healthy boy, with strong out-of-door instincts planted in him by +inheritance from his seafaring 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 his foot +is no better, and that a new doctor is to be sent for. "May be," 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." +This weighing of possibilities, and this sense of the uncertain future, +already quaintly show the disposition of the man he is to grow into; +though the writing is as characterless as extreme youth, exaggerated +distinctness, and copy-books could make it. The little invalid has not +yet quite succumbed, however, for the same letter details that he has +hopped out into the street once since his lameness began, and been "out +in the office and had four cakes." 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 (at +whose sessions it may have been that Hawthorne read Enfield's "Speaker," +the name of which had "a classical sound in his ears," long, long +afterward, when he saw the author's tombstone in Liverpool), came to +hear him his lessons at home. The good pedagogue does not figure after +this in Hawthorne's boyish 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 +stockings for the cat who reigned in the household at the time. When +tired of reading, he diverted himself with constructing houses of books +for the same feline pet, building walls for her to leap, and perhaps +erecting triumphal arches for her to pass under. In this period he must +have taken a considerable range in literature, for his age; and one +would almost say that Nature, seeing so rare a spirit in a sound body +that kept him sporting and away from reading, had devised a seemingly +harsh plan of luring him into his proper element. + +It was more likely after this episode than before, that Bunyan took that +hold upon him so fraught with consequences. He went every Sunday to his +grandmother Hathorne's, and every Sunday he would lay hands upon the +book; then, going to a particular three-cornered chair in a particular +corner of the room, "he would read it by the hour, without once +speaking." I have already suggested the relations of the three minds, +Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne. The more obvious effect of this reading +is the allegorical turn which it gave the boy's thoughts, manifest in +many of his shorter productions while a young man; the most curious and +complete issue being that of "The Celestial Railroad," in the "Mosses," +where Christian's pilgrimage is so deftly parodied in a railroad route +to the heavenly goal. Full of keen satire, it does not, as it might at +first seem, tend to diminish Bunyan's dignity, but inspires one with a +novel sense of it, as one is made to gradually pierce the shams of +certain modern cant. But a more profound consequence was the direction +of Hawthorne's expanding thought toward sin and its various and occult +manifestations. Imagine the impression upon a mind so fine, so +exquisitely responsive, and so well prepared for grave revery as +Hawthorne's, which a passage like the following would make. In his +discourse with Talkative, Faithful says: "A man may cry out against sin, +of policy; but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy. I +have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, who can abide it well +enough in the heart, house, and conversation." + +Here is almost the motive and the moral of "The Scarlet Letter." But +Hawthorne refined upon it unspeakably, and probed many fathoms deeper, +when he perceived that there might be motives far more complex than that +of policy, a condition much more subtly counterfeiting the mien of +goodness and spirituality. Talkative replies, "You lie at a catch, I +perceive,"--meaning that he is sophistical. "No, not I," says Faithful; +"I am only for setting things right." Did not this desire of setting +things right stir ever afterward in Hawthorne's consciousness? It is not +a little singular to trace in Bunyan two or three much more direct links +with some of Hawthorne's work. When Christiana at the Palace Beautiful +is shown one of the apples that Eve ate of, and Jacob's ladder with some +angels ascending upon it, it incites one to turn to that marvellously +complete "Virtuoso's Collection," [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, +Vol. II.] where Hawthorne has preserved Shelley's skylark and the steed +Rosinante, with Hebe's cup and many another impalpable marvel, in the +warden-ship of the Wandering Jew. So, too, when we read Great-Heart's +analysis of Mr. Fearing, this expression, "He had, I think, a Slough of +Despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him," we +can detect the root of symbolical conceptions like that of "The Bosom +Serpent." [Footnote: Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] I cannot +refrain from copying here some passages from this same portion which +recall in an exceptional way some of the traits of Hawthorne, enough, at +least, to have given them a partially prophetic power over his +character. Mr. Great-Heart says of Mr. Fearing: "He desired much to be +alone; yet he always loved good talk, and often would get behind the +screen to hear it." (So Hawthorne screened himself behind his genial +reserve.) "He also loved much to see ancient things, and to be pondering +them in his mind." What follows is not so strictly analogous throughout. +Mr. Honest asks Great-Heart why so good a man as Fearing "should be all +his days so much in the dark." And he answers, "There are two sorts of +reasons for it. One is, the wise God will have it so: some must pipe, +and some must weep.... And for my part, I care not at all for that +profession which begins not in heaviness of mind. The first string that +the musician usually touches is the bass, when he intends to put all in +tune. God also plays upon this string first, when he sets the soul in +tune for himself. Only there was the imperfection of Mr. Fearing; he +could play upon no other music but this, till towards his latter end." +Let the reader by no means imagine a moral comparison between Hawthorne +and Bunyan's Mr. Fearing. The latter, as his creator says, "was a good +man, though much down in spirit"; and Hawthorne, eminent in uprightness, +was also overcast by a behest to look for the most part at the darker +phases of human thinking and feeling; yet there could not have been the +slightest real similarity between him and the excellent but weak-kneed +Mr. Fearing, whose life is made heavy by the doubt of his inheritance in +the next world. Still, though the causes differ, it could be said of +Hawthorne, as of Master Fearing, "Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, +he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell that were to him +a terror." I mean merely that Hawthorne may have found in this +character-sketch--Bunyan's most elaborate one, for the typical subject +of which he shows an evident fondness and leniency--something peculiarly +fascinating, which may not have been without its shaping influence for +him. But the intimate, affectionate, and lasting relation between +Bunyan's allegory and our romancer is something to be perfectly assured +of. The affinity at once suggests itself, and there are allusions in the +"Note-Books" and the works of Hawthorne which recall and sustain it. So +late as 1854, he notes that "an American would never understand the +passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going astray along a +by-path into the grounds of Giant Despair, from there being no stiles +and by-paths in our country." Rarely, too, as Hawthorne quotes from or +alludes to other authors, there is a reference to Bunyan in "The +Blithedale Romance," and several are found in "The Scarlet Letter": it +is in that romance that the most powerful suggestion of kinship between +the two imaginations occurs. After Mr. Dimmesdale's interview with +Hester, in the wood, he suffers the most freakish temptations to various +blasphemy on returning to the town: he meets a deacon, and desires to +utter evil suggestions concerning the communion-supper; then a pious and +exemplary old dame, fortunately deaf, into whose ear a mad impulse urges +him to whisper what then seemed to him an "unanswerable argument against +the immortality of the soul," and after muttering some incoherent words, +he sees "an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like +the _shine of the celestial city_ on her face." Then comes the most +frightful temptation of all, as he sees approaching him a maiden newly +won into his flock. "She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in +Paradise. The minister knew well that he himself was enshrined within +the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about +his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a +religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young +girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of +this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and +desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered to him to +condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of +evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit +betimes." Now, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, "poor Christian was +so confounded, that he did not know his own voice.... Just when he was +come over against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones +got behind him and stepped up softly to him, and, whisperingly, +suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had +proceeded from his own mind." I need not enlarge upon the similar drift +of these two extracts; still less mark the matured, detailed, and +vividly human and dramatic superiority of Hawthorne's use of the element +common to both. + +For other reading in early boyhood he had Spenser (it is said that the +first book which he bought with his own money was "The Faery Queen," for +which he kept a fondness all his life), Froissart's "Chronicles," and +Clarendon's "History of the Rebellion." The incident of Dr. Johnson's +penance in Uttoxeter Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he +has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it +in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly +impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared +it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this +time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not +be at a loss to find endless entertainment there. + +It was in November, 1813, that the accident at ball disabled him. In +June of the same year an event had taken place which must have entered +strongly into his heart, as into that of many another Salem boy. Young +Lawrence, of the American navy,--who had won honors for himself at +Tripoli and in the then prevailing war with Great Britain,--had just +been promoted, for gallant achievements off the coast of Brazil, to a +captaincy, and put in command of the frigate "Chesapeake," at Boston. A +British frigate, the "Shannon," had been cruising for some time in the +neighborhood, seeking an encounter with the "Chesapeake," and the +valiant Lawrence felt compelled to go out and meet her, though he had +only just assumed command, had had no time to discipline his crew (some +of whom were disaffected), and was without the proper complement of +commissioned officers. Americans know the result; how the "Chesapeake" +was shattered and taken in a fifteen minutes' fight off Marblehead, and +how Lawrence fell with a mortal wound, uttering those unforgotten words, +"Don't give up the ship." The battle was watched by crowds of people +from Salem, who swarmed upon the hillsides to get a glimpse of the +result. + +When the details at last reached the town, many days afterward, Captain +George Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax with +ten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his +lieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gave +itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martial +dignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannon +reverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast, +shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration over +them, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with that +spiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes at +hours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have +stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, and +imbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profound +love of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which +marked his whole maturity. + +I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathaniel +again lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. In +another brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all +these documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to find +anything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school a +little longer" before removing with his mother to the house which his +uncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant, +which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seeming +to show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency among +persons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to +establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in this +powerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular as +in intellectual development. + +It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family to +Raymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the +primitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning's +Folly." Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake, +and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is near +what has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by Robert +Manning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widow +married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's will +provided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood, +and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, the +community ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remained +untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of being +haunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more lively +aspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of the +Folly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyond +the open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, ranging +and rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distance +every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blue +of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland became +the nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one +twelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for college +preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, lies +less than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the same +county: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at +Raymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps even +deepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith of +women's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration as +this of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to +have heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remained +bereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With pathetic +energy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks, +sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, I +think this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may have +impregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of +mortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifying +the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to this +exquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus +true to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in a +sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set in +an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not how +to hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims of +convenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledge +of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or later +know how much it owes to such as you! + +More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres of +the heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and, +incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one of +the Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of the +sensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably the +fact," so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lost +companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other +hand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the +departed, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with a +Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect +example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief, +concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead," +[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which +I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned +and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope +and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women," +the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two +successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances +of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies +the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is +roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that the +report about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty without +the whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory +without losing the effect they make together. It is a complete +presentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence I +may remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inward +to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless +contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake, +had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as +his widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dwelt +there together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake! + +Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he had +not always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16, +1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his +uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the +trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on +Lymington mountains. 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 brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me +to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is, +to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is +otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother +says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been +very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great +deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne +reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking +man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake; +"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of +solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so +perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." 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 at will through the woods of Maine!... Everything is +beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The same +writer mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the +return from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his +quiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and never +touch the shore again." I have it from his sister that he used to +declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a +mariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and the +salt spray in his blood. + +Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missed +carrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we have +explained all the fostering influences and formative forces that +surround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the +inexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not find +the right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right and +left and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannot +wholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death before +it will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to get +into a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possible +from what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whom +perception and receptivity exist in that active state which we call +genius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether the +conditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it +must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry +behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had +remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit; +lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community +of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age; +yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes +they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in +his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of that +interior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment of +his outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance of +unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come +violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he +would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature +against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be +said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the +mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled +in any case. + +As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March +7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:-- + +"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L. +Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in +your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement, +but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my +lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the +morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A +minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a +career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. +"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at +the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was +again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest +days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will +come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note +that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a +large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I +append it. + +"I remain," he says, + "Your + Affectionate + and + Dutiful + son, + and + Most + Obedient + and + Most + Humble + Servant, + and + Most + Respectful + and + Most + Hearty + Well-wisher, + NATHANIEL HATHORNE." + +A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would +perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall +with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this +harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness +into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And +with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for +his pure young heart. + +In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the +possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law, +unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been +forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he +had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this +extract:-- + +"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 for me but to be an author. How +would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by +your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?" + +But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "Early +Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland +"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs +them; [Footnote: See Appendix I.] and it has been impossible, up to this +time, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons named +in them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cumberland +County, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence of +authorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the first +leaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as +reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the book +had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning, +"with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as +good words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of the +best means of his securing for mature years command of thought and +language"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, if +true, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He did +not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly been +there, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816. +So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, though +their mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they must +cover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisher +of the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with a +date. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems also +probable that the whole series was written before the author's college +days. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's +perceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course, +and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which he +must have seen at Raymond. + +"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the +mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know +about. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great +pond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that +flies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be +miserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not +yet seen one turn to defend himself. + +"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." + +Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably her +nephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance +which ripened into "The Gentle Boy." + +"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not long +ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'Long +Reds.' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he liked +them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,--one end is very +poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was +gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and +that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it +very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato +spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would +have been called witty." + +"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read, +the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes to +Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library. + +"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 wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go +down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs. +Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless +her for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are to +have a pump in the well, after this mishap. + +"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He was +in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the +half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a +second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have +supposed that he was drumming with twenty." + +"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday. +One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him down +near the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I +thought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so asked +Mr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, and +that will bring sixty-five cents,' was the answer. I ran and petitioned +mother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile that +she tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a great +spendthrift.' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (without +taking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the +butcher. + +"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter White +of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain +Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out +to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also 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. It is strange that this beautiful +body of water is called a 'Pond.' The geography tells of many in +Scotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes.' It is +not respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of +clear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of +goose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the +streams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and he +calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that Captain +Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr. +Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears and +wolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a grove +so fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. On +the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spotted +trout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, after +we got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. The +men said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the water +it would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking +hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line had +been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or have +been pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. I +am a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at the +Images, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. In +coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr. +White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without +finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat, +as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats +in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man +standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more +than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at +the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of +Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the +almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light. +If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to +see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the +hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good +Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made +the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before +sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely +moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to +fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure +that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I +was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that +with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy +charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went +to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother +with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr. +Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I +had found that out before. + +"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house, +that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning +Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long. +It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the +track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was +twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me +about the snakes. + +"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between +Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just +taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of the +trees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examining +closely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut off +the root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body; +saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he found +that there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake, +too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with the +axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears in +less than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and what +hunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably +true, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was here +with his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of the +Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday. + +"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two days ago, up in +Crooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swim +the faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him in +fun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit +his chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before his +friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says) +beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother this +morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercy +endureth forever.' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man just +married. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming +any more 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. + + * * * * * + +"Fishing from the bridge to-day, I caught an eel two thirds as long as +myself. Mr. Watkins tried to make me believe that he thought it a water +moccasin snake. Old Mr. Shane said that it was a 'young sea-sarpint +sure.' Mr. Ficket, the blacksmith, begged it to take home for its skin, +as he said for buskin-strings and flail-strings. So ends my day's +fishing. + + * * * * * + +"Went over to-day to see Watkins make bricks. I have always thought +there was some mystery about it, but I can make them myself. Why did the +Israelites complain so much at having to make bricks without straw? I +should not use straw if I was a brick-maker; besides, when they are +burned in the kiln, the straw will burn out and leave the bricks full of +holes. + + * * * * * + +"I can, from my chamber window, look across into Aunt Manning's garden, +this morning, and see little Betty Tarbox, flitting among the +rose-bushes, and in and out of the arbor, like a tiny witch. She will +never realize the calamity that came upon her brothers and sisters that +terrible night when her father and mother lay within a few rods of each +other, in the snow, freezing to death. I love the elf, because of her +loss; and still my aunt is much more to her than her own mother, in her +poverty, could have been." + + * * * * * + +This little girl was the child of some poor people of the neighborhood +who were frozen to death one March night, in 1819. In a letter to his +uncle Robert, March 24, 1819, Nathaniel says: "I suppose you have not +heard of the death of Mr. Tarbox and his wife, who were froze to death +last Wednesday. They were brought out from the Cape on Saturday, and +buried from Captain Dingley's on Sunday." This determines the time of +writing the last-quoted extract from the journal. + + * * * * * + +"This morning I saw at the grist-mill a solemn-faced old horse, hitched +to the trough. 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 to 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 him and the meal up the Ben Ham Hill, and home, and am +now so weak that I can hardly stand. O 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, for his master might come out and see what +I was about. 'Thank you,' said he, 'a luncheon of corn with the bits in +is much better than none. The worst of it is, I have to munch so slowly, +that master may come before I finish it, and thrash me for eating his +corn, and you for the kindness.' I sat down on a stone out of the wind, +and waited in trouble, for fear that the miller and the owner of the +corn would come and find out what I had done. At last the horse winked +and stuck out his upper 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 shut his eyes as if to take a nap. 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 if his +master whipped him much. He opened his eyes, and looking at me kindly, +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.' I asked him why he +did not kick up, and knock his tormentor out of the wagon. 'I did try +once,' said he, 'but am old and was weak, and could only get my heels +high enough to break the whiffletree, and besides lost my balance and +fell down flat. Master then jumped down, and getting a cudgel struck me +over the head, and I thought my troubles were over. This happened just +before Mr. Ben Ham's house, and I should have been finished and ready +for the crows, if he had not stepped out and told master not to strike +again, if he did he would shake his liver out. That saved my life, but I +was sorry, though Mr. Ham meant good.' 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 knew well enough what I said, for +I looked him in the eye and spoke horse language. At that moment the +brute that owned the horse came out of the store, and down the hill +towards us. I slipped behind a pile of slabs. The meal was put in the +wagon, the horse unhitched, the wagon mounted, the goad picked up and a +thrust made, but dobbin was in no hurry. Looking at the end of the +stick, the man bawled, 'What little devil has had my goad?' and then +began striking with all his strength; but his steed only walked, shaking +his head as he went across the bridge; and I thought I heard the ancient +Equus say as he went, 'Thrash as much as you please, for once you cannot +stab.' I went home a little uneasy, not feeling sure that the feeding +the man's corn to his horse was not stealing, and thinking that if the +miller found it out, he would have me taken down before Squire Longley. + + * * * * * + +"Polly Maxfield came riding to mill to-day on horseback. She rode as +gracefully as a Trooper. I wish with all my heart that I was as daring a +rider, or half so graceful. + + * * * * * + +"This morning walked down to the Pulpit Rock Hill, and climbed up into +the pulpit. It looks like a rough place to preach from, and does not +seem so much like a pulpit when one is in it, as when viewing it from +the road below. It is a wild place, and really a curiosity. I brought a +book and sat in the rocky recess, and read for nearly an hour. This is a +point on the road known to all teamsters. They have a string of names +for reference by which they tell each other where they met +fellow-teamsters and where their loads got stuck, and I have learned +them from those who stop for drinks at the store. One meets another near +our house, and says, 'Where did you meet Bill?' 'Just this side of +Small's Brook,' or 'At the top of Gray's Pinch,' 'At the Dry Mill-Pond,' +'Just the other side of Lemmy Jones's,' 'On the long causeway,' 'At +Jeems Gowen's,' 'Coming down the Pulpit Rock Hill,' 'Coming down Tarkill +Hill.' I have heard these answers till I have them by heart, without +having any idea where any of the places are, excepting the one I have +seen to-day. While on the bridge near the Pulpit, Mr. West, who lives +not far away, came along and asked where I had been. On my telling him, +he said that no money would hire him to go up to that pulpit; that the +Devil used to preach from it long and long ago; that on a time when +hundreds of them were listening to one of his sermons, a great chief +laughed in the Devil's face, upon which he stamped his foot, and the +ground to the southwest, where they were standing, sunk fifty feet, and +every Indian went down out of sight, leaving a swamp to this day. He +declared that he once stuck a pole in there, which went down easily +several feet, but then struck the skull-bone of an Indian, when +instantly all the hassocks and flags began to shake; he heard a yell as +from fifty overgrown Pequots; that he left the pole and ran for life. +Mr. West also said that no Indian had ever been known to go near that +swamp since, but that whenever one came that way, he turned out of the +road near the house of Mr. West, and went straight to Thomas Pond, +keeping to the eastward of Pulpit Rock, giving it a wide berth. Mr. West +talked as though he believed what he said. + + * * * * * + +"A pedler named Dominicus Jordan was to-day in Uncle Richard's store, +telling a ghost-story. I listened intently, but tried not to seem +interested. The story was of a house, the owner of which was suddenly +killed. Since his death the west garret-window cannot be kept closed; +though the shutters be hasped and nailed at night, they are invariably +found open the next morning, and no one can tell when or how the nails +were drawn. There is also on the farm an apple-tree, the fruit of which +the owner was particularly fond of, but since his death no one has been +able to get one of the apples. The tree hangs full nearly every year, +but whenever any individual tries to get one, stones come in all +directions as if from some secret infernal battery, or hidden catapult, +and more than once have those making the attempts been struck. What is +more strange, the tree stands in an open field, there being no shelter +near from which tricks can be played without exposure. Jordan says that +it seems odd to strangers to see that tree loaded with apples when the +snow is four feet deep; and, what is a mystery, there are no apples in +the spring; no one ever sees the wind blow one off, none are seen on the +snow, nor even the vestige of one on the grass under the tree; and that +children may play on the grass under and around it while it is in the +blossom, and until the fruit is large enough to tempt them, with perfect +safety; but the moment one of the apples is sought for, the air is full +of flying stones. He further says, that late one starlight night he was +passing the house, and looking up saw the phantom walk out of the garret +window with cane in hand, making all the motions as if walking on +_terra firma_, although what appeared to be his feet were at least +six yards from the ground; and so he went walking away on nothing, and +when nearly out of sight there was a great flash and an explosion as of +twenty field-pieces, then--nothing. This story was told with seeming +earnestness, and listened to as though it was believed. How strange it +is that almost all persons, old or young, are fond of hearing about the +supernatural, though it produces nervousness and fear! I should not be +willing to sleep in that garret, though I do not believe a word of the +story. + + * * * * * + +"The lumbermen from Saccarappa are getting their logs across the Great +Pond. Yesterday a strong northwest wind blew a great raft of many +thousands over almost to the mouth of the Dingley Brook. Their anchor +dragged for more than a mile, but when the boom was within twenty or +thirty rods of the shore, it brought up, and held, as I heard some men +say who are familiar with such business. All the men and boys went from +the mill down to the pond to see the great raft, and I among them. They +have a string of logs fastened end to end and surrounding the great +body, which keeps them from scattering, and the string is called a boom. +A small, strong raft, it may be forty feet square, with an upright +windlass in its centre, called a capstan, is fastened to some part of +the boom. The small raft is called 'Head Works,' and from it in a +yawl-boat is carried the anchor, to which is attached a strong rope half +a mile long. The boat is rowed out the whole length of the rope, the +anchor thrown over, and the men on the headworks wind up the capstan and +so draw along the acres of logs. After we went down to the shore, +several of the men came out on the boom nearest to us, and, striking a +single log, pushed it under and outside; then one man with a gallon jug +slung to his back, taking a pickpole, pushed himself ashore on the small +single log,--a feat that seemed almost miraculous to me. This man's name +was Reuben Murch, and he seemed to be in no fear of getting soused. This +masterly kind of navigation he calls 'cuffing the rigging'; nobody could +tell me why he gave it that name. Murch went up to the store, had the +jug filled with rum (the supply having run out on the headworks), and +made the voyage back the way he came. His comrades received him with +cheers, and after sinking the log and drawing it back under the boom, +proceeded to try the contents of the jug, seeming to be well satisfied +with the result of his expedition. It turned out that Murch only rode +the single log ashore to show his adroitness, for the yawl-boat came +round from the headworks, and brought near a dozen men in red shirts to +where we were. I was interested listening to their conversation mixed +with sharp jokes. Nearly every man had a nickname. Murch was called +'Captain Snarl'; a tall, fierce-looking man, who just filled my idea of +a Spanish freebooter, was 'Dr. Coddle.' I think his real name was Wood. +The rum seems to make them crazy, for one, who was called 'Rub-a-dub,' +pitched 'Dr. Coddle' head and heels into the water. A gentlemanly man +named Thompson, who acted as master of ceremonies, or Grand Turk, +interfered and put a stop to what was becoming something like a fight. +Mr. Thompson said that the wind would go down with the sun, and that +they must get ready to start. This morning I went down to look for them, +and the raft was almost to Frye's Island. + + * * * * * + +"I have read 'Gulliver's Travels,' but do not agree with Captain Britton +that it is a witty and uncommonly interesting book; the wit is obscene, +and the _lies_ too _false_." + + * * * * * + +The next and last piece of this note-book was printed two years later +than the preceding items, and after the death of the person who +professed to own the manuscript, but still with the same degree of +mystery, except in the matter of date. + +"Day before yesterday Mr. Thomas Little from Windham, Mr. M. P. Sawyer +of Portland, Mr. Thomas A. Deblois, a lawyer, Mr. Hanson of Windham, and +Enoch White, a boy of about my own age, from White's Bridge, came up to +the Dingley Brook in a sail-boat. They were on the way to Muddy River +Bog, for a day's sport, fishing, and shooting ducks. Enoch proposed that +I should go with them. I needed no urging, but knew how unwillingly my +mother would consent. They could wait but a few minutes, and Uncle +Richard kindly wrote a note, asking her to be willing to gratify me +_this_ time. + +"She said, 'Yes,' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my day's pleasure +would cost _her_ one of anxiety. However, I gathered up hooks and +lines, with some white salted pork for bait, and with a fabulous number +of biscuit, split in the middle, the insides well buttered, then +skilfully put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work-bag, +and slung over my shoulder. I started, making a wager with Enoch White, +as we walked down to the boat, as to which would catch the largest +number of fish. + +"The air was clear, with just breeze enough to shoot us along +pleasantly, without making rough waves. The wind was not exactly after +us, though we made but two tacks to reach the mouth of Muddy River. The +men praised the grand view, after we got into the Great Bay. We could +see the White Hills to the northwest, though Mr. Little said they were +eighty miles from us; 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. Mr. Little seems to be familiar with every +book that has ever been written, and must have a great memory. Among +other things, he said:-- + +"'Gentlemen, do you know that this should be called the sea, instead of +the Great Pond; that ships should be built here and navigate this water? +The surface of the Sea of Galilee, of which we hear so much in the New +Testament, was just about equal to the surface of our sea to-day.' + +"And then he went on to give a geographical description of the country +about the Sea of Galilee, and draw parallels between places named in the +Testament and points in sight. His talk stole my attention until we were +fairly at Muddy River mouth. + +"Muddy River Bog is quite a curiosity. The river empties into the pond +between two small sandy capes or points, only a short distance apart; +but after running up a little between them we found the bog to widen to +fifty or sixty rods in some places, and to be between two or three miles +long. People say that it has no bottom, and that the longest poles that +ever grew may be run down into the mud and then pushed down with another +a little longer, and this may be repeated until the long poles are all +gone. + +"Coarse, tall water-grass grows up from the mud over every part, with +the exception of a place five or six rods wide, running its whole +length, and nearly in the middle, which is called the Channel. One can +tell at first sight that it is the place for pickerel and water-snakes. + +"Mr. Deblois stated something that I never heard before as a fact in +natural history, that the pickerel wages war upon all fish, except the +trout, who is too active for him; that he is a piscatorial cannibal; but +that under all circumstances and in all places, he lives on good terms +with the water-snake. + +"We saw a great many ducks, but they seemed to know that Mr. Sawyer had +a gun, and flew on slight notice. At last, as four were flying and +seemed to be entirely out of gunshot, he fired, saying he would frighten +them, if no more; when, to our surprise, he brought one down. The gun +was loaded with ball, and Mr. Deblois told him he could not do it again +in a million shots. Mr. Sawyer laughed, saying that he had always been a +votary of Chance, and that, as a general thing, she had treated him +handsomely. + +"We sailed more than a mile up the bog, fishing and trolling for +pickerel; and though we saw a great many, not one offered to be caught, +but horned pouts were willing, and we caught them till it was no sport. +We found a man there who had taken nearly two bushels of pouts. He was +on a raft, and had walked from near the foot of Long Pond, in Otisfield. +Mr. Little knew him, and, intending to have some fun, said, 'The next +time you come to Portland I want half a dozen of your best jewsharps; +leave them at my store at Windham Hill. I need them very badly.' + +"The man deliberately took from the hook a large pout that he had just +pulled up, and, laying his fishing-pole down, began solemnly to explore +in his pockets, and brought out six quaint jewsharps carefully tied to +pieces of corn-cobs; then he tossed them into our boat to Mr. Little, +saying, 'There they are, Tom, and they are as good ones as I ever made; +I shall charge you fifty cents for them.' Mr. Little had the worst of +the joke; but as the other men began to rally him, he took out the +silver and paid the half-dollar; but they laughed at him till he told +them, if they would say no more about it, he would give them all the +brandy they could drink when they got home. + +"Mr. Deblois said he would not be bribed; that he must tell Peter White +when he got to Windham Hill. + +"Mr. Little said he would not have Peter White know it for a yoke of +steers. + +"After fishing till all were tired, we landed on a small dry knoll that +made out into the bog, to take our luncheon. The men had a variety of +eatables, and several bottles that held no eatables. The question was +started whether Enoch and I should be invited to drink, and they +concluded not to urge us, as we were boys, and under their care. So Mr. +Deblois said, 'Boys, anything to eat that is in our baskets is as much +yours as ours; help yourselves; but we shall not invite you to drink +spirits.' + +"We thanked them, and said that we had plenty of our own to eat, and had +no relish for spirits, but were very thirsty for water. Mr. Little had +been there before, and directed us to a spring of the best of water, +that boiled up like a pot from the ground, just at the margin of the +bog. + +"Before starting to return, the bet between Enoeh and myself had to be +settled. By its conditions, the one who caught the largest number of +fish was to have all the hooks and lines of the other. I counted my +string and found twenty-five. Enoch made twenty-six on his; so I was +about turning over the spoils, when Mr. Sawyer said that my string was +the largest, and that there was a mistake. So he counted, and made +twenty-six on mine, and twenty-five on Enoch's. We counted again, and +found it was as he said, and Enoch prepared to pay the bet, when Mr. +Sawyer again interfered, saying that Enoch's string was certainly larger +than mine, and proposed to count again. This time I had but twenty-four, +and Enoch twenty-seven. All the men counted them several times over, +until we could not tell which was which, and they never came out twice +alike. + +"At length Mr. Deblois said solemnly, 'Stop this, Sawyer, you have +turned these fish into a pack of cards, and are fooling us all.' The men +laughed heartily, and so should I if I had known what the point of the +joke was. + +"Mr. Deblois said the decision as to our bet would have to go over to +the next term. After starting for home, while running down the bog, Mr. +Sawyer killed three noble black ducks at one shot, but the gun was not +loaded this time with ball. Mr. Hanson struck with his fishing-pole, and +killed a monstrous water-snake. Mr. Little measured a stick with his +hands, and using it as a rule, declared him to be five feet long. If I +thought any such snakes ever went over to Dingley Bay, I never would go +into the water there again. + +"When we got out of the bog into the open water, we found a lively +breeze from the northwest, and they landed me at the Dingley Brook in +less than an hour, and then kept on like a great white bird down towards +the Cape, and for the outlet. I stood and watched the boat until it was +nearly half-way to Frye's Island, loath to lose sight of what had helped +me to enjoy the day so much. Taking my fish I walked home, and greeted +mother just as the sun went out of sight behind the hills in Baldwin. +The fish were worthless, but I thought I must have something to show for +the day spent. After exhibiting them to mother and sister, and hearing +the comments as to their ugliness, and much speculation as to what their +horns were for, I gave them to Mr. Lambard, who said that pouts were the +best of fish after they were skinned. + +"I have made this account of the expedition to please Uncle Richard, who +is an invalid and cannot get out to enjoy such sport, and wished me to +describe everything just as it had happened, whether witty or silly, and +give my own impressions. He has read my diary, and says that it +interested him, which is all the reward I desire. And now I add these +lines to keep in remembrance the peculiar satisfaction I received in +hearing the conversation, especially of Mr. Deblois and Mr. Little. +August, 1818, Raymond." + + * * * * * + +These extracts from the Raymond Journal, if they be genuine, as in most +respects I believe they must be, will furnish a clew, otherwise wanting, +to the distinct turn which the boy's mind took toward authorship after +his return to Salem, and on passing the propylon of classical culture. +We can also see in them, I think, the beginning of that painstaking +accumulation of fact, the effort to be first of all accurate, which is a +characteristic of his maturer and authenticated note-books; very +significant, too, is the dash of the supernatural and his tone +concerning it. A habit of thus preserving impressions, and of communing +with himself through the pen, so constant and assiduous as we know it to +have been in his later years,--even when mind and time were +preoccupied,--must have been formed early, to retain so strong a hold +upon him. But there is another reason for supposing that he had begun to +compose with care before coming from Raymond to Salem; and this is found +in the fact that, in 1820, he began issuing (probably to a very small +and intimate circle of subscribers) a neat little weekly paper printed +with the pen on sheets of a much-curtailed note size, and written in an +excellent style. + +The first number, dated Monday, August 21, 1820, opens with the Editor's +Address:-- + +"Our feelings upon sending into the world the first number of the +Spectator may be compared to those of a fond Parent, when he beholds a +beloved child about to embark on the troubled Ocean of public Life. +Perhaps the iron hand of Criticism may crush our humble undertaking, ere +it is strengthened by time. Or it may pine in obscurity neglected and +forgotten by those, with whose assistance it might become the Pride and +Ornament of our Country.... We beg leave farther to remark that in order +to carry on any enterprise with spirit MONEY is absolutely necessary. +Money, although it is the root of all evil, is also the foundation of +everything great and good, and therefore our Subscribers ... will please +carefully to remember that the terms are two cents per month." + +A little further on there is this allusion to the Scriptural proverb +cited above: "We have been informed that this expression is incorrect, +and that it is the love of Money which is the 'Root of all Evil.' But +money is certainly the cause of the love of Money. Therefore, Money is +the deepest 'Root of Evil.'" (Observe, here, the young student's pride +of reason, and the consciousness of a gift for casuistry!) Under the +head of "Domestic News" occur some remarks on the sea-serpent, the +deduction from various rumors about the monster being that "he seems to +possess a strange and we think rather unusual faculty of appearing in +different shapes to different eyes, so that where one person sees a +shark, another beholds a nameless dragon." (Here, too, is the humorously +veiled distrust that always lurked beneath his dealings with the +marvellous.) In the next columns there is found an advertisement of the +Pin Society, which "will commence lending pins to any creditable person, +on Wednesday, the 23d instant. No numbers except ten, twenty, and thirty +will be lent"; and the rate of interest is to be one pin on every ten +per day. This bold financial scheme is also carried on by the editor in +person,--a combination which in these days would lay him open to +suspicions of unfair dealing. I have seen a little manuscript book +containing the remarkable constitution and by-laws of this society, in +which there were but two members; and it is really a curious study of +whimsical intricacy, the work of a mind perfectly accustomed to solitude +and fertile in resources for making monotony various and delightful. It +does not surprise one to meet with the characteristic announcement from +this editor that he has "concluded not to insert deaths and marriages +(except of very distinguished persons) in the Spectator. We can see but +little use in thus giving to the world the names of the crowd who are +tying the marriage knot, and going down to the silent tomb." There is +some poetry at the end of the paper, excellent for a boy, but without +the easy inspiration of the really witty prose. + +It would seem that this weekly once made a beginning, which was also an +end, before nourishing up into the series of which I have synopsized the +first issue; for there is another Number One without date, but +apparently earlier. This contains some exemplary sentiments "On +Solitude," with a touch of what was real profundity in so inexperienced +a writer. "Man is naturally a sociable being," he says; "and apart from +the world there are no incitements to the pursuit of excellence; there +are no rivals to contend with; and therefore there is no improvement.... +The heart may be more pure and uncorrupted in solitude than when exposed +to the influences of the depravity of the world; but the benefit of +virtuous examples is equal to the detriment of vicious ones, and both +are equally lost." The "Domestic Intelligence" of this number is as +follows: "The lady of Dr. Winthrop Brown, a son and Heir. Mrs. +Hathorne's cat, Seven Kittens. We hear that both of the above ladies are +in a state of convalescence." Also, "Intentions of Marriage. The +beautiful and accomplished Miss Keziah Dingley will shortly be united to +Dominicus Jordan Esq." (The young author appears to have allowed himself +in this paragraph the stimulus of a little fiction respecting real +persons. Dominicus Jordan is the pedler of the Raymond notes. Who Miss +Keziah was I do not know, but from the name I guess her to have been a +relative, by appellation at least, through Richard Manning's wife. If +Hawthorne did not himself call Miss Dingley aunt, he may very likely +have heard her commonly spoken of by that title. Did the old, boyish +association perhaps unconsciously supply him with a name for the Indian +aunt of "Septimius Felton"?) The next item is "DEATHS. We are sorry to +be under the necessity of informing our readers that no deaths of +importance have taken place, except that of the publisher of this Paper, +who died of Starvation, owing to the slenderness of his patronage." +Notwithstanding this discouraging incident, one of the advertisements +declares that "Employment will be given to any number of indigent Poets +and Authors at this office." But shortly afterward is inserted the +announcement that "Nathaniel Hathorne proposes to publish by +subscription a new edition of the Miseries of Authors, to which will be +added a sequel, containing Facts and Remarks drawn from his own +experience." + +In Number Two of the new series, the editor speaks of a discourse by Dr. +Stoughton, "on Tuesday evening.... With the amount of the contribution +which was taken up ... we are unacquainted, as, having no money in our +pockets, we departed before it commenced." This issue takes a despondent +view of the difficulties that beset editors. There is a clever paragraph +of "Domestic News" again. "As we know of no News," it says, "we hope our +readers will excuse us for not inserting any. The law which prohibits +paying debts when a person has no money will apply in this case." Next +we have a very arch dissertation "On Industry": "It has somewhere been +remarked that an Author does not write the worse for knowing little or +nothing of his subject. We hope the truth of this saying will be +manifest in the present article. With the benefits of Industry we are +not personally acquainted." The desperate editor winds up his week's +budget with a warning to all persons who may be displeased by +observations in the Spectator, that he is going to take fencing lessons +and practise shooting at a mark. "We also," he adds, "think it advisable +to procure a stout oaken cudgel to be the constant companion of our +peregrinations." The assumption of idleness in the essay on Industry, +just quoted, breaks down entirely in a later number, when the editor-- +in apologizing for inaccuracies in the printing of his paper--enumerates +his different occupations: "In the first place we study Latin and Greek. +Secondly we write in the employment of William Manning Esq., [at that +time proprietor of an extensive line of stagecoaches]. Thirdly, we are +Secretary, Treasurer, and Manager of the 'Pin Society'; Fourthly, we are +editor of the Spectator; fifthly, sixthly, and lastly, our own Printers, +Printing Press and Types." But the young journalist carried on his +labors unabatedly, for the term of some five weeks, and managed to make +himself very entertaining. I take from an essay "On Benevolence" a +fragment which has a touch of poetry out of his own life. Benevolence, +he says, is "to protect the fatherless, and to make the Widow's heart +sing for joy." One of the most cherishable effusions is that "On +Wealth," in which the venerable writer drops into a charmingly +confidential and reminiscent vein. "All men," he begins, "from the +highest to the lowest, desire to pursue wealth.... In process of time if +we obtain possession" of a sum at first fixed as the ultimatum, "we +generally find ourselves as far from being contented as at first.... +When I was a boy, I one day made an inroad into a closet, to the secret +recesses of which I had often wished to penetrate. I there discovered a +quantity of very fine apples. At first I determined to take only one, +which I put in my pocket. But those which remained were so very inviting +that it was against my conscience to leave them, and I filled my pockets +and departed, wishing that they would hold more. But alas! an apple +which was unable to find space enough among its companions bounced down +upon the floor before all the Family. I was immediately searched, and +forced, very unwillingly, to deliver up all my booty." In the same +number which contains this composition appears the token of what was +doubtless Hawthorne's first recognition in literature. It is a +"Communication," of tenor following:-- + +"Mr. Editor: I have observed in some of your last papers, Essays on +Various subjects, and am very much pleased with them, and wish you to +continue them. If you will do this, you will oblige + +"MARIA LOUISA HATHORNE." + +"We hail the above communication," writes the editor with exaggerated +gratitude, "as the dawn of a happy day for us." In his next and final +issue, though (September, 18, 1820), he satirically evinces his +dissatisfaction at the want of a literary fraternity in his native land, +through this "Request":-- + +"As it is part of the plan of the Spectator to criticise +home-manufactured publications, we most earnestly desire some of our +benevolent Readers to write a book for our special benefit. At present +we feel as we were wont to do in the days of our Boyhood, when we +possessed a Hatchet, without anything to exercise it upon. We engage to +execute the Printing and Binding, and to procure the Paper for the Work, +free of all expense to the Author. If this request should be denied us, +we must infallibly turn our arms against our own writings, which, as +they will not stand the test of criticism, we feel very unwilling to do. +We do not wish that the proposed work should be too perfect; the Author +will please to make a few blunders for us to exercise our Talents upon." + +In these quotations one sees very clearly the increased maturity (though +it be only by a year or two) of the lad, since the engrossing of his +records at Raymond. We get in these his entire mood, catch gleams of a +steady fire of ambition under the light, self-possessed air of assumed +indifference, and see how easily already his humor began to play, with +that clear and sweet ripeness that warms some of his more famous pages, +like late sunshine striking through clusters of mellow and translucent +grapes. Yet our grasp of his mental situation at this point would not be +complete, without recognition of the graver emotions that sometimes +throbbed beneath the surface. The doubt, the hesitancy that sometimes +must have weighed upon his lonely, self-reliant spirit with weary +movelessness, and all the pain of awakening ambition and departing +boyhood, seem to find a symbol in this stanza from the fourth +"Spectator":-- + + "Days of my youth, ye fleet away, + As fades the bright sun's cheering ray, + And scarce my infant hours are gone, + Ere manhood's troubled step comes on. + My infant hours return no more, + And all their happiness is o'er; + The stormy sea of life appears, + A scene of tumult and of tears." + +Of the vexations of unfledged manhood the boy of sixteen did not speak +without knowledge. Various sorts of pressure from uncongenial sources +were now and then brought to bear upon him; there was present always the +galling consciousness of depending on others for support, and of being +less self-sustaining than approaching manhood made him wish to be. +Allusion has been made to his doing writing for his uncle William. "I +still continue," he says in a letter of October, 1820, to his mother at +Raymond, "to write for Uncle William, and find my salary quite +convenient for many purposes." This, to be sure, was a first approach to +self-support, and flattering to his sense of proper dignity. But +Hawthorne, in character as in genius, had a passion for maturity. An +outpouring of his thoughts on this and other matters, directed to his +sister, accompanies the letter just cited. Let us read it here as he +wrote it more than a half-century ago:-- + +DEAR SISTER:--I am very angry with you for not sending me some of your +poetry, which I consider a great piece of ingratitude. You will not see +one line of mine until you return the confidence which I have placed in +you. I have bought the 'Lord of the Isles,' and intend either to send or +to bring it to you. I like it as well as any of Scott's other poems. I +have read Hogg's "Tales," "Caleb Williams," "St. Lean," and +"Mandeville." I admire Godwin's novels, and intend to read them all. I +shall read the "Abbot," by the author of "Waverley," as soon as I can +hire it. I have read all Scott's novels except that. I wish I had not, +that I might have the pleasure of reading them again. Next to these I +like "Caleb Williams." I have almost given up writing poetry. No man can +be a Poet and a book-keeper at the same time. I do find this place most +"dismal," and have taken to chewing tobacco with all my might, which, I +think, raises my spirits. Say nothing of it in your letters, nor of the +"Lord of the Isles." ... I do not think I shall ever go to college. I +can scarcely bear the thought of living upon Uncle Robert for four years +longer. How happy I should be to be able to say, "I am Lord of myself!" +You may cut off this part of my letter, and show the other to Uncle +Richard. Do write me some letters in skimmed milk. [The shy spirit finds +it thus hard, even thus early, to be under possible surveillance in his +epistolary musings, and wants to write invisibly.] I must conclude, as I +am in a "monstrous hurry!" + +Your affectionate brother, NATH. HATHORNE. + +P. S. The most beautiful poetry I think I ever saw begins:-- + + "She's gone to dwell in Heaven, my lassie, + She's gone to dwell in Heaven: + Ye're ow're pure quo' a voice aboon + For dwalling out of Heaven." + +It is not the words, but the thoughts. I hope you have read it, as I +know you would admire it. + +As to the allusion to college, it is but a single ray let into the +obscurity of a season when the sensitive, sturdy, proud young heart must +have borne many a vigil of vexatious and bitter revery. And this must +not be left out in reckoning the grains and scruples that were +compounding themselves into his inner consciousness. But at last he +struck a balance, wisely, among his doubts; and in the fall of 1821 he +went to Bowdoin to become one of the famous class with Longfellow and +Cheever, the memory of which has been enwreathed with the gentle verse +of "Morituri Salutamus,"--a fadeless garland. In "Fanshawe," an +anonymous work of his youth, Hawthorne has pictured some aspects of the +college at Brunswick, under a very slight veil of fiction. + +"From the exterior of the collegians," he says, "an accurate observer +might pretty safely judge how long they had been inmates of those +classic walls. The brown cheeks and the rustic dress of some would +inform him that they had but recently left the plough, to labor in a not +less toilsome field. The grave look and the intermingling of garments of +a more classic cut would distinguish those who had begun to acquire the +polish of their new residence; and the air of superiority, the paler +cheek, the less robust form, the spectacles of green, and the dress in +general of threadbare black, would designate the highest class, who were +understood to have acquired nearly all the science their Alma Mater +could bestow, and to be on the point of assuming their stations in the +world. There were, it is true, exceptions to this general description. A +few young men had found their way hither from the distant seaports; and +these were the models of fashion to their rustic companions, over whom +they asserted a superiority in exterior accomplishments, which the +fresh, though unpolished intellect of the sons of the forest denied them +in their literary competitions. A third class, differing widely from +both the former, consisted of a few young descendants of the aborigines, +to whom an impracticable philanthropy was endeavoring to impart the +benefits of civilization. + +"If this institution 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 students, indeed, ignorant +of their own bliss, sometimes wished to hasten the time of their +entrance on the business of life; but they found, in after years, that +many of their happiest remembrances, many of the scenes which they would +with least reluctance live over again, referred to the seat of their +early studies." + + * * * * * + +He here divides the honors pleasantly between the forest-bred and +city-trained youth, having, from his own experience, an interest in each +class. Yet I think he must have sided, in fact, with the country boys. +Horatio Bridge, his classmate, and throughout life a more confidential +friend than Pierce, was brought up on his father's estate at Bridgton, +north of Sebago Lake; and Franklin Pierce, in the class above him, his +only other frequent companion, was a native of the New Hampshire +hill-lands. He himself, in his outward bearing, perhaps gathered to his +person something the look of both the seaport lads and the sturdy +mountaineers and woodsmen. He was large and strong (in a letter to his +uncle Robert, just before entering college, he gives the measure of his +foot, for some new shoes that are to be sent; it is ten inches), but an +interior and ruling grace removed all suspicion of heaviness. Being a +sea-captain's son, he would naturally make his connections at college +with men who had the out-of-doors glow about them; the simple and severe +life at Raymond, too, had put him in sympathy with the people rather +than with the patricians (although I see that the reminiscences of some +of the old dwellers near Raymond describe the widow and her brother +Richard as being exclusive and what was there thought "aristocratic"). +Hawthorne, Pierce, and Bridge came together in the Athenaean Society, +the newer club of the two college literary unions, and the more +democratic; and the trio preserved their cordial relations intact for +forty years, sometimes amid confusions and misconstructions, or between +cross-fires of troublous counter-considerations, with a rare fidelity. +Hawthorne held eminent scholarship easily within his grasp, but he and +his two cronies seem to have taken their curriculum very easily, though +they all came off well in the graduation. Hawthorne was a good Latinist. +The venerable Professor Packard has said that his Latin compositions, +even in the Freshman year, were remarkable; and Mr. Longfellow tells me +that he recalls the graceful and poetic translations which his classmate +used to give from the Roman authors. He got no celebrity in Greek, I +believe, but he always kept up his liking for the Latin writers. Some +years since a Latin theme of his was found, which had been delivered at +an exhibition of the Athenaean Society, in December, 1823. [Footnote: +See Appendix II.] It shows some niceties of selection, and the style is +neat; I even fancy something individual in the choice of the words +_sanctior nec beatior_, as applied to the republic, and a +distinctly Hawthornesque distinction in the _fulgor tantum fuit sine +fervore_; though a relic of this kind should not be examined too +closely, and claims the same exemption that one gives to Shelley's +school-compelled verses, _In Horologium_. + +His English compositions also excited notice. Professor Newman gave them +high commendation, and Mr. Bridge speaks of their superiority. But none +of them have survived; whether owing to the author's vigilant +suppression, or to the accidents of time. It was Hawthorne's habit as a +young man to destroy all of his own letters that he could find, on +returning home after an absence; and few records of his college life +remain. Here is a brief note, however. + +BRUNSWICK, August 12, 1823. + +MY DEAR UNCLE:--I received your letter in due time, and should have +answered it in due season, if I had not been prevented, as L---- +conjectures, by laziness. The money was very acceptable to me, and will +last me till the end of the term, which is three weeks from next +Wednesday. I shall then have finished one half of my college life.... I +suppose your farm prospers, and I hope you will have abundance of fruit, +and that I shall come home time enough to eat some of it, which I should +prefer to all the pleasure of cultivating it. I have heard that there is +a steamboat which runs twice a week between Portland and Boston. If this +be the case I should like to come home that way, if mother has no +apprehension of the boiler's bursting. + +I really have had a great deal to do this term, as, in addition to the +usual exercises, we have to write a theme or essay of three or four +pages, every fortnight, which employs nearly all my time, so that I hope +you will not impute my neglect of writing wholly to laziness.... + +Your affectionate nephew, NATH. HATHORNE. + +This letter, as well as the others here given, shows how much of boyish +simplicity surrounded and protected the rare and distinct personality +already unfolded in this youth of eighteen. The mixture makes the charm of +Hawthorne's youth, as the union of genius and common-sense kept his +maturity alive with a steady and wholesome light. I fancy that obligatory +culture irked him then, as always, and that he chose his own green lanes +toward the advancement of learning. His later writings vouchsafe only two +slight glimpses of the college days. In his Life of Franklin Pierce, he +recalls Pierce's chairmanship of the Athenaean Society, on the committee +of which he himself held a place. "I remember, likewise," he says, "that +the only military service of my life was as a private soldier in a +college company, of which Pierce was one of the officers. He entered +into this latter business, or pastime, with an earnestness with which I +could not pretend to compete, and at which, perhaps, he would now be +inclined to smile." But much more intimate and delightful is the +reminiscence which, in the dedicatory preface of "The Snow Image," +addressed to his friend Bridge, he thus calls up. "If anybody is +responsible for my being at this day an author, it is yourself. I know +not whence your faith came: but, 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 treats in +that shadowy little stream, which, I suppose, is still wandering +riverward through the forest,--though you and I will never cast a line +in it again,--two idle lads, in short (as we need not fear to +acknowledge now), doing a hundred things that the Faculty never heard +of, or else it had been the worse for us,--still it was your prognostic +of your friend's destiny, that he was to be a writer of fiction." I have +asked Mr. Bridge what gave him this impression of Hawthorne, and he +tells me that it was an indescribable conviction, aroused by the whole +drift of his friend's mind as he saw it. Exquisite indeed must have been +that first fleeting aroma of genius; and I would that it might have been +then and there imprisoned and perpetuated for our delight. But we must +be satisfied with the quick and sympathetic insight with which +Hawthorne's friend discovered his true bent. The world owes more, +probably, to this early encouragement from a college companion than it +can ever estimate. + +Nothing in human intercourse, I think, has a more peculiar and +unchanging value than the mutual impressions of young men at college: +they meet at a moment when the full meaning of life just begins to +unfold itself to them, and their fresh imaginations build upon two or +three traits the whole character of a comrade, where a maturer man +weighs and waits, doubts and trusts, and ends after all with a like or +dislike that is only lukewarm. Far on toward the close of life, +Hawthorne, in speaking of something told him by an English gentleman +respecting a former classmate of the latter's, wrote: "It seemed to be +one of those early impressions which a collegian gets of his +fellow-students, and which he never gets rid of, whatever the character +of the person may turn out to be in after years. I have judged several +persons in this way, and still judge them so, though the world has come +to very different opinions. Which is right,--the world, which has the +man's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who has +nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, +doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man's +mature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable or +otherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. In +this, then, we perceive one of the formative effects on Hawthorne's mind +of his stay at Brunswick. Those four years of student life gave him a +thousand eyes for observing and analyzing character. He learned then, +also, to choose men on principles of his own. Always afterward he was +singularly independent in selecting friends; often finding them even in +unpopular and out-of-the-way persons. The affinity between himself and +Bridge was ratified by forty years of close confidence; and Hawthorne +never swerved from his early loyalty to Pierce, though his faithfulness +gave him severe trials, both public and private, afterward. I am not of +those who explain this steadfastness by a theory of early prepossession +on Hawthorne's part, blinding him to Pierce's errors or defects. There +is ample proof in the correspondence between Bridge and himself, which I +have seen, that he constantly and closely scanned his distinguished +friend the President's character with his impartial and searching eye +for human character, whatsoever its relations to himself. I believe if +he had ever found that the original nucleus of honor and of a certain +candor which had charmed him in Pierce was gone, he would, provided it +seemed his duty, have rejected the friendship. As it was, he saw his old +friend and comrade undergoing changes which he himself thought +hazardous, saw him criticised in a post where no one ever escaped the +severest criticism, and beheld him return to private life amid +unpopularity, founded, as he thought, upon misinterpretation of what was +perhaps error, but not dishonesty. Meanwhile he felt that the old +"Frank," his brother through Alma Mater, dwelt still within the person +of the public man; and though to claim that brotherhood exposed +Hawthorne, under the circumstances, to cruel and vulgar insinuations, he +saw that duty led him to the side of his friend, not to that of the +harsh multitude. + +Perhaps his very earliest contribution to light literature was an +apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen +or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted +with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was +especially concerned in fruit culture, Hawthorne wrote, and sent from +college to a Boston paper, a careful description of the new destroyer, +his habits, and the proper mode of combating him, all drawn from his own +imagination. It was printed, so the tale runs; and a package of the +papers containing it arrived in Salem just as the author reached there +for a brief vacation. Mr. Manning is said to have accepted in good faith +the knowledge which the article supplied, but Hawthorne's amusement was +not unmixed with consternation at the success of his first essay. + +In the two or three letters from him at college which still survive, +there is no open avowal of the inner life, which was then the supplier +of events for his outwardly monotonous days; not a breath of that strain +of revery and fancy which impressed Bridge's mind! One allusion shows +that he systematically omitted declamation; and an old term bill of 1824 +(the last year of his course) charges him with a fine of twenty cents +for neglect of theme! Spur to authorship:--the Faculty surely did its +best to develop his genius, and cannot be blamed for any shortcomings. +[Footnote: The amount of this bill, for the term ending May 21, 1824, is +but $19.62, of which $2.36 is made up of fines. The figures give a +backward glimpse at the epoch of cheap living, but show that the +disinclination of students to comply with college rules was even then +expensive. The "average of damages" is only thirty-three cents, from +which I infer that the class was not a destructive one.] Logically, +these tendencies away from essay and oratory are alien to minds destined +to produce literature; but empirically, they are otherwise. Meantime, we +get a sudden light on some of the solid points of character, apart from +genius, in this note from the college president, and the student's +parallel epistles. + +May 29, 1822. + +MRS. ELIZABETH C. HATHORNE. + +MADAM:----By note of the Executive Government of this college, it is +made my duty to request your co-operation with us in the attempt to +induce your son faithfully to observe the laws of this institution. He +was this day fined fifty cents for playing cards for money, last term. +He played at different times. Perhaps he might not have gained, were it +not for the influence of a student whom we have dismissed from college. +It does not appear that your son has very recently played cards; yet +your advice may be beneficial to him. I am, madam, + +Very respectfully, + +Your obedient, humble servant, + +WILLIAM ALLEN, _President_. + +The next day after this note was written (on May 30, 1822) the subject +of it wrote thus:-- + +"MY DEAR MOTHER:--I hope you have safely arrived in Salem. I have +nothing particular to inform you of, except that all the card-players in +college have been found out, and my unfortunate self among the number. +One has been dismissed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with +myself, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the President +intends to write to the friends of all the delinquents. Should that be +the case, you must show the letter to nobody. If I am again detected, I +shall have the honor of being suspended; when the President asked what +we played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty cents, +although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I had told him of +that, he would probably have fined me for having a blow. [It appears +that the mild dissipation of wine-drinking in vogue at Bowdoin at that +time was called having a "blow;" probably an abbreviation for the common +term "blow-out," applied to entertainments.] There was no untruth in the +case, as the wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. +I have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and shall not +till the last week." + +But in a letter to one of his sisters (dated August 5, 1822) a few +months afterward, he touches the matter much more vigorously:-- + +"To quiet your suspicions, I can assure you that I am neither 'dead, +absconded, or anything worse.' [The allusion is to some reproach for a +long silence on his part.] I have involved myself in no 'foolish +scrape,' as you say all my friends suppose; but ever since my misfortune +I have been as steady as a sign-post, and as sober as a deacon, have +been in no 'blows' this term, nor drank any kind of 'wine or strong +drink.' So that your comparison of me to the 'prodigious son' will hold +good in nothing, except that I shall probably return penniless, for I +have had no money this six weeks.... The President's message is not so +severe as I expected. I perceive that he thinks I have been led away by +the wicked ones, in which, however, he is greatly mistaken. I was full +as willing to play as the person he suspects of having enticed me, and +would have been influenced by no one. I have a great mind to commence +playing again, merely to show him that I scorn to be seduced by another +into anything wrong." + +I cannot but emphasize with my own words the manly, clear-headed +attitude of the young student in these remarks. He has evidently made up +his mind to test the value of card-playing for wine, and thinks +himself--as his will be the injury, if any--the best judge of the wisdom +of that experiment. A weaker spirit, too, a person who knew himself less +thoroughly, would have taken shelter under the President's charitable +theory with thanksgiving; but Hawthorne's perfectly simple moral sense +and ingrained manhood would not let him forget that self-respect lives +by truth alone. In this same letter he touches lesser affairs:-- + +"I have not read the two novels you mention. I began some time ago to +read Hume's 'History of England,' but found it so abominably dull that I +have given up the undertaking until some future time. I can procure +books of all sorts from the library of the Athenaean Society, of which I +am a member. The library consists of about eight hundred volumes, among +which is Rees's Cyclopaedia [this work was completed in 1819], and many +other valuable works.... Our class will be examined on Tuesday for +admittance to our Sophomore year. If any of us are found deficient, we +shall be degraded to the Freshman class again; from which misfortune may +Heaven defend me." + +But the young Freshman's trepidation, if he really felt any, was soon +soothed; he passed on successfully through his course. Not only did he +graduate well, but he had also, as we shall see, begun to prepare +himself for his career. Here is a letter which gives, in a fragmentary +way, his mood at graduation:-- + +"BRUNSWICK, July 14, 1825. + +"MY DEAR SISTER:--.... I am not very well pleased with Mr. Dike's report +of me. The family had before conceived much too high an opinion of my +talents, and had probably formed expectations which I shall never +realize. I have thought much upon the subject, and have finally 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. I do +not say this for the purpose of drawing any flattery from you, but +merely to set mother and the rest of you right upon a point where your +partiality has led you astray. I did hope that Uncle Robert's opinion of +me was nearer to the truth, as his deportment toward me never expressed +a very high estimation of my abilities." + +Mr. Dike was a relative, who had probably gone back to Salem, after +seeing the young man at Brunswick, with a eulogy on his lips. +Hawthorne's modesty held too delicate a poise to bear a hint of praise, +before he had yet been put to the test or accomplished anything +decisive. In some ways this modesty and shyness may have postponed his +success as an author; yet it was this same delicate admixture which +precipitated and made perfect the mysterious solution in which his +genius lay. The wish "to plod along with the multitude," seemingly +unambitious, is only a veil. The hearts that burn most undyingly with +hope of achievement in art, often throw off this vapor of discontent; +they feel a prophetic thrill of that nameless suffering through which +every seeker of truth must pass, and they long beforehand for rest, for +the sweet obscurity of the ungifted. + +Another part of this letter shows the writer's standing at college:-- + +"Did the President write to you about my part? He called me to his +study, and informed me that, though my rank in the class entitled me to +a part, yet it was contrary to the law to give me one, on account of my +neglect of declamation. As he inquired mother's name and residence, I +suppose that he intended to write to her on the subject. If so, you will +send me a copy of the letter. I am perfectly satisfied with this +arrangement, as it is a sufficient testimonial to my scholarship, while +it saves me the mortification of making my appearance in public at +Commencement. Perhaps the family may not be so much pleased by it. Tell +me what are their sentiments on the subject. + +"I shall return home in three weeks from next Wednesday." + +Here the dim record of his collegiate days ceases, leaving him on the +threshold of the world, a fair scholar, a budding genius, strong, young, +and true, yet hesitant; halting for years, as if gathering all his +shy-souled courage, before entering that arena that was to echo such +long applause of him. Yet doubt not that the purpose to do some great +thing was already a part of his life, together with that longing for +recognition which every young poet, in the sweet uncertain certainty of +beginning, feels that he must some day deserve. Were not these words, +which I find in "Fanshawe," drawn from the author's knowledge of his own +heart? + +"He called up the years that, even at his early age, he had spent in +solitary study,--in conversation with the dead,--while he had scorned to +mingle with the living world, or to be actuated by any of its motives. +Fanshawe had hitherto deemed himself unconnected with the world, +unconcerned in its feelings, and uninfluenced by it in any of his +pursuits. In this respect he probably deceived himself. If his inmost +heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that +dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a +thousand realities." + +Already, while at Bowdoin, Hawthorne had begun to write verses, and +perhaps to print some of them anonymously in the newspapers. From some +forgotten poem of his on the sea, a single stanza has drifted down to +us, like a bit of beach-wood, the relic of a bark too frail to last. It +is this:-- + + "The ocean hath its silent caves, + Deep, quiet, and alone; + Though there be fury on the waves, + Beneath them there is none." + +If one lets the lines ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque +murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, +that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a +near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, +but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the +cable securely. Another piece is preserved complete, and much more +nearly does the writer justice:-- + +"MOONLIGHT. + + "We are beneath the dark blue sky, + And the moon is shining bright; + O, what can lift the soul so high + As the glow of a summer night; + When all the gay are hushed to sleep + And they that mourn forget to weep, + Beneath that gentle light! + + "Is there no holier, happier land + Among those distant spheres, + Where we may meet that shadow band, + The dead of other years? + Where all the day the moonbeams rest, + And where at length the souls are blest + Of those who dwell in tears? + + "O, if the happy ever leave + The bowers of bliss on high, + To cheer the hearts of those that grieve, + And wipe the tear-drop dry; + It is when moonlight sheds its ray, + More pure and beautiful than day, + And earth is like the sky." + +At a time when the taste and manner of Pope in poetry still held such +strong rule over readers as it did in the first quarter of the century, +these simple stanzas would not have been unworthy of praise for a +certain independence; but there is something besides in the refined +touch and the plaintive undertone that belong to Hawthorne's +individuality. This gentle and musical poem, it is curious to remember, +was written at the very period when Longfellow was singing his first +fresh carols, full of a vigorous pleasure in the beauty and inspiration +of nature, with a rising and a dying fall for April and Autumn, and the +Winter Woods. One can easily fancy that in these two lines from "Sunrise +on the Hills":-- + + "Where, answering to the sudden shot, thin smoke + Through thick-leaved branches from the dingle broke," + +it was the fire of Hawthorne's fowling-piece in the woods that attracted +the young poet, from his lookout above. But Longfellow had felt in the +rhythm of these earliest poems the tide-flow of his future, and Hawthorne +had as yet hardly found his appropriate element. + +In 1828, however, three years after graduating, he published an +anonymous prose romance called "Fanshawe," much more nearly approaching +a novel than his later books. It was issued at Boston, by Marsh and +Capen; but so successful was Hawthorne in his attempt to exterminate the +edition, that not half a dozen copies are now known to be extant. We +have seen that he read and admired Godwin and Scott, as a boy. +"Kenilworth," "The Pirate," "The Fortunes of Nigel," "Peveril of the +Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared +while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become +the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy +between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the +people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a +common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of +both states at about the same period, and in both it has had the same +result, making of the farming-class a body of energetic, thrifty, +intelligent, and aspiring people. Scotland and New England alike owe +some of their best as well as their least attractive traits to bitter +climate and a parsimonious soil; and the rural population of either is +pushed into emigration by the scanty harvests at home. It is not a +little singular that the Yankee and the canny Scot should each stand as +a butt for the wit of his neighbors, while each has a shrewdness all his +own. The Scotch, it is true, are said to be unusually impervious to a +joke, while our Down-Easters are perhaps the most recondite and +many-sided of American humorists. And, though many of the conditions of +the two regions are alike, the temperaments of the two races are of +course largely dissimilar. The most salient distinction, perhaps, is +that of the Scotch being a musical and dancing nation; something from +which the New-Englanders are fatally far removed. As if to link him with +his Puritan ancestry and stamp him beyond mistake as a Pilgrim and not a +Covenanter, Hawthorne was by nature formed with little ear for music. It +seems strange that a man who could inform the verses on "Moonlight," +just quoted, with so delicate a melody, and never admitted an ill-timed +strain or jarring cadence into his pure, symphonious prose, should +scarcely be able to distinguish one tune from another. Yet such was the +case. But this was owing merely to the absence of the _musical_ +instinct. He would listen with rapture to the unaccompanied voice; and I +have been always much touched by a little incident recorded in the +"English Note-Books": "There is a woman who has several times passed +through this Hanover Street in which we live, stopping occasionally to +sing songs under the windows; and last evening ... she came and sang +'Kathleen O'Moore' richly and sweetly. Her voice rose up out of the dim, +chill street, and made our hearts throb in unison with it as we sat in +our comfortable drawing-room. I never heard a voice that touched me more +deeply. Somebody told her to go away, and she stopped like a nightingale +suddenly shot." Hawthorne goes on to speak with wonder of the waste of +such a voice, "making even an unsusceptible heart vibrate like a +harp-string"; and it is pleasant to know that Mrs. Hawthorne had the +woman called within, from the street. So that his soul was open to +sound. But the unmusicalness of New England, less marked now than +formerly, is only a symbol, perhaps,--grievous that it should be so!--of +the superior temperance of our race. For, by one of those strange +oversights that human nature is guilty of, Scotland, in opening the door +for song and dance and all the merry crew of mirth, seems to admit quite +freely two vagabonds that have no business there, Squalor and +Drunkenness. Yet notwithstanding this grave unlikeness between the two +peoples, Hawthorne seems to have found a connecting clew, albeit +unwittingly, when he remarked, as he did, on his first visit to Glasgow, +that in spite of the poorer classes there excelling even those of +Liverpool in filth and drunkenness, "they are a better looking people +than the English (and this is true of all classes), more intelligent of +aspect, with more regular, features." There is certainly one quality +linking the two nations together which has not yet been commented on, in +relation to Hawthorne; and this is the natural growth of the weird in +the popular mind, both here and in Scotland. It is not needful to enter +into this at all at length. In the chapter on Salem I have suggested +some of the immediate factors of the weird element in Hawthorne's +fiction; but it deserves remark that only Scott and Hawthorne, besides +George Sand, among modern novelists, have used the supernatural with +real skill and force; and Hawthorne has certainly infused it into his +work by a more subtle and sympathetic gift than even the magic-loving +Scotch romancer owned. After this digressive prelude, the reader will be +ready to hear me announce that "Fanshawe" was a faint reflection from +the young Salem recluse's mind of certain rays thrown across the +Atlantic from Abbotsford. But this needs qualification. + +Hawthorne indeed admired Scott, when a youth; and after he had returned +from abroad, in 1860, he fulfilled a tender purpose, formed on a visit +to Abbotsford, of re-reading all the Waverley novels. Yet he had long +before arrived at a ripe, unprejudiced judgment concerning him. The +exact impression of his feeling appears in that delightfully humorous +whimsey, "P.'s Correspondence," which contains the essence of the best +criticism. [Footnote: See Mosses from an Old Manse, Vol. II.] In +allusion to Abbotsford, Scott, he says, "whether in verse, prose, or +architecture, could achieve but one thing, although that one in infinite +variety." And he adds: "For my part, I can hardly regret that Sir Walter +Scott had lost his consciousness of outward things before his works went +out of vogue. It was good that he should forget his fame, rather than +that fame should first have forgotten him. Were he still a writer, and +as brilliant a one as ever, he could no longer maintain anything like +the same position in literature. The world, nowadays, requires a more +earnest purpose, a deeper moral, and a closer and homelier truth than he +was qualified to supply it with. Yet who can be to the present +generation even what Scott has been to the past?" Now, in "Fanshawe" +there is something that reminds one of Sir Walter; but the very +resemblance makes the essential unlikeness more apparent. + +The scene of the tale is laid at Harley College, "in an ancient, though +not very populous settlement in a retired corner of one of the New +England States." This, no doubt, is a reproduction of Bowdoin. Mr. +Longfellow tells me that the descriptions of the seminary and of the +country around it strongly suggest the Brunswick College. The President +of Harley is a Dr. Melmoth, an amiable and simple old delver in +learning, in a general way recalling Dominie Sampson, whose vigorous +spouse rules him somewhat severely: their little bickerings supply a +strain of farce indigenous to Scott's fictions, but quite unlike +anything in Hawthorne's later work. A young lady, named Ellen Langton, +daughter of an old friend of Dr. Melmoth's, is sent to Harley, to stay +under his guardianship. Ellen is somewhat vaguely sketched, in the style +of Scott's heroines; but this sentence ends with a trace of the young +writer's quality: "If pen could give an adequate idea of Ellen Langton's +beauty, it would achieve what pencil ... never could; for though the +dark eyes might be painted, the pure and pleasant thoughts that peeped +through them could only be seen and felt." This maiden the doctor once +took into his study, to begin a course of modern languages with her; but +she "having discovered an old romance among his heavy folios, contrived +by the sweet charm of her voice to engage his attention," and quite +beguiled him from severer studies. Naturally, she inthralls two young +students at the college: one of whom is Edward Wolcott, a wealthy, +handsome, generous, healthy young fellow from one of the seaport towns; +and the other, Fanshawe, the hero, who is a poor but ambitious recluse, +already passing into a decline through overmuch devotion to books and +meditation. Fanshawe, though the deeper nature of the two, and intensely +moved by his new passion, perceiving that a union between himself and +Ellen could not be a happy one, resigns the hope of it from the +beginning. But circumstances bring him into intimate relation with her. +The real action of the book, after the preliminaries, takes up only some +three days, and turns upon the attempt of a man named Butler to entice +Ellen away under his protection, then marry her, and secure the fortune +to which she is heiress. This scheme is partly frustrated by +circumstances, and Butler's purpose towards Ellen then becomes a much +more sinister one. From this she is rescued by Fanshawe; and, knowing +that he loves her, but is concealing his passion, she gives him the +opportunity and the right to claim her hand. For a moment, the rush of +desire and hope is so great that he hesitates; then he refuses to take +advantage of her generosity, and parts with her for the last time. Ellen +becomes engaged to Wolcott, who had won her heart from the first; and +Fanshawe, sinking into rapid consumption, dies before his class +graduates. It is easy to see how the sources of emotion thus opened +attracted Hawthorne. The noble and refined nature of Fanshawe, and the +mingled craftiness, remorse, and ferocity of Butler, are crude +embodiments of the same characteristics which he afterward treated in +modified forms. They are the two poles, the extremes,--both of them +remote and chilly,--of good and evil, from which the writer withdrew, +after exploring them, into more temperate regions. The movement of these +persons is visionary, and their personality faint. But I have marked a +few characteristic portions of the book which suggest its tone. + +When the young lady's flight with the stranger actually takes place, +young Wolcott and President Melmoth ride together in the pursuit, and at +this point there occurs a dialogue which is certainly as laughable and +is better condensed than most similar passages in Scott, whom it +strongly recalls. A hint of Cervantes appears in it, too, which makes it +not out of place to mention that Hawthorne studied "Don Quixote" in the +original, soon after leaving college. + + * * * * * + +"'Alas, youth! these are strange times,' observed the President, 'when a +doctor of divinity and an undergraduate set forth like a knight-errant +and his squire, in search of a stray damsel. Methinks I am an epitome of +the church militant, or a new species of polemical divinity. Pray +Heaven, however, there he no encounter in store for us; for I utterly +forgot to provide myself with weapons.' + +"'I took some thought for that matter, reverend knight,' replied Edward, +whose imagination was highly tickled by Dr. Melmoth's chivalrous +comparison. + +"'Ay, I see that you have girded on a sword,' said the divine. 'But +wherewith shall I defend myself?--my hand being empty except of this +golden-headed staff, the gift of Mr. Langton.' + +"'One of those, if you will accept it,' answered Edward, exhibiting a +brace of pistols, 'will serve to begin the conflict, before you join the +battle hand to hand.' + +"'Nay, I shall find little safety in meddling with that deadly +instrument, since I know not accurately from which end proceeds the +bullet,' said Dr. Melmoth. 'But were it not better, seeing we are so +well provided with artillery, to betake ourselves, in the event of an +encounter, to some stone-wall or other place of strength?' + +"'If I may presume to advise,' said the squire, 'you, as being most +valiant and experienced, should ride forward, lance in hand (your long +staff serving for a lance), while I annoy the enemy from afar.' + +"'Like Teucer behind the shield of Ajax,' interrupted Dr. Melmoth, 'or +David with his stone and sling. No, no, young man; I have left +unfinished in my study a learned treatise, important not only to the +present age, but to posterity, for whose sakes I must take heed to my +safety. But lo! who rides yonder?'" + + * * * * * + +In one place only does the author give full rein to his tragic power; +but this is a vigorous burst, and remarkable also for its sure and +trenchant analysis. During his escape with Ellen, Butler is moved to +stop at a lonely hut inhabited by his mother, where he finds her dying; +and, torn by the sight of her suffering while she raves and yearns for +his presence, he makes himself known to her. + + * * * * * + +"At that unforgotten voice, the darkness burst away at once from her +soul. She arose in bed, her eyes and her whole countenance beaming with +joy, and threw her arms about his neck. A multitude of words seem +struggling for utterance; but they gave place to a low moaning sound, +and then to the silence of death. The one moment of happiness, that +recompensed years of sorrow, had been her last.... As he [Butler] +looked, the expression of enthusiastic joy that parting life had left +upon the features faded gradually away, and the countenance, though no +longer wild, assumed the sadness which it had worn through a long course +of grief and pain. On beholding this natural consequence of death, the +thought perhaps occurred to him that her soul, no longer dependent on +the imperfect means of intercourse possessed by mortals, had communed +with his own, and become acquainted with all its guilt and misery. He +started from the bedside and covered his face with his hands, as if to +hide it from those dead eyes.... But his deep repentance for the misery +he had brought upon his parent did not produce in him a resolution to do +wrong no more. The sudden consciousness of accumulated guilt made him +desperate. He felt as if no one had thenceforth a claim to justice or +compassion at his hands, when his neglect and cruelty had poisoned his +mother's life, and hastened her death." + + * * * * * + +What separates this story from the rest of Hawthorne's works is an +intricate plot, with passages of open humor, and a rather melodramatic +tone in the conclusion. These are the result in part of the prevalent +fashion of romance, and in part of a desire to produce effects not quite +consonant with his native bent. The choice of the title, "Fanshawe," +too, seems to show a deference to the then prevalent taste for brief and +quaint-sounding names; and the motto, "Wilt thou go on with me?" from +Southey, placed on his title-page, together with quotations at the heads +of chapters, belongs to a past fashion. Fanshawe and Butler are powerful +conceptions, but they are so purely embodiments of passion as to assume +an air of unreality. Butler is like an evil wraith, and Fanshawe is as +evanescent as a sad cloud in the sky, touched with the first pale light +of morning. Fanshawe, with his pure heart and high resolves, represents +that constant aspiration toward lofty moral truth which marked +Hawthorne's own mind, and Butler is a crude example of the sinful spirit +which he afterward analyzed under many forms. The verbal style has few +marks of the maturer mould afterward impressed on it, except that there +is the preference always noticeable in Hawthorne for Latin wording. Two +or three phrases, however, show all the limpidness and ease for which he +gained fame subsequently. For instance, when Fanshawe is first surprised +by his love for Ellen, he returns to his room to study: "The books were +around him which had hitherto been to him like those fabled volumes of +magic, from which the reader could not turn away his eye, till death +were the consequence of his studies." This, too, is a pretty description +of Ellen: "Terror had at first blanched her as white as a lily.... Shame +next bore sway; and her blushing countenance, covered by her slender +white fingers, might fantastically be compared to a variegated rose, +with its alternate stripes of white and red." Its restraint is perhaps +the most remarkable trait of the novel; for though this comes of +timidity, it shows that Hawthorne, whether this be to his advantage or +not, was not of the order of young genius which begins with tumid and +excessive exhibition of power. His early acquaintance with books, +breeding a respect for literary form, his shy, considerate modes of +dealing with any intellectual problem or question requiring judgment, +and the formal taste of the period in letters, probably conspired to +this end. + + + + +IV. + + +TWILIGHT OF THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. + +1828-1838. + +We have now reached the point where the concealed foundations of +Hawthorne's life terminate, and the final structure begins to appear +above the surface, like the topmost portion of a coral island slowly +rising from the depths of a solitary ocean. + +When he left college, his friends Cilley and Pierce entered into law, +the gateway to politics; Bridge returned to his father's estate at +Bridgton, to engage later in a large enterprise there; and other +classmates took up various activities in the midst of other men; but for +Hawthorne no very clear path presented itself. Literature had not yet +attained, in the United States, the rank of a distinct and powerful +profession. Fifteen years before, Brockden Brown had died prematurely +after a hapless struggle, worn out with overwork,--the first man who had +undertaken to live by writing in this country since its colonization. +"The North American Review," indeed, in Boston, was laying the +corner-stone of a vigorous periodical literature; and in this year of +1825 William Cullen Bryant had gone to New York to edit "The New York +Review," after publishing at Cambridge his first volume of poetry, "The +Ages." Irving was an author of recent but established fame, who was +drawing chiefly from the rich supplies of European manners, legend, and +history; while Cooper, in his pleasant Pioneer-land beside Otsego Lake, +had begun to make clear his claim to a wide domain of native and +national fiction. But to a young man of reserved temper, having few or +no friends directly connected with publication, and living in a sombre, +old-fashioned town, isolated as all like towns were before the era of +railroads, the avenue to publicity and a definite literary career was +dark and devious enough. + +I suppose it was after his venture of "Fanshawe," that he set about the +composition of some shorter stories which he called "Seven Tales of my +Native Land." [Footnote: The motto prefixed to these was, "We are +seven."] His sister, to whom he read these, has told me that they were +very beautiful, but no definite recollection of them remains to her, +except that some of them related to witchcraft, and some to the sea, +being stories of pirates and privateers. In one of these latter were +certain verses, beginning,-- + + "The pirates of the sea, they were a fearful race." + +Hawthorne has described in "The Devil in Manuscript," while depicting a +young author about to destroy his manuscript, his own vexations in +trying to find a publisher for these attempts. "They have been offered +to some seventeen booksellers. It would make you stare to read their +answers.... One man publishes nothing but school-books; another has five +novels already under examination; ... another gentleman is just giving +up business on purpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my +book.... In short, of all the seventeen booksellers, only one has +vouchsafed even to read my tales; and he--a literary dabbler himself, I +should judge--has the impertinence to criticise them, proposing what he +calls vast improvements, and concluding ... that he will not be +concerned on any terms.... But there does seem to be one honest man +among these seventeen unrighteous ones; and he tells me fairly that no +American publisher will meddle with an American work, seldom if by a +known writer, and never if by a new one, unless at the writer's risk." +He indeed had the most discouraging sort of search for a publisher; but +at last a young printer of Salem promised to undertake the work. His +name was Ferdinand Andrews; and he was at one time half-owner with Caleb +Cushing of an establishment from which they issued "The Salem Gazette," +in 1822, the same journal in which Hawthorne published various papers at +a later date, when Mr. Caleb Foote was its editor. Andrews was +ambitious, and evidently appreciative of his young townsman's genius; +but he delayed issuing the "Seven Tales" so long that the author, +exasperated, recalled the manuscript. Andrews, waiting only for better +business prospects, was loath to let them go; but Hawthorne insisted, +and at last the publisher sent word, "Mr. Hawthorne's manuscript awaits +his orders." The writer received it and burned it, to the chagrin of +Andrews, who had hoped to bring out many works by the same hand. + +This, at the time, must have been an incident of incalculable and +depressing importance to Hawthorne, and the intense emotion it caused +may be guessed from the utterances of the young writer in the sketch +just alluded to, though he has there veiled the affair in a light film +of sarcasm. The hero of that scene is called Oberon, one of the feigned +names which Hawthorne himself used at times in contributing to +periodicals. "'What is more potent than fire!' said he, in his gloomiest +tone. 'Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escape +it.... All that I had accomplished, all that I planned for future years, +has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heap of embers! The +deed has been my fate. And what remains? A weary and aimless life; a +long repentance of this hour; and at last an obscure grave, where they +will bury and forget me!'" There is also an allusion to the tales +founded on witchcraft: "I could believe, if I chose," says Oberon, "that +there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers. You have read them, and +know what I mean,--that conception in which I endeavored to embody the +character of a fiend, as represented in our traditions and the written +records of witchcraft. O, I have a horror of what was created in my own +brain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that dark idea a +sort of material existence!' You remember how the hellish thing used to +suck away the happiness of those who ... subjected themselves to his +power." This is curious, as showing the point from which Hawthorne had +resolved to treat the theme. He had instinctively perceived that the +only way to make the witchcraft delusion available in fiction was to +accept the witch as a fact, an actual being, and expend his art upon +developing the abnormal character; while other writers, who have +attempted to use the subject for romantic ends, have uniformly taken the +historical view, and sought to extract their pathos from the effect of +the delusion on innocent persons. The historical view is that of +intelligent criticism; but Hawthorne's effort was the harbinger and +token of an original imagination. + +After the publication of "Fanshawe" and the destruction of his "Seven +Tales," Hawthorne found himself advanced not so much as by a single +footstep on the road to fame. "Fame!" he exclaims, in meditation; "some +very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as the +penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to +everybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are +unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens." But the fame that he +desired was, I think, only that which is the recognition by the public +that a man is on the way to truth. An outside acknowledgment of this is +invaluable even to the least vain of authors, because it assures him +that, in following his own inner impulse through every doubt and +discouragement, he has not been pursuing a chimera, and gives him new +heart for the highest enterprises of which he is capable. To attain +this, amid the peculiar surroundings of his life, was difficult enough. +At that time, Salem society was more peculiarly constituted than it has +been in later years. A strong circle of wealthy families maintained +rigorously the distinctions of class; their entertainments were +splendid, their manners magnificent, and the fame of the beautiful women +born amongst them has been confirmed by a long succession reaching into +the present day. They prescribed certain fashions, customs, punctilios, +to disregard which was social exile for the offending party; and they +were divided even among themselves, I am told, by the most inveterate +jealousies. It is said that certain people would almost have endured the +thumb-screw rather than meet and speak to others. There seems to be good +authority for believing that Hawthorne could have entered this circle, +had he so chosen. He had relatives who took an active part within it; +and it appears that there was a disposition among some of the +fashionable coterie to show him particular favor, and that advances were +made by them with the wish to draw him out. But one can conceive that it +would not be acceptable to him to meet them on any but terms of entire +equality. The want of ample supplies of money, which was one of the +results of the fallen fortunes of his family, made this impossible; +those who held sway were of older date in the place than some of the +Hawthornes, and, like many another long-established stock, they had a +conviction that, whatever their outward circumstances might be, a +certain intrinsic superiority remained theirs. They were, like the lady +of Hawthorne blood mentioned in the "American Note-Books," "proud of +being proud." The Hawthornes, it was said, were as unlike other people +as the Jews were to Gentiles; and the deep-rooted reserve which +enveloped Hawthorne himself was a distinct family trait. So that, +feeling himself to be in an unfair position, he doubtless found in these +facts enough to cause him acute irritation of that sort which only very +young or very proud and shrinking men can know. Besides this, the +altered circumstances of his line, and his years in Maine, had brought +him acquainted with humbler phases of life, and had doubtless developed +in him a sympathy with simpler and less lofty people than these +magnates. His father had been a Democrat, and loyalty to his memory, as +well as the very pride just spoken of, conspired to lead him to that +unpopular side. This set up another barrier between himself and the rich +and powerful Whigs, for political feeling was almost inconceivably more +bitter then than now. Thus there arose within him an unquiet, +ill-defined, comfortless antipathy that must have tortured him with +wearisome distress; and certainly shut him out from the sympathy and +appreciation which, if all the conditions had been different, might have +been given him by sincere and competent admirers. So little known among +his own townsfolk, it is not to be wondered at that no encouraging +answer reached him from more distant communities. + +In his own home there was the faith which only love can give, but +outside of it a chill drove his hopes and ardors back upon himself and +turned them into despairs. His relatives, having seen him educated by +the aid of his uncle, and now arrived at maturity, expected him to take +his share in practical affairs. But the very means adopted to train him +for a career had settled his choice of one in a direction perhaps not +wholly expected; all cares and gains of ordinary traffic seemed sordid +and alien to him. Yet a young man just beginning his career, with no +solid proof of his own ability acquired, cannot but be sensitive to +criticism from those who have gained a right to comment by their own +special successes. As he watched these slow and dreary years pass by, +from his graduation in 1825 to the time when he first came fully before +the public in 1837, he must often have been dragged down by terrible +fears that perhaps the fairest period of life was being wasted, losing +forever the chance of fruition. "I sat down by the wayside of life," he +wrote, long after, "like a man under enchantment, and a shrubbery sprang +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." Judge in what a silence and solitary +self-communing the time must have passed, to leave a thought like this: +"To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course +of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence; as, the clocks have struck, +the dead have been buried." Or this: "A recluse like myself, or a +prisoner, to measure time by the progress of sunshine through his +chamber." His Note-Books show how the sense of unreality vexed and +pursued him; and how the sadness and solemnity of life returned upon him +again and again; and how he clothed these dark visitants of his brain +with the colors of imagination, and turned them away from him in the +guise of miraculous fantasies. He talks with himself of writing "the +journal of a human heart for a single day, in ordinary circumstances. +The lights and shadows that flit across it, its internal vicissitudes." +But this is almost precisely what his printed Note-Books have revealed +to us. Only now and then do we get precisely the thought that is passing +through his mind at the moment; it more often throws upon the page a +reflected image,--some strange and subtle hint for a story, the germs of +delicate fabrics long afterward matured, some merry or sad conceit, some +tender yet piercing inference,--like the shadows of clouds passing +quickly across a clear sky, and casting momentary glooms, and glances of +light, on the ground below. These journals do not begin until a date +seven years after "Fanshawe" was published; but it is safe to assume +that they mirror pretty closely the general complexion of the +intervening years. + +His mode of life during 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; 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. In summer he was up +shortly after sunrise, and would go down to bathe in the sea. 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. Or perhaps he would pace +the streets of the town, unseen but observing, gathering material for +something in the vein of his delicious "Night Sketches." "After a time," +he writes, "the visions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. +Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my +spirits, and impels me to venture out before the clock shall strike +bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not made of such shadowy +materials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so +long among fantasies, that the things without him will seem as unreal as +those within." Or, if he chose a later hour, he might go abroad to +people the deserted thoroughfares with wilder phantoms. 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. His tramps +along the Manchester and Beverly shores or from Marblehead to Nahant +were productive of such delicate tracings as "Footprints by the +Sea-shore," or the dream-autobiography of "The Village Uncle." "Grudge +me not the day," he says, in the former sketch, "that has been spent in +seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my +companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wind has told me +his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around my hermitage. Such +companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been +admitted to the society of creatures that are not mortal." This touches +the inmost secret of those lonely, youthful years, which moulded the +pure-hearted muser with ethereal, unsuspected fingers. Elsewhere, +Hawthorne has given another glimpse into his interior life at this time: +"This scene came into my fancy as I walked along a hilly road, on a +starlight October evening; in the pure and bracing air I became all +soul, and felt as if I could climb the sky, and run a race along the +Milky Way. Here is another tale in which I wrapped myself during a dark +and dreary night-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the +wheels and the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of a +dream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled page describes +shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight; they would not +depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, and found me wide awake and +feverish, the victim of my own enchantments!" Susan, the imaginary wife +in "The Village Uncle," is said to have had a prototype in the daughter +of a Salem fisherman, whose wit and charm gave Hawthorne frequent +amusement; and I suppose that not seldom he reaped delightful +suggestions from his meetings with frank, unconscious, and individual +people of tastes and life unlike his own. I have heard it told with a +polite, self-satisfied scorn, that he was in the habit of visiting now +and then a tavern patronized by 'longshore-men and nautical veterans, to +listen to their talk. I can well believe it, for it is this sort of +intercourse that a person of manly genius, with a republican +fellow-feeling for the unrenowned, most covets. How well he gives the +tone of these old sea-dogs, when he writes: "The blast will put in its +word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them!" It +was this constant searching among the common types of men, and his ready +sympathy with them, refined as it was hearty, that stored his mind with +a variety of accurate impressions which afterward surprised observers, +in a man of habits so retired. + +His uncles, the Mannings, were connected with extensive stage-coach +lines at this time, and Hawthorne seems to have used these as antennae +to bring himself in contact with new and nutritive regions and people. A +letter, probably written in 1830, which I do not feel at liberty to +quote entire, tells something of a trip that he took with Samuel Manning +through a part of Connecticut and the Connecticut valley. The extracts +that follow give a glimpse of the fresh and alert interest he felt about +everything; and I regard them as very important in showing the obverse +of that impression of unhealthy solitude which has been so generally +received from accounts of Hawthorne hitherto published. + +"We did not leave New Haven till last Saturday ... and we were forced to +halt for the night at Cheshire, a village about fifteen miles from New +Haven. The next day being Sunday, we made a Sabbath day's journey of +seventeen miles, and put up at Farmington. As we were wearied with rapid +travelling, we found it impossible to attend divine service, which was +(of course) very grievous to us both. In the evening, however, I went to +a Bible class with a very polite and agreeable gentleman, whom I +afterward discovered to be a strolling tailor of very questionable +habits.... We are now at Deerfield (though I believe my letter is dated +Greenfield) ... with our faces northward; nor shall I marvel much if +your Uncle Sam pushes on to Canada, unless we should meet with two or +three bad taverns in succession.... + +"I meet with many marvellous adventures. At New Haven I observed a +gentleman staring at me with great earnestness, after which he went into +the bar-room, I suppose to inquire who I might be. Finally, he came up +to me and said that as I bore a striking resemblance to a family of +Stanburys, he was induced to inquire if I was connected with them. I was +sorry to be obliged to answer in the negative. At another place they +took me for a lawyer in search of a place to settle, and strongly +recommended their own village. Moreover, I heard some of the students at +Yale College conjecturing that I was an Englishman, and to-day, as I was +standing without my coat at the door of a tavern, a man came up to me, +and asked me for some oats for his horse." + +It was during this trip, I have small doubt, that he found the scenery, +and perhaps the persons, for that pretty interlude, "The Seven +Vagabonds." The story is placed not far from Stamford, and the conjurer +in it says, "I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather, across the +Connecticut first, and then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada +before the fall." The narrator himself queries by what right he came +among these wanderers, and furnishes himself an answer which suggests +that side of his nature most apt to appear in these journeys: "The free +mind that preferred its own folly to another's wisdom; the open spirit +that found companions everywhere; above all, the restless impulse that +had so often made me wretched in the midst of enjoyments: these were my +claims to be of their society." "If there be a faculty," he also writes, +"which I possess more perfectly than most men, it is that of throwing +myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting with a +cheerful eye the desirableness of each." There is also one letter of +1831, sent back during an expedition in New Hampshire, which supplies +the genesis of another Twice-Told Tale, "The Canterbury Pilgrims." + +"I walked to the Shaker village yesterday [he says], and was shown over +the establishment, and dined there with a squire and a doctor, also of +the world's people. On my arrival, the first thing I saw was a jolly old +Shaker carrying an immense decanter of their superb cider; and as soon +as I told him my business, he turned out a tumblerful and gave me. It +was as much as a common head could clearly carry. Our dining-room was +well furnished, the dinner excellent, and the table attended by a +middle-aged Shaker lady, good looking and cheerful.... This +establishment is immensely rich. Their land extends two or three miles +along the road, and there are streets of great houses painted yellow and +tipt with red.... On the whole, they lead a good and comfortable life, +and, if it were not for their ridiculous ceremonies, a man could not do +a wiser thing than to join them. Those whom I conversed with were +intelligent, and appeared happy. I spoke to them about becoming a member +of their society, but have come to no decision on that point. + +"We have had a pleasant journey enough.... I make innumerable +acquaintances, and sit down on the doorsteps with judges, generals, and +all the potentates of the land, discoursing about the Salem murder [that +of Mr. White], the cow-skinning of Isaac Hill, the price of hay, and the +value of horse-flesh. The country is very uneven, and your Uncle Sam +groans bitterly whenever we come to the foot of a low hill; though this +ought to make me groan rather than him, as I have to get out and trudge +every one of them." + +The "Clippings with a Chisel" point to some further wanderings, to +Martha's Vineyard; and an uncollected sketch reveals the fact that he +had been to Niagara. It was probably then that he visited Ticonderoga; +[Footnote: A brief sketch of the fortress is included in The Snow Image +volume of the Works.] but not till some years later that he saw New +York. With these exceptions, and a trip to Washington before going to +Liverpool in 1853, every day of his life up to that date was passed +within New England. In "The Toll-Gatherer's Day" one sees the young +observer at work upon the details of an ordinary scene near home. The +"small square edifice which stands between shore and shore in the midst +of a long bridge," spanning an arm of the sea, refers undoubtedly to the +bridge from Salem to Beverly. But how lightly his spirit hovers over the +stream of actual life, scarcely touching it before springing up again, +like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurate +and polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actual +facts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, +far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible human +pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host of +heavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. His +attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a +Steeple": "The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a +spiritualized Paul Pry, hovering invisible round man and woman, +witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing +brightness from their felicity, and shade from their sorrow, and +retaining no emotion peculiar to himself." He had the longing which +every creative mind must feel, to mix with other beings and share to the +utmost the possibilities of human weal or woe, suppressing his own +experience so far as to make himself a transparent medium for the +emotions of mankind; but he still lacked a definite connection with the +multifarious drama of human fellowship; he could not catch his cue and +play his answering part, and therefore gave voice to a constantly +murmurous, moralizing "aside." He delights to let the current of action +flow around him and beside him; he warms his heart in it; but when he +again withdraws by himself, it is with him as with the old toll-gatherer +at close of day, "mingling reveries of Heaven with remembrances of +earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty +pilgrimage which he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of +phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon." + +"What would a man do," he asks himself, in his journal, "if he were +compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never +bathe himself in cool solitude?" As yet, this bracing influence of +quietude, so essential to his well-being, fascinates him, and he cannot +shake off its influence so far as to enter actively and for personal +interests into any of the common pursuits even of the man who makes a +business of literature. Yet nothing impresses him more than the fact +that every one carries a solitude with him, wherever he goes, like a +shadow. Twice, with an interval of three years between, this idea recurs +in the form of a hint for romance. "Two lovers or other persons, on the +most private business, to appoint a meeting in what they supposed to be +a place of the utmost solitude, and to find it thronged with people." +The idea implied is, that this would in fact be the completest privacy +they could have wished. "The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, +yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two +were in the deepest solitude." This contradiction between the +_apparent_ openness that must rule one's conduct among men, and the +real secrecy that may coexist with it, even when one is most exposed to +the gaze of others, excites in his mind a whole train of thought based +on the falsity of appearances. If a man can be outwardly open and +inwardly reserved in a good sense, he can be so in a bad sense; so, too, +he may have the external air of great excellence and purity, while +internally he is foul and unfaithful. This discovery strikes our +perfectly sincere and true-hearted recluse with intense and endless +horror. He tests it, by turning it innumerable ways, and imagining all +sorts of situations in which such contradictions of appearance and +reality might be illustrated. At one time, he conceives of a friend who +should be true by day, and false at night. At another he suggests: "Our +body to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visage +shall express one mood, and the other half another." "A man living a +wicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one +in another." Then he perceives that this same uncertainty and +contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things in +the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things +meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become +dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A +virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees +what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself +completely into his power, and is ruined,--all in jest." Likewise, the +most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often prove +the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires some +particular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great +pest of their lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the +desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrong +and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her +lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, through +a long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly +trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evil +passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greater +evil would have come upon himself than on his victim." This theme of +self-punished revenge, as we know, was afterward thoroughly wrought out +in "The Scarlet Letter." Another form in which the thought of this +pervading falsehood in earthly affairs comes to him is the frightful +fancy of people being poisoned by communion-wine. Thus does the +insincerity and corruption of man, the lie that is hidden in nearly +every life and almost every act, rise and thrust itself before him, +whichever way he turns, like a serpent in his path. He is in the +position of the father confessor of whom he at one time thinks, and of +"his reflections on character, and the contrast of the inward man with +the outward, as he looks around his congregation, all whose secret sins +are known to him." But Hawthorne does not let this hissing serpent +either rout him or poison him. He is determined to visit the ways of +life, to find the exit of the maze, and so tries every opening, +unalarmed. The serpent is in all: it proves to be a deathless, +large-coiled hydra, encircling the young explorer's virgin soul, as it +does that of every pure aspirer, and trying to drive him back on +himself, with a sting in his heart that shall curse him with a life-long +venom. It does, indeed, force him to recoil, but not with any mortal +wound. He retires in profound sorrow, acknowledging that earth holds +nothing perfect, that his dream of ideal beings leading an ideal life, +which, in spite of the knowledge of evil, he has been cherishing for so +many years, is a dream to be fulfilled in the hereafter alone. He +confesses to himself that "there is evil in every human heart, which may +remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may +rouse it to activity." It is not a new discovery; but from the force +with which it strikes him, we may guess the strength of his aspiration, +the fine temper of his faith in the good and the beautiful. To be driven +to this dismal conclusion is for him a source of inexpressible dismay, +because he had trusted so deeply in the possibility of reaching some +brighter truth. No; not a new discovery;--but one who approaches it with +so much sensibility _feels_ it to be new, with all the fervor which +the most absolute novelty could rouse. This is the deepest and the true +originality, to possess such intensity of feeling that the oldest truth, +when approached by our own methods, shall be full of a primitive +impressiveness. + +But, in the midst of the depression born of his immense sorrow over sin, +Hawthorne found compensations. First, in the query which he puts so +briefly: "The good deeds in an evil life,--the generous, noble, and +excellent actions done by people habitually wicked,--to ask what is to +become of them." This is the motive which has furnished novelists for +the last half-century with their most stirring and pathetic effects. It +is a sort of escape, a safety-valve for the hot fire of controversy on +the soul's fate, and offers in its pertinent indefiniteness a vast +solace to those who are trying to balance the bewildering account of +virtue with sin. Hawthorne found that here was a partial solution of the +problem, and he enlarged upon it, toward the end of his life, in "The +Marble Faun." But it was a second and deeper thought that furnished him +the chief compensation. In one of the "Twice-Told Tales," "Fancy's +Show-Box," he deals with the question, how far the mere thought of sin, +the incipient desire to commit it, may injure the soul. After first +strongly picturing the reality of certain sinful impulses in a man's +mind, which had never been carried out,--"A scheme of guilt," he argues, +taking up the other side, "till it be put in execution, greatly +resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale.... Thus a +novel-writer, or a dramatist, in creating the villain of romance, and +fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life in +projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other +half-way between reality and fancy. It is not until the crime is +accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the heart, and claims it +for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and +acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repentance, grows a thousand-fold +more virulent by its self-consciousness. Be it considered, also, that +men often overestimate their capacity for evil. At a distance, while its +attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, its results are +dimly seen, they can bear to contemplate it.... In truth, there is no +such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for +good or evil, except at the very moment of execution. Let us hope, +therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be +incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet ... +_man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest_, +since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by +the flitting phantoms of iniquity." That is, purity is too spotless a +thing to exist in absolute perfection in a human being, who must often +feel at least the dark flush of passionate thoughts falling upon him, +however blameless of life he may be. From this lofty conception of +purity comes that equally noble humility of always feeling "his +brotherhood, even with the guiltiest." What more logical issue from the +Christian idea, what more exquisitely tender rendering of it than this? +"Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or woman of us can be +clean!" was his exclamation, many years later, in that English workhouse +which he describes in a heart-rending chapter of "Our Old Home" called +"Outside Glimpses of English Poverty." And it was then that he revealed +the vast depth and the reality of his human sympathy toward the wretched +and loathsome little foundling child that silently sued to him for +kindness, till he took it up and caressed it as tenderly as if he had +been its father. + +Armed with these two perceptions, of the good that still persists in +evil persons, and the deep charity which every one must feel towards +even the most abject fellow-being, Hawthorne moves forth again to trace +the maze; and lo, the serpent drops down, cowering. He has found a charm +that robs sin and crime of their deadly hurt, and can handle them +without danger. It is said by some that Hawthorne treats wrong and +corruption too shrinkingly, and his mood of never-lessened and acute +sensibility touching them is contrasted with that of "virile" writers +like Balzac and George Sand. But these incline to make a menagerie of +life, thrusting their heads into the very lion's mouth, or boldly +embracing the snake of sin. They are indeed superior in strong dramatic +and realistic effects; but, unvicious as may be their aim, they are not +filled with a robust morality: they deliberately choose unclean elements +to heighten the interest,--albeit using such elements with magnificent +strength and skill. Let us be grateful that Hawthorne does not so covet +the applause of the clever club-man or of the unconscious vulgarian, as +to junket about in caravan, carrying the passions with him in gaudy +cages, and feeding them with raw flesh; grateful that he never loses the +archangelic light of pure, divine, dispassionate wrath, in piercing the +dragon! + +We see now how, in this early term of probation, he was finding a +philosophy and an unsectarian religiousness, which ever stirred below +the clear surface of his language like the bubbling spring at bottom of +a forest pool. It has been thought that Hawthorne developed late. But +the most striking thing about the "Twice-Told Tales" and the first +entries in the "American Note-Books" is their evidence of a calm and +mellow maturity. These stories are like the simple but well-devised +theme which a musician prepares as the basis of a whole composition: +they show the several tendencies which underlie all the subsequent +works. First, there are the scenes from New England history,--"Endicott +and the Red Cross," "The Maypole of Merry Mount," "The Gray Champion," +the "Tales of the Province House." + +Then we have the psychological vein, in "The Prophetic Pictures," "The +Minister's Black Veil," "Dr. Heidegger," "Fancy's Show-Box"; and along +with this the current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The Haunted +Mind," and "Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ramble," again, foreshadows +his charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he should +thus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his first +works. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at once +flowing and large in its outline, and masterly in its minuteness. + +But this maturity was not won without deep suffering and long-deferred +hope. + +If actual contact with men resulted in such grave and sorrowful +reflection as we have traced, how drearily trying must have been the +climaxes of solitary thought after a long session of seclusion! And much +the larger portion of his time was consumed amid an absolute silence, a +privacy unbroken by intimate confidences and rife with exhausting and +depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe +intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have +amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing +perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. +"Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in +some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the +extracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then we get from +the same source a glimpse of the haunting sense that he is missing his +fit relation to the rest of the race, the question whether his pursuit +was not in some way futile like all the human pursuits he had +noticed,--whether it was not to be nipped by the same perversity and +contradiction that seemed to affect all things mundane. Here is one of +his proposed plots, which turns an inner light upon his own frame of +mind: "Various good and desirable things to be presented to a young man, +and offered to his acceptance,--as a friend, a wife, a fortune; but he +to refuse them all, suspecting that it is merely a delusion. Yet all to +be real, and he to be told so when too late." Is this not, in brief, +what he conceives may yet be the story of his own career? Another +occurs, in the same relation: "A man tries to be happy in love; he +cannot sincerely give his heart, and the affair seems all a dream. In +domestic life the same; in politics, a seeming patriot: but still he is +sincere, and all seems like a theatre." These items are the merest +indicia of a whole history of complex emotions, which made this epoch +one of continuous though silent and unseen struggle. In a Preface +prefixed to the tales, in 1851, the author wrote: "They are the +memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years." Tranquil they of +course were; and to the happy and successful man of forty-seven, the +vexing moods and dragging loneliness of that earlier period would seem +"not unhappy," because he could then see all the good it had contained. +I cannot agree with Edwin Whipple, who says of them, "There was audible +to the delicate ear a faint and muffled growl of personal discontent, +which showed they were not mere exercises of penetrating imaginative +analysis, but had in them the morbid vitality of a despondent mood." For +this applies to only one of the number, "The Ambitious Guest." Nor do I +find in them the "misanthropy" which he defines at some length. On the +contrary, they are, as the author says, "his attempts to open an +intercourse with the world," incited by an eager sympathy, but also +restrained by a stern perception of right and wrong. + +Yet I am inclined to adhere to the grave view of his inner life just +sketched. When his friend Miss Peabody first penetrated his retirement, +his pent-up sympathies flowed forth in a way that showed how they had +longed for relief. He returned constantly to the discussion of his +peculiar mode of living, as if there could be no understanding between +himself and another, until this had been cleared up and set aside. Among +other things, he spoke of a dream by which he was beset, that he was +walking abroad, and that all the houses were mirrors which reflected him +a thousand times and overwhelmed him with mortification. This gives a +peculiar insight into his sensitive condition. + +The noiseless, uneventful weeks slipped by, each day disguising itself +in exact semblance of its fellow, like a file of mischievous maskers. +Hawthorne sat in his little room under the eaves reading, studying, +voicelessly communing with himself through his own journal, or-- +mastered by some wild suggestion or mysterious speculation--feeling his +way through the twilight of dreams, into the dusky chambers of that +house of thought whose haunted interior none but himself ever visited. +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 several 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 feminine element is not +to be underrated as forming a very great compensation in the cold and +difficult morning of Hawthorne's life. + +If the week-day could not lure him from his sad retreat, neither could +the Sunday. He had the right to a pew in the First Church, which his +family had held since 1640, but he seldom went to service there after +coming from college. His religion was supplied from sources not always +opened to the common scrutiny, and it never chanced that he found it +essential to join any church. + +The chief resource against disappointment, the offset to the pain of so +much lonely living and dark-veined meditation was, of course, the +writing of tales. Never was a man's mind more truly a kingdom to him. +This was the fascination that carried him through the weary +waiting-time. Yet even that pleasure had a reverse side, to which the +fictitious Oberon has no doubt given voice in these words: "You cannot +conceive what an effect the composition of these tales has had upon me. +I have become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solid reputation. I +am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilder me by aping the +realities of life. They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the +world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude ... where nobody +wished for what I do, nor thinks or feels as I do." Alluding to this +season of early obscurity to a friend who had done much to break it up, +he once said, "I was like a person talking to himself in a dark room." +To make his own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story was one of +his projects then formed, which he carried out in the "Mosses." With +that image of the dark room, and this suggested reflection in the +mirror, we can rehabilitate the scene of which the broken lights and +trembling shadows are strewn through the "Twice-Told Tales." Sober and +weighty the penumbrous atmosphere in which the young creator sits; but +how calm, thoughtful, and beautiful the dim vision of his face, lit by +the sheltered radiance of ethereal fancies! Behind his own form we catch +the movement of mysterious shapes,--men and women wearing aspects of joy +or anger, calm or passionate, gentle and pitiable, or stern, splendid, +and forbidding. It is not quite a natural twilight in which we behold +these things; rather the awesome shadowiness of a partial eclipse; but +gleams of the healthiest sunshine withal mingle in the prevailing tint, +bringing reassurance, and receiving again a rarer value from the +contrast. There are but few among the stories of this series afterward +brought together by the author which are open to the charge of +morbidness. In "The White Old Maid" an indefinable horror, giving the +tale a certain shapelessness, crowds out the compensating brightness +which in most cases is not wanting; perhaps, too, "The Ambitious Guest" +leaves one with too hopeless a downfall at the end; and "The Wedding +Knell" cannot escape a suspicion of disagreeable gloom. But these +extremes are not frequent. The wonder is that Hawthorne's mind could so +often and so airily soar above the shadows that at this time hung about +him; that he should nearly always suggest a philosophy so complete, so +gently wholesome, and so penetrating as that which he mixes with even +the bitterest distillations of his dreams. Nor is the sadness of his +tone disordered or destructive, more than it is selfish; he does not +inculcate despair, nor protest against life and fate, nor indulge in +gloomy or weak self-pity. The only direct exposition of his own case is +contained in a sketch, "The Journal of a Solitary Man," not reprinted +during his life. One extract from this I will make, because it sums up, +though more plaintively than was his wont, Hawthorne's view of his own +life at this epoch:-- + +"It is hard to die without one's happiness; to none more so than myself, +whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys of +life, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy! The very +hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long +toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. Merely skimming the +surface of life, I know nothing by my own experience of its deep and +warm realities, ... so that few mortals, even the humblest and weakest, +have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I +must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thousand +vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, and perhaps shall be doomed +to loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my +soul has never married itself to the soul of woman." + +The touch about avoiding the cares of life is no doubt merely +metaphorical; but the self-imposed doom of eternal loneliness reveals +the excess of sombreness in which he clothed his condition to his own +perception. One may say that the adverse factors in his problem at this +time were purely imaginary; that a little resolution and determined +activity would have shaken off the incubus: but this is to lose sight of +the gist of the matter. The situation in itself,--the indeterminateness +and repression of it, and the denial of any satisfaction to his warm and +various sympathies, and his capacity for affection and responsibility,-- +must be allowed to have been intensely wearing. Hawthorne believed +himself to possess a strongly social nature, which was cramped, chilled, +and to some extent permanently restrained by this long seclusion at the +beginning of his career. This alone might furnish just cause for +bitterness against the fate that chained him. It was not a matter of +option; for he knew that his battle must be fought through as he had +begun it, and until 1836 no slightest loophole of escape into action +presented itself. It lay before him to act out the tragedy of isolation +which is the lot of every artist in America still, though greatly +mitigated by the devotion of our first generation of national writers. +If he had quitted his post sooner, and had tried by force to mould his +genius according to theory, he might have utterly distorted or stunted +its growth. All that he could as yet do for himself was to preserve a +certain repose and harmony in the midst of uncertainty and delay; and +for this he formed four wise precepts: "To break off customs; to shake +off spirits ill disposed; to meditate on youth; to do nothing against +one's genius." [Footnote: American Note-Books, Vol. I.] Thus he kept +himself fresh and flexible, hopeful, ready for emergency. But that +I have not exaggerated the severity and import of his long vigil, let +this revery of his show, written at Liverpool, in 1855: "I think I have +been happier this Christmas than ever before,--by my own fireside, and +with my wife and children about me; more content to enjoy what I have, +less anxious for anything beyond it in this life. My early life was +perhaps a good preparation for the declining half of life; it having +been such a blank that any thereafter would compare favorably with it. +For a long, long while I have been occasionally visited with a singular +dream; and I have an impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have +been in England. It is, that I am still at college,--or, sometimes, even +at school,--and there is a sense that I have been there unconscionably +long, and have quite failed to make such progress as my contemporaries +have done; and I seem to meet some of them with a feeling of shame and +depression that broods over me as I think of it, even when awake. This +dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty years, must be one +of the effects of that heavy seclusion in which I shut myself up for +twelve years after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, and +left me behind." Experiences which leave effects like this must bite +their way into the heart and soul with a fearful energy! This precursive +solitude had tinged his very life-blood, and woven itself into the +secret tissues of his brain. Yet, patiently absorbing it, he wrote late +in life to a friend: "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." It was under such a guise that the test of his genius +and character came to him. Every great mind meets once in life with a +huge opposition that must somehow be made to succumb, before its own +energies can know their full strength, gain a settled footing, and make +a roadway to move forward upon. Often these obstacles are viewless to +others, and the combat is unsuspected; the site of many a Penuel remains +untraced; but none the less these are the pivots on which entire +personal histories turn. Hawthorne's comparatively passive endurance was +of infinitely greater worth than any active irruption into the outer +world would have been. It is obvious that we owe to the innumerable +devious wanderings and obscure sufferings of his mind, under the +influences just reviewed, something of his sure and subtle touch in +feeling out the details of morbid moods; for though his mind remained +perfectly healthy, it had acquired acute sympathy with all hidden +tragedies of heart and brain. + +But another and larger purpose was not less well served by this +probation. The ability of American life to produce a genius in some +sense exactly responding to its most distinctive qualities had yet to be +demonstrated; and this could only be done by some one who would stake +life and success on the issue, for it needed that a soul and brain of +the highest endowment should be set apart solely for the experiment, +even to the ruin of it if required, before the truth could be +ascertained. Hawthorne, the slowly produced and complex result of a line +of New-Englanders who carried American history in their very limbs, +seemed providentially offered for the trial. It was well that +temperament and circumstance drew him into a charmed circle of reserve +from the first; well, also, that he was further matured at a simple and +rural college pervaded by a homely American tone; still more fortunate +was it that nothing called him away to connect him with European +culture, on graduating. To interpret this was the honorable office of +his classmate Longfellow, who, with as much ease as dignity and charm, +has filled the gap between the two half-worlds. The experiment to be +tried was, simply, whether with books and men at his command, and +isolated from the immediate influence of Europe, this American could +evolve any new quality for the enrichment of literature. The conditions +were strictly carried out; even after he began to come in contact with +men, in the intervals of his retirement, he saw only pure American +types. A foreigner must have been a rare bird in Salem, in those days; +for the maritime element which might have brought him was still +American. Hawthorne, as we have seen, and as his Note-Books show, pushed +through the farming regions and made acquaintance with the men of the +soil; and probably the first alien of whom he got at all a close view +was the Monsieur S---- whom he found at Bridge's, on his visit to the +latter, in 1837, described at length in the Note-Books. So much did +Hawthorne study from these types, and so closely, that he might, had his +genius directed, have written the most homely and realistic novels of +New England life from the material which he picked up quite by the way. +But though he did not translate his observations thus, the originality +which he was continuously ripening amid such influences was radically +affected by them. They established a broad, irrepressible republican +sentiment in his mind; they assisted his natural, manly independence and +simplicity to assert themselves unaffectedly in letters; and they had +not a little to do, I suspect, with fostering his strong turn for +examining with perfect freedom and a certain refined shrewdness into +everything that came before him, without accepting prescribed opinions. +The most characteristic way, perhaps, in which this American nurture +acted was by contrast; for the universal matter-of-fact tone which he +found among his fellow-citizens was an incessant spur to him to maintain +a counteracting idealism. Thus, singularly enough, the most salient +feature of the new American product was its apparent denial of the +national trait of practical sagacity. It is not to be supposed that +Hawthorne adhered consciously to the aim of asserting the American +nature in fiction. These things can be done only half consciously, at +the most. Perhaps it is well that the mind on which so much depends +should not be burdened with all the added anxiety of knowing how much is +expected from it by the ages. Therefore, we owe the triumphant assertion +of the American quality in this novel genius to Hawthorne's quiet, +unfaltering, brave endurance of the weight that was laid upon him, +unassisted by the certainty with which we now perceive that a great end +was being served by it. But, although unaware of this end at the time, +he afterward saw some of the significance of his youth. Writing in 1840, +he speaks thus of his old room in Union Street:-- + +"This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon +thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them +have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he +ought to make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so +much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and _here my mind and +character were formed_; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and +here I have been despondent.... And now I begin to understand why I was +imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never +break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my +escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and my heart +might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude.... But +living in solitude till the fulness of time, I still kept the dew of my +youth and the freshness of my heart." + +Yes, and more than this, Hawthorne! It was a young nation's faith in its +future which--unsuspected by any then, but always to be remembered +henceforth--had found a worthy answer and after-type in this faithful +and hopeful heart of yours! Thus was it that the young poet who, in the +sense we have observed, stood for old New England, absorbed into himself +also the atmosphere of the United States. The plant that rooted in the +past had put forth a flower which drew color and perfume from to-day. In +such wise did Hawthorne prove to be the unique American in fiction. + +I have examined the librarian's books at the Salem Athenaeum, which +indicate a part of the reading that the writer of the "Twice-Told Tales" +went through. The lists from the beginning of 1830 to 1838 include +nearly four hundred volumes taken out by him, besides a quantity of +bound magazines. This gives no account of his dealings with books in the +previous five years, when he was not a shareholder in the Athenaeum, nor +does it, of course, let us know anything of what he obtained from other +sources. When Miss E. P. Peabody made his acquaintance, in 1836-37, he +had, for example, read all of Balzac that had then appeared; and there +is no record of this in the library lists. These lists alone, then, +giving four hundred volumes in seven years, supply him with one volume a +week,--not, on the whole, a meagre rate, when we consider the volumes of +magazines, the possible sources outside of the library, and the +numberless hours required for literary experiment. I do not fancy that +he plodded through books; but rather that he read with the easy energy +of a vigorous, original mind, though he also knew the taste of severe +study. "Bees," he observes in one place, "are sometimes drowned (or +suffocated) in the honey which they collect. So some writers are lost in +their collected learning." He did not find it necessary to mount upon a +pyramid of all learning previous to his epoch, in order to get the +highest standpoint for his own survey of mankind. Neither was he "a man +of parts," precisely; being in himself a distinct whole. His choice of +reading was ruled by a fastidious need. He was fond of travels for a +rainy day, and knew Mandeville; but at other times he took up books +which seem to lie quite aside from his known purposes. [Footnote: See +Appendix III.] Voltaire appears to have attracted him constantly; he +read him in the original, together with Rousseau. At one time he +examined Pascal, at another he read something of Corneille and a part of +Racine. Of the English dramatists, he seems at this time to have tried +only Massinger; "Inchbald's Theatre" also occurs. The local American +histories took his attention pretty often, and he perused a variety of +biography,--"Lives of the Philosophers," "Plutarch's Lives," biographies +of Mohammed, Pitt, Jefferson, Goldsmith, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, +Baxter, Heber, Sir William Temple, and others. Brewster's "Natural +Magic" and Sir Walter Scott's essay on "Demonology and Witchcraft" are +books that one would naturally expect him to read; and he had already +begun to make acquaintance with the English State Trials, for which he +always had a great liking. "Colquhoun on the Police" would seem not +entirely foreign to one who mentally pursued so many malefactors; but it +is a little surprising that he should have found himself interested in +"Babbage on the Economy of Machinery." He dipped, also, into botany and +zoölogy; turned over several volumes of Bayle's "Critical Dictionary," +read Mrs. Jameson, and the "London Encyclopaedia of Architecture"; and +was entertained by Dunlap's "History of the Arts of Design in America." +It was from this last that he drew the plot of "The Prophetic Pictures," +in the "Twice-Told Tales." Some Boston newspapers of the years 1739 to +1783 evidently furnished the material for an article called "Old News," +reprinted in "The Snow Image." Hawthorne seems never to have talked much +about reading: 'tis imaginable that he was as shy in his choice of books +and his discussion of them, as in his intercourse with men; and there is +no more ground for believing that he did not like books, than that he +cared nothing for men and women. Life is made up, for such a mind, of +men, women, and books; Hawthorne accepted all three estates. + +Gradually, from the midst of the young author's obscurity, there issued +an attraction which made the world wish to know more of him. One by one, +the quiet essays and mournful-seeming stories came forth, like drops +from a slow-distilling spring. The public knew nothing of the internal +movement which had opened this slight fountain, nor suspected the dark +concamerations through which the current made its way to the surface. +The smallest mountain rill often has a thunder-storm at its back; but +the average reader of that day thought he had done quite enough, when he +guessed that the new writer was a timid young man fabling under a +feigned name, excellent in his limited way, who would be a great deal +better if he could come out of seclusion and make himself more like +other people. + +The first contributions were made to the "Salem Gazette" and the "New +England Magazine"; then his attempts extended to the "Boston Token and +Atlantic Souvenir," edited by S. G. Goodrich; and later, to other +periodicals. Mr. Goodrich wrote to his young contributor (October, +1831): "I am gratified to find that all whose opinion I have heard agree +with me as to the merit of the various pieces from your pen." But for +none of these early performances did Hawthorne receive any considerable +sum of money. And though his writings began at once to attract an +audience, he had slight knowledge of it. Three young ladies--of whom his +future sister-in-law, Miss Peabody, was one--were among the first +admirers; and though Hawthorne baffled his readers and perhaps retarded +his own notoriety by assuming different names in print, [Footnote: Among +these were "Oberon" and "Ashley Allen Royce," or "The Rev. A. A. Royce." +The latter was used by him in the Democratic Review, so late as March, +1840.] they traced his contributions assiduously, cut them out of +magazines, and preserved them. But they could not discover his personal +identity. One of them who lived in Salem used constantly to wonder, in +driving about town, whether the author of her favorite tales could be +living in this or in that house; for it was known that he was a Salem +resident. Miss Peabody, who had in girlhood known something of the +Hathorne family (the name was still written either way, I am told), was +misled by the new spelling, and by the prevalent idea that Nathaniel +Hawthorne was an assumed name. This trio were especially moved by "The +Gentle Boy" when it appeared, and Miss Peabody was on the point of +addressing "The Author of 'The Gentle Boy,'" at Salem, to tell him of +the pleasure he had given. When afterward told of this, Hawthorne said, +"I wish you had! It would have been an era in my life." Soon after, the +Peabodys returned to Salem, and she learned from some one that the new +romancer was the son of the Widow Hathorne. Now it so chanced that her +family had long ago occupied a house on Union Street, looking off into +the garden of the old Manning family mansion; and she remembered no son, +though a vague image came back to her of a strong and graceful boy's +form dancing across the garden, at play, years before. Her mind +therefore fastened upon one of the sisters, who, she knew, had shown +great facility in writing: indeed, Hawthorne used at one time to say +that it was she who should have been the follower of literature. Full of +this conception, she went to carry her burden of gratitude to the +author, and after delays and difficulties, made her way into the retired +and little-visited mansion. It was the other sister into whose presence +she came, and to her she began pouring out the reason of her intrusion, +delivering at once her praises of the elder Miss Hathorne's fictions. + +"My brother's, you mean," was the response. + +"It _is_ your brother, then." And Miss Peabody added: "If your +brother can write like that, he has no right to be idle." + +"My brother never is idle," answered Miss Louisa, quietly. + +Thus began an acquaintance which helped to free Hawthorne from the spell +of solitude, and led directly to the richest experiences of his life. +Old habits, however, were not immediately to be broken, and months +passed without any response being made to the first call. Then at last +came a copy of the "Twice-Told Tales," fresh from the press. But it was +not until the establishment of the "Democratic Review," a year or two +later, that occasion offered for a renewal of relations. Hawthorne was +too shy to act upon the first invitation. Miss Peabody, finally, +addressing him by letter, to inquire concerning the new periodical, for +which he had been engaged as a contributor, asked him to come with both +his sisters on the evening of the same day. Entirely to her surprise, +they came. She herself opened the door, and there before her, between +his sisters, stood a splendidly handsome youth, tall and strong, with no +appearance whatever of timidity, but, instead, an almost fierce +determination making his face stern. This was his resource for carrying +off the extreme inward tremor which he really felt. His hostess brought +out Plaxmau's designs for Dante, just received from Professor Felton of +Harvard, [Footnote: The book may have been Felton's Homer with Flaxman's +drawings, issued in 1833.] and the party made an evening's entertainment +out of them. + +The news of this triumph, imparted to a friend of Miss Peabody's, led to +an immediate invitation of Hawthorne to dinner at another house, for the +next day. He accepted this, also, and on returning homeward, stopped at +the "Salem Gazette" office, full of the excitement of his new +experiences, announcing to Mr. Foote, the editor, that he was getting +dissipated. He told of the evening with Miss Peabody, where he said he +had had a delightful time, and of the dinner just achieved. "And I've +had a delightful time there, too!" he added. Mr. Foote, perceiving an +emergency, at once asked the young writer to come to his own house for +an evening. Hawthorne, thoroughly aroused, consented. When the evening +came, several ladies who had been invited assembled before the author +arrived; and among them Miss Peabody. When he reached the place he +stopped short at the drawing-room threshold, startled by the presence of +strangers, and stood perfectly motionless, but with the look of a sylvan +creature on the point of fleeing away. His assumed brusquerie no longer +availed him; he was stricken with dismay; his face lost color, and took +on a warm paleness. All this was in a moment; but the daughter of the +house moved forward, and he was drawn within. Even then, though he +assumed a calm demeanor, his agitation was very great: he stood by a +table, and, taking up some small object that lay upon it, he found his +hand trembling so that he was forced to put it down again. + +While friends were slowly penetrating his reserve in this way, he was +approached in another by Mr. Goodrich, who induced him to go to Boston, +there to edit the "American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining +Knowledge." This work, which only continued from 1834 to September, +1837, was managed by several gentlemen under the name of the Bewick +Company. One of these was Bowen, of Charlestown, an engraver; another +was Goodrich, who also, I think, had some connection with the American +Stationers' Company. The Bewick Company took its name from Thomas +Bewick, the English restorer of the art of wood-engraving, and the +magazine was to do his memory honor by its admirable illustrations. But, +in fact, it never did any one honor, nor brought any one profit. It was +a penny popular affair, containing condensed information about +innumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts were +of the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of +several editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at a +salary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got next +to nothing, and that he did not stay in the position long. There is +little in its pages to recall the identity of the editor; but in one +place he quotes as follows from Lord Bacon: "The ointment which witches +use is made of the fat of children digged from their graves, and of the +juices of smallage, cinquefoil, and wolf's-bane, mingled with the meal +of fine wheat," and hopes that none of his readers will try to compound +it. In the tale of "Young Goodman Brown," when Goody Cloyse says, "I was +all anointed with the juice of small-age and cinquefoil and +wolf's-bane," and the Devil continues, "'Mingled with fine wheat and the +fat of a new-born babe,'--'Ah, your worship knows the recipe,' cried the +old lady, cackling aloud." A few scraps of correspondence, mostly +undated, which I have looked over, give one a new view of him in the +bustle and vexation of this brief editorial experience. He sends off +frequent and hurried missives to one of his sisters, who did some of the +condensing and compiling which was a part of the business. "I make +nothing," he says, in one, "of writing a history or biography before +dinner." At another time, he is in haste for a Life of Jefferson, but +warns his correspondent to "see that it contains nothing heterodox." At +the end of one of the briefest messages, he finds time to speak of the +cat at home. Perhaps with a memory of the days when he built +book-houses, he had taken two names of the deepest dye from Milton and +Bunyan for two of his favorite cats, whom he called Beelzebub and +Apollyon. "Pull Beelzebub's tail for me," he writes. But the following +from Boston, February 15, 1836, gives the more serious side of the +situation:-- + +"I came here trusting to Goodrich's positive promise to pay me +forty-five dollars as soon as I arrived; and he has kept promising from +one day to another, till I do not see that he means to pay at all. I +have now broke off all intercourse with him, and never think of going +near him ... I don't feel at all obliged to him about the editorship, +for he is a stockholder and director in the Bewick Company; ... and I +defy them to get another to do for a thousand dollars what I do for five +hundred." + +Goodrich afterward sent his editor a small sum; and the relations +between them were resumed.. A letter of May 5, in the same year, +contains these allusions:-- + +"I saw Mr. Goodrich yesterday.... He wants me to undertake a Universal +History, to contain about as much as fifty or sixty pages of the +magazine. [These were large pages.] If you are willing to write any part +of it, ... I shall agree to do it. If necessary I will come home by and +by, and concoct the plan of it with you. It need not be superior in +profundity and polish to the middling magazine articles.... I shall have +nearly a dozen articles in The Token,--mostly quite short." + +The historical project is, of course, that which resulted in the famous +"Peter Parley" work. "Our pay as historians of the universe," says a +letter written six days later, "will be about one hundred dollars, the +whole of which you may have. It is a poor compensation, but better than +the Token; because the writing is so much less difficult." He afterward +carried out the design, or a large part of it, and the book has since +sold by millions, for the benefit of others. There are various little +particulars in this ingenious abridgment which recall Hawthorne, +especially if one is familiar with his "Grandfather's Chair" and "True +Stories" for children; though the book has probably undergone some +changes in successive editions. This passage about George IV. is, +however, remembered as being his: "Even when he was quite an old man, +this king cared as much about dress as any young coxcomb. He had a great +deal of taste in such matters, and it is a pity that he was a king, for +he might otherwise have been an excellent tailor." + +Up to this time (May 12) he had received only twenty dollars for four +months' editorial labor. "And, as you may well suppose," he says, "I +have undergone very grievous vexations. Unless they pay me the whole +amount shortly, I shall return to Salem, and stay there till they do." +It seems a currish fate that puts such men into the grasp of paltry and +sordid cares like these! But there is something deeper to be felt than +dissatisfaction at the author-publisher's feeble though annoying scheme +of harnessing in this rare poet to be his unpaid yet paying hack. This +deeper something is the pathos of such possibilities, and the spectacle +of so renowned and strong-winged a genius consenting thus to take his +share of worldly struggle; perfectly conscious that it is wholly beneath +his plane, but accepting it as a proper part of the mortal lot; +scornful, but industrious and enduring. You who have conceived of +Hawthorne as a soft-marrowed dweller in the dusk, fostering his own +shyness and fearing to take the rubs of common men, pray look well at +all this. And you, also, who discourse about the conditions essential to +the development of genius, about the _milieu_ and the +_moment_, and try to prove America a vacuum which the Muse abhors, +will do well to consider the phenomenon. "It is a poor compensation, yet +better than the Token"; so he wrote, knowing that his unmatched tales +were being coined for even a less reward than mere daily bread. He took +the conditions that were about him, and gave them a dignity by his own +fine perseverance. It is this inspired industry, this calm facing of the +worst and making it the best, which has formed the history of all art. +You talk of the ages, and choose this or that era as the only fit one. +You long for a cosey niche in the past; but genius crowds time and +eternity into the present, and says to you, "Make your own century!" + +Meanwhile, if he received no solid gain from his exertions, Hawthorne +was winning a reputation. In January he had written home: "My worshipful +self is a very famous man in London, the 'Athenaeum' having noticed all +my articles in the last Token, with long extracts." This refers to the +'Athenaeum' for November 7, 1835, which mentioned "The Wedding Knell" +and "The Minister's Black Veil" as being stories "each of which has +singularity enough to recommend it to the reader," and gave three +columns to a long extract from "The Maypole of Merry Mount"; the notice +being no doubt the work of the critic Chorley, who afterward met +Hawthorne in England. Thus encouraged, he thought of collecting his +tales and publishing them in volume form, connected by the conception of +a travelling story-teller, whose shiftings of fortune were to form the +interludes and links between the separate stories. A portion of this, +prefatory to "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," has been published in the +"Mosses," with the heading of "Passages from a Relinquished Work." +Goodrich was not disposed to lavish upon his young beneficiary the +expense of bringing out a book for him, and the plan of reprinting the +tales with this framework around them was given up. The next year Bridge +came to Goodrich and insisted on having a simple collection issued, +himself taking the pecuniary risk. In this way the "Twice-Told Tales" +were first brought collectively before the world; and for the second +time this faithful comrade of Hawthorne laid posterity under obligation +to himself. It was not till long afterward, however, that Hawthorne knew +of his friend's interposition in the affair. + +Mr. Bridge had not then entered the navy, and was engaged in a great +enterprise on the Androscoggin; nothing less than an attempt to dam up +that river and apply the water-power to some mills. In July of 1837, +Hawthorne went to visit him at Bridgton, and has described his +impressions fully in the Note-Books. It was probably his longest absence +from Salem since graduating at Bowdoin. "My circumstances cannot long +continue as they are," he writes; "and Bridge, too, stands between high +prosperity and utter ruin." + +The change in his own circumstances which Hawthorne looked for did not +come through his book. It sold some six or seven hundred copies in a +short time, but was received quietly, [Footnote: Some of the sketches +were reprinted in England; and "A Rill from the Town Pump" was +circulated in pamphlet form by a London bookseller, without the author's +name, as a temperance tract.] though Longfellow, then lately established +in his Harvard professorship, and known as the author of "Outre-Mer," +greeted it with enthusiasm in the "North American Review," which wielded +a great influence in literary affairs. + +On March 7, 1837, Hawthorne sent this note to his former classmate, to +announce the new volume. + +"The agent of the American Stationer's Company will send you a copy of a +book entitled 'Twice-Told Tales,'--of which, as a classmate, I venture +to request your acceptance. We were not, it is true, so well acquainted +at college, that I can plead an absolute right to inflict my +'twice-told' tediousness upon you; but I have often regretted that we +were not better known to each other, and have been glad of your success +in literature and in more important matters." Returning to the tales, he +adds: "I should like to flatter myself that they would repay you some +part of the pleasure which I have derived from your own 'Outre-Mer.' + +"Your obedient servant, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +Longfellow replied warmly, and in June Hawthorne wrote again, a long +letter picturing his mood with a fulness that shows how keenly he had +felt the honest sympathy of the poet. + +"Not to burden you with my correspondence," he said, "I have delayed a +rejoinder to your very kind and cordial letter, until now. It gratifies +me that you have occasionally felt an interest in my situation; but your +quotation from Jean Paul about the 'lark's nest' makes me smile. You +would have been much nearer the truth if you had pictured me as dwelling +in an owl's nest; for mine is about as dismal, and like the owl I seldom +venture abroad till after dusk. By some witchcraft or other--for I +really cannot assign any reasonable why and wherefore--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. +I have made a captive of myself, and put me into a dungeon, and now I +cannot find the key to let myself out,--and if the door were open, I +should be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you have met with +troubles and changes. I know not what these may have been, but I can +assure you that trouble is the next best thing to enjoyment, and that +there is no fate in this world so horrible as to have no share in either +its joys or sorrows. For the last ten years, I have not lived, but only +dreamed of living. It may be true that there have been some +unsubstantial pleasures here in the shade, which I might have missed in +the sunshine, but you cannot conceive how utterly devoid of satisfaction +all my retrospects are. I have laid up no treasure of pleasant +remembrances against old age; but there is some comfort in thinking that +future years can hardly fail to be more varied and therefore more +tolerable than the past. + +"You give me more credit than I deserve, in supposing that I have led a +studious life. I have indeed turned over a good many books, but in so +desultory a way that it cannot be called study, nor has it left me the +fruits of study. 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. I have +had no external excitement,--no consciousness that the public would like +what I wrote, nor much hope nor a passionate desire that they should do +so. Nevertheless, having nothing else to be ambitious of, I have been +considerably interested in literature; and if my writings had made any +decided impression, I should have been stimulated to greater exertions; +but there has been no warmth of approbation, so that I have always +written with benumbed fingers. I have another great difficulty in the +lack of materials; for I have seen so little of the world that I have +nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of, and it is not easy to +give a lifelike semblance to such shadowy stuff. Sometimes through a +peep-hole I have caught a glimpse of the real world, and the two or +three articles in which I have portrayed these glimpses please me better +than the others. + +"I have now, or shall soon have, a sharper spur to exertion, which I +lacked at an earlier period; for I see little prospect but that I shall +have to scribble for a living. But this troubles me much less than you +would suppose. I can turn my pen to all sorts of drudgery, such as +children's books, etc., and by and by I shall get some editorship that +will answer my purpose. Frank Pierce, who was with us at college, +offered me his influence to obtain an office in the Exploring Expedition +[Commodore Wilkes's]; but I believe that he was mistaken in supposing +that a vacancy existed. If such a post were attainable, I should +certainly accept it; for, though fixed so long to one spot, I have +always had a desire to run round the world.... I intend in a week or +two to come out of my owl's nest, and not return till late in the +summer,--employing the interval in making a tour somewhere in New +England. You who have the dust of distant countries on your +'sandal-shoon' cannot imagine how much enjoyment I shall have in this +little excursion.... + +"Yours sincerely, + +"NATH. HAWTHORNE." + +A few days later the quarterly, containing Longfellow's review of the +book, appeared; and the note of thanks which Hawthorne sent is full of +an exultation strongly in contrast with the pensive tone of the letter +just given. + +SALEM, June 19th, 1837. + +DEAR LONGFELLOW:--I have to-day 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 correctness 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.... + +Very sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +That "Evangeline" was written upon a theme suggested to Hawthorne (by a +friend who had heard it from a French Canadian [Footnote: See American +Note-Books, October 24,1839]) and by him made over to the poet, has +already been made public. Hawthorne wrote, on its appearance:---- + +"I have read 'Evangeline' with more pleasure than it would be decorous +to express. It cannot fail, I think, to prove the most triumphant of all +your successes." + +Nevertheless, he gave vent to some of his admiration in a notice of the +work which he wrote for "The Salem Advertiser," a Democratic paper. + +"The story of Evangeline and her lover," he there says, "is as poetical +as the fable of the Odyssey, besides that it comes to the heart as a +fact that has actually taken place in human life." He speaks of "its +pathos all illuminated with beauty,----so that the impression of the +poem is nowhere dismal nor despondent, and glows with the purest +sunshine where we might the least expect it, on the pauper's +death-bed.... The story is told with the simplicity of high and +exquisite art, which causes it to flow onward as naturally as the +current of a stream. Evangeline's wanderings give occasion to many +pictures both of northern and southern scenery and life: but these do +not appear as if brought in designedly, to adorn the tale; they seem to +throw their beauty inevitably into the calm mirror of its bosom as it +flows past them.... By this work of his maturity he has placed himself +on a higher eminence than he had yet attained, and beyond the reach of +envy. Let him stand, then, at the head of our list of native poets, +until some one else shall break up the rude soil of our American life, +as he has done, and produce from it a lovelier and nobler flower than +this poem of Evangeline!" + +Longfellow's characteristic kindly reply was as follows:---- + +"MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:----I have been waiting and waiting in the hope of +seeing you in Cambridge.... I have been meditating upon your letter, and +pondering with friendly admiration your review of 'Evangeline,' in +connection with the subject of which, that is to say, the Acadians, a +literary project arises in my mind for you to execute. Perhaps I can pay +you back in part your own generous gift, by giving you a theme for +story, in return for a theme for song. It is neither more nor less than +the history of the Acadians, _after_ their expulsion as well as +before. Felton has been making some researches in the State archives, +and offers to resign the documents into your hands. + +"Pray come and see me about it without delay. Come so as to pass a night +with us, if possible, this week; if not a day and night. + +"Ever sincerely yours, + +"HENRY W. LONGFELLOW." There is nothing in our literary annals more +unique and delightful than this history of Longfellow's warm recognition +of his old classmate, and the mutual courtesies to which it led. One is +reminded by it of the William Tell episode between Goethe and Schiller, +though it was in this case only the theme and nothing of material that +was transferred. + +An author now almost forgotten, Charles Fenno Hoffman, also published in +"The American Monthly Magazine," [Footnote: For March, 1838.] which he +was editing, a kindly review, which, however, underestimated the +strength of the new genius, as it was at first the general habit to do. +"Minds like Hawthorne's," he said, "seem to be the only ones suited to +an American climate.... Never can a nation be impregnated with the +literary spirit by minor authors alone.... Yet men like Hawthorne are +not without their use.".... In this same number of the magazine, by the +way, was printed Hawthorne's "Threefold Destiny," under the pseudonyme +of Ashley Allen Royce; and the song of Faith Egerton, afterward omitted, +is thus given:---- + + "O, man can seek the downward glance, + And each kind word,----affection's spell,---- + Eye, voice, its value can enhance; + For eye may speak, and tongue can tell. + + "But woman's love, it waits the while + To echo to another's tone; + To linger on another's smile, + Ere dare to answer with its own." + +These versicles, though they might easily be passed over as commonplace, +hold a peculiar inner radiance that perhaps issued from the dawn of a +lifelong happiness for Hawthorne at this period. + + + + +V. + + +AT BOSTON AND BROOK FARM. + +1838-1842. + +Hawthorne's mood at this time was one of profound dissatisfaction at 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 that I can call 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 on a table that stood +by: "If I could only make tables," he declared, "I should feel myself +more of a man." He was now thirty-four, and the long restraint and +aloofness of the last thirteen years, with the gathering consciousness +that he labored under unjust reproach of inaction, and the sense of loss +in being denied his share in affairs, had become intolerable. It was +now, also, that a new phase of being was opened to him. He had become +engaged to Miss Sophia Peabody, a sister of his friend. + +President Van Buren had been two years in office, 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 a lady 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 had urged him to enter politics, and he had at one time been +tendered a post of some sort in the West Indies, but refused it because +he would not live in a slaveholding community. "I happen to know," said +the lady, "that he would be very glad of employment." The result was +that a commission for a small post in the Boston Custom House came, soon +after, to the young author. On going down from Salem to inquire further +about it, he received another and a better appointment as weigher and +gauger, with a salary, I think, of twelve hundred a year. Just before +entering the Collector's office, he noticed a man leaving it who wore a +very dejected air; and, connecting this with the change in his own +appointment, he imagined this person to be the just-ejected weigher. +Speaking of this afterward, he said: "I don't believe in rotation in +office. It is not good for the human being." But he took his place, +writing to Longfellow (January 12, 1839): + +"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 and religious duties, and the second of duties imposed by the +Revenue Laws, which I begin to consider the most important class." + +Two years later, when Harrison and Tyler carried the election for the +Whigs, he suffered the fate of his predecessor. And here I may offer an +opinion as to Hawthorne's connection with the Democratic party. When +asked why he belonged to it, he answered that he lived in a democratic +country. "But we are all republicans alike," was the objection to his +defence. "Well," he said, "I don't understand history till it's a +hundred years old, and meantime it's safe to belong to the Democratic +party." Still, Hawthorne was, so far as it comported with his less +transient aims, a careful observer of public affairs; and mere badinage, +like that just quoted, must not be taken as really covering the ground +of his choice in politics. A man of such deep insight, accustomed to +bring it to bear upon everything impartially, was not to be influenced +by any blind and accidental preference in these questions; albeit his +actual performance of political duties was slight. I think he recognized +the human strength of the Democratic, as opposed to the theorizing and +intellectual force of the Republican party. It is a curious fact, that +with us the party of culture should be the radical party, upholding +ideas even at the expense of personal liberty; and the party of +ignorance that of order, the conservating force, careful of personal +liberty even to a fault! Hawthorne, feeling perhaps that ideas work too +rapidly here, ranged himself on the side that offered the greater +resistance to them. + +This term of service in Boston was of course irksome to Hawthorne, and +entirely suspended literary endeavors for the time. Yet "my life only is +a burden," he writes, "in the same way that it is to every toilsome +man.... But from henceforth forever I shall be entitled to call the sons +of toil my brethren, and shall know how to sympathize with them, seeing +that I likewise have risen at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the +midday sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward till eventide." He +need not always have made the employment so severe, but the wages of the +wharf laborers depended on the number of hours they worked in a day, and +Hawthorne used to make it a point in all weathers, to get to the wharf +at the earliest possible hour, solely for their benefit. For the rest, +he felt a vast benefit from his new intercourse with men; there could +not have been a better maturing agency for him at this time; and the +interval served as an apt introduction to the Brook Farm episode. + +That this least gregarious of men should have been drawn into a +socialistic community, seems at first inexplicable enough; but in +reality it was the most logical step he could have taken. He had +thoroughly tried seclusion, and had met and conquered by himself the +first realization of what the world actually is. Next, he entered into +the performance of definite duties and the receipt of gain, and watched +the operation of these two conditions on himself and those about him; an +experiment that taught him the evils of the system, and the necessity of +burying his better energies so long as he took part in affairs. This +raised doubts, of course, as to how he was to fit himself into the frame +of things; and while he mused upon some more generous arrangement of +society, and its conflicting interests, a scheme was started which +plainly proposed to settle the problem. Fourier had only just passed +away; the spread of his ideas was in its highest momentum. On the other +hand, the study of German philosophy, and the new dissent of Emerson, +had carried men's thoughts to the very central springs of intellectual +law, while in Boston the writing and preaching of Channing roused a +practical radicalism, and called for a better application of +Christianity to affairs. The era of the Transcendentalists had come. The +Chardon Street meetings--assemblages of ardent theorists and +"come-outers" of every type, who, while their sessions lasted, held +society in their hands and moulded it like clay--were a rude +manifestation of the same deep current. In the midst of these +influences, Mr. Ripley, an enthusiastic student of philosophy, received +an inspiration to establish a modified socialistic community on our own +soil. The Industrial Association which he proposed at West Roxbury was +wisely planned with direct reference to the emergencies of American +life; it had no affinity with the erratic views of Enfantin and the +Saint Simonists, nor did it in the least tend toward the mistakes of +Robert Owen regarding the relation of the sexes; though it agreed with +Fourier and Owen both, as I understand, in respect of labor. In a better +and freer sense than has usually been the case with such attempts, the +design sprang out of one man's mind and fell properly under his control. +His 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. It was a practical, orderly, +noble effort to apply Christianity directly to human customs and +institutions. "A few men and women 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." At various times Charles Dana, Pratt, the young +Brownson, Horace Sumner (a younger brother of Charles), George William +Curtis, and his brother Burrill Curtis were there. The place was a kind +of granary of true grit. People who found their own honesty too heavy a +burden to carry successfully through the rough jostlings of society, +flocked thither. "They were mostly individuals" says Hawthorne, "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." + +To men like Hawthorne, however little they may noise the fact abroad, +the rotten but tenacious timbers of the social order shake beneath the +lightest tread. But he knew that the only wise method is to begin +repairing within the edifice, keeping the old associations, and losing +nothing of value while gaining everything new that is desirable. Because +Brook Farm seemed to adopt this principle, he went there. Some of the +meetings of the associators were held at Miss E. P. Peabody's, in +Boston, and the proceedings were related to him. Mr. Ripley did not at +first know who was the "distinguished literary gentleman" announced as +willing to join the company; and when told that it was Hawthorne, he +felt as if a miracle had befallen, or "as if," he tells me, "the heavens +would presently be filled with angels, 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." For his personal +benefit, Hawthorne had two ends in view, connected with Brook Farm: one, +to find a suitable and economical home after marriage; the other, to +secure a mode of life thoroughly balanced and healthy, which should +successfully distribute the sum of his life's labor between body and +brain. He hoped to secure leisure for writing by perhaps six hours of +daily service; but he found nearly sixteen needful. "He worked like a +dragon," says Mr. Ripley. + +The productive industry of the association was agriculture; the leading +aim, teaching; and in some cases there were classes made up of men, +women, children, whom ignorance put on the same plane. Several buildings +accommodated the members: the largest, in which the public table was +spread and the cooking done, being called The Hive; another, The Pilgrim +House; a smaller one, The Nest; and still another was known as The +Cottage. In The Eyrie, Mr. and Mrs. Ripley lived, and here a great part +of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when +the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and +shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom +Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an +original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with +the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements +failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. +Occasionally, in the dramatic season, large delegations from the farm +would drive into Boston in carriages and wagons to the opera or the +play. Sometimes, too, the young women sang as they washed the dishes, in +The Hive; and the youthful yeomen of the society came in and helped them +with their work. The men wore blouses of a checked or plaided stuff, +belted at the waist, with a broad collar folding down about the throat, +and rough straw hats; the women, usually, simple calico gowns, and +hats,--which were then an innovation in feminine attire. In the season +of wood-wanderings, they would trim their hats with wreaths of barberry +or hop-vine, ground-pine, or whatever offered,--a suggestion of the +future Priscilla of "Blithedale." Some families and students came to the +farm as boarders, paying for their provision in household or field +labor, or by teaching; a method which added nothing to the funds of the +establishment, and in this way rather embarrassed it. A great deal of +individual liberty was allowed. People could eat in private or public; +and it has been said by those who were there that the unconventional +life permitted absolute privacy at any time. Every one was quite +unfettered, too, in the sphere of religious worship. When a member +wished to be absent, another would generally contrive to take his work +for the interval; and a general good-will seems to have prevailed. +Still, I imagine there must have been a temporary and uncertain air +about the enterprise, much of the time; and the more intimate unions of +some among the members who were congenial, gave rise to intermittent +jealousies in those who found no special circle. "In this way it was +very much like any small town of the same number of inhabitants," says +one of my informants. Indeed, though every one who shared in the Brook +Farm attempt seems grateful for what it taught of the dignity and the +real fellowship of labor, I find a general belief in such persons that +it could not long have continued at its best. The system of compensating +all kinds of service, skilled or otherwise, according to the time used, +excited--as some have thought--much dissatisfaction even among the +generous and enlightened people who made up the society. "I thought I +could see some incipient difficulties working in the system," writes a +lady who was there in 1841. "Questions already arose as to how much +individual freedom could be allowed, if it conflicted with the best +interests of the whole. Those who came there were the results of another +system of things which still gave a salutary cheek to the more radical +tendencies; but the second generation there could hardly have shown +equal, certainly not the same, character." A confirmation of this augury +is the fact that the cast of the community became decidedly more +Fourieristic before it disbanded; and it is not impossible that another +generation might have decolorized and seriously deformed human existence +among them. Theories and opinions were very openly talked over, and +practical details as well; and though this must have had its charm, yet +it would also touch uncomfortably on a given temperament, or jar upon a +peculiar mood. In such enterprises there must always he a slight +inclination to establish a conformity to certain freedoms which really +become oppressions. Shyness was not held essential to a regenerated +state of things, and was perhaps too much disregarded; as also was +illness, an emergency not clearly provided for, which had to be met by +individual effort and self-sacrifice, after the selfish and +old-established fashion of the world. How this atmosphere affected +Hawthorne he has hinted in his romance founded on some aspects of +community life: "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." +A fellow-toiler came upon him suddenly, one day, lying in a green hollow +some distance from the farm, with his hands under his head and his face +shaded by his hat. "How came you out here?" asked his friend. "Too much +of a party up there," was his answer, as he pointed toward the community +buildings. It has also been told that at leisure times he would sit +silently, hour after hour, in the broad old-fashioned hall of The Hive, +where he "could listen almost unseen to the chat and merriment of the +young people," himself almost always holding a book before him, but +seldom turning the leaves. + +One sees in his letters of this time [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. I.] how the life wore upon him; and his journal apparently ceased +during the whole bucolic experience. How joyously his mind begins to +disport itself again with fancies, the moment he leaves the association, +even temporarily! And in 1842, as soon as he is fairly quit of it, the +old darkling or waywardly gleaming stream of thought and imagination +flows freshly, untamably forward. Hawthorne remained with the Brook Farm +community nearly a twelvemonth, a small part of which time was spent in +Boston. Some of the letters which his sisters wrote him show a +delightful solicitude reigning at home, during the period of his +experiment. + +"What is the use," says one, "of burning your brains out in the sun, if +you can do anything better with them?... I am bent upon coming to see +you, this summer. Do not you remember how we used to go a-fishing +together in Raymond? Your mention of wild flowers and pickerel has given +me a longing for the woods and waters again." + +Then, in August, + +"C---- A----," writes his sister Louisa, "told me the other day that he +heard you were to do the travelling in Europe for the community." + +This design, if it existed, might well have found a place in the +Dialogues of the Unborn which Hawthorne once meant to write; for this +was his only summer at Brook Farm. "A summer of toil, of interest, of +something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and +there became a rich experience," he writes, in "Blithedale." "I found +myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on +the same system." This was, in fact, his attitude; for, after passing +the winter at the farm as a boarder, and then absenting himself a little +while, he returned in the spring to look over the ground and perhaps +select a house-site, just before his marriage, but came to an adverse +decision. This no doubt accorded with perceptions which he was not +called upon to make public; but because he was a writer of fiction there +seems to have arisen a tacit agreement, in some quarters, to call him +insincere in his connection with this socialistic enterprise. He had not +much to gain by leaving the community; for he had put into its treasury +a thousand dollars, about the whole of his savings from the custom-house +stipend, and had next to nothing to establish a home with elsewhere, +while a niche in the temple of the reformers would have cost him nothing +but labor. The length of his stay was by no means uncommonly short, for +there was always a transient contingent at Brook Farm, many of whom +remained but a few weeks. A devoted but not a wealthy disciple, who had +given six thousand dollars for the building of the Pilgrim House, and +hoped to end his days within it, retired forever after a very short +sojourn, not dissuaded from the theory, but convinced that the practical +application was foredoomed to disaster. And, in truth, though a manful +effort was made, with good pecuniary success for a time, ten years +brought the final hour of failure to this millennial plan. + +Very few people who were at Brook Farm seem to have known or even to +have seen Hawthorne there, though he was elected chairman of the Finance +Committee just before leaving, and I am told that his handsome presence, +his quiet sympathy, his literary reputation, and his hearty +participation in labor commanded a kind of reverence from some of the +members. Next to his friend George P. Bradford, one of the workers and +teachers in the community, his most frequent associates were a certain +Rev. Warren Burton, author of a curious little book called +"Scenery-Shower," designed to develop a proper taste for landscape; and +one Frank Farley, who had been a pioneer in the West, a man of singular +experiences and of an original turn, who was subject to mental +derangement at times. The latter visited him at the Old Manse, +afterward, when Hawthorne was alone there, and entered actively into his +makeshift housekeeping. + +President Pierce, on one occasion, speaking to an acquaintance about +Hawthorne, said: "He is enthusiastic when he speaks of the aims and +self-sacrifice of some of the Brook Farm people; but when I questioned +him whether he would like to live and die in a community like that, he +confessed he was not suited to it, but said he had learned a great deal +from it. 'What, for instance?' 'Why, marketing, for one thing. I didn't +know anything about it practically, and I rode into Boston once or twice +with the men who took in things to sell, and saw how it was done.'" The +things of deepest moment which he learned were not to be stated fully in +conversation; but I suppose readers would draw the same inference from +this whimsical climax of Hawthorne's as that which has been found in +"The Blithedale Romance"; namely, that he looked on his socialistic life +as the merest jesting matter. Such, I think, is the general opinion; and +a socialistic writer, Mr. Noyes, of the Oneida Community, has +indignantly cried out against the book, as a "poetico-sneering romance." +This study of human character, which would keep its value in any state +of society that preserved its reflective faculty intact and sane, to be +belittled to the record of a brief experiment! Hawthorne indeed, +speaking in the prefatory third person of his own aim, says: "His whole +treatment of the affair is altogether incidental to the main purpose of +the romance; nor does he put forward the slightest pretensions to +illustrate a theory, or elicit a conclusion, favorable or otherwise, in +respect to socialism." And though he has told the story +autobiographically, it is through a character whom we ought by no means +to identify with Hawthorne in his whole mood. I have taken the liberty +of applying to Hawthorne's own experience two passages from Coverdale's +account, because they picture something known to be the case; and a +careful sympathy will find no difficulty in distinguishing how much is +real and how much assumed. Coverdale, being merely the medium for +impressions of the other characters, is necessarily light and +diaphanous, and Hawthorne, finding it more convenient, and an advantage +to the lifelikeness of the story, does not attempt to hold him up in the +air all the time, but lets him down now and then, and assumes the part +himself. The allusions to the community scheme are few, and most of them +are in the deepest way sympathetic. Precisely because the hopes of the +socialists were so unduly high, he values them and still is glad of +them, though they have fallen to ruin. "In my own behalf, I rejoice that +I could once think better of the world than it deserved. It is a mistake +into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and +higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error." +Where is the sneer concealed in this serious and comprehensive +utterance? There is a class of two-pronged minds, which seize a pair of +facts eagerly, and let the truth drop out of sight between them. For +these it is enough that Hawthorne made some use of his Brook Farm +memories in a romance, and then wrote that romance in the first person, +with a few dashes of humor. + +Another critic, acting on a conventional idea as to Hawthorne's "cold, +self-removed observation," quotes to his disadvantage this paragraph in +a letter from Brook Farm: "Nothing here is settled.... My mind will not +be abstracted. I must observe and think and feel, and content myself +with catching glimpses of things which may be wrought out hereafter. +Perhaps it will be quite as well that I find myself unable to set +seriously about literary occupation for the present." This is offered as +showing that Hawthorne went to the community--unconsciously, admits our +critic, but still in obedience to some curious, chilly "dictate of his +nature"--for the simple purpose of getting fresh impressions, to work up +into fiction. But no one joined the society expecting to give up his +entire individuality, and it was a special part of the design that each +should take such share of the labor as was for his own and the general +good, and follow his own tastes entirely as to ideal pursuits. A +singular prerogative this, which every one who writes about Hawthorne +lays claim to, that he may be construed as a man who, at bottom, had no +other motive in life than to make himself uneasy by withdrawing from +hearty communion with people, in order to pry upon them intellectually! +He speaks of "that quality of the intellect and the heart which impelled +me (often against my own will, and to the detriment of my own comfort) +to live in other lives, and to endeavor--_by generous sympathies, by +delicate intuitions_, by taking note of things too slight for record, +and by bringing my human spirit into manifold accordance with the +companions God had assigned me--to learn the secret which was hidden +even from themselves"; and this is cited as evidence of "his cold +inquisitiveness, his incredulity, his determination to worm out the +inmost secrets of all associated with him." Such distortion is amazing. +The few poets who search constantly for truth are certainly impelled to +get at the inmost of everything. But what, in Heaven's name, is the +motive? Does any one seriously suppose it to be for the amusement of +making stories out of it? The holding up to one's self the stern and +secret realities of life is no such pleasing pursuit. These men are +driven to it by the divine impulse which has made them seers and +recorders. + +As for Hawthorne, he hoped and loved and planned with the same rich +human faith that fills the heart of every manly genius; and if +discouraging truth made him suffer, it was all the more because his +ideals--and at first his trust in their realization--were so generous +and so high. Two of his observations as to Brook Farm, transferred to +the "The Blithedale Romance," show the wisdom on which his withdrawal +was based. The first relates to himself: "No sagacious man will long +retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and +progressive people, without periodically returning to the settled system +of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old +standpoint." He had too much imagination to feel safe in giving free +rein to it, in a special direction of theoretic conduct; he also +remembered that, as the old system of things was full of error, it was +possible that a new one might become so in new ways, unless watched. The +second observation touches the real weakness of the Brook Farm +institution: "It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first +questions raised, after our separation from the greedy, struggling, +self-seeking world, should relate to the possibility of getting the +advantage over the outside barbarians in their own field of labor. But +to own the truth, I very soon became sensible that, _as regarded +society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility rather than +new brotherhood._" And, in fact, the real good which Mr. Ripley's +attempt did, was to implant the co-operative idea in the minds of men +who have gone out into the world to effect its gradual application on a +grander scale. It is by introducing it into one branch of social energy +after another that the regenerative agency of to-day can alone be made +effectual. The leaders of that community have been broad-minded, and +recognize this truth. None of them, however, have ever taken the trouble +to formulate it as Hawthorne did, on perceiving it some years in +advance. + +The jocose tone, it maybe added, seems to have been a characteristic +part of the Brook Farm experiment, despite the sober earnest and rapt +enthusiasm that accompanied it. The members had their laughing +allusions, and talked--in a strain of self-ridicule precisely similar +to Coverdale's--of having bands of music to play for the +field-laborers, who should plough in tune. This merely proves that they +were people who kept their wits whole, and had the humor that comes with +refinement; while it illustrates by the way the naturalness of the tone +Hawthorne has given to Coverdale. + +The Priscilla of Blithedale was evidently founded upon the little +seamstress whom he describes in the Note-Books as coming out to the +farm, and Old Moodie's spectre can be discerned in a brief memorandum of +a man seen (at Parker's old bar-room in Court Square) in 1850. It has been +thought that Zenobia was drawn from Margaret Fuller, or from a lady at +Brook Farm, or perhaps from both: a gentleman who was there says that he +traces in her a partial likeness to several women. It is as well to +remember that Hawthorne distinctly negatived the idea that he wrote with +any one that he knew before his mind; and he illustrated it, to one of +his most intimate friends, by saying that sometimes in the course of +composition it would suddenly occur to him, that the character he was +describing resembled in some point one or more persons of his +acquaintance. Thus, I suppose that when the character of Priscilla had +developed itself in his imagination, he found he could give her a +greater reality by associating her with the seamstress alluded to; and +that the plaintive old man at Parker's offered himself as a good figure +to prop up the web-work of pure invention which was the history of +Zenobia's and Priscilla's father. There is a conviction in the minds of +all readers, dearer to them than truth, that novelists simply sit down +and describe their own acquaintances, using a few clumsy disguises to +make the thing tolerable. When they do take a hint from real persons the +character becomes quite a different thing to them from the actual +prototype. It was not even so definite as this with Hawthorne. Yet no +doubt, his own atmosphere being peculiar, the contrast between that and +the atmosphere of those he met stimulated his imagination; so that, +without his actually seeing a given trait in another person, the meeting +might have the effect of _suggesting_ it. Then he would brood over +this suggestion till it became a reality, a person, to his mind; and +thus his characters were conceived independently in a region somewhere +between himself and the people who had awakened speculation in his mind. + +He had a very sure instinct as to when a piece of reality might be +transferred to his fiction with advantage. Mr. Curtis has told the story +of a young woman of Concord, a farmer's daughter, who had had her +aspirations roused by education until the conflict between these and the +hard and barren life she was born to, made her thoroughly miserable and +morbid; and one summer's evening she sought relief in the quiet, homely +stream that flowed by the Old Manse, and found the end of earthly +troubles in its oozy depths. Hawthorne was roused by Curtis himself +coming beneath his window (precisely as Coverdale comes to summon +Hollingsworth), and with one other they went out on the river, to find +the poor girl's body. "The man," writes his friend, "whom the villagers +had only seen at morning as a musing spectre in the garden, now appeared +among them at night to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their +service." + +By this dark memory is the powerful climax of "The Blithedale Romance" +bound to the sphere of a reality as dread. + + + + +VI. + + +THE OLD MANSE. + +1842-1846. + +There is a Providence in the lives of men who act sincerely, which makes +each step lead, with the best result, to the next phase of their +careers. By his participation in the excellent endeavor at Brook Farm, +Hawthorne had prepared himself to enjoy to the full his idyllic +retirement at the Old Manse, in Concord. "For now, being happy," he +says, "I felt as if there were no question to be put." + +Hawthorne was married in July, 1842, and went at once to this his first +home. Just before going to Brook Farm he had written "Grandfather's +Chair," the first part of a series of sketches of New England history +for children, which was published by Miss Peabody in Boston, and Wiley +and Putnam in New York; but the continuation was interrupted by his stay +at the farm. In 1842 he wrote a second portion, and also some +biographical stories, all of which gained an immediate success. He also +resumed his contributions to the "Democratic Review," the most brilliant +periodical of the time, in which Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell, Poe, and +other noted authors made their appearance. It was published at +Washington, and afterward at New York, and made considerable pretensions +to a national character. Hawthorne had been engaged as a contributor, at +a fair rate, in 1838, and his articles had his name appended (not always +Hie practice at that time) in a way that shows the high estimation into +which he had already grown. "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," "The +Celestial Railroad," "The Procession of Life," "Fire Worship," "Buds and +Bird Voices," and "Roger Malvin's Burial," all appeared in the +"Democratic" in 1843. "Rappaccini's Daughter" and other tales followed +in the next year; and in 1845 the second volume of "Twice-Told Tales" +was brought out at Boston. During the same year Hawthorne edited the +"African Journals" of his friend Bridge, then an officer in the navy, +who had just completed a cruise. The editor's name evidently carried +great weight, even then. "The mere announcement, 'edited by Nathaniel +Hawthorne,'" said one of the critics, "is enough to entitle this book to +a place among the American classics." I dwell upon this, because an +attempt has been made to spread the idea that Hawthorne up to the time +of writing "The Scarlet Letter" was still obscure and discouraged, and +that only then, by a timely burst of appreciation in certain quarters, +was he rescued from oblivion. The truth is, that he had won himself an +excellent position, was popular, and was himself aware by this time of +the honor in which he was held. Even when he found that the small +profits of literature were forcing him into office again, he wrote to +Bridge: "It is rather singular that I should need an office: for +nobody's scribblings seem to be more acceptable than mine." The +explanation of this lies in the wretchedly dependent state of native +authorship at that time. The law of copyright had not then attained to +even the refined injustice which it has now reached. "I continue," he +wrote, in 1844, "to scribble tales with good success so far as regards +empty praise, some notes of which, pleasant enough to my ears, have come +from across the Atlantic. But the pamphlet and piratical system has so +broken up all regular literature, that I am forced to work hard for +small gains." + +Besides the labors already enumerated, he edited for the "Democratic" +some "Papers of an old Dartmoor Prisoner" (probably some one of his +"sea-dog" acquaintance in Salem). He was in demand among the publishers. +A letter from Evert Duyckinck (New York, October 2, 1845), who was then +in the employ of Wiley and Putnam, publishers of the "African Cruiser," +says of that book: "The English notices are bounteous in praise. No +American book in a long time has been so well noticed." The same firm +were now eager to bring out his recent tales, and were also, as appears +in the following from Duyckinck, urging the prosecution of another +scheme: "I hope you will not think me a troublesome fellow," he writes, +"if I drop you another line with the vociferous cry, MSS.! MSS.! Mr. +Wiley's American series is athirst for the volumes of tales; and how +stands the prospect for the History of Witchcraft, I whilom spoke of?" +The History Hawthorne wisely eschewed; but early in 1846 the "Mosses +from an Old Manse" was issued at New York, in two volumes. This +attracted at once a great deal of praise, and it certainly shows a +wider range and fuller maturity than the first book of "Twice-Told +Tales"; yet I doubt whether the stories of this group have taken such +intimate hold of any body of readers as those, although recommending +themselves to a larger audience. Hawthorne's life at the Old Manse was +assuredly one of the brightest epochs of his career: an unalloyed +happiness had come to him, he was full of the delight of first +possession in his home, a new and ample companionship was his, and the +quiet course of the days, with their openings into healthful outdoor +exercise, made a perfect balance between creation and recreation. The +house in which he dwelt was itself a little island of the past, standing +intact above the flood of events; all around was a mild, cultivated +country, broken into gentle variety of "hills to live with," and touched +with just enough wildness to keep him from tiring of it: the stream that +flowed by his orchard was for him an enchanted river. He renewed the +pleasant sports of boyhood with it, fishing and boating in summer, and +in winter whistling over its clear, black ice, on rapid skates. In the +more genial months, the garden gave him pleasant employment; and in his +journal-musings, the thought gratifies him that he has come into a +primitive relation with nature, and that the two occupants of the Manse +are in good faith a new Adam and Eve, so far as the happiness of that +immemorial pair remained unbroken. The charm of these experiences has +all been distilled into the descriptive chapter which prefaces the +"Mosses"; and such more personal aspects of it as could not be mixed in +that vintage have been gathered, like forgotten clusters of the harvest, +into the Note-Books. It remains to comment, here, on the contrast +between the peaceful character of these first years at Concord and the +increased sombreness of some of the visions there recorded. + +The reason of this is, that Hawthorne's genius had now waxed to a +stature which made its emanations less immediately dependent on his +actual mood. I am far from assuming an exact autobiographical value for +the "Twice-Told Tales"; a theory which the writer himself condemned. But +they, as he has also said, require "to be read in the clear brown +twilight atmosphere in which they were written"; while the "Mosses" are +the work of a man who has learned to know the world, and the atmosphere +in which they were composed seems almost dissonant with the tone of some +of them. "The Birthmark," "The Bosom Serpent," "Rappaccini's Daughter," +and that terrible and lurid parable of "Young Goodman Brown," are made +up of such horror as Hawthorne has seldom expressed elsewhere. "The +Procession of Life" is a fainter vibration of the same chord of +awfulness. Such concentration of frightful truth do these most graceful +and exquisitely wrought creations contain, that the intensity becomes +almost poisonous. What is the meaning of this added revelation of evil? +The genius of Hawthorne was one which used without stint that costliest +of all elements in production,--time; the brooding propensity was +indispensable to him; and, accordingly, as some of these conceptions had +occurred to him a good while before the carrying out, they received +great and almost excessive elaboration. The reality of sin, the +pervasiveness of evil, had been but slightly insisted upon in the +earlier tales: in this series, the idea bursts up like a long-buried +fire, with earth-shaking strength, and the pits of Hell seem yawning +beneath us. Dismal, too, is the story of "Roger Malvin's Burial," and +dreary "The Christmas Banquet," with its assembly of the supremely +wretched. In "Earth's Holocaust" we get the first result of Hawthorne's +insight into the demonianism of reformatory schemers who forget that the +centre of every true reform is the heart. And, incidentally, this marks +out the way to "The Scarlet Letter" on the one hand, and "The Blithedale +Romance" on the other, in which the same theme assumes two widely +different phases. Thus we find the poet seeking more and more certainly +the central fountain of moral suggestion from which he drew his best +inspirations. The least pleasing quality of the work is, I think, its +overcharged allegorical burden. Some of the most perfect of all his +tales are here, but their very perfection makes one recoil the more at +the supremacy of their purely intellectual interest. One feels a certain +chagrin, too, on finishing them, as if the completeness of embodiment +had given the central idea a shade of too great obviousness. Hawthorne +is most enjoyable and most true to himself when he offers us the chalice +of poetry filled to the very brim with the clear liquid of moral truth. +But, at first, there seems to have been a conflict between his aesthetic +and his ethical impulse. Coleridge distinguishes the symbolical from the +allegorical, by calling it a part of some whole which it represents. +"Allegory cannot be other than spoken consciously; whereas in the symbol +it is very possible that the general truth represented may be working +unconsciously in the writer's mind.... The advantage of symbolical +writing over allegory is that it presumes no disjunction of faculties, +but simple predominance." Now in the "Allegories of the Heart," +collected in the "Mosses," there is sometimes an extreme consciousness +of the idea to be illustrated; and though the ideas are in a measure +symbolical, yet they are on the whole too disintegrating in their effect +to leave the artistic result quite generous and satisfying. Allegory +itself, as an echo of one's thought, is often agreeable, and pleases +through surprise; yet it is apt to be confusing, and smothers the poetic +harmony. In his romances, Hawthorne escapes into a hugely significant, +symbolic sphere which relieves the reader of this partial vexation. "The +Celestial Railroad," of course, must be excepted from censure, being the +sober parody of a famous work, and in itself a masterly satirical +allegory. And in two cases, "Drowne's Wooden Image," and "The Artist of +the Beautiful," we find the most perfect imaginable symbolism. In one, +the story of Pygmalion compressed and Yankeefied, yet rendered +additionally lovely by its homeliness; and the essence of all artistic +life, in the other, presented in a form that cannot be surpassed. "Mrs. +Bullfrog" is a sketch which is ludicrously puzzling, until one recalls +Hawthorne's explanation: "The story was written as a mere experiment in +that style; it did not come from any depth within me,--neither my heart +nor mind had anything to do with it." [Footnote: American Note-Books, +Vol. II.] It is valuable, in this light, as a distinct boundary-mark in +one direction. But the essay vein which had produced some of the +clearest watered gems in the "Twice-Told Tales," begins in the "Mosses" +to yield increase of brilliance and beauty; and we here find, with the +gathering strength of imagination,--the enlarged power for bringing the +most unreal things quite into the circle of realities,--a compensating +richness in describing the simply natural, as in "Buds and Bird Voices," +"Fire Worship," "The Old Apple-Dealer." + +Everything in these two volumes illustrates forcibly the brevity, the +absolutely right proportion of language to idea, which from the first +had marked Hawthorne with one trait, at least, quite unlike any +displayed by the writers with whom he was compared, and entirely foreign +to the mood of the present century. This _sense of form_, the +highest and last attribute of a creative writer, provided it comes as +the result of a deep necessity of his genius, and not as a mere +acquirement of art, is a quality that has not been enough noticed in +him; doubtless because it is not enough looked for anywhere by the +majority of critics and readers, in these days of adulteration and of +rapid manufacture out of shoddy and short-fibred stuffs. We demand a +given measure of reading, good or bad, and producers of it are in great +part paid for length: so that with much using of thin and shapeless +literature, we have forgotten how good is that which is solid and has +form. But, having attained this perfection in the short story, Hawthorne +thereafter abandoned it for a larger mould. + +The "Mosses," as I have said, gained him many admirers. In them he for +the first time touched somewhat upon the tendencies of the current +epoch, and took an entirely independent stand among the philosophers of +New England. Yet, for a while, there was the oddest misconception of his +attitude by those at a distance. A Whig magazine, pleased by his manly +and open conservatism, felt convinced that he must be a Whig, though he +was, at the moment of the announcement, taking office under a Democratic +President. On the other hand, a writer in "The Church Review" of New +Haven, whom we shall presently see more of, was incited to a tilt +against him as a rabid New England theorist, the outcome, of +phalansteries, a subverter of marriage and of all other holy things. In +like manner, while Hawthorne was casting now and then a keen dart at the +Transcendentalists, and falling asleep over "The Dial" (as his journals +betray), Edgar Poe, a literary _Erinaceus_, wellnigh exhausted his +supply of quills upon the author, as belonging to a school toward which +he felt peculiar acerbity. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, in his +most high-pitched strain of personal abuse, "get a bottle of visible +ink, hang (if possible) the editor of 'The Dial,' cut Mr. Alcott, and +throw out of the window to the pigs all his odd numbers of the 'North +American Review.'" This paper of Poe's is a laughable and pathetic case +of his professedly punctilious analysis covering the most bitter +attacks, with traces of what looks like envy, and others of a resistless +impulse to sympathize with a literary brother as against the average +mind. He begins with a discussion of originality and peculiarity: "In +one sense, to be peculiar is to be original," he says, but the true +originality is "not the uniform but the continuous peculiarity, ... +giving its own hue to everything it touches," and touching everything. +From this flimsy and very uncertain principle, which seems to make two +different things out of the same thing, he goes on to conclude that, +"the fact is, if Mr. Hawthorne were really original, he could not fail +of making himself felt by the public. But the fact is, he is _not_ +original in any sense." He then attempts to show that Hawthorne's +peculiarity is derivative, and selects Tieck as the source of this +idiosyncrasy. Perhaps his insinuation may be the origin of Hawthorne's +effort to read some of the German author, while at the Old Manse,--an +attempt given up in great fatigue. Presently, the unhappy critic brings +up his favorite charge of plagiarism; and it happens, as usual, that the +writer borrowed from is Poe himself! The similarity which he discovers +is between "Howe's Masquerade" and "William Wilson," and is based upon +fancied resemblances of situation, which have not the least foundation +in the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, +"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, written +a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:-- + +"Of Mr. Hawthorne's tales we would say emphatically that they belong to +the highest region of art,--an art subservient to genius of a very lofty +order. We had supposed, with good reason for so supposing, that he had +been thrust into his present position by one of the impudent +_cliques_ who beset our literature; ... but we have been most +agreeably mistaken.... Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, +creation, imagination, originality,--a trait which, in the literature of +fiction, is positively worth all the rest. But the nature of the +originality ... is but imperfectly understood.... The inventive or +original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of _tone_ as +in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original in _all_ points." + +This, certainly, is making generous amends; but before he leaves the +subject, the assertion is repeated, that "he is peculiar, and _not_ +original." + +Though an extravagant instance, this tourney of Poe's represents pretty +well the want of understanding with which Hawthorne was still received +by many readers. His point of view once seized upon, nothing could be +more clear and simple than his own exposition of refined and evasive +truths; but the keen edge of his perception remained quite invisible to +some. Of the "Twice-Told Tales" Hawthorne himself wrote:-- + +"The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound; but it +is rather more remarkable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design +on the writer's part to make them so.... Every sentence, so far as it +embodies thought or sensibility, may be understood and felt by anybody +who will give himself the trouble to read it, and will take up the book +in a proper mood." + +But it was hard for people to find that mood, because in fact the Tales +_were_ profound. Their language was clear as crystal; but all the +more dazzlingly shone through the crystal that new light of Hawthorne's +gaze. + +After nearly four years, Hawthorne's tenancy of the Manse came to an +end, and he returned to Salem, with some prospect of an office there +from the new Democratic government of Polk. It is said that President +Tyler had at one time actually appointed him to the Salem post-office, +but was induced to withdraw his name. There were local factions that +kept the matter in abeyance. The choice, in any case, lay between the +Naval Office and the surveyorship, and Bridge urged Hawthorne's +appointment to the latter. "Whichever it be," wrote Hawthorne, "it is to +you that I shall owe it, among so many other solid kindnesses. I have as +true friends as any man has, but you have been the friend in need and +the friend indeed." At this time he was seriously in want of some +profitable employment, for he had received almost nothing from the +magazine. It was the period of credit, and debts were hard to collect. +His journal at the Old Manse refers to the same trouble. I have been +told that, besides losing the value of many of his contributions to the +"Democratic," through the failure of the magazine, he had advanced money +to the publishers, which was never repaid; but this has not been +corroborated, and as he had lost nearly everything at Brook Farm, it is +a little doubtful. At length, he was installed as surveyor in the Salem +Custom-House, where he hoped soon to begin writing at ease. + + + + +VII. + + +THE SCARLET LETTER. + +1846-1850. + +The literary result of the four years which Hawthorne now, after long +absence, spent in his native town, was the first romance which gave him +world-wide fame. But the intention of beginning to write soon was not +easy of fulfilment in the new surroundings. + +"Literature, its exertions and objects, were now of little moment in my +regard," he says, in "The Custom-House." "I cared not at this period for +books; they were apart from me.... A gift, a faculty, if it had not +departed, was suspended and inanimate within me." + +Readers of that charming sketch will remember the account of the +author's finding a veritable Puritan scarlet letter in an unfinished +upper room of the public building in which he labored at this time, and +how he was urged by the ghost of a former surveyor, who had written an +account of the badge and its wearer, to make the matter public. The +discovery of these materials is narrated with such reassuring accuracy, +that probably a large number of people still suppose this to have been +the origin of "The Scarlet Letter." But there is no knowledge among +those immediately connected with Hawthorne of any actual relic having +been found; nor, of course, is it likely that anything besides the +manuscript memorandum should have been preserved. But I do not know that +he saw even this. The papers of Mr. Poe were probably a pure invention +of the author's. + +A strange coincidence came to light the year after the publication of +the romance. A letter from Leutze, the painter, was printed in the Art +Union Bulletin, running thus:-- + +"I was struck, when some years ago in the Schwarzwald (in an old +castle), with one picture in the portrait-gallery; it has haunted me +ever since. It was not the beauty or finish that charmed me; it was +something strange in the figures, the immense contrast between the child +and what was supposed to be her gouvernante in the garb of some severe +order; the child, a girl, was said to be the ancestress of the family, a +princess of some foreign land. No sooner had I read 'The Scarlet Letter' +than it burst clearly upon me that the picture could represent no one +else than Hester Prynne and little Pearl. I hurried to see it again, and +found my suppositions corroborated, for the formerly inexplicable +embroidery on the breast of the woman, which I supposed was the token of +her order, assumed the form of the letter; and though partially hidden +by the locks of the girl and the flowers in her hair, I set to work upon +it at once, and made as close a copy of it, with all its quaintness, as +was possible to me, which I shall send you soon. How Hester Prynne ever +came to be painted, I can't imagine; it must certainly have been a freak +of little Pearl. Strange enough, the castle is named Perlenburg, the +Castle of Pearls, or Pearl Castle, as you please." + +A more extraordinary incident in its way than this discovery, if it be +trustworthy, could hardly be conceived; but I am not aware that it has +been verified. + +The germ of the story in Hawthorne's mind is given below. The name +Pearl, it will be remembered, occurs in the Note-Books, as an original +and isolated suggestion "for a girl, in a story." + +In "Endicott and the Red Cross," one of the twice-told series printed +many years before, there is a description of "a young woman, with no +mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the +breast of her gown, in the eyes of all the world and her own children. +Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had +embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the +nicest art of needlework." A friend asked Hawthorne if he had +documentary evidence for this particular punishment, and he replied that +he had actually seen it mentioned in the town records of Boston, though +with no attendant details. [Footnote: I may here transcribe, as a further +authority, which Hawthorne may or may not have seen, one of the laws of +Plymouth Colony, enacted in 1658, about the period in which the events +of "The Scarlet Letter" are placed. "It is enacted by the Court and the +Authoritie thereof that whosoeuer shall committ Adultery shal bee +seuerly Punished by whipping two seueral times viz: once whiles the +Court is in being att which they are convicted of the fact, and the +second time as the Court shall order, and likewise to were two Capitall +letters viz: A D cut cut in Cloth and sewed on their vpermost garments +on their arme or backe; and if at any time they shal bee taken without +said letters, whiles they are in the Gou'ment soe worne, to be forthwith +Taken and publicly whipt."] This friend said to another at the time: "We +shall hear of that letter again, for it evidently has made a profound +impression on Hawthorne's mind." Returning to Salem, where his +historical stories and sketches had mainly been written, he reverted +naturally to the old themes; and this one doubtless took possession of +him soon after his entrance on his customs duties. But these disabled +him from following it out at once. When the indefatigable Whigs got hold +of the government again, Hawthorne's literary faculty came into power +also, for he was turned out of office. In the winter of 1849, therefore, +he got to work on his first regular romance. In his Preface to the +"Mosses" he had formally renounced the short story; but "The Scarlet +Letter" proved so highly wrought a tragedy that he had fears of its +effect upon the public, if presented alone. + +"In the present case I have some doubts about the expediency, [he wrote +to Mr. Fields, the junior partner of his new publisher, Ticknor,] +because, if the book is made up entirely of 'The Scarlet Letter,' it +will be too sombre. I found it impossible to relieve the shadows of the +story with so much light as I would gladly have thrown in. Keeping so +close to its point as the tale does, and diversified no otherwise than +by turning different sides of the same dark idea to the reader's eye, it +will weary very many people, and disgust some. Is it safe, then, to +stake the book entirely on this one chance?" + +His plan was to add some of the pieces afterward printed with the "The +Snow Image," and entitle the whole "Old Time Legends, together with +Sketches Experimental and Ideal." But this was abandoned. On the 4th of +February, 1850, he writes to Bridge:-- + +"I finished my book only yesterday: one end being in the press at +Boston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as you +see, the story is at least fourteen miles long.... + +"My book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before April. He +speaks of it in tremendous terms of approbation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, +to whom I read the conclusion last night. [Footnote: This recalls an +allusion in the English Note-Books (September 14, 1855): "Speaking of +Thackeray, I cannot but wonder at his coolness in respect to his own +pathos, and compare it with my emotions when I read the last scene of +The Scarlet Letter to my wife just after writing it,--tried to read it, +rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down +on an ocean as it subsides after a storm. But I was in a very nervous +state, then, having gone through a great diversity of emotion while +writing it, for many months."] It broke her heart, and sent her to bed +with a grievous headache,--which I look upon as a triumphant success. +Judging from its effect on her and the publisher, I may calculate on +what bowlers calls a 'ten-strike.' But I do not make any such +calculation." + +Now that the author had strongly taken hold of one of the most tangible +and terrible of subjects, the public no longer held back. "The Scarlet +Letter" met with instant acceptance, and the first edition of five +thousand copies was exhausted in ten days. On the old ground of Salem +and in the region of New England history where he had won his first +triumphs, Hawthorne, no longer the centre of a small public, received +the applause of a widespread audience throughout this country, and +speedily in Europe too. His old friend, "The London Athenaeum," received +"The Scarlet Letter" with very high, though careful praise. But at the +same time with this new and wide recognition, an assault was made on the +author which it is quite worth while to record here. This was an article +in "The Church Review" (an Episcopal quarterly published at New Haven), +[Footnote: In the number for January, 1851.] written, I am told, by a +then young man who has since reached a high place in the ecclesiastical +body to which he belongs. The reviewer, in this case, had in a previous +article discussed the question of literary schools in America. Speaking +of the origin of the term "Lake School," he pronounced the epithet +_Lakers_ "the mere blunder of superficial wit and raillery." But +that did not prevent him from creating the absurd title of "Bay +writers," which he applied to all the writers about Boston, baptizing +them in the profane waters of Massachusetts Bay. "The Church Review" was +in the habit of devoting a good deal of its attention to criticism of +the Puritan movement which founded New England. Accordingly, "It is +time," announced this logician, in opening his batteries on Hawthorne, +"that the literary world should learn that Churchmen are, in a very +large proportion, their readers and book-buyers, and that the tastes and +principles of Churchmen have as good a right to be respected as those of +Puritans and Socialists." Yet, inconsistently enough, he declared that +Bay writers could not have grown to the stature of authors at all, +unless they had first shaken off the Puritan religion, and adopted "a +religion of indifference and unbelief." Thus, though attacking them as +Puritans and Socialists (this phrase was aimed at Brook Farm), he denied +that they were Puritans at all. Clear understanding of anything from a +writer with so much of the boomerang in his mind was not to be expected. +But neither would one easily guess the revolting vulgarity with which he +was about to view "The Scarlet Letter." He could discover in it nothing +but a deliberate attempt to attract readers by pandering to the basest +taste. He imagines that Hawthorne "selects the intrigue of an adulterous +minister, as the groundwork of his ideal" of Puritan times, and asks, +"Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" Yet, being in some +points, or professing to be, an admirer of the author, "We are glad," he +says, "that 'The Scarlet Letter' is, after all, little more than an +experiment, and need not be regarded as a step necessarily fatal." And +in order to save Mr. Hawthorne, and stem the tide of corruption, he is +willing to point out his error. Nevertheless, he is somewhat at a loss +to know where to puncture the heart of the offence, for "there is a +provoking concealment of the author's motive," he confesses, "from the +beginning to the end of the story. We wonder what he would be at: +whether he is making fun of all religion, or only giving a fair hint of +the essential sensualism of enthusiasm. But, in short, we are astonished +at the kind of incident he has selected for romance." The phraseology, +he finds, is not offensive: but this is eminently diabolical, for "the +romance never hints the shocking words that belong to its things, but, +like Mephistopheles, hints that the arch-fiend himself is a very +tolerable sort of person, if nobody would call him Mr. Devil." Where, +within the covers of the book, could the deluded man have found this +doctrine urged? Only once, faintly, and then in the words of one of the +chief sinners. + +"Shelley himself," says the austere critic, airing his literature, +"never imagined a more dissolute conversation than that in which the +polluted minister comforts himself with the thought, that the revenge of +the injured husband is worse than his own sin in instigating it. 'Thou +and I never did so, Hester,' he suggests; and she responds, 'Never, +never! What we did had a consecration of its own.'" + +And these wretched and distorted consolations of two erring and +condemned souls, the righteous Churchman, with not very commendable +taste, seizes upon as the moral of the book, leaving aside the terrible +retribution which overtakes and blasts them so soon after their vain +plan of flight and happiness. Not for a moment does Hawthorne defend +their excuses for themselves. Of Hester:-- + +"Shame, Despair, Solitude! These [he says] had been her teachers,--stern +and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much +amiss." + +And what she urges on behalf of herself and Dimmesdale must, of course, +by any pure-minded reader, be included among the errors thus taken into +her mind. + +"The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience +calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; +although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of +the most sacred of them.... Were such a man once more to fall, what plea +could be urged in extenuation of his crime? _None_; unless it avail +him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; +that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which +harrowed it." + +But that these partial excuses are futile, the writer goes on to show, +in this solemn declaration:-- + +"And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has +once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. +It may be watched and guarded.... But there is still the ruined wall, +and near it the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his +unforgotten triumph." + +How Mr. Dimmesdale yielded to this stealthy foe is then described; but +it is also shown how Roger Chillingworth, the personified retribution of +the two sinners, fastens himself to them in all their movements, and +will be with them in any flight, however distant. + +"'Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,' said he, looking darkly at +the clergyman, 'there was no one place so secret, no high place nor +lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me.'" + +And it was precisely because Hawthorne would leave no specious turn of +the hypocrisy of sin unrevealed, that he carried us through this +delusive mutual consolation of the guilty pair, and showed us their +empty hope, founded on wrong-doing, powdered to dust at the moment of +fulfilment. + +But the reverend critic, by some dark and prurient affinity of his +imagination, saw nothing of the awful truths so clearly though briefly +expressed, and finally came to the conclusion that the moral of the +whole fiction was "that the Gospel has not set the relations of man and +woman where they should be, and that a new gospel is needed to supersede +the Seventh Commandment, and the bond of matrimony." + +"The lady's frailty, [writes the reviewer,] is philosophized into a +natural and necessary result of the Scriptural law of marriage, which by +holding her irrevocably to her vows, as plighted to a dried-up old +book-worm, ... is viewed as making her heart an easy victim.... The sin +of her seducer, too, seems to be considered as lying, not so much in the +deed itself, as in his long concealment of it; and in fact the whole +moral of the tale is given in the words, 'Be true, he true!' as if +sincerity in sin were a virtue, and as if 'Be clean, he clean!' were not +the more fitting conclusion." + +But this moral of cleanliness was one so obvious that Hawthorne probably +never dreamed of any one's requiring it to be emphasized. In fact, it is +the starting-point, the very foundation, of the tragedy. The tale is a +massive argument for repentance, which is the flinging aside of +concealment, and the open and truthful acknowledgment of sin. In the +Puritan mode of dealing with sin, Hawthorne found the whole problem of +repentance and confession presented in the most drastic, concentrated, +and startling form; for the Puritans carried out in the severest style a +practical illustration of the consequences of moral offence. Since men +and women would not voluntarily continue in active remorse and public +admission of wrong-doing, these governors and priests determined to try +the effect of visible symbols in keeping the conscience alive. People +were set before the public gaze, in the stocks, whipped in public at the +whipping-post, and imprisoned in the pillory. Malefactors had their ears +cropped; scolding women had to wear a forked twig on the tongue; other +criminals to carry a halter constantly around the neck. But that this +was only a hellish device, after all; that the inflictors of such +punishment were arrogating too much to themselves, and shared the office +of the fiend; that, moreover, this compulsion of a dumb outward +truthfulness would never build up the real inner truth of the soul;--all +this Hawthorne perceived and endeavored to portray in a form which +should be as a parable, applying its morality to the men and women of +to-day, all the more persuasively because of its indirectness. As a +study of a system of social discipline never before so expounded, it +claimed the deepest attention. And never was the capacity of sinning men +and women for self-delusion more wonderfully illustrated than in this +romance. The only avenue of escape from such delusion was shown to be +self-analysis; that is, the conscientious view of one's self which keeps +the right or wrong of one's conduct always clearly visible. Hester was +on the whole the truest of the three persons in the drama, and the +advantages of this comparative trueness are constantly made manifest. +She in a measure conquers evil and partly atones for her wrong, by the +good which she is able to do among her fellow-beings,--as much +compensation as can rightfully be hoped for a woman who has once been so +essentially corrupted as she. Dimmesdale, too, retains so much of native +truth that he never allows his conscience to slumber for a moment, and +plies the scourge of remorse upon himself continually. To this extent he +is better than Chillingworth, who, in order to take into his own hands +the retribution that belongs to Heaven, deliberately adopts falsity for +his guide, and becomes a monster of deceit, taking a wicked joy in that +which ought to have awakened an endless, piteous horror in him instead, +and have led to new contemplation and study of virtue. But Dimmesdale, +though not coolly and maliciously false, stops short of open confession, +and in this submits himself to the most occult and corrosive influence +of his own sin. For him, the single righteousness possible consisted in +abject acknowledgment. Once announcing that he had fallen, and was +unworthy, he might have taken his place on the lower moral plane; and, +equally resigning the hope of public honor and of happiness with Hester, +he could have lent his crippled energies to the doing of some limited +good. The shock to the general belief in probity would have been great; +but the discovery that the worst had been made known, that the minister +was strong enough to condemn himself, and descend from the place he no +longer was fit for, would have restored the public mind again, by +showing it that a deeper probity possible than that which it wanted to +see sustained. This is the lesson of the tragedy, that nothing is so +destructive as the morality of mere appearances. Not that sincerity in +sin is a virtue, but that it is better than sin and falsehood combined. +And if anything were wanting, at first, to make this clear, there +certainly is not a particle of obscurity left by the glare of the +catastrophe, when the clergyman rejects Hester's hope that he and she +may meet after death, and spend their immortal life together, and says +that God has proved his mercy most of all by the afflictions he has laid +upon him. + +As to the new truth which Hester hoped would be revealed, it could have +been no other than that ultimate lifting up of the race into a plane of +the utmost human truthfulness, which every one who believes in the +working of all things for good, looks forward to with vague longing, but +with most certain faith. How far the Puritan organization was from this +state of applied truth, the romance shows. Nearly every note in the +range of Puritan sympathies is touched by the poet, as he goes on. The +still unspoiled tenderness of the young matron who cannot but feel +something of mercifulness toward Hester is overruled by the harsh +exultation of other women in her open shame. We have the noble and +spotless character of Winthrop dimly suggested by the mention of his +death on the night of Dimmesdale's vigil at the pillory; but much more +distinct appears the mild and saintly Wilson, who, nevertheless, is +utterly incompetent to deal with the problem of a woman's lost morality. +Governor Bellingham is the stern, unflinching, manly upholder of the +state and its ferocious sanctions; yet in the very house with him dwells +Mistress Hibbins, the witch-lady, revelling in the secret knowledge of +widespread sin. Thus we are led to a fuller comprehension of +Chillingworth's attitude as an exponent of the whole Puritan idea of +spiritual government; and in his diabolical absorption and gloating +interest in sin, we behold an exaggerated--but logically +exaggerated--spectre of the Puritan attempt to precipitate and +personally supervise the punishments of eternity on this side of death. + +Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply to +this article in "The Church Review," though he recognized, as all +readers of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not by +any means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity for +whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece. + +Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so +excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly +be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the +adroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, which +we call "plot." Passion and motive and character, having been brought +together in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; but +the individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures, +with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama +gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration, +indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evident +as is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still, +long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like a +playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather +arrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this is +simply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist's +method; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that, +and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies all +Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but also +protracting the impression a little too much, at times. Yet the general +conception, and the mode of drawing out the story and of illustrating +the characters, is dramatic in a high degree. The author's exegesis of +the moods of his persons is brief, suggestive, restrained; and, +notwithstanding the weight of moral meaning which the whole work +carries, it is impossible to determine how much the movement of events +is affected by his own will, or by that imperious perception of the +necessary outcome of certain passions and temperaments, which influences +novelists of the higher order. + +As a demonstration of power, it seems to me that this first extended +romance was not outdone by its successors; yet there is a harshness in +its tone, a want of mitigation, which causes it to strike crudely on the +aesthetic sense by comparison with those mellower productions. This was +no doubt fortunate for its immediate success. Hawthorne's faith in pure +beauty was so absolute as to erect at first a barrier between himself +and the less devout reading public. If in his earlier tales he had not +so transfused tragedy with the suave repleteness of his sense of beauty, +he might have snatched a speedier popular recognition. It is curious to +speculate what might have been the result, had he written "The House of +the Seven Gables" before "The Scarlet Letter." Deep as is the tragic +element in the former, it seems quite likely that its greater gentleness +of incident and happier tone would have kept the world from discovering +the writer's real measure, for a while longer. But "The Scarlet Letter" +burst with such force close to its ears, that the indolent public awoke +in good earnest, and never forgot, though it speedily forgave the shock. + +There was another smaller but attendant explosion. Hawthorne's prefatory +chapter on the Custom-House incensed some of his fellow-citizens of +Salem, terribly. There seems to have been a general civic clamor against +him, on account of it, though it would be hard to find any rational +justification therefor. In reference to the affair, Hawthorne wrote at +the time:-- + +"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, and on two false +indictments, without hardly a voice being raised on my behalf." + +This refers to political machinations of the party opposed to Hawthorne +as an official: they had pledged themselves, it was understood, not to +ask for his ejection, and afterward set to work to oust him without +cause. There is reason to believe that Hawthorne felt acute exasperation +at these unpleasant episodes for a time. But the annoyance came upon him +when he was worn out with the excitement of composing "The Scarlet +Letter"; and this ebullition of local hostility must moreover have been +especially offensive at a moment when the public everywhere else was +receiving him with acclaim as a person whose genius entitled him to +enthusiastic recognition. Hawthorne had generous admirers and sincere +friends in Salem, and his feeling was, I suppose, in great measure the +culmination of that smouldering disagreement which had harassed him in +earlier years, and had lurked in his heart in spite of the constant mild +affection which he maintained toward the town. + +But the connection between Hawthorne and Salem was now to be finally +broken off. He longed for change, for the country, and for the +recreation that the Old Manse garden had given him. "I should not long +stand such a life of bodily inactivity and mental exertion as I have led +for the last few months," he wrote to Bridge. "Here I hardly go out once +a week." On this account, and because of his difficulty in writing while +in office, he did not so much regret losing his place. One of the plans +proposed at this time was that he should rent or buy the Sparhawk house, +a famous old colonial mansion on Goose Creek, at Kittery, in Maine, +which was then to be disposed of in some way. Hawthorne, I think, would +have found much that was suggestive and agreeable in the neighborhood. +After his return from abroad, he made a visit to the quaint and stately +little city of Portsmouth, and dined at one of the most beautiful old +houses in New England, the ancient residence of Governor Langdon, then +occupied by the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. A memorial of that visit remains, in +this bright note from his host:-- + +PORTSMOUTH, September, 1860. + +MR. HAWTHORNE. + +MY DEAR SIR:--There are no Mosses on our "Old Manse," there is no +Romance at our Blithedale; and this is no "Scarlet Letter." But you can +give us a "Twice-Told Tale," if you will for the second time be our +guest to-morrow at dinner, at half past two o'clock. + +Very truly yours, + +CHARLES BURROUGHS. + +But, at present, Hawthorne's decision led him to Berkshire. + + + + +VIII. + + +LENOX AND CONCORD: PRODUCTIVE PERIOD. + +1850-1853. + +In the early summer, after the publication of "The Scarlet Letter," +Hawthorne removed from Salem to Lenox, in Berkshire, where himself and +his family were ensconced in a small red house near the Stockbridge +Bowl. It was far from a comfortable residence; but he had no means of +obtaining a better one. Meantime, he could do what he was sent into the +world to do, so long as he had the mere wherewithal to live. + +He was much interested in Herman Melville, at this time living in +Pittsfield. There was even talk of their writing something together, as +I judge from some correspondence; though this was abandoned. + +Between this summer of 1850 and June, 1853, Hawthorne wrote "The House +of the Seven Gables," "The Blithedale Romance," "The Wonder-Book for +Boys and Girls," and "Tanglewood Tales," besides the story of "The Snow +Image" in the volume to which this supplies the title; and his short +"Life of Franklin Pierce." The previous paucity of encouragements to +literature, and the deterring effect of official duties and of the Brook +Farm attempt, were now removed, and his pen showed that it could pour a +full current if only left free to do so. + +The industry and energy of this period are the more remarkable because +he could seldom accomplish anything in the way of composition during the +warm months. "The House of the Seven Gables" was under way by September, +1850. + +"I shan't have the new story ready," he writes to his publisher on the +1st of October, "by November, for I am never good for anything in the +literary way till after the first autumnal frost, which has somewhat +such an effect on my imagination that it does on the foliage here about +me,--multiplying and brightening its hues; though they are likely to be +sober and shabby enough after all." + +The strain of reflection upon the work in hand which he indulged one +month later is so important as to merit dwelling upon. + +"I write diligently, but not so rapidly as I had hoped. I find the book +requires more care and thought than 'The Scarlet Letter'; also I have to +wait oftener for a mood. 'The Scarlet Letter' being all in one tone, I +had only to get my pitch, and could then go on interminably. Many +passages of this book ought to be finished with the minuteness of a +Dutch picture, in order to give them their proper effect. Sometimes, +when tired of it, it strikes me that the whole is an absurdity, from +beginning to end; but the fact is, in writing a romance, a man is +always, or always ought to be, careering on, the utmost verge of a +precipitous absurdity, and the skill lies in coming as close as +possible, without actually tumbling over. My prevailing idea is, that +the book ought to succeed better than 'The Scarlet Letter,' though I +have no idea that it will." + +By the 12th of January, 1851, he was able to write: "My 'House of the +Seven Gables' is, so to speak, finished; only I am hammering away a +little at the roof, and doing up a few odd jobs that were left +incomplete"; and at the end of that month, he despatched the manuscript +to Boston, still retaining his preference for it over the preceding work. + +"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." + +He also wrote to Bridge, in July, after listening to the critics, and +giving his own opinion time to mature:-- + +"I think it a work more characteristic of my mind, and more proper and +natural for me to write, than 'The Scarlet Letter,'--but, for that very +reason, less likely to interest the public. Nevertheless, it appears to +have sold better than the former, and I think is move sure of retaining +the ground that it acquires. Mrs. Kemble writes that both works are +popular in England, and advises me to take out my copyright there." + +His opinion of the superiority of the fresh production to his first +great romance is no doubt one that critics will coincide with as regards +artistic completeness; though his fear that it would not succeed so well +was not confirmed, because, as I have suggested, he had begun to acquire +that momentum of public favor which sets in after its first immense +inertia has once been overcome. Acting on the reports from England, he +made a suggestion to his publisher; and though this at first met with +discouragement, ten months later £200 were received from a London house +for "The Blithedale Romance." English editions of his works had already +become numerous. But Hawthorne began now to receive a more ethereal and +not less welcome kind of tribute from abroad, that of praise from the +makers and markers of literature. The critics welcomed him to a high +place; authors wrote to him, urging him to cross the sea; and Miss +Mitford--of whom he said, "Her sketches, long ago as I read them, are as +sweet in my memory as the scent of new hay"--sent special messages +expressive of her pleasure. + +When the "Blithedale Romance" had come out, Mr. Hawthorne sent Miss +Mitford a copy, and she wrote in reply this cordial and delightful +note:-- + +SWALLOWFIELD, August 6,1852. + +At the risk of troubling you, dear Mr. Hawthorne, I write again to tell +you how much I thank you for the precious volume enriched by your +handwriting, which, for its own sake and for yours, I shall treasure +carefully so long as I live. The story has your mark upon it,--the fine +tragic construction unmatched amongst living authors, the passion of the +concluding scenes, the subtle analysis of jealousy, the exquisite finish +of style. I must tell you what one of the cleverest men whom I have ever +known, an Irish barrister, the juvenile correspondent of Miss Edgeworth, +says of your style: "His English is the richest and most intense essence +of the language I know of; his words conveying not only a meaning, but +more than they appear to mean. They point onward or upward or downward, +as the case may be, and we cannot help following them with the eyes of +imagination, sometimes smiling, sometimes weeping, sometimes shuddering, +as if we were victims of the mesmeric influence he is so fond of +bringing to bear upon his characters. Three of the most perfect +Englishmen of our day are Americans,--Irving, Prescott, and this great +new writer, Mr. Hawthorne." So far my friend Mr. Hockey. I forget, dear +Mr. Hawthorne, whether I told you that the writer of whose works you +remind me, not by imitation, but by resemblance, is the great French +novelist, Balzac. Do you know his books? He is untranslated and +untranslatable, and it requires the greatest familiarity with French +literature to relish him thoroughly.... I doubt if he be much known +amongst you; at least I have never seen him alluded to in American +literature. He has, of course, the low morality of a Frenchman, but, +being what he is, Mrs. Browning and I used to discuss his personages +like living people, and regarded his death as a great personal calamity +to both. + +I am expecting Mrs. Browning here in a few days, not being well enough +to meet her in London.... How I wish, dear Mr. Hawthorne, that you were +here to meet them! The day will come, I hope. It would be good for your +books to look at Europe, and all of Europe that knows our tongue would +rejoice to look at you. + +Ever your obliged and affectionate friend, + +M. R. MITFORD. + +I must transcribe here, too, part of a letter from Herman Melville, who, +in the midst of his epistle, suddenly assumes the tone of a reviewer, +and discourses as follows, under the heading, "_The House of the Seven +Gables: A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne_. 16_mo. pp._ 344." + +"The contents of this book do not belie its clustering romantic title. +With great enjoyment we spent almost an hour in each separate gable. +This book is like a fine old chamber, abundantly but still judiciously +furnished with precisely that sort of furniture best fitted to furnish +it. There are rich hangings, whereon are braided scenes from tragedies. +There is old china with rare devices, set about on the carved beaufet; +there are long and indolent lounges to throw yourself upon; there is an +admirable sideboard, plentifully stored with good viands; there is a +smell of old wine in the pantry; and finally, in one corner, there is a +dark little black-letter volume in golden clasps, entitled _Hawthorne: +A Problem_.... + +"We think the book for pleasantness of running interest surpasses the +other work of the author. The curtains are now drawn; the sun comes in +more; genialities peep out more. Were we to particularize what has most +struck us in the deeper passages, we should point out the scene where +Clifford, for a minute, would fain throw himself from the window, to +join the procession; or the scene where the Judge is left seated in his +ancestral chair. + +"Clifford is full of an awful truth throughout. He is conceived in the +finest, truest spirit. He is no caricature. He is Clifford. And here we +would say, that did the circumstances permit, we should like nothing +better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full +consideration and analysis of the purpose and significance of what so +strongly characterizes all of this author's writing. There is a certain +tragic phase of humanity, which, in our opinion, was never more +powerfully embodied than by Hawthorne: we mean the tragicalness of human +thought in its own unbiased, native, and profound workings. We think +that into no recorded mind has the intense feeling of the whole truth +ever entered more deeply than into this man's. By whole truth, we mean +the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they +strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst +to him." + +This really profound analysis, Mr. Mellville professes to extract from +the "Pittsfield Secret Review," of which I wish further numbers could be +found. + +But chief among the prizes of this season were letters from his friends +Lowell and Holmes. The latter's I insert, because it admirably +illustrates the cordial relation which has always distinguished the +famous writers of New England,--no pleasant illusion of distance, but a +notable and praiseworthy reality. + +BOSTON, April 9, 1851. + +MY DEAR SIR:--I have been confined to my chamber and almost to my bed, +for some days since I received your note; and in the mean time I have +received what was even more welcome, the new Romance "from the Author." +While I was too ill to read, my wife read it to me, so that you have +been playing physician to my heartaches and headaches at once, with the +magnetism of your imagination. + +I think we have no romancer but yourself, nor have had any for this long +time. I had become so set in this feeling, that but for your last two +stories I should have given up hoping, and believed that all we were to +look for in the way of spontaneous growth were such languid, lifeless, +sexless creations as in the view of certain people constitute the chief +triumphs of a sister art as manifested among us. + +But there is rich red blood in Hester, and the flavor of the sweet-fern +and the bayberry are not truer to the soil than the native sweetness of +our little Phoebe! The Yankee mind has for the most part budded and +flowered in pots of English earth, but you have fairly raised yours as a +seedling in the natural soil. My criticism has to stop here; the moment +a fresh mind takes in the elements of the common life about us and +transfigures them, I am contented to enjoy and admire, and let others +analyze. Otherwise I should be tempted to display my appreciating +sagacity in pointing out a hundred touches, transcriptions of nature, of +character, of sentiment, true as the daguerreotype, free as crayon +sketching, which arrested me even in the midst of the palpitating story. +Only one word, then, this: that the solid reality and homely +truthfulness of the actual and present part of the story are blended +with its weird and ghostly shadows with consummate skill and effect; +this was perhaps the special difficulty of the story. + +I don't want to refuse anything you ask me to do. I shall come up, I +trust, about the 1st of June. I would look over the MS. in question, as +a duty, with as much pleasure as many other duties afford. To say the +truth, I have as great a dread of the _Homo Caudatus_ Linn., +Anglicé, the Being with a Tale, male or female, as any can have. + + "If foes they write, if friends they read me dead," + +said poor Hepzibah's old exploded poet. Still, if it must be, I will +stipulate to read a quantity not exceeding fifty-six pounds avoirdupois +by weight or eighteen reams by measure or "tale,"--provided there is no +locomotion in the case. The idea of visiting Albany does not enter into +my intentions. I do not know who would serve as a third or a second +member of the committee; Miss Sedgwick, if the Salic law does not +prevail in Berkshire, is the most natural person to do it. But the real +truth is, the little Albaneses want to see the author of "The Scarlet +Letter," and don't care a sixpence who else is on the committee. That is +what they are up to. So if you want two dummies, on the classical +condition _not to leave the country except in case of invasion_, +absentees, voters by proxy, potential but not personally present +bottle-holders, I will add my name to those of Latimer, Ridley, and Co. +as a Martyr in the cause of Human Progress. + +Believe me, my dear sir, + +Yours very sincerely, + +O. W. Holmes. + +Hawthorne's interest in Dr. Holmes's works was also very great, and one +of the last books which he read at all was "Elsie Venner," which he had +taken up for a second time shortly before his death. + +Amid all the variety of thoughtful and thoughtless praise, or of other +comment on the new romance, he began to feel that necessity for +abstracting his attention entirely from what was said of his work in +current publications, which forces itself upon every creative mind +attempting to secure some centre of repose in a chattering and unprivate +age like the present. This feeling he imparted to Bridge, and it also +appears in one or two published letters. At the same time, it must be +remembered how careful a consideration he gave to criticism; and he +wrote of Edwin Whipple's reviewing of the "Seven Gables":-- + +"Whipple's notices have done more than pleased me, for they have helped +me to see my book. Much of the censure I recognize as just; I wish I +could feel the praise to be so fully deserved. Being better (which I +insist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have never expected it to be +so popular." + +In this same letter occurs the following:-- + +"---- ----, Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have +made his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon +(or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their +representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge +Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ----'s grandfather, and (at +least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman +in the world. There are several touches in my account of the Pyncheons +which, he says, make it probable that I had this actual family in my +eye, and he considers himself infinitely wronged and aggrieved, and +thinks it monstrous that the 'virtuous dead' cannot be suffered to rest +quietly in their graves." + +The matter here alluded to threatened to give Hawthorne almost as much +inconvenience as the tribulation which followed the appearance of "The +Custom-House." One of the complainants in this case, though objecting to +the use of the name Pyncheon, "respectfully suggests," with an ill-timed +passion for accuracy, that it should in future editions be printed with +the _e_ left out, because this was the proper mode in use by the +family. + +There has been some slight controversy as to the original of the +visionary mansion described in this romance. Mr. Hawthorne himself said +distinctly that he had no particular house in mind, and it is also a +fact that none is recalled which fulfils all the conditions of that of +the "Seven Gables." Nevertheless, one party has maintained that the old +Philip English house, pulled down many years since, was the veritable +model; and others support the Ingersoll house, which still stands. The +Curwin, called the "Witch House," appears, by an antique painting from +which photographs have been made, to have had the requisite number of +peaks at a remote date; but one side of the structure being perforce +left out of the picture, there is room for a doubt. [Footnote: It is +from one of these photographs that the cut in the new edition of +Hawthorne's Works has been developed.] + +In "The House of the Seven Gables" Hawthorne attained a connection of +parts and a masterly gradation of tones which did not belong, in the +same fulness, to "The Scarlet Letter." There is, besides, a larger range +of character, in this second work, and a much more nicely detailed and +reticulated portrayal of the individuals. Hepzibah is a painting on +ivory, yet with all the warmth of a real being. Very noticeable is the +delicate veneration and tenderness for her with which the author seems +to inspire us, notwithstanding the fact that he has almost nothing +definite to say of her except what tends to throw a light ridicule. She +is continually contrasted with the exquisite freshness, ready grace, and +beauty of Phoebe, and subjected to unfavorable comparisons in the mind +of Clifford, whose half-obliterated but still exact aesthetic perception +casts silent reproach upon her. Yet, in spite of this, she becomes in a +measure endeared to us. In the grace, and agreeableness too, with which +Hawthorne manages to surround this ungifted spinster, we find a unit of +measure for the beauty with which he has invested the more frightful and +tragic elements of the story. It is this triumph of beauty without +destroying the unbeautiful, that gives the romance its peculiar artistic +virtue. Judge Pyncheon is an almost unqualified discomfort to the +reader, yet he is entirely held within bounds by the prevailing charm of +the author's style, and by the ingenious manner in which the pleasanter +elements of the other characters are applied. At times the strong +emphasis given to his evil nature makes one suspect that the villain is +too deeply dyed; but the question of equity here involved is one of the +most intricate with which novelists have to deal at all. The +well-defined opposition between good and bad forces has always been a +necessity to man, in myths, religions, and drama. Heal life furnishes +the most absolute extremes of possession by the angel or the fiend; and +Shakespere has not scrupled to use one of these ultimate possibilities +in the person of Iago. Yet Hawthorne was too acutely conscious of the +downward bent in every heart, to let the Judge's pronounced iniquity +stand without giving a glimpse of incipient evil in another quarter. +This occurs in the temptation which besets Holgrave, when he finds that +he possesses the same mesmeric sway over Phoebe, the latest Pyncheon +offshoot, as that which his ancestor Matthew Maule exercised over Alice +Pyncheon. The momentary mood which brings before him the absolute power +which might be his over this fair girl, opens a whole new vista of +wrong, in which the retribution would have been transferred from the +shoulders of the Pyncheons to those of the Maules. Had Holgrave yielded +then, he might have damned his own posterity, as Colonel Pyncheon had +_his_. Thus, even in the hero of the piece, we are made aware of +possibilities as malicious and destructive as those hereditary faults +grown to such rank maturity in the Judge; and this may be said to offer +a middle ground between the side of justice and attractiveness, and the +side of injustice and repulsiveness, on which the personages are +respectively ranged. + +The conception of a misdeed operating through several generations, and +righted at last solely by the over-toppling of unrestrained malevolence +on the one hand, and on the other by the force of upright character in +the wronged family, was a novel one at the time; this graphic depicture +of the past at work upon the present has anticipated a great deal of the +history and criticism of the following twenty-five years, in its close +conjunction of antecedent influences and cumulative effects. + +As a discovery of native sources of picturesque fiction, this second +romance was not less remarkable than the one which preceded it. The +theme furnished by the imaginary Pyncheon family ranges from the tragic +in the Judge, through the picturesquely pathetic in Clifford, to a +grotesque cast of pathos and humor in Hepzibah. Thence we are led to +another vein of simple, fun-breeding characterization in Uncle Venner +and Ned Higgins. The exquisite perception which draws old Uncle Venner +in such wholesome colors, tones him up to just one degree of sunniness +above the dubious light in which Hepzibah stands, so that he may soften +the contrast of broad humor presented by little Ned Higgins, the "First +Customer." I cannot but regret that Hawthorne did not give freer scope +to his delicious faculty for the humorous, exemplified in the "Seven +Gables." If he had let his genius career as forcibly in this direction +as it does in another, when burdened with the black weight of the dead +Judge Pyncheon, he might have secured as wide an acceptance for the book +as Dickens, with so much more melodrama and so much less art, could gain +for less perfect works. Hawthorne's concentration upon the tragic +element, and comparative neglect of the other, was in one sense an +advantage; but if in the case under discussion he had given more bulk +and saliency to the humorous quality, he might also have been more +likely to avoid a fault which creeps in, immediately after that +marvellous chapter chanted like an unholy requiem over the lifeless +Judge. This is the sudden culmination of the passion of Holgrave for +Phoebe, just at the moment when he has admitted her to the house where +Death and himself were keeping vigil. The revulsion, here, is too +violent, and seems to throw a dank and deathly exhalation into the midst +of the sweetness which the mutual disclosure of love should have spread +around itself. There is need of an enharmonic change, at this point; and +it might have been effected, perhaps, by a slower passage from gloom to +gladness just here, and a more frequent play of the brighter mood +throughout the book. But the tragic predilection seems ultimately to +gain the day over the comic, in every great creative mind, and it was so +strong with Hawthorne, that instead of giving greater play to humor in +later fictions, it curtailed it more and more, from the production of +the "Seven Gables" onward. + +Mr. Curtis has shown me a letter written soon after the publication of +the new book, which, as it gives another instance of the writer's keen +enjoyment of other men's work, and ends with a glimpse of the life at +Lenox, I will copy at length:-- + +LENOX, April 29,1851. + +MY DEAR HOWADJI:--I ought to be ashamed (and so I really am) of not +having sooner responded to your note of more than a month ago, +accompanied as it was by the admirable "Nile Notes." The fact is, I have +been waiting to find myself in an eminently epistolary mood, so that I +might pay my thanks and compliments in a style not unworthy of the +occasion. But the moment has not yet come, and doubtless never will; and +now I have delayed so long, that America and England seem to have +anticipated me in their congratulations. + +I read the book aloud to my wife, and both she and I have felt that we +never knew anything of the Nile before. There is something beyond +descriptive power in it. You make me feel almost as if we had been there +ourselves. And then you are such a luxurious traveller.... The fragrance +of your chibonque was a marvellous blessing to me. It cannot be +concealed that I felt a little alarm, as I penetrated the depths of +those chapters about the dancing-girls, lest they might result in +something not altogether accordant with our New England morality; and +even now I hardly know whether we escaped the peril, or were utterly +overwhelmed by it. But at any rate, those passages are gorgeous in the +utmost degree. However, I suppose you are weary of praise; and as I have +nothing else to inflict, I may as well stop here. + +S---- and the children and I are plodding onward in good health, and in +a fair medium state of prosperity; and on the whole, we are quite the +happiest family to be found anywhere. We live in the ugliest little old +red farm-house you ever saw.... + +What shall you write next? For of course you are an author forever. I am +glad, for the sake of the public, but not particularly so for your own. + +Very soon after the issue of the "Seven Gables," another lighter +literary project was put into execution. + +"I mean [he had announced on the 23d of May] to write within six weeks +or two months next ensuing, a book of stories made up of classical +myths. The subjects are: The Story of Midas, with his Golden Touch; +Pandora's Box; The Adventure of Hercules in Quest of the Golden Apples; +Bellerophon and the Chimera; Baucis and Philemon; Perseus and Medusa." + +The "Wonder-Book" was begun on the first of June, and finished by the +middle of July; so that the intention of writing it within six weeks was +strictly carried out: certainly a rapid achievement, considering the +excellent proportion and finish bestowed upon the book. It is a minor +work, but a remarkable one; not its least important trait being the +perfect simplicity of its style and scope, which, nevertheless, omits +nothing essential, and preserves a thorough elegance. Its peculiar +excellences come out still more distinctly when contrasted with Charles +Kingsley's "The Heroes; or, Greek Fairy Tales," published in England +five years after the appearance of the "Wonder-Book" here. The fresher +play of Hawthorne's mind with those old subjects is seen in nothing more +agreeably than in the graceful Introduction and interludes which he has +thrown around the mythological tales, like the tendrils of a vine +curling over a sculptured capital. This midsummer task--it was very +uncommon for him to write in the hot season--perhaps had something to do +with further unsettling Hawthorne's health, which at this time was not +good. The somewhat sluggish atmosphere of the far inland valley did not +suit his sea-braced temperament; and so, instead of renting Mrs. +Kemble's country place, as he had thought of doing, he decided to leave +Berkshire with the birds; but not to go southward. Moving to West +Newton, near Boston, he remained there for the winter, writing +"Blithedale," which was put forth in 1852. + +The special characteristic of "The Blithedale Romance" seems to me to be +its appearance of unlabored ease, and a consequent breeziness of effect +distinguishing its atmosphere from that of any of the other romances. +The style is admirably finished, and yet there is no part of the book +that gives the same impression of almost unnecessary polish which +occasionally intervenes between one's admiration and the "Seven Gables." +On this score, "Blithedale" is certainly the most consummate of the four +completed romances. And as Hawthorne has nowhere given us more robust +and splendid characterization than that of Zenobia and Hollingsworth, +the work also takes high rank on this ground. The shadows, which seemed +partly dispersed in the "Seven Gables," gather again in this succeeding +story; but, on the other hand, it is not so jarringly terrible as "The +Scarlet Letter." From this it is saved partly by the sylvan surrounding +and the pleasant changes of scene. In comparing it with the other works, +I find that it lets itself be best defined as a mean between extremes; +so that it ought to have the credit of being the most evenly attempered +of all. The theme is certainly as deep as that of the earlier ones, and +more tangible to the general reader than that of "The Marble Faun"; it +is also more novel than that of "The Scarlet Letter" or even the "Seven +Gables," and has an attractive air of growing simply and naturally out +of a phenomenon extremely common in New England, namely, the man who is +dominated and blinded by a theory. And the way in which Hollingsworth, +through this very prepossession and absorption, is brought to the ruin +of his own scheme, and has to concentrate his charity for criminals upon +himself as the first criminal needing reformation, is very masterly. +Yet, in discussing the relative positions of these four works. I am not +sure that we can reach any decision more stable than that of mere +preference. + +There is a train of thought suggested in "Blithedale" which receives +only partial illustration in that story, touching the possible identity +of love and hate. It had evidently engaged Hawthorne from a very early +period, and would have made rich material for an entire romance, or for +several treating different phases of it. Perhaps he would have followed +out the suggestion, but for the intervention of so many years of +unproductiveness in the height of his powers, and his subsequent too +early death. + +It was while at West Newton, just before coming to the Wayside, that he +wrote a note in response to an invitation to attend the memorial meeting +at New York, in honor of the novelist, Cooper, which should be read for +its cordial admiration of a literary brother, and for the tender thought +of the closing sentence. + +_To Rev. R. W. Griswold._ + +February 20,1852. + +Dear Sir:--I greatly regret that circumstances render it impossible for +me to be present on the occasion of Mr. Bryant's discourse in honor of +James Fenimore Cooper. No man has a better right to be present than +myself, if many years of most sincere and unwavering admiration of Mr. +Cooper's writings can establish a claim. It is gratifying to observe the +earnestness with which the literary men of our country unite in paying +honor to the deceased; and it may not be too much to hope that, in the +eyes of the public at large, American literature may henceforth acquire +a weight and value which have not heretofore been conceded to it: time +and death have begun to hallow it. + +Very respectfully yours, + +Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +Early in the summer of 1852 he went to Concord again, where he had +bought a small house, there to establish his permanent home. Mr. Curtis +was at this time writing some chapters for a book on "The Homes of +American Authors," among which was to be included the new abode of +Hawthorne. The project called forth from the romancer this letter:-- + +CONCORD, July 14, 1852. + +MY HEAR 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 hillside 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 hillside 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 Hillside." 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. [Footnote: 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.] 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. + +The Wayside was, perhaps, so named in remembrance of the time when its +owner had "sat down by the wayside like a man under enchantment." It +characterized well, too, his mental attitude in maturity; though the +spell that held him now was charged with happiness. The house itself was +small, but the proprietor might have carved on his lintel the legend +over Ariosto's door, _Parva, sed apta mihi_. In October, 1852, he +wrote to Bridge that he intended to begin a new romance within a day or +two, which he should make "more genial" than the last. What design this +was cannot now be even conjectured. Hawthorne had written, in the +preceding year, "I find that my facility of labor increases with the +demand for it"; and he always felt that an unlimited reserve of +invention and imagination awaited his drafts upon it, so that he could +produce as many books as he might have time for writing. But +circumstances again called him away from ideal occupations. Just as he +was preparing to write the "Tanglewood Tales," as a sequel to the +"Wonder-Book," General Pierce, the Democratic nominee for President, +urged him to write his biography, as a "campaign" measure. "I have +consented to do so," wrote Hawthorne, to his publisher; "somewhat +reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude where a +man careful of his personal dignity will begin to think of cutting his +acquaintance. But I seek nothing from him, and therefore need not be +ashamed to tell the truth of an old friend." To Bridge, after the book +was out, he wrote much more confidentially and strongly. "I tried to +persuade Pierce 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." In this letter, also, he states that before +undertaking the work, he resolved to "accept no office" from Pierce; +though he raises the query whether this be not "rather folly than +heroism." In discussing this point, he says, touching Pierce:-- + +"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." + +These have to do with Hawthorne's attitude during the war. Speaking of +Pierce's indorsement of the Compromise, both as it bore hard on Northern +views and exacted concessions from the South thought by it to be more +than reciprocal, he says:-- + +"It was impossible for him not to take his stand as the unshaken +advocate of Union, and of the mutual steps of compromise which that +great object unquestionably demanded. The fiercest, the least +scrupulous, and the most consistent of those who battle against slavery +recognize the same fact that he does. They see that merely human wisdom +and human efforts cannot subvert it, except by tearing to pieces the +Constitution, breaking the pledges which it sanctions, and severing into +distracted fragments that common country which Providence brought into +one nation, through a continued miracle of almost two hundred years, +from the first settlement of the American wilderness until the +Revolution." + +He predicted, too, the evils of forcible abolition being certain, and +the good only a contingency, that the negroes would suffer aggravated +injuries from the very process designed to better their state. It is +useless here to enter into the question of degrees of right and wrong on +either side, in the struggle which had already become formidable before +Pierce's election; but one can see how sincerely, and with what generous +motives, a man like Hawthorne would feel that the Union must be +maintained peacefully. Without questioning the undoubted grandeur of +achievement which we sanely fell upon through the insane fit of civil +war, we may recognize a deep patriotism consistent with humanity which +forced itself to dissent from the noble action of the fighters, because +it could not share in any triumph, however glorious, that rested on the +shedding of brothers' blood. It was this kind of humanity that found +shelter in the heart of Hawthorne. + +Unwelcome as was the task, he wrote the biography of Pierce, in +friendship, but in good faith also, even seeing the elements of +greatness in his old classmate, which might yet lead him to a career. +[Footnote: As a literary performance, the book is of course but slightly +characteristic; and being distasteful to the author, it is even dry. Yet +there is a great deal of simple dignity about it. The Whig journals +belabored it manfully, and exhausted the resources of those formidable +weapons, italics and small capitals, in the attempt to throw a +ridiculous light on the facts most creditable to Pierce. Hawthorne came +in for a share of the abuse too. One newspaper called the book his "new +romance"; another made him out a worthy disciple of Simonides, who was +the first poet to write for money. The other party, of course, took +quite another view of the work. A letter to Hawthorne from his elder +sister bears well upon his fidelity. "Mr. D---- has bought your Life of +Pierce, but he will not be convinced that you have told the precise +truth. I assure him that it is just what I have always heard you say."] +He had not much hope of his friend's election, but when that occurred, +the question of office, which he had already mooted, was definitely +brought before him. When Pierce learned that he positively would not +take an office, because to do so now might compromise him, he was +extremely troubled. He had looked forward to giving Hawthorne some one +of the prizes in his hand, if he should be elected. But the service he +had exacted from his friend threatened to deprive Hawthorne of the very +benefit which Pierce had been most anxious he should receive. At last, +Mr. Ticknor, Hawthorne's publisher, was made the agent of Pierce's +arguments, and to them he added personal considerations which were +certainly not without weight. Literature gave but a bare subsistence, +and Hawthorne was no longer young, having passed his forty-ninth year. +His books were not likely, it seemed, to fill the breach that would be +made in the fortunes of his family, were he to be suddenly removed. +This, Mr. Ticknor urged, in addition to the friendly obligation which +Pierce ought to be allowed to repay. Hawthorne, as we have seen, had +always wished to travel, and the prospect of some years in Europe was an +alluring one: the decision was made, to take the Liverpool consulship. + +The appointment was well received, though many persons professed +surprise that Hawthorne could accept it. One gentleman in public life, +however, who knew how unjust current judgments may often be, was not of +this number, as appears from his note below.-- + +SENATE CHAMBER, March 26, 1853. + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--"Good! good!" I exclaimed aloud on the floor of the +Senate as your nomination was announced. + +"Good! good!" I now write to you, on its confirmation. Nothing could be +more grateful to me. Before you go, I hope to see you. + +Ever yours, + +CHARLES SUMNER. + + + + +IX. + + +ENGLAND AND ITALY. + +1853-1860. + +It is very instructive to trace the contact of Hawthorne's mind with +Europe, as exhibited in his "English Note-Books" and "French and Italian +Note-Books." But in these records three things are especially +observable. He goes to Europe as unperturbed, with an individual mood as +easily sustained, as he would enter Boston or New York. He carries no +preconception of what may be the most admirable way of looking at it. +There has never been a more complete and charming presentment of a +multitude of ingenuous impressions common to many travellers of widely +differing endowment than here, at the same time that you have always +before you the finished writer and the possible romancer, who suddenly +and without warning flashes over his pages of quiet description a far, +fleeting light of delicious imagination. It is as if two brothers, one a +dreamer, and one a well-developed, intellectual, but slightly stoical +and even shrewd American, dealing exclusively in common-sense, had gone +abroad together, agreeing to write their opinions in the same book and +in a style of perfect homogeneity. Sometimes one has the blank sheet to +himself, sometimes the other; and occasionally they con each other's +paragraphs, and the second modifies the ideas of the first. It is +interesting to note their twofold inspection of Westminster Hall, for +example. The understanding twin examines it methodically, finding its +length to be eighty paces, and its effect "the ideal of an immense +barn." The reasoning and imagining one interposes to this, "be it not +irreverently spoken"; and also conjures up this splendid vision: "I +wonder it does not occur to modern ingenuity to make a scenic +representation, in this very hall, of the ancient trials for life or +death, pomps, feasts, coronations, and every great historic incident ... +that has occurred here. The whole world cannot show another hall such as +this, so tapestried with recollections." But in any case it is always +apparent that the thought is colored by a New World nurture. From this +freshness of view there proceeded one result, the searching, +unembarrassed, yet sympathetic and, as we may say, cordial criticism of +England in "Our Old Home." But it also gave rise to the second notable +quality, that exquisite apprehension of the real meaning of things +European, both institutions and popular manners and the varied products +of art. At times, Hawthorne seems to have been born for the one end of +adding this final grace of definition which he so deftly attaches to the +monuments of that older civilization. He brings a perception so keen and +an innate sympathy so true for everything beautiful or significant, that +the mere flowing out of this fine intellectual atmosphere upon the objects +before him invests them with a quality which we feel to be theirs, even +while we know that it could not have become _ours_ without his aid. +A breath of New England air touches the cathedral windows of the Old World, +and--I had almost said--bedims them with a film of evanescent frost-work; +yet, as that lingers, we suddenly discern through the veil a charm, a +legendary fascination in their deep-gemmed gorgeousness, which, although +we have felt it and read of it before, we never seized till now. I speak, +of course, from the American point of view; though in a great measure the +effect upon foreign readers may be similar. But I fancy a special +appropriateness for us in the peculiar mixture of estimation and +enthusiasm which forms the medium through which Hawthorne looks at the +spectacle of transatlantic life and its surroundings. He visits the +British Museum, and encounters only disappointment at the mutilated +sculptures of the Parthenon; but out of this confession, which is truth, +slowly arises the higher truth of that airy yet profound response with +which he greets the multiform mute company of marble or painted shapes +that form the real population of Rome. + +Even there, he has much dissent to make, still; and we may not find +it at all essential or beneficial to follow each of his deviations +ourselves. But however we may differ with him, it is impossible not to +feel sure that within this circle of contradictions, of preference for +new frames and of his friend Thompson's pictures to all but a very few +of the old masters', somewhere within there is a perfectly trustworthy +aesthetic sensibility which grasps the "unwritten rules of taste," the +inmost truth of all art. This inmost secret is, however we may turn it, +a matter of paradox, and the moment it professes to be explained, that +moment are the gates of the penetralia shut upon us. The evasiveness and +the protest, then, with which Hawthorne discourses to himself as he +wanders through the galleries of Europe, are the trembling of the +needle, perfectly steadfast to the polar opposites of truth, yet +quivering as with a fear that it may be unsettled by some artificial +influence from its deep office of inner constancy. And as if, in this +singular world, all truth must turn to paradox at the touch of an index +finger, that almost faulty abstention from assuming the European tone +which has made Hawthorne the traveller appear to certain readers a +little crude,--that very air of being the uncritical and slightly +puzzled American is precisely the source of his most delightful +accuracies of interpretation. + +The third greatest distinction of his foreign observation is its entire +freedom from specialism. Perhaps this cannot be made to appear more +clearly than in the contrast presented by his "English Note-Books" and +"Our Old Home" to Emerson's "English Traits," and Taine's "Notes on +England." The latter writer is an acute, alert, industrious, and +picturesque comparer of his own and a neighboring country, and is +accompanied by a light battery of literary and pictorial criticism, +detached from his heavier home armament. Emerson, on the other hand, +gives us probably the most masterly and startling analysis of a people +which has ever been offered in the same slight bulk, unsurpassed, too, +in brilliancy and penetration of statement. But the "English Traits" is +as clear, fixed, and accurate as a machinist's plan, and perhaps a +little too rigidly defined. Hawthorne's review of England, though not +comparable to Emerson's work for analysis, has this advantage, that its +outline is more flexible and leaves room for many individual +discriminations to which it supplies an easily harmonized groundwork. +Emerson and Taine give us their impressions of a foreign land: Hawthorne +causes us to inhale its very atmosphere, and makes the country ours for +the time being, rather than an alien area which we scrutinize in +passing. Yet here and there he partakes of the very qualities that are +dominant with Emerson and Taine. "Every Englishman runs to 'The Times' +with his little grievance, as a child runs to his mother," is as +epigrammatic as anything in "English Traits"; [Footnote: No one, I +think, has so well defined our relation to the English as Hawthorne, in +a casual phrase from one of his printed letters: "We stand in the light +of posterity to them, and have the privileges of posterity." This, on +London, ought to become proverbial: "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 die, or go to London."] +and there is a tendency in his pages to present the national character +in a concrete form, as the French writer gives it. But, in addition, +Hawthorne is an artist and a man of humor; and renders human character +with a force and fineness which give it its true value as being, after +all, far weightier and dearer to us than the most important or famous of +congealed _results_ of character. Withal a wide and keen observer +and a hospitable entertainer of opinions, he does not force these upon +us as final. Coming and going at ease, they leave a mysterious sense of +greater wisdom with us, an indefinable residue of refined truth. + +It is a natural question, why did not Hawthorne write an English +romance, as well, or rather than an Italian one? More than half his stay +abroad was north of the Channel, and one would infer that there could +have been no lack of suggestion there. "My ancestor left England," he +wrote, "in 1630. I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had +been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, leaving England +just emerging from the feudal system, and finding it, on my return, on +the verge of republicanism." Herein lay a source of romantic +possibilities from which he certainly meant to derive a story. But the +greater part of his four years in England was spent in Liverpool, where +his consular duties suppressed fiction-making. [Footnote: And it was not +till he reached the villa of Montauto at Florence that he could write:-- + +"It is pleasant to feel at last that I am really 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 +Yankee-dom 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 out of all my old tracks, and am really remote."] + +Hawthorne's genius was extremely susceptible to every influence about +it. One might liken its quality to that of a violin which owes its fine +properties to the tempering of time and atmosphere, and transmits +through its strings the very thrill of sunshine that has sunk into its +wood. His utterances are modulated by the very changes of the air. In +one of his letters from Florence he wrote:-- + +"Speaking of romances, I have planned two, one or both of which I could +have ready for the press in a few months if I were either in England or +America. But 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." + +But though England might be his workshop for books dreamed of in Italy, +yet the aspect of English life seems much more fittingly represented by +his less excursively imaginative side, as in "Our Old Home," than in a +romance. Perhaps this is too ingenious a consolation; but I believe we +may much better spare the possible English romance, than we could have +foregone the actual Italian one. + +In "The Marble Faun" Hawthorne's genius took a more daring and +impressive range than ever before, and showed conclusively--what, +without this testimony, would most likely have been questioned, or even +by some denied--that his previous works had given the arc of a circle +which no English or American writer of prose fiction besides himself has +even begun to span. It is not alone that he plucks from a prehistoric +time--"a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his +fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear"--this +conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or +crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has +nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of +Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book +reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as +the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the +primitive purity of man and of Christianity. I recoil from any attempt +at adequate analysis of this marvellous production, for it is one of +those works of art which are also works of nature, and will present to +each thoughtful reader a new set of meanings, according to his +individuality, insight, or experience. The most obvious part of the +theme is that which is represented in the title, the study of the Faun's +nature; and this embraces the whole question of sin and crime, their +origin and distinction. But it is not the case, as has been assumed, +that in this study the author takes the position of advocate to a theory +that sin was requisite to the development of soul in man. For, though he +shows that remorse developed in Donatello "a more definite and nobler +individuality," he also reminds us that "sometimes the instruction comes +without the sorrow, and oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides +with us"; and he illustrates this in the exquisite height of +spirituality to which Hilda has attained through sinlessness. He is not, +I say, the advocate of a theory: this charge has been made by +self-confident critics, who saw only the one idea,--that of a +Beneficence which has so handled sin, that, instead of destroying man, +"it has really become an instrument most effective in the education of +intellect and soul." This idea is several times urged by Miriam and +Kenyon, but quickly rejected each time; first by Kenyon, and then by +Hilda; so that, while it is suggested, it is also shown to be one which +human nature cannot trust itself to dwell upon. But the real function of +the author is that of a profound religious teacher. The "Romance of +Monte Beni" is, as Miriam plainly says, the story of the fall of man +repeated. It takes us with fearless originality to the source of all +religious problems, affirming,--as one interpreter [Footnote: See an +unsigned article, "The Genius of Hawthorne," in the Atlantic Monthly for +September, 1868.] has said,--"the inherent freedom of man," and +illustrating how he may choose the good or the evil. Donatello is the +ideal of the childlike nature on the threshold of history who has lived +without choosing either, up to the time when his love and defence of +Miriam involve him in crime. Father Antonio, "the spectre of the +catacombs," and Miriam's persecutor, is the outcome of a continual +choice of evil and of utter degradation. These two extremes, more widely +asunder than Prospero and Caliban, Hawthorne has linked together in his +immense grasp of the inmost laws of life, and with a miraculous nicety +of artistic skill. Then comes Donatello's fall, illustrating the genesis +of sin from crime, in accordance with the Biblical story of Cain; and +this precipitates an examination, not only of the result upon Donatello +himself, but of the degree in which others, even the most guiltless, are +involved. There is first the reaction upon and inculpation of Miriam, +whose glance had confirmed Donatello's murderous intent; only a glance, +yet enough to involve her in the doom of change and separation--of sin +in short--which falls upon the Faun. And in Hilda's case, it is the +simple consciousness of another's guilt, which is "almost the same as if +she had participated" in it. The mutual relations of these persons, who +are made to represent the whole of society, afford matter for infinite +meditation, the artistic and moral abstract of which the author has +given. + +But with this main theme is joined a very marvellous and intricate study +of the psychology of Beatrice Cenci's story, in a new form. Miriam is a +different woman placed in the same circumstances which made the Cenci +tragedy. In the "French and Italian Note-Books," Hawthorne describes the +look he caught sight of in Guido's picture,--that "of a being +unhumanized by some terrible fate, and gazing out of a remote and +inaccessible region, where she was frightened to be alone, but where no +human sympathy could reach her." It was of this single insight that both +Miriam and Hilda were born to his mind. He reproduces this description, +slightly modified, in the romance (Vol. I. Chap. XXIII.): "It was the +intimate consciousness of her father's guilt that threw its shadow over +her, and frightened her into" this region. Now, in the chapter called +"Beatrice," quite early in the story, he brings out between Miriam and +Hilda a discussion of Beatrice and her history. It is evident, from the +emphasis given by the chapter-title, that this subject is very deeply +related to the theme of the romance; and no theory can explain Miriam's +passionate utterances about the copy of Guido's portrait, except that +which supposes her own situation to be that of Beatrice. This chapter is +full of the strongest hints of the fact. Miriam's sudden resemblance to +the picture, at the instant when she so yearns to grasp the secret of +Beatrice's view of her own guilt or innocence; her ardent defence of +Beatrice's course, as "the best virtue possible under the +circumstances," when Hilda condemns it; her suggestion that, after all, +only a woman could have painted the poor girl's thoughts upon her face, +and that _she herself_ has "a great mind to undertake a copy," +giving it "what it lacks";--all these things point clearly. But there is +a mass of inferential evidence, besides; many veiled allusions and +approaches to a revelation, as well as that very marked description of +the sketches in which Miriam has portrayed in various moods a "woman +acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man," and the hint, in +the description of her portrait of herself, that "she might ripen to be +what Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her beauty, and +slew him for too much adoring it." There is no need to pursue the proof +further: readers will easily find it on re-examining the book. But what +is most interesting, is to observe how Hawthorne has imagined two women +of natures so widely opposed as Hilda and Miriam under a similar +pressure of questionable blood-guiltiness. With Miriam, it is a guilt +which has for excuse that it was the only resort against an unnatural +depravity in Father Antonio. But as if to emphasize the indelibleness of +blood-stains, however justly inflicted, we have as a foil to Miriam the +white sensitiveness of Hilda's conscience, which makes her--though +perfectly free from even the indirect responsibility of Miriam--believe +herself actually infected. In both cases, it is the shadow of crime +which weighs upon the soul; but Miriam, in exactly the position of +Beatrice Cenci, is a more complex and deep-colored nature than she; and +Hilda, differently affected by the same question of conscience, is a +vastly spiritualized image of the historic sufferer. Miriam, after the +avenging of her nameless wrong, doubts, as Beatrice must have done, +whether there be any guilt in such avengement; but being of so different +a temperament, and having before her eyes the effect of this murder upon +the hitherto sinless Faun, the reality of her responsibility is brought +home to her. The clear conscience of Hilda confirms it. Thus by taking +two extremes on either side of Beatrice,--one, a woman less simply and +ethereally organized, and the other one who is only indirectly connected +with wrong or crime,--Hawthorne seems to extract from the problem of +Beatrice all its most subtle significance. He does not coldly condemn +Beatrice; but by re-combining the elements of her case, he succeeds in +magnifying into startling distinctness the whole awful knot of crime and +its consequence, which lies inextricably tangled up within it. How +different from Shelley's use of the theme! There is certainly nothing in +the "Marble Faun" to equal the impassioned expression of wrong, and the +piercing outcry against the shallow but awful errors of human justice, +which uplift Shelley's drama. But Shelley stops, on the one side, with +this climax:-- + + "O plead + With famine or wind-walking pestilence, + Blind lightning or the deaf sea, not with man!" + +And on the side of the moral question, he leaves us with Beatrice's +characterization of the parricide, + + "Which is, or is not, what men call a crime." + +Hawthorne, on the contrary, starts from this latter doubt. "The foremost +result of a broken law," he says, "is ever an ecstatic freedom." But +instead of pausing to give this his whole weight, as Shelley does, he +distinctly pronounces the murder of Miriam's degraded father to be +crime, and proceeds to inquire how Miriam and Donatello may work out +their purification. So that if the first part of the romance is the Fall +of Man repeated, the second part is the proem to a new Paradise +Regained; and the seclusion of the sculptor and the Faun, and their +journey together to Perugia, seasoned with Kenyon's noble and +pure-hearted advice, compose a sort of seven-times-refined Pilgrim's +Progress. Apt culmination of a genius whose relations to Milton and +Bunyan we found to be so suggestive! The chief means which Kenyon offers +for regeneration is that Miriam and the Faun shall abandon any hope of +mutual joy, and consecrate themselves to the alleviation of misery in +the world. Having by violence and crime thrust one evil out of life, +they are now by patience and benevolence to endeavor to exorcise others. +At the same time, remarking that Providence has infinitely varied ways +of dealing with any deed, Hawthorne leaves a possibility of happiness +for the two penitents, which may become theirs as "a wayside flower, +springing along a path that leads to higher ends." But he also shows, in +Donatello's final delivering of himself up to justice, the wisdom of +some definite judgment and perhaps punishment bestowed by society. Thus, +avenues of thought are opened to us on every side, which we are at +liberty to follow out; but we are not forced, as a mere theorist would +compel us, to pursue any particular one to the exclusion of the others. +In all we may find our way to some mystic monument of eternal law, or +pluck garlands from some new-budded bough of moral truth. The romance is +like a portal of ebony inlaid with ivory,--another gate of +dreams,--swinging softly open into regions of illimitable wisdom. But +some pause on the threshold, unused to such large liberty; and these cry +out, in the words of a well-known critic, "It begins in mystery, and +ends in mist." + +Though the book was very successful, few readers grasped the profounder +portions. It is a vast exemplar of the author's consummate charm as a +simple storyteller, however, that he exercised a brilliant fascination +over all readers, notwithstanding the heavy burden of uncomprehended +truths which they were obliged to carry with them. Some critics complain +of the extent to which Roman scenery and the artistic life in Rome have +been introduced; but, to my mind, there is scarcely a word wasted in the +two volumes. The "vague sense of ponderous remembrances" pressing down +and crowding out the present moment till "our individual affairs are but +half as real here as elsewhere," is essential to the perspective of the +whole; and nothing but this rich picturesqueness and variety could avail +to balance the depth of tragedy which has to be encountered; so that the +nicety of art is unquestionable. It is strange, indeed, that this great +modern religious romance should thus have become also the ideal +representative of ruined Rome--the home of ruined religions--in its +aesthetic aspects. But one instance of appreciation must be recorded +here, as giving the highest pitch of that delightful literary fellowship +which Hawthorne seems constantly to have enjoyed in England. His friend +John Lothrop Motley, the historian, wrote thus of "The Marble Faun," +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. +Where, O where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and +diamonds?... 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 criticised, 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; and to those who +complain, I suppose that nothing less than an illustrated edition, with +a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensile of +attitudes,--his ears revealed through a white nightcap,--would be +satisfactory. I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really +moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile +figures of your romance to the level of an every-day romance.... 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." + +To this Hawthorne replied from Bath (April 1, 1860); and Mr. Motley has +kindly sent me a copy of the letter. + +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 loved 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 most 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.... [The allusion here is to illness in the family, +of which there had also been a protracted case in Rome]. 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, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +These seven years in Europe formed, outwardly, the most opulently happy +part of Hawthorne's life. Before he left America, although he had been +writing--with several interruptions--for twenty-four years, he had only +just reached a meagre prosperity. I have touched upon the petty clamor +which his Custom-House pictures aroused, and the offensive political +attacks following the Life of Pierce. These disagreeables, scattered +along the way, added to the weary delay that had attended his first +efforts, made the enthusiastic personal welcome with which he everywhere +met in England, and the charm of highly organized society, with its +powerful artistic classes centred upon great capitals there and in +Italy, a very captivating contrast. Still there were drawbacks. The most +serious one was the change in the consular service made during his term +at Liverpool. The consulate there was considered the most lucrative post +in the President's gift, at the time of his appointment. But, to begin +with, Pierce allowed the previous incumbent to resign prospectively, so +that Hawthorne lost entirely the first five months of his tenure. These +were very valuable months, and after the new consul came into office the +dull season set in, reducing his fees materially. Business continued bad +so long, that even up to 1855 little more than a living could be made in +the consulate. In February of that year a bill was passed by Congress, +remodelling the diplomatic and consular system, and fixing the salary of +the Liverpool consul at $7,500,--less than half the amount of the best +annual income from it before that time. The position was one of +importance, and involved an expensive mode of life; so that even before +this bill went into operation, though practising "as stern an economy," +he wrote home, "as ever I did in my life," Hawthorne could save but +little; and the effect of it would have been not only to prevent his +accomplishing what he took the office for, but even to have imposed loss +upon him. For, in addition to social demands, the mere necessary office +expenses (including the pay of three clerks) were very large, amounting +to some thousands yearly; and the needs of unfortunate fellow-citizens, +to whom Hawthorne could not bring himself to be indifferent, carried off +a good portion of his income. As he says, "If the government chooses to +starve the consul, a good many will starve with him." The most +irritating thing about the new law was that it merely cut down the +consular fees, without bringing the government anything; for the fees +came from business that a notary-public could perform, and the consul +would naturally decline to take it upon himself when his interest in it +was removed. Fortunately, the President was given some discretion about +the date of reappointment, and allowed the old commission to continue +for a time. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was obliged, in anticipation of the new +rule, to alter his mode of life materially. He now planned to give up +the place in the autumn of 1855, and go to Italy; but this was not +carried out till two years later. + +Italy charmed him wholly, and he longed to make it his home. There had +not been want of unjust criticism of him in America, while at Liverpool. +When some shipwrecked steamer passengers were thrown upon his hands, for +whom he provided extra-officially, on Mr. Buchanan's (then minister) +refusing to have anything to do with the matter, a newspaper rumor was +started at home that Mr. Hawthorne would do nothing for them until +ordered to by Mr. Buchanan. + +"It sickens me," he wrote at that time, "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." + +And on the eve of sailing, he wrote to another friend:-- + +"I shall go home, I fear, with a heavy heart, not expecting to be very +well contented there." + +But his sense of duty, stronger than that of many Americans under +similar circumstances, was rigorously obeyed. We shall see what sort of +reward this fidelity to country won from public opinion at home. + + + + +X. + + +THE LAST ROMANCE. + +1860-1863. + +There are in the "English Note-Books" several dismal and pathetic +records of tragic cases of brutality or murder on shipboard, which it +was Hawthorne's duty as consul to investigate. These things, as one +might have divined they would, made a very strong and deep impression +upon him; and he tried strenuously to interest the United States +government in bettering the state of the marine by new laws. But though +this evil was and is still quite as monstrous as that of slavery, there +was no means of mixing up prejudice and jealousy with the reform, to +help it along, and he could effect nothing. He resolved, on returning +home, to write some articles--perhaps a volume--exposing the horrors so +calmly overlooked; but the slavery agitation, absorbing everybody, +perhaps discouraged him: the scheme was never carried out. It is a pity; +for, aside from the weight which so eminent a name might have given to a +good cause, the work would have clearly proven the quick, responsive, +practical nature of his humanity--a quality which some persons have seen +fit to deny him--in a case where no question of conflicting rights +divided his sense of duty. + +He came to America in June, 1860. For several years the mutterings of +rising war between the States had been growing louder. In June of 1856 +he had written to Bridge, expressing great hope that all would yet turn +out well. But so rapidly did the horizon blacken, that later in the same +year he declared that "an actual fissure" seemed to him to be opening +between the two sections of the country. In January, 1857:-- + +"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. 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." + +He felt, no doubt, that the vital principle of The Union from the +beginning had been compromise, mutual concession, and if it was to be +severed, preferred that it should be peacefully. Still, his moods and +wishes varied as did those of many careful watchers at that time; and he +saw too clearly the arguments on either side to hold fixedly to one +course. In the December after his return, secession began; and for more +than a year following he could not fix his attention upon literary +matters. He wrote little, not even his journal, as Mrs. Hawthorne has +told us, until 1862. Accustomed to respond accurately to every influence +about him, with that sensitized exterior of receptive imagination which +overlay the fixed substance of personal character,--so that, as we have +seen, even a change of climate left its impress on his productions,--it +was not strange that the emotions of horror and pain, the passion of +hate, the splendid heroism which charged the whole atmosphere about him, +now, should absorb his whole sensibility, and paralyze his imagination. +It was no time for quiet observation or creative revery. A new era had +broken upon us, ushered by the wild din of trumpet and cannon, and +battle-cry; an era which was to form new men, and shape a new generation. +He must pause and listen to the agonies of this birth, striving vainly to +absorb the commotion into himself and to let it subside into clear visions +of the future. No hope! He could not pierce the war-smoke to any horizon +of better things. He who had schooled himself so unceasingly to feel with +utmost intensity the responsibility of each soul for any violence or crime +of others, could not cancel the fact of multitudinous murder by any +hypothesis of prospective benefit. Thus, in the midst of that magnificent +turbulence, he was like the central quiet of a whirlpool: all the fierce +currents met there, and seemed to pause,--but only seemed. Full of +sympathy as he was for his fellows, and agitated at times by the same +warlike impulses, he could not give himself rein as they did, nor dared +to raise any encouraging strain in his writing, as others felt that they +might freely do. His Puritan sense of justice, refined by descent and +wedded to mercy, compelled him to weigh all carefully, to debate long and +compassionately. But meantime the popular sense of justice--that same +New England sentiment, of which his own was a development--cared nothing +for these fine considerations, and Hawthorne was generally condemned by +it as being warped by his old Democratic alliances into what was called +treason. Nevertheless, he was glad to be in his native land, and suffer +bitter criticism here,--if that were all that could be granted,--rather +than to remain an unmolested exile. + +An article which he contributed to the "Atlantic Monthly" in July, 1862, +gives a faint inkling of his state of mind at this time; but nothing +illustrates more clearly, either, the reserve which he always claimed +lay behind his seemingly most frank expressions in print. For he there +gives the idea of something like coldness in his attitude touching the +whole great tragedy. But those who saw him daily, and knew his real +mood, have remembered how deeply his heart was shaken by it. +Fortunately, there are one or two epistolary proofs of the degree in +which his sympathy with his own side of the struggle sometimes mastered +him. He used to say that he only regretted that his son was too young +and himself too old to admit of either of them entering the army; and +just after the first battle of Bull Run he wrote to Mr. Lowell, at +Cambridge, declining an invitation:-- + +THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD, July 23, 1861. + +DEAR LOWELL:--I am to start, in two or three days, on an excursion +with----, who has something the matter with him, and seems to need +sea-air and change. If I alone were concerned, ... I would most gladly +put off my trip till after your dinner; but, as the case stands, I am +compelled to decline. Speaking of dinner, last evening's news will dull +the edge of many a Northern appetite; but if it puts all of us into the +same grim and bloody humor that it does me, the South had better have +suffered ten defeats than won this victory. + +Sincerely yours, + +NATH. HAWTHORNE. + +And to another friend, in October:-- + +"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.... 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 at my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper +as of yore." + +He had now begun, I suppose, the "Romance of Immortality," or "Septimius +Felton," which has been posthumously printed, but had been abandoned by +him for another treatment of the same theme, called "The Dolliver +Romance." This last, of which two chapters appeared, was left unfinished +at his death. Of "Septimius" I shall not attempt an analysis: it +contains several related and concentric circles of meaning, to survey +which would require too much space. The subject had been one of the +earliest themes of meditation with Hawthorne, and he wrote as with a +fountain-pen in which was locked the fluid thought of a lifetime. +One of the less obvious aspects of the book is the typification +in Septimius's case of that endless struggle which is the lot of +every man inspired by an ideal aim. The poet and the painter are, +equally with Septimius, seekers after immortality, though of a more +ethereal kind; and his morbidness and exaggeration serve to excite in us +a tenderness and pity over him, assisting the reception of truth. These +relate mainly to the temptation of the artist to effect a severance of +ordinary, active human relations. (Sad to think what bitter cause the +author had to brood upon this, the fault attributed to himself!) The +poet, the creator in whatever art, must maintain his own circle of +serene air, shutting out from it the flat reverberations of common life; +but if he fail to live generously toward his fellows,--if he cannot make +the light of every day supply the nimbus in which he hopes to appear +shining to posterity,--then he will fall into the treacherous pit of +selfishness where Septimius's soul lies smothered. But this set of +meanings runs imperceptibly into others, for the book is much like the +cabalistic manuscript described in its pages: now it is blurred over +with deceptive sameness, and again it brims with multifarious beauties +like those that swim within the golden depth of Tieck's enchanted +goblet. The ultimate and most insistent moral is perhaps that which +brings it into comparison with Goethe's "Faust"; this, namely, that, in +order to defraud Nature of her dues, we must enter into compact with the +Devil. Both Faust and Septimius study magic in their separate ways, with +the hope of securing results denied to their kind by a common destiny; +but Faust proves infinitely the meaner of the two, since he desires only +to restore his youth, that he may engage in the mere mad joy of a lusty +existence for a few years, while Septimius seeks some mode, however +austere and cheerless, of prolonging his life through centuries of +world-wide beneficence. Yet the satanically refined egoism which lays +hold of Septimius is the same spirit incarnated in Goethe's +Mephistopheles,--_der Geist der stets verneint_. To Faust he denies +the existence of good in anything, primarily the good of that universal +knowledge to the acquisition of which he has devoted his life, but +through this scepticism mining his faith in all besides. To Septimius he +denies the worth of so brief a life as ours, and the good of living to +whatever end seems for the hour most needful and noble. Septimius might +perhaps be described as Faust at an earlier stage of development than +that in which Goethe represents him. [Footnote: Indeed, these words, +applied by Mephistopheles to Faust, suit Septimius equally well:-- + + "Ihm hat das Schicksal einen Geist gegeben + Der ungebändigt immer vorwarts dringt + Und dessen übereiltes Streben + Der Erde Freuden überspringt."] + +As a further point of resemblance between the two cases, it may be +noticed that the false dreams of both are dispelled by the exorcising +touch of a woman. Both have fallen into error through perceiving only +half of the truth which has hovered glimmering before them; these errors +originate in the exclusively masculine mood, the asceticism, which has +prevailed in their minds. It will be observed that, in the first +relation of Rose to Septimius, Hawthorne takes pains to contrast with +this mood, delicately but strongly, the woman's gentle conservatism and +wisely practical tendency to be satisfied with life, which make her +influence so admirable a poising force to man. The subsequent alteration +of the situation, by which he makes her the half-sister of his hero, is +owing, as Mr. Higginson has pointed out, to the fact "that a heroine +must be supplied who corresponds to the idea in the lover's soul; like +Helena in the second part of Faust." [Footnote: A phase of character +rich in interest, but which I can only mention, in passing, is presented +in the person of Sybil Dacy, who here occupies very much the same place, +in some regards, as Roger Chillingworth in "The Scarlet Letter." The +movement of the story largely depends on a subtle scheme of revenge +undertaken by her, as that of "The Scarlet Letter" hangs upon the mode +of retribution sought by the physician; but her malice is directed, +characteristically, against the slayer of the young officer who had +despoiled her of her honor, and, again characteristically, she is unable +to consummate her plan, from the very tenderness of her feminine heart, +which leads her first to half sympathize with his dreams, then pity him +for the deceit she practised on him, and at last to rather love than +hate him.] + +But there is a suitable difference between the working of the womanly +element in "Faust" and in Hawthorne's romance. In the former instance it +is through the gratification of his infernal desire that the hero is +awakened from his trance of error and restored to remorse; while +Septimius's failure to accomplish his intended destiny appears to be +owing to the inability of his aspiring nature to accommodate itself to +that code of "moral dietetics" which is to assist his strange project. +"Kiss no woman if her lips be red; look not upon her if she be very +fair," is the maxim taught him. "If thou love her, all is over, and thy +whole past and remaining labor and pains will be in vain." How pathetic +a situation this, how much more terrible than that of Faust, when he has +reached the turning-point in his career! A nature which could accept an +earthly immortality on these terms, for the sake of his fellows, must +indeed have been a hard and chilly one. But there is still too much of +the heart in it, to admit of being satisfied with so cruel an +abstraction. On the verge of success, as he supposes, with the +long-sought drink standing ready for his lips, Septimius nevertheless +seeks a companion. Half unawares, he has fallen in love with Sybil, and +thenceforth, though in a way he had not anticipated, "all is over." Yet, +saved from death by the poison in which he had hoped to find the spring +of endless life, his fate appears admirably fitting. There is no picture +of Mephisto hurrying him off to an apparently irrevocable doom. The +wrongs he has committed against himself, his friends, humanity,--these, +indeed, remain, and are remembered. He has undoubtedly fallen from his +first purity and earnestness, and must hereafter be content to live a +life of mere conventional comfort, full of mere conventional goodness, +conventional charities, in that substantial English home of his. Could +anything be more perfectly compensatory? + +Nothing is more noticeable than the way in which, while so many +symbolisms spring up out of the story, the hero's half-crazed and +bewildered atmosphere is the one which we really accept, until the +reading is ended. By this means we are enabled to live through the whole +immortal future which he projects for himself, though he never in +reality achieves any of it. This forcing of the infinite into the +finite, we are again indebted to Mr. Higginson for emphasizing as "one +of the very greatest triumphs in all literature." "A hundred separate +tragedies," he says, "would be easier to depict than this which combines +so many in one." + +But notice the growth of the romance in Hawthorne's mind. "Dr. +Heidegger's Experiment," in which several people are restored to youth +for an hour by a life-elixir, was published before 1837. In 1840 we have +this entry in the journal: "If a man were sure of living forever here, +he would not care about his offspring." A few years afterward, in "A +Virtuoso's Collection," the elixir vitae is introduced, "in an antique +sepulchral urn," but the narrator refuses to quaff it. "'No; I desire +not an earthly immortality,' said I. 'Were man to live longer on the +earth, the spiritual would die out of him.... There is a celestial +something within us, that requires, after a certain time, the atmosphere +of heaven to preserve it from ruin.'" But the revolt against death, and +then the reactionary meditation upon it, and final reverence for it, +must, from the circumstances of his youngest years, have been very early +familiar to Hawthorne; and in the course of these meditations, the +conception of deathlessness must often have floated before him. The +tradition as to the former owner of the Wayside, who had thought he +should never die (alluded to in the letter to Curtis, in 1852 [Footnote: +See ante, p. 244.]), brought it definitely home to him. He had in 1837 +thought of this: "A person to spend all his life and splendid talents, +in trying to achieve something totally impossible,--as, to make a +conquest over nature"; but the knowledge of an actual person who had +expected to live forever gave the scattered elements coherence. The way +in which other suggestions came into the plan is exceedingly curious. +The idea of a bloody footstep appears in the Note-Books in 1850: "The +print in blood of a naked foot to be traced through the street of a +town." By a singular corroboration, he encountered five years afterward +in England an actual bloody footprint, or a mark held to be such, at +Smithell's Hall in Lancashire. ("English Note-Books," Vol. I. April 7, +and August 25, 1855.) The parting request of his hostess there was that +he "should write a ghost-story for her house," and he observes that "the +legend is a good one." Only five days after first hearing it he makes a +note thus: "In my Romance, the original emigrant to America may have +carried away with him a family secret, by which it was in his power, had +he so chosen, to have brought about the ruin of the family. This secret +he transmitted to his American progeny, by whom it is inherited +throughout all the intermediate generations. At last the hero of my +Romance comes to England, and finds that, by means of this secret, he +still has it in his power to procure the downfall of the family." This +clearly refers to something already rapidly taking shape in his mind, +and recalls at once the antique chest containing family papers, and the +estate in England waiting for an heir, of "Septimius." Could he have +already connected the two things, the bloody footstep and this +Anglo-American interest? The next piece of history comes in the shape of +a manuscript book in journal form, written in 1858, after Hawthorne had +left the consulate, and containing what must have been the earliest +sketch of the story, as he then conceived it. It begins abruptly, and +proceeds uncertainly, at the rate of a few pages each day, for about a +month. Detached passages of narration alternate with abstracts of the +proposed plot, and analysis of the characters. The chief interest seems +to lie in the project which a young American has formed, during a visit +to England, of tracing out and proving his inherited right to an old +manor-house formerly the property of his ancestors. This old hall +possesses the peculiarity of the bloody footstep, and with this some +mystery is connected, which the writer himself does not yet seem to have +discovered. He takes a characteristic pleasure in waiting for this +suggestive footstep to track the lurking interest of his story to its +lair, and lingers on the threshold of the tale, gazing upon it, +indulging himself with that tantalizing pleasure of vague anticipation +in which he hopes to envelop the good reader. The perusal of this +singular journal, in which the transactions recorded are but day-dreams, +is absorbing beyond description. But though at times he seems to be +rapidly approaching the heart of the story, yet at every point the +subtle darkness and coming terror of the theme seem to baffle the +author, and he retires, to await a more favorable moment. At its +conclusion, though he appears now to have formed a clear picture enough +of what his persons are to do, there is still wanting the underlying +thought, which he at moments dimly feels but cannot bring to light, and +without which he is unable to fuse the materials into readiness for the +mould. + +Our only information as to the course of the story between April, 1858, +and the time of writing "Septimius," must be gathered from a sketch +found among the author's papers, the date of which it is not possible to +determine with precision, though both its matter and form indicate that +it must have been written subsequently to the journal above mentioned. +Herein are curiously mingled certain features of both "Septimius" and +the "Dolliver Romance." So far as is consistent with the essential +privacy of the manuscript, I shall give a general outline of its +contents. It consists of two sections, in the second of which a lapse of +some years is implied. In the first of these chapters, for they hardly +exceed that limit, the most prominent figure is that of a singular, +morose old man, who inhabits a house overlooking a New England +graveyard. But though his situation resembles in this particular that of +Grandsir Dolliver, his characteristics resemble more those of Dr. +Portsoaken. He is constantly accompanied, too, by brandy-and-water and a +cloud-compelling pipe; and his study, like the doctor's chamber in +"Septimius," is tapestried with spider-webs; a particularly virulent +spider which dangles over his head, as he sits at his writing-desk, +being made to assume the aspect of a devilish familiar. On the other +hand, his is a far richer and less debased nature than that of +Portsoaken. Hawthorne appears subsequently to have divided him, +straining off from the rank sediments which settle into the character of +Dr. Portsoaken the clear sweetness of good Grandsir Dolliver. This "grim +doctor," as he is almost invariably styled in the manuscript, seems to +have originated in Hawthorne's knowledge of a Mr. Kirkup, painter, +spiritualist and antiquarian, of Florence, [Footnote: French and Italian +Note-Books, Vol. II.] who also probably stood as a model for Grandsir +Dolliver. Not that either of these personages is copied from Mr. Kirkup; +but the personality and surroundings of this quaint old gentleman had +some sort of affinity with the author's idea, which led him to maintain +a certain likeness between him and his own fictitious persons. As in the +case of the Florentine antiquary, a little girl dwells in the house of +the doctor, her chief playmate being, like that of Mr. Kirkup's adopted +daughter, a very beautiful Persian kitten. There is much about her like +Pansie, of the "Dolliver" fragment, but she is still only dimly brought +out. The boy is described as of superior nature, but strangely addicted +to revery. Though his traits are but slightly indicated, he suggests in +general the character of Septimius, and may very easily have grown into +him, at a later period. At first he is much neglected by the doctor, but +afterwards, by resolute and manly behavior in questioning his mysterious +guardian as to his own origin, and the connection subsisting between +them, he secures greater consideration. The doctor gradually hints to +him the fact of his descent from an old English family, and frequent +mention is made of the ancestral hall, the threshold of which is stained +by the imprint of a bloody footstep marking the scene of some dark +tragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, +assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangers +are introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, and +connection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone is +discovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old +man had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness of +a foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, and +the children, in playing about it, discover a little silver key, which +the doctor, so soon as it is shown him, pockets, with the declaration +that it is of no value. After this, the boy's education is taken in hand +by his being sent to school; but presently the doctor sickens of life, +and characteristically resolving to abandon brandy-drinking, and die, +does so accordingly. Mention has previously been made of certain papers +which he had kept in a secret place, and these the youth now secures. +The second part describes his advent into England. He soon makes his way +to the old hall, but just as his connection with it and its inmates +begins, the manuscript terminates. + +It will be noticed that in this fragment the scene is at first laid in +New England, whereas the journalized sketch opened the drama in England. +From this I infer that the former was written after the return to this +country. "The Marble Faun" appropriated the author's attention, after +the sketch of 1858; and in this, which was probably written just before +the commencement of the war, he had not yet clearly struck the key-note +of the story. When he recurred to it, in the autumn of 1861, on +beginning to "blot successive sheets as of yore," it was at last with +the definite design of uniting the legend of the deathless man with the +legend of Smithell's Hall. It is as if, having left England, he could no +longer write an English romance, but must give the book mainly an +American coloring again. There is a pathetic interest, too, in his thus +wavering between the two countries, which now so nearly equally divided +his affections, and striving to unite the Wayside with the far-off +English manor. Under the new design, everything began to fall into +place. The deathless man was made the hero; the English inheritance +became an inferior motive-power, on which, however, the romantic action +depends; the family papers and the silver key came well to hand for the +elucidation of the plot; the bloody footstep gained a new and deep +significance; and a "purple everlasting flower," presented in 1854 to +Mrs. Hawthorne by the gardener of Eaton Hall, blossomed out, with +supernatural splendor, as a central point in the design. The scene being +in Concord, and the time of writing that of war, the Revolutionary +association was natural. But the public phase of that epoch could not +assume an important place: it was sunk into the background, forming +merely a lurid field on which the figures of this most solemn and +terrific of all Hawthorne's works stand out in portentous relief. One +singular result of the historic location, however, is the use that was +now made of that tradition which Lowell had told him at the Old Manse, +concerning a boy who was chopping wood on the April morning of the +famous fight, and found a wounded British soldier on the field, whom he +killed with his axe. "Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral exercise, +I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent career, +and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain.... This one +circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us +of the fight." Thus had he written, fourteen years before; and now that +sombre study furnished him with the psychology of the death-scene in the +beginning of "Septimius." + +But the romance, even in this form, was again abandoned, as we learn +from the prefatory note to Pierce in "Our Old Home," written in July, +1863. He there speaks of it as an "abortive project, utterly thrown +aside," which "will never now be accomplished." In November of that +year, "The Dolliver Romance" was announced for serial publication; and +in the first page of the isolated opening scene, published in July, +1864, occurs the mention of a certain potent cordial, from which the +good doctor had received great invigoration, and which we may well +suppose was destined to tincture the whole story. Another point from +which a connection with "Septimius Felton" may perhaps be traced is the +passing mention of Grandsir Dolliver's grandson Cornelius, by whom this +cordial had been compounded, he having displayed a great efficiency with +powerful drugs. Recalling that the author describes many nostrums as +having been attributed to Septimius, which he had perhaps chanced upon +in his unsuccessful attempts to distil the elixir of life, we may fairly +conjecture this posthumous character of Cornelius, this mere memory, to +be the remains of Septimius, who, it would seem, was to have been buried +by the author under the splendid monument of a still more highly wrought +and more aspiring form of the romance. The only remaining portions of +this latest form have been printed, and are lull of a silvery and +resonant promise. Unquestionably it was to have been as much a "Romance +of Immortality" as "Septimius"; and the exquisite contrast of the child +Pansie--who promised to be the author's most captivating feminine +creation--with the aged man, would no doubt have given us a theme of +celestial loveliness, as compared with the forbidding and remorseless +mournfulness of the preliminary work. In the manuscript sketch for +"Septimius" there is a note referring to a description in the "English +Note-Books" of two pine-trees at Lowood, on Windermere, "quite dead and +dry, although they have the aspect of dark, rich life. But this is +caused by the verdure of two great ivy-vines which have twisted round +them like gigantic snakes, ... throttling the life out of them, ... and +one feels that they have _stolen the life_ that belonged to the +pines." This does not seem to have been used; but the necessity of some +life being stolen in order to add to any other life more than its share, +is an idea that very clearly appears in the romance. In "Dolliver" the +same strain of feeling would probably have reappeared; but it would +there perhaps have been beautified, softened, expiated by the mutual +love of Pansie and the grandsire; each wishing to live forever, for the +other. Even in "Septimius" we can discern Hawthorne standing upon the +wayside hill-top, and, through the turbid medium of the unhappy hero, +tenderly diffusing the essence of his own concluding thoughts on art and +existence. Like Mozart, writing what he felt to be a requiem for his own +death, like Mozart, too, throwing down the pen in midmost of the melody, +leaving the strain unfinished, he labors on, prescient of the +overhanging doom. Genial and tender at times, amidst their sadness, his +reveries are nevertheless darkened by the shadow of coming death; and it +is not until the opening of "The Dolliver Romance" that the darkness +breaks away. Then, indeed, we feel once more the dewy freshness of the +long-past prime, with a radiance unearthly fair, besides, of some new, +undreamed-of morning. He who has gone down into the dark valley appears +for a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on his +countenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this new +message that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddle +of sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out a +little way from earth. + +Only an eddying silence! And yet the air seems even now alive with his +last words. + + + + +XI. + + +PERSONALITY. + +What has thus far been developed in this essay, concerning Hawthorne's +personality, though incidental, has, I hope, served the end in +view,--that of suggesting a large, healthy nature, capable of the most +profound thought and the most graceful and humorous mental play. The +details of his early life already given show how soon the inborn honor +of his nature began to shine. The small irregularities in his college +course have seemed to me to bring him nearer and to endear him, without +in any way impairing the dignity and beauty of character which prevailed +in him from the beginning. It is good to know that he shared the average +human history in these harmless peccadilloes; for they never hurt his +integrity, and they are reminders of that old but welcome truth, that +the greatest men do not need a constant diet of great circumstances. He +had many difficulties to deal with, as unpicturesque and harassing as +any we have to encounter in our daily courses,--a thing which people are +curiously prone to forget in the case of eminent authors. The way in +which he dealt with these throws back light on himself. We discover how +well the high qualities of genius were matched by those of character. + +Fragmentary anecdotes have a value, but so relative that to attempt to +construct the subject's character out of them is hazardous. Conceptions +of a man derived only from such matter remind one of Charles Lamb's +ghosts, formed of the particles which, every seven years, are replaced +throughout the body by new ones. Likewise, the grossest errors have been +committed through the assumption that particular passages in Hawthorne's +writings apply directly and unqualifiedly to himself. There is so much +imagination interfused with them, that only a reverent and careful +imagination can apply them aright. Nor are private letters to be +interpreted in any other way than as the talk of the hour, very +inadequately representative, and often--unless read in many +lights--positively untrue, to the writer. It gives an entirely false +notion, for example, to accept as a trait of character this modest +covering up of a noble sentiment, which occurs in a letter refusing to +withdraw the dedication of "Our Old Home" to Pierce, in the time of the +latter's unpopularity:-- + +"Nevertheless, I have no fancy for making myself a martyr when it is +honorably and conscientiously possible to avoid it; and I always measure +out my heroism very accurately according to the exigencies of the +occasion, and should be the last man in the world to throw away a bit of +it needlessly." + +Such a passage ought never to have been printed without some modifying +word; for it has been execrably misused. "I have often felt," Hawthorne +says, "that words may be a thick and darksome veil of mystery between +the soul and the truth which it seeks." What injustice, then, that he +should be judged by a literal construction of words quickly chosen for +the transient embodiment of a mood! + +The first and most common opinion about the man Hawthorne is, that he +must have been extremely gloomy, because his mind nourished so many +grave thoughts and solemn fancies. But this merely proves that, as he +himself says, when people think he is pouring himself out in a tale or +an essay, he is merely telling what is common to human nature, not what +is peculiar to himself. "I sympathize with them, not they with me." He +sympathizes in the special direction of our darker side. A creative mind +of the higher order holds the thread which guides it surely through +life's labyrinths; but all the more on this account its attention is +called to the erratic movement of other travellers around it. The genius +who has the clew begins, therefore, to study these errors and to +describe them for our behoof. It is a great mistake to suppose that the +abnormal or preposterous phases which he describes are the fruit of +_self_-study,--personal traits disguised in fiction; yet this is +what has often been affirmed of Hawthorne. We don't think of attributing +to Dickens the multiform oddities which he pictures with such power, it +being manifestly absurd to do so. As Dickens raises the laugh against +them, we at once perceive that they are outside of himself. Hawthorne is +so serious, that we are absorbed in the sober earnest of the thing, and +forget to apply the rule in his case. Dickens's distinct aim is to +excite us with something uncommon; Hawthorne's, to show us that the +elements of all tragedies lie within our individual natures; therefore +we begin to attribute in undue measure to _his_ individual nature +all the abnormal conditions that he has shown to be potential in any of +us. But in truth he was a perfectly healthy person. + +"You are, intellectually speaking, quite a puzzle to me," his friend +George Hillard wrote to him, once. "How comes it that, with so +thoroughly healthy an organization as you have, you have such a taste +for the morbid anatomy of the human heart, and such a knowledge of it, +too? I should fancy, from your books, 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." + +This very healthiness was his qualification for his office. By virtue of +his mental integrity and absolute moral purity, he was able to handle +unhurt all disintegrated and sinful forms of character; and when souls +in trouble, persons with moral doubts to solve and criminals wrote to +him for counsel, they recognized the healing touch of one whose pitying +immaculateness could make them well. + +She who knew best his habitual tone through a sympathy such as has +rarely been given to any man, who lived with him a life so exquisitely +fair and high, that to speak of it publicly is almost irreverent, has +written:-- + +"He had the inevitable pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed +what a friend has called his 'awful power of insight'; but his mood was +always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the +airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too +far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping +imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived +morbidness wherever it existed instantly, as if by the illumination of +his own steady cheer." + +His closest friends, too, speak with delight of his genial warmth and +ease in converse with them. He could seldom talk freely with more than +two or three, however, on account of his constitutional shyness, and +perhaps of a peculiarly concentrative cast of mind; though he possessed +a ready adaptability. "I talk with everybody: to Mrs. T---- good sense; +to Mary, good sense, with a mixture of fun; to Mrs. G----, sentiment, +romance, and nonsense." [Footnote: American Note-Books, 1837.] A +gentleman who was with him at Brook farm, and knew him well, tells me +that his presence was very attractive, and that he inspired great esteem +among all at the farm by his personal qualities. On a walking trip to +Wachusett, which they once made together, Hawthorne showed a great +interest in sitting in the bar-rooms of country taverns, to listen to +the talk of the attendant farmers and villagers. The manner in which he +was approached had a great deal to do with his response. If treated +simply and wisely, he would answer cordially; but he was entirely +dismayed, as a rule, by those who made demonstrations of admiration or +awe. "Why do they treat me so?" he asked a friend, in one case of this +sort. "Why, they're afraid of you." "But I tremble at _them_," he +said. "They think," she explained, "that you're imagining all sorts of +terrible things." "Heavens!" he answered; "if they only knew what I +_do_ think about." At one time, when he was visiting this same +friend, he was obliged to return some calls, and his companion in the +midst of conversation left him to continue it. He had previously asked +his hostess, in assumed terror, what he should talk about, and she +advised "climate." Accordingly, he turned to the naval officer whom he +was calling upon, and asked him if he had ever been to the Sandwich +Islands. "The man started," he said, on returning, "as if he had been +struck. He had evidently been there and committed some terrible crime, +which my allusion recalled. I had made a frightful mess of it. B---- led +me away to the door." This woful account was, of course, an imaginary +and symbolical representation of the terrors which enforced conversation +caused him; the good officer's surprise at the abrupt introduction of a +new subject had supplied him with the ludicrous suggestion. Mr. Curtis +has given an account of his demeanor on another occasion:-- + +"I had driven up with some friends to an aesthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. +It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable +hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled; and I, who +listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some +time scarcely aware of a man who sat upon the edge of the circle, a +little withdrawn, his head slightly thrown forward upon his breast, and +his black eyes ['black' is an error] clearly burning under his black +brow. As I drifted down the stream of talk, this person, who sat silent +as a shadow, looked to me as Webster might have looked had he been a +poet,--a kind of poetic Webster. He rose and walked to the window, and +stood there quietly for a long time, watching the dead-white landscape. +No appeal was made to him, nobody looked after him; the conversation +flowed steadily on, as if every one understood that his silence was to +be respected. It was the same thing at table. In vain the silent man +imbibed aesthetic tea. Whatever fancies it inspired did not flower at +his lips. But there was a light in his eye which assured me nothing was +lost. So supreme was his silence, that it presently engrossed me, to the +exclusion of everything else. There was very brilliant discourse, but +this silence was much more poetic and fascinating. Fine things were said +by the philosophers, but much finer things were implied by the dumbness +of this gentleman with heavy brows and black hair. When he presently +rose and went, Emerson, with the 'slow, wise smile' that breaks over his +face like day over the sky, said, 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the +night.'" + +He was not a lover of argumentation. "His principle seemed to be, if a +man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, +because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not." And the +same writer says:---- + +"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." + +I am told that in his own home, though he was often silent, it was never +with sadness except in seasons of great illness in the house, the +prevailing effect of his manner being usually that of a cheerful and +almost humorous calm. Mr. Curtis gives perhaps one of the best +descriptions of his aspect, when he speaks of his "glimmering smile"; +and of his atmosphere, when he says that at Emerson's house it seemed +always morning, but at Hawthorne's you passed into + + "A land in which it seemed always afternoon." + +Hawthorne's personal appearance is said by those who knew him to have +been always very impressive. He was tall and strongly built, with +beautiful and lustrous gray-blue eyes, and luxuriant dark brown hair of +great softness, which grew far back from his forehead, as in the early +engraved portrait of him. His skin had a peculiar fineness and delicacy, +giving unusual softness to his complexion. After his Italian sojourn 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 from 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 and almost irresolute voice." +The occasions on which he gave full vent to his indignation at anything +were very rare; but when these came, he manifested a strength of sway +only to be described as regal. Without the least violence, he brought a +searching sternness to bear that was utterly overwhelming, carrying as +it did the weight of perfect self-control. 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 quite +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 habitual and informal 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 an explanation. His considerateness was always delicate and +alert, and has left in his family a reverence for qualities that have +certainly never been surpassed and not often equalled in sweetness. + +He was simple in his habits, and fond of being out of doors, but +not--after his college days--as a sportsman. While living beside the +Concord, he rowed frequently, with a dreamy devotion to the pastime, and +was fond of fishing; swimming, too, he enjoyed. But his chief exercise +was walking; he had a vast capacity for it, and was, I think, never even +seen upon horseback. At Brook Farm he "belabored the rugged furrows" +with a will; and at the Old Manse he presided over his garden in a +paradisiacal sort of way. Books in every form he was always eager for, +sometimes, as has been reported, satisfying himself with an old almanac +or newspaper, over which he would brood as deeply as over richly stored +volumes of classic literature. At other times he was fastidious in his +choice, and threw aside many books before he found the right one for the +hour. [Footnote: He would attach himself to a book or a poem apparently +by some law perceptible only to himself, perhaps often giving an +interest by his own genius. A poem On Solitude, in Dryden's Miscellany, +was at one time a special favorite with him. + +It begins:-- + + "O Solitude, my sweetest choice, + Places devoted to the Night, + Remote from Tumult and from Noise, + How you my restless thoughts delight!" + +And the last stanza has these lines:-- + + "O, how I solitude adore, + That element of noblest wit, + Where I have learned Apollo's lore, + Without the pains to study it."] + +An impression has been set afloat that he cared nothing for books in +themselves, but this is incorrect. He never had the means to accumulate +a library of any size, but he had a passion for books. + +"There yet lingers with me a superstitious reverence for literature of +all kinds," he writes in "The Old Manse." "A bound volume has a charm in +my eyes similar to what scraps of manuscript possess for the good +Mussulman; ... every new book or antique one may contain the 'open +sesame,'--the spell to disclose treasures hidden in some unsuspected +cave of Truth." + +When he lived at the Wayside, and would occasionally bring home a small +package of books from Boston, these furnished him fresh pleasure for +many days. He would carry some favorite of them with him everywhere, +from room to room or to his hill-top. He was, as we have seen, a cordial +admirer of other writers, seldom vexing himself with a critical review +of their merits and defects, but applying to them instead the test of +his own catholic capacity for enjoyment. The deliberate tone in which he +judges his own works, in his letters, shows how little his mind was +impressed by the greatness of their fame and of the genius found in +them. There could not have been a more modest author, though he did not +weakly underrate his work. "Recognition," he once said to Mr. Howells, +"makes a man very modest." + +An attempt has also been made to show that he had little interest in +animals, partly based, ludicrous as it may seem, on his bringing them +into only one of his books. In his American journals, however, there is +abundant evidence of his acute sympathy in this direction; at the Old +Manse he fried fish for his dog Leo, when he says he should not have +done it for himself; and in the Trosachs he finds a moment for pitying +some little lambs startled by the approach of his party. [Footnote: +English Note-Books (May, 1856).] I have already mentioned his fondness +for cats. It has further been said that he did not enjoy wild nature, +because in the "English Note-Books" there is no outgushing of ecstatic +description. But in fact he had the keenest enjoyment of it. He could +not enter into the spectacle when hurrying through strange regions. +Among the English lakes he writes:-- + +"To say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me +that I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all in +the space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was a +surfeit. + +"I doubt if anybody ever does really see a mountain, who goes for the +set and sole purpose of seeing it. Nature will not let herself be seen +in such cases. You must patiently bide her time; and by and by, at some +unforeseen moment, she will quietly and suddenly unveil herself and for +a brief space allow you to look right into the heart of her mystery. But +if you call out to her peremptorily, 'Nature! unveil yourself this very +moment!' she only draws her veil the closer; and you may look with all +your eyes, and imagine that you see all that she can show, and yet see +nothing." + +But this was because his sensibility was so great that he drew from +little things a larger pleasure than many feel when excited by grand +ones; and knowing this deeper phase, he could not be content with the +hasty admiration on which tourists flatter themselves. The beauty of a +scene which he could absorb in peace was never lost upon him. 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. Nothing could be more +accurate or sensitive than the brief descriptions of nature in his +works. But there is nothing sentimental about them; partly owing to the +Anglo-Saxon instinct which caused him to seek precise and detailed +statement first of all, and partly because of a certain classic, +awe-inspired reserve, like that of Horace and Virgil. + +There was a commendable indolence in his character. It was not a +constitutional weakness, overcoming will, but the instinctive precaution +of a man whose errand it was to rise to great emergencies of exertion. +He always waited for an adequate mood, before writing. But these +intervals, of course, were richly productive of revery which afterward +entered into the creative moments. He would sometimes become deeply +abstracted in imagination; and while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter" +it is related by a trustworthy person that, sitting in the room where +his wife was doing some sewing, he unconsciously took up a part of the +work and cut it into minute fragments with the scissors, without being +aware that he had done so. At some previous time, he had in the same way +gradually chipped off with a knife portions of a table, until the entire +folding-leaf was worn away by the process. The opinion was sometimes +advanced by him that without a certain mixture of uncongenial labor he +might not have done so much with the pen; but in this he perhaps +underestimated the leisure in his blood, which was one of the elements +of his power. Men of smaller calibre are hollowed out by the fire of +ideas, and decay too quickly; but this trait preserved him from such a +fate. Combined with his far-reaching foresight, it may have had +something to do with his comparative withdrawal from practical affairs +other than those which necessity connected him with. Of Holgrave he +writes:-- + +"His error lay in supposing that this age more than any past or future +one is destined to see the garments of antiquity exchanged for a new +suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; ... and +more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in +view whether he himself should contend for it or against it." + +The implied opinion of the author, here, is not that of a fatalist, but +of an optimist (if we must connect him with any "ism") who has a very +profound faith in Providence; not in any "special providence," but in +that operation of divine laws through unexpected agencies and +conflicting events, which is very gradually approximating human affairs +to a state of truthfulness. Hawthorne was one of the great believers of +his generation; but his faith expressed itself in the negative way of +showing how fragile are the ordinary objects of reverence in the world, +how subject the best of us are to the undermining influence of very +great sin; and, on the other hand, how many traits of good there are, by +consequence, even in the worst of us. This, however, is a mere skeleton +statement: the noblest element in his mood is that he believes with his +heart. A good interpreter has said that he _feels_ with his _brain_, and +_thinks_ with his _heart_, to show the completeness with which he +mingled the two elements in his meditations on existence. A warm, pure, +living sympathy pervaded all his analysis of mankind, without which that +analysis would have taken no hold upon us. It is a crude view which +reckons him to have been wanting in moral enthusiasm: he had not that +kind which can crush out sympathy with suffering, for the sake of +carrying out an idea. Perhaps in some cases this was a fault; but one +cannot dwell on the mistaken side of such a phase, when it possesses +another side so full of beneficent aid to humanity. And it must be +remembered that with all this susceptibility, he was not a suffering +poet, like Shelley, but distinctly an endurer. His moral enthusiasm was +deeper than that of any scheme or system. + +His distaste for society has been declared to proceed from the fact +that, when he once became interested in people, he could no longer +chemically resolve them into material for romance. But this assumption +is also erroneous; for Hawthorne, if he felt it needful, could bring to +bear upon his best friends the same qualitative measuring skill that he +exercised on any one. I do not doubt that he knew where to place his +friends and acquaintance in the scale of relative excellence. All of us +who have not an equal analytic power with his own can at least reverence +his discretion so far as to believe that he had stand-points not open to +every one, from which he took views often more essentially just than if +he had assumed a more sweeping estimate. In other cases, where he +bestowed more friendship and confidence than the object of them +especially deserved, he no doubt sought the simple pleasure of accepting +what circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person; +although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he +often spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense," deeming it a +desirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioning +trust on his part; for he might well be called + + "As the greatest only are, + In his simplicity sublime." + +The connection between Pierce and himself involved too many +considerations to make it possible to pass them with indifference; and +he perhaps condemned certain public acts of the President, while feeling +it to be utter disloyalty to an old friend to discuss these mistakes +with any one. As to other slighter connections, it is very likely he did +not take the trouble that might have saved him from being imposed upon. + +But it is impossible to define Hawthorne's personality precisely. A +poet's whole effort is to indirectly express this, by expressing the +effect of things upon him; and we may read much of Hawthorne in his +books, if we have the skill. But it is very clear that he put only a +part of himself into them; that part which best served the inexorable +law of his genius for treating life in a given light. For the rest, his +two chapters on "The Custom-House" and "The Old Manse" show us something +of his mode of taking daily affairs. But his real and inmost character +was a mystery even to himself, and this, because he felt so profoundly +the impossibility of sounding to the bottom any human heart. "A cloudy +veil stretches over the abyss of my nature," he writes, at one time. "I +have, however, no love of secrecy or darkness." At another time: "Lights +and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know +neither whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I look too closely +into them." A mind so conscious as his of the slight reality of +appearances would be dissatisfied with the few tangible qualities which +are all of himself that a man can discern: at the same time he would +hesitate to probe the deeper self assiduously, for fear of turning his +searching gaze too intently within, and thus becoming morbid. In other +persons, however, he could perceive a contour, and pursue his study of +investigation from without inward,--a more healthy method. His +_instinctive_ knowledge of himself, being brought into play, would +of course aid him. Incidentally, then, something of himself comes to +light in his investigation of others. And it is perhaps this inability +to define their own natures, except by a roundabout method, which is the +creative impulse of all great novelists and dramatists. I doubt whether +many of the famous delineators of character could give us a very +distinct account of their own individualities; and if they did, it would +probably make them out the most uninteresting of beings. It would +certainly be divested of the special charm of their other writing. +Imagine Dickens clearly accounting for himself and his peculiar traits: +would he be able to excite even a smile? How much of his own delicious +personality could Thackeray have described without losing the zest of +his other portraitures? Hawthorne has given a kind of picture of himself +in Coverdale, and was sometimes called after that character by his +friends; but I suspect he has adroitly constructed Coverdale out of the +_appearance_ which he knew himself to make in the eyes of +associates. I do not mean that Hawthorne had not a very decisive +personality; for indeed he had. But the essence of the person cannot be +compressed into a few brief paragraphs, and must be slowly drawn in as a +pervasive elixir from his works, his letters, his note-books. In the +latter he has given as much definition of his interior self as we are +likely to get, for no one else can continue the broken jottings that he +has left, and extend them into outlines. We shall not greatly err if we +treat the hidden depths of his spirit with as much reverence as he +himself used in scrutinizing them. Curiously enough, many of those who +have studied this most careful and delicate of definers have embraced +the madness of attempting to bind him down in unhesitating, absolute +statements. He who mastered words so completely that he learned to +despise their obscurity, has been made the victim of easy epithets and a +few conventional phrases. But none can ever be said to know Hawthorne +who do not leave large allowances for the unknowable. + + + + +XII. + + +POE, IRVING, HAWTHORNE. + +The names of Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have been so often connected +without due discrimination, that it is imperative to consider here the +actual relation between the three men. Inquiry might naturally be roused +by the circumstance that, although Hawthorne has freely been likened to +Irving in some quarters, and in others to Poe, the latter two are never +supposed to hold anything in common. Indeed, they might aptly be cited +in illustration of the widely opposed tendencies already developed in +our brief national literature. Two things equal to the same thing are +equal to each other; and if Poe and Irving were each equal to Hawthorne, +there would be some similarity between them. But it is evident that they +are not like quantities; and we must conclude that they have been +unconsciously used by critics, in trying to find a unit of measure to +gauge the greatest of the triad with. + +Undoubtedly there are resemblances in Hawthorne to both Poe and Irving. +Hawthorne and Irving represent a dignity and roundedness of diction +which is one of the old-fashioned merits in English writing; and because +they especially, among eminent authors of the century, have stood for +this quality, they have been supposed to stand close together. But +Irving's speech is not so much an organic part of his genius as a +preconceived method of expression which has a considerable share in +modifying his thought. It is rather a manner than a style. On the other +hand, it would be hard to find a style growing so naturally and strongly +out of elemental attributes as Hawthorne's, so deftly waiting upon the +slightest movement of idea, at once disclosing and lightly veiling the +informing thought,--like the most delicate sculptured marble drapery. +The radical differences of the two men were also obscured in the +beginning by the fact that Hawthorne did not for some time exhibit that +massive power of hewing out individual character which afterward had +full swing in his romances, and by a certain kinship of fancy in his +lighter efforts, with Irving's. "The Art of Book-Making" and "The +Mutability of Literature" are not far removed from some of Hawthorne's +conceits. And "The Vision of the Fountain" and "The Village Uncle" might +have issued in their soft meditativeness from Geoffrey Crayon's own +repertory, except that they are moulded with a so much more subtile art +than his, and with an instinct of proportion so much more sure. But even +in the earlier tales, taken all together, Hawthorne ranks higher than +Irving in the heraldry of genius: he has more quarterings in his shield. +Not only does he excel the other in brief essay, depending only on +endogenous forces, whereas Irving is always adorning his paragraphs with +that herb-o'-grace, quotation, but he also greatly surpasses him in the +construction of his stories; and finally, his psychological analysis and +symbolic imagination place him beyond rivalry. It is a brilliant +instance of the more ideal mind asserting its commanding power, by +admirable achievements in the inferior styles,--so that even in those he +was at once ranked with the most famous practiser of them,--and then +quietly reaching out and grasping a higher order of truths, which no one +had even thought of competing for. I suppose it is not assumed for a +moment that "Wolfert's Roost," the "Tales of a Traveller," the story of +"Rip Van Winkle," the "Legend of Sleepy Hollow," and the picturesque but +evanescent tales of "The Alhambra" can be brought into discussion on the +same terms with Hawthorne's romances, as works of art; and they +assuredly cannot be as studies of character, for of this they have next +to nothing. The only phases of character which Irving has any success in +dealing with are those of credulity and prejudice. The legendary +tendency of the two men has perhaps confused some readers. Both were +lovers of association, and turned naturally to the past for materials: +the New-Yorker found delightful sources of tradition or of ludicrous +invention in the past of that city, where his family held a +long-established and estimable footing; and the New-Englander, as we +have seen, drew also through the channel of descent from the dark tarn +of Puritan experience. But Irving turned his back upon everything else +when he entered the tapestried chamber of the past, while Hawthorne +sought that vantage-ground only to secure a more impressive view of +humanity. There is one gift of Irving's which won him an easier as well +as a wider triumph than that which awaited Hawthorne; and this is his +ability to take the simple story-teller's tone, devoid of double +meanings. Poe, also, had the passion for narrative in and for itself, +but in him it was disturbed by a diseased mind, and resulted in a horrid +fascination instead of cheerful attraction. Hawthorne, to be sure, +possessed the gift of the _raconteur_; but in general he was at +once seer and teller, and the higher exertions of his imagination were +always in the peculiarly symbolic atmosphere we are wont to associate +with him. Irving's contented disposition in this regard is certainly +very charming; there are often moods in which it is a great relief to +turn to it; and he has in so far the advantage over the other two. He +pitches for us the tone of average cultured minds in his time and +locality; and in reading him we have a comfortable sense of reality, +than which nothing in fiction is more reassuring. This is almost +entirely absent from the spell with which Hawthorne holds us; and here, +indeed, we touch the latter's most decided limitation as a writer of +fiction; for although his magnificently portrayed characters do not want +reality, an atmosphere of ghostliness surrounds them, warning us that we +must not look to find life there as we see it elsewhere. There is a +Northern legend of a man who lay down to sleep, and a thin smoke was +seen to issue from his nostrils, traverse the ground, cross a rivulet, +and journey on, finally returning to the place whence it came. When he +awoke, he described an imaginary excursion of his own, following exactly +the course which the smoke had taken. This indirect contact might +furnish a partially true type of Hawthorne's mysterious intercourse with +the world through his books. + +It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this difference to the +greater strength of Irving's humor,--a trait, always much lauded in him. +It is without doubt a good quality. This mild, sweet radiance of an +uncontaminated and well-bred spirit is not a common thing in literature. +But I cannot fall in with the judgment that calls it "freer and far more +joyous" than Addison's. Both in style and in humor Irving has caught +something of the grace of "The Spectator"; but as in the style he +frequently falls short, writing feeble or jarring sentences, so in humor +I cannot see how he is to be brought at all on a level with Addison, who +is primarily a grave, stately, scholarly mind, but all the deeper on +that account in the lustre of his humorous displays. Addison, too, had +somewhat of the poet in him, and was capable of tragedy as well as of +neat satire and compact characterization. But if we looked for a pithy +embodiment of the difference between Irving and Hawthorne, we might call +the former a "polite writer," and the latter a profound poet: as, +indeed, I have called him in this essay, though with no intent to +confuse the term with that given to poets who speak in verse. Pathos is +the great touchstone of humor, and Irving's pathos is always a +lamentable failure. Is it not very significant, that he should have made +so little of the story of Rip Van Winkle? In his sketch, which has won +so wide a fame and given a lasting association to the Kaatskills, there +is not a suspicion of the immense pathos which the skill of an +industrious playwright and the genius of that rare actor, Mr. Jefferson, +have since developed from the tale. The Dame Van Winkle that we now know +is the creation of Mr. Boucicault; to him it is we owe that vigorous +character,--a scold, a tyrant to her husband, but nevertheless full of +relentful womanliness, and by the justice of her cause exciting our +sympathy almost as much as Rip himself does. In the story, she wears an +aspect of singular causelessness, and Rip's devotion to the drinking-can +is barely hinted: the marvellous tenderness, too, and joyful sorrow of +his return after the twenty years' sleep, are apparently not even +suspected by the writer. It is the simple wonder and picturesqueness of +the situation that charm him; and while in the drama we are moved to the +bottom of our hearts by the humorous tragicalness it casts over the +spectacle of conflicting passions, the only outcome of the written tale +is a passing reflection on the woe of being henpecked. "And it is a +common wish of all henpecked husbands in the neighborhood, when life +hangs heavy on their hands, that they might have a quieting draught out +of Rip Van Winkle's flagon." To be sure, there is a hidden moral here, +of the folly of driving men to drunkenness; but it is so much obscured +as to suggest that this was of small moment in the writer's mind. Such a +moral, in any case, must necessarily have been very delicately advanced, +in order not to becloud the artistic atmosphere; but a person of +searching dramatic genius would have found means to emphasize it without +injury to art, just as it has been done on the stage. Imagine what +divine vibrations of emotion Hawthorne would have smitten out of this +theme, had he been the originator of it. Certainly we should, as the +case stands, have missed the whole immortal figment, had not Irving +given it to us in germ; the fact that our playwright and our master +comedian have made it so much greater and more beautiful does not annul +that primary service; but, looking at the matter historically, we must +admit that Irving's share in the credit is that of the first projector +of a scientific improvement, and the latter sort of person always has to +forego a great part of his fame in favor of the one who consummates the +discovery. I am willing to believe that there was a peculiar advantage +in Irving's treatment; namely, that he secured for his story a quicker +and more general acceptance than might have been granted to something +more profound; but this does not alter the critical judgment that we +have to pass upon it. If Irving had grasped the tragic sphere at all, he +would have shone more splendidly in the comic. But the literary part of +him, at least, never passed into the shade: it somehow contrived to be +always on that side of the earth which was towards the sun. Observe, +now, the vital office of humor in Hawthorne's thought. It gleams out +upon us from behind many of the gravest of his conceptions, like the +silver side of a dark leaf turning in the wind. Wherever the concretion +of guilt is most adamantine, there he lets his fine slender jet of humor +play like a lambent fire, until the dark mass crumbles, and the choragos +of the tragedy begins his mournful yet hopeful chant among the ruins. +This may be verified in the "Seven Gables," "Blithedale," and "The +Marble Faun"; not in "The Scarlet Letter," for that does not present +Hawthorne's genius in its widest action. In one place he speaks of "the +tragic power of laughter,"--a discrimination which involves the whole +deep originality of his mind. It is not irrelevant here to remark that +at the most affecting portions of the play "Rip Van Winkle," the +majority of the audience always laugh; this, though irritating to a +thoughtful listener, is really an involuntary tribute to the marvellous +wisdom and perfection with which Jefferson mingles pathos and humor. +Again Hawthorne: "Human destinies look _ominous_ without some +perceptible intermixture of the sable or the gray." And, elsewhere: +"There is _something more awful in happiness than in sorrow_, the +latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance +and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble +at it." These thoughts could never have occurred to Irving with the same +intensity. Now, from all this we gather inference as to the deep sources +of Hawthorne's humor. I sometimes think that Thalia was the daughter, +and not the sister, of Melpomene. As to actual exhibition of humor, +Hawthorne's is made a diffusive medium to temper the rays of tragedy +with, and never appears in such unmixed form as that of Irving. So that +even though we must confess a smaller mental calibre in the latter, we +may gladly grant him a superiority in his special mood of fun. +An excellent English critic, Leslie Stephen, lately wrote: "Poe is a +kind of Hawthorne and _delirium tremens_." This announcement, +however, betrays a singular misapprehension. When Hawthorne's tales +first appeared, they were almost invariably taken to bear an intimate +and direct relation to the author's own moods; while Poe's were supposed +to be daring flights of pure imagination, or ingenious attempts to prove +theories held by the writer, but were not charged directly to his own +experience. Time has shown that the converse was the case. The psychical +conditions described by Hawthorne had only the remotest connection with +any mood of his own; they were mainly translations, into the language of +genius, of certain impressions and observations drawn from the world +around him. After his death, the Note-Books caused a general rustle of +surprise, revealing as they did the simple, wholesome nature of this +strange imaginer; yet though he there speaks--surely without prejudice, +because without the least knowledge that the world would ever hear +him--of "the objectivity" of his fictions, critics have not yet wholly +learned how far apart from himself these creations were. The observation +of some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings, +would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a concise +embodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate it +with; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like that +of Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil," or a singular +physiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based, +would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstrip +it in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, the +whole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from +_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; and +this expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and +movement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from the +outside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merely +inventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild, +arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but his +impressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid. +What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that this +quality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owing +to it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's +unfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to a +scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of his +unjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one else +could be. The fine enamel of his genius is all corroded by the deadly +acid of his passions. The imperfections of his temperament have pierced +his poetry and prose, shattered their structure, and blurred their +beauty. Only four or five of his poems--"The Raven," "Ligeia," the +earlier of the two addressed "To Helen," and the sonnet to his +wife--escape being flawed by some fit of haste, some ungovernable error +of taste, some hopeless, unaccountable break in their beauty. In +criticism, Poe initiated a fearless and agile movement; he had an acute +instinct in questions of literary form, amounting to a passion, as all +his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding +clever reasons, good or bad, for all his opinions. These things are +essential to a critic's equipment, and it was good service in Poe to +exemplify them. Yet here, too, the undermining processes of his +thoroughly unsound mind subverted the better qualities, vitiated his +judgments with incredible jealousies and conflicting impulses, and +withered the most that he wrote in this direction into something very +like rubbish. We have seen, for example, how his attempt to +dispassionately examine Hawthorne resulted. Sooner or later, too, he ran +his own pen full against his rigid criteria for others. It is suggestive +to find that the holder of such exacting doctrine about beauty, the man +also of whom pre-eminently it may be said, as Baudelaire wrote of him, +"Chance and the incomprehensible were his two great enemies," should so +completely fail to reach even the unmoral perfection which he assigned +as the highest attainable. Professing himself the special apostle of the +beautiful in art, he nevertheless forces upon us continually the most +loathsome hideousness and the most debasing and unbeautiful horror. This +passionate, unhelmed, errant search for beauty was in fact not so much a +normal and intelligent desire, as an attempt to escape from interior +discord; and it was the discord which found expression, accordingly, +instead of the sense of beauty,--except (as has been said) in fragments. +Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it, from the start, +and though his delicate touch often stole a new grace from classic +antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of all +lovely and noble things, that excited and engaged him. "I have imbibed +the shadows of fallen columns," he says in one of his tales, "at Balbec, +and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin." +Always beauty and grace are with him most poetic in their overthrow, and +it is the shadow of ruined grandeur that he receives, instead of the +still living light so fair upon them, or the green growth clinging +around them. Hawthorne, too, wandered much amid human ruin, but it was +not with delight in the mere fact of decay; rather with grieving over +it, and the hope to learn how much of life was still left in the wreck, +and how future structures might be made stronger by studying the sources +of failure. One of the least thoughtful remarks which I have heard +touching Hawthorne was this, that his books could not live because they +dealt with the "sick side" of human nature. As if great poets ever +refrained from dealing with it! The tenure of fame depends on whether +the writer has himself become infected with sickness. With Hawthorne +this is most certainly not the case, for the morbid phases which he +studied were entirely outside of himself. Poe, on the other hand, +pictured his own half-maniacal moods and diseased fancies. There is +absolutely no study of character in his stories, no dramatic +separateness of being. He looks only for fixed and inert human +quantities, with which he may juggle at will. He did not possess +insight; and the analytic quality of which he was so proud was merely a +sort of mathematical ingenuity of calculation, in which, however, he was +extraordinarily keen. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities, Poe +must be rated almost highest among American poets, and high among +prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and +frightful energy crowded into such small compartments. Yet it would be +difficult to find a poetic fury less allied to sane human life than that +which informs his tales. It is not the _representation_ of +semi-insanity that he gives: he himself is its _representative_. +Instead of commanding it, and bringing it into some sort of healthy +relation with us, he is swayed and carried away by it. His genius +flourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that it +left, are like a deadly powdered poison. Clifford Pyncheon in the "Seven +Gables" is Poe himself, deprived of the ability to act: in both are +found the same consummate fastidiousness, the same abnormal egotism. And +it is worth attention that when Clifford is aroused to sudden action by +Judge Pyncheon's death, the coruscating play of his intellect is almost +precisely that brilliant but defective kind of ratiocination which Poe +so delights to display. It is crazy wildness, with a surface appearance +of accurate and refined logic. In this fact, that Hawthorne--the calm, +ardent, healthy master of imagination--is able to create the disordered +type that Poe _is_, we shall find by how much the former is greater +than the latter. + +A recent writer has raised distinctly the medical question as to Poe. He +calls him "the mad man of letters _par excellence_," and by an +ingenious investigation seems to establish it as probable that Poe was +the victim of a form of epilepsy. But in demonstrating this, he attempts +to make it part of a theory that all men of genius are more or less +given over to this same "veiled epilepsy." And here he goes beyond the +necessities of the case, and takes up an untenable position. There is a +morbid and shattering susceptibility connected with some genius; but +that tremulous, constantly readjusted sensitiveness which indicates the +perfect equilibrium of health in other minds must not be confounded with +it. Such is the condition of the highest genius alone; of men like +Shakespere and Hawthorne, who, however dissimilar their temperaments, +grasp the two spheres of mind and character, the sane and the insane, +and hold them perfectly reconciled by their gentle yet unsparing +insight. A case like Poe's, where actual mental decay exists in so +advanced a stage and gives to his productions a sharper and more +dazzling effect than would have been theirs without it, is probably more +unique, but it is certainly less admirable, less original in the true +sense, than an instance of healthier endowment like Hawthorne. On the +side of art, it is impossible to bring Poe into any competition with +Hawthorne: although we have ranked him high in poetry and prose, +regarded simply as a dynamic substance, it must be confessed that his +prose has nothing which can be called style, nor even a manner like +Irving's very agreeable one. His feeling for form manifests itself in +various ways, yet he constantly violates proportion for the sake of +getting off one of his pseudo-philosophical disquisitions; and, +notwithstanding many successful hits in expression, and a specious but +misleading assumption of fervid accuracy in phraseology, his language is +loose, promiscuous, and altogether tiresome. + +Poe, Irving, and Hawthorne have one marked literary condition in common: +each shows a double side. With Poe the antithesis is between poetry and +criticism; Irving, having been brought up by Fiction as a foster-mother, +is eventually turned over to his rightful guardian, History; and +Hawthorne rests his hand from ideal design, in elaborating quiet +pictures of reality. In each case there is more or less seeming +irreconcilement between the two phases found in combination; but the +opposition is rather more distinct in Hawthorne, and the grasp with +which it is controlled by him is stronger than that of either Poe or +Irving,--again a result pronouncing him the master. + +There is still another issue on which comparison must be made. The +question of nationality will for some time to come be an interesting one +in any discussion of American authors. The American character is so +relative, that it is only by a long series of contrasts, a careful study +of the registering-plate of literature, that we shall come to the point +of defining it. American quality in literature is not like Greek, +German, French, English quality: those are each unified, and their +component elements stoutly enough welded together to make what may be +called a positive impression; but _our_ distinctions are relative. +The nearest and most important means that we have for measuring them is +that of comparison with England; and anything strikingly original in +American genius is found to be permanent in proportion as it maintains a +certain relation to English literature, not quite easy to define. It is +not one of hostility, for the best American minds thus far have had the +sincerest kindliness toward the mother country; it involves, however, +the claiming of separate standards of judgment. The primary division, +both in the case of the New England Pilgrims and in that of our +Revolutionary patriots, was based on clearer perceptions of certain +truths on the part of the cisatlantic English; and this claiming of +separate standards in literature is a continuation of that historic +attitude. We are making a perpetual minority report on the rest of the +world, sure that in time our voice will be an authoritative one. The +attitude being a relative and not very positively predicable one, a +singular integrity of judgment is required in sustaining it. Of this Poe +exhibits nothing. It was a part of the ingrained rebellion in him, that +he revolted against the moneyed mediocracy of this country,--a position +in which he deserves much sympathy,--and perhaps this underlies his want +of deep literary identification with the national character in general. +But more probably his genius was a detonating agent which could have +been convulsed into its meet activity anywhere, and had nothing to do +with a soil. It is significant that he was taken up by a group of men in +Paris, headed by Baudelaire and assisted by Théophile Gautier, as a sort +of private demigod of art; and I believe he stands in high esteem with +the Rossetti-Morris family of English poets. Irving, on the other hand, +comes directly upon the ground of difference between the American and +the English genius, but it is with the colors of a neutral. Irving's +position was peculiar. He went to Europe young, and ripened his genius +under other suns than those that imbrowned the hills of his native +Hudson. He had won success enough through "Salmagundi" and +"Knickerbocker's History" to give him the importance of an accredited +literary ambassador from the Republic, in treating with a foreign +audience; and he really did us excellent service abroad. This alone +secures him an important place in our literary history. Particularly +wise and dignified is the tone of his short chapter called "English +Writers on America"; and this sentence from it might long have served in +our days of fairer fame as a popular motto: "We have but to live on, and +every day we live a whole volume of refutation." His friendship with +Scott, also, was a delightful addition to the amenities of literature, +and shall remain a goodly and refreshing memory to us always. Yet what +he accomplished in this way for American literature at large, Irving +compensated for with some loss of his own dignity. It cannot be denied +that the success of "The Sketch-Book" led to an overdoing of his part in +"Bracebridge Hall." "Salmagundi" was the first step in the path of +palpable imitation of Addison's "Spectator"; in "The Sketch-Book," +though taking some charming departures, the writer made a more refined +attempt to produce the same order of effects so perfectly attained by +the suave Queen Anne master; and in "Bracebridge Hall" the recollection +of the Sir Roger de Coverley papers becomes positively annoying. It is +not that the style of Addison is precisely reproduced, of course, but +the general resemblance in manner is as close as it could well have been +without direct and conscious copying, the memory of Addisonian methods +is too apparent. Irving's real genius, which occasionally in his other +writings emits delicious flashes, does not often assert itself in this +work; and though he has the knack of using the dry point of Addison's +humor, he doesn't achieve what etchers call "the burr" that ought to +result from its use. Addison, too, stings his lines in with true +aquafortis precision, and Irving's sketches are to his as pen-and-ink +drawing to the real etching. But it was not only this lack of literary +independence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so well +satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two +nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he +had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and _almost_ +obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused +pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,--honest, pathetic Paulding, a +rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and +couldn't; whom Drake laughingly hails as + + "The bard of the backwoods, + The poet of cabbages, log-huts, and gin." + +Irving was vexedly concerned at the violent outbreaks of his old +coadjutor, directed against the British; yet, though they were foolish, +they showed real pluck. But if we need other proof of the attitude which +Irving was distinctly recognized to have taken up, we may turn to a page +on which "The Edinburgh Review," unusually amiable toward him at first, +thus vented its tyrannical displeasure at his excessive complaisance: +"He gasped for British popularity [it said]: he came, and found it. He +was received, caressed, applauded, made giddy: natural politeness owed +him some return, for he imitated, admired, deferred to us.... It was +plain he thought of nothing else, and was ready to sacrifice everything +to obtain a smile or a look of approbation." In a less savage fashion +we, too, may admit the not very pleasant truth here enunciated with such +unjust extremeness. An interval of nearly forty years lies between the +date of the "Sketch-Book" and "Bracebridge" and that of "Our Old Home"; +the difference in tone fully corresponds to the lapse of time. + +In the use of native material, of course, Irving was a pioneer, along +with Cooper, and was in this quite different from Poe, who had no +aptitude in that way. "Knickerbocker's History of New York" is too +farcical to take a high position on this score, though it undoubtedly +had a beneficial effect in stirring up pride and interest in local +antiquities; but "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" were +valuable acquisitions so far as they went. Would that they had been +wrought out with a more masterly touch; and would that Irving had +penetrated further in this direction! But, though these Hudson legends +will long keep his fame renewed, it will perhaps be chiefly as a +historian that he will be prized. His pleasant compilation on Goldsmith, +his "Mahomet," "Columbus," and "Conquest of Granada," though not too +profound, fill an enviable niche in popular esteem; and his mellow and +stately narrative of Washington's life is a work of enduring excellence. +But these lie outside of our present discussion. Nor need we compare his +achievements in native fiction with Hawthorne's, after the review we +have been making of the latter's relation to New England. + +Poe and Irving and Hawthorne have all met with acceptance in other +countries, and their works have been translated into several languages. +Irving has exercised no perceptible influence on literature at home or +abroad; Poe has entered more or less into the workings of a school in +England and a group in France. Hawthorne's position on the Continent has +perhaps not been so much one of conquest as of receiving an abstract +admiration; but he has taken much stronger hold of the Anglo-Saxon mind +than either of the others, and it is probable that his share in +inspiring noble literature in America will--as it has already begun to +show itself an important one--become vastly greater in future. It is +impossible, as we have seen, to fix an absolute ratio between these +writers. Irving has a more human quality than Poe, but Poe is beyond +dispute the more original of the two. Each, again, has something which +Hawthorne does not possess. But, if we must attempt at all to reduce so +intricate a problem to exact terms, the mutual position of the three may +be stated in the equation, Poe _plus_ Irving _plus_ an unknown +quantity equals Hawthorne. + + + + +XIII. + + +THE LOSS AND THE GAIN. + +The suddenness with which Hawthorne faded away and died, when at the +zenith of his fame, is no less strange and sad and visionary now than it +was a poignant anguish then. He returned from Europe somewhat +lingeringly, as we have seen, knowing too well the difference between +the regions he was quitting and the thinner, sharper, and more wasting +atmosphere of a country where every one who has anything to give is +constantly drawn upon from every side, and has less resource for +intellectual replenishment than in other lands. His seven years in +England and Italy had, on the whole, been a period of high prosperity, +of warm and gratifying recognition, of varied and delightful literary +encounter, in addition to the pleasure of sojourning among so many new +and suggestive scenes. And when he found himself once more on the old +ground, with the old struggle for subsistence staring him steadily in +the face again, it is not difficult to conceive how a certain degree of +depression would follow. Just as this reaction had set in, the breaking +out of civil war threw upon Hawthorne, before he had time to brace +himself for the shock, an immense burden of sorrowing sympathy. The +conflict of feelings which it excited on the public side has been +sketched; and that alone should have been enough to make the years of +strife a time of continuous gloom and anxiety to him; but it would be +losing sight of a very large element in his distress, not to add that he +mourned over the multitude of private griefs which were the harvest of +battle as acutely as if they had all been his own losses. His intense +imagination burned them too deeply into his heart. How can we call this +weakness, which involved such strength of manly tenderness and sympathy? +"Hawthorne's life was shortened by the war," Mr. Lowell says. Expressing +this view once, to a friend, who had served long in the Union army, I +was met with entire understanding. He told me that his own father, a +stanch Unionist, though not in military service, was as certainly +brought to his death by the war as any of the thousands who fell in +battle. In how wide and touchingly humane a sense may one apply to +Hawthorne Marvell's line on Cromwell's death,-- + + "To Love and Grief the fatal writ was signed!" + +His decline was gradual, and semi-conscious, as if from the first he +foresaw that he could not outlive these trials. In April, 1862, he +visited Washington, and wrote the article "Chiefly about War Matters" +already alluded to. He has left this glimpse of himself at that time:-- + +"I stay here only while Leutze finishes a portrait, which I think will +be the best ever painted of the same unworthy subject. One charm it must +needs have,--an aspect of immortal jollity and well-to-do-ness; for +Leutze, when the sitting begins, gives me a first-rate cigar, and when +he sees me getting tired, he brings out a bottle of splendid champagne; +and we quaffed and smoked yesterday, in a blessed state of mutual +good-will, for three hours and a half, during which the picture made a +really miraculous progress. Leutze is the best of fellows." + +The trip was taken to benefit his health, which had already begun to +give way; and though he wrote thus cheerily, he was by no means well. In +another published note there is this postscript:-- + +"My hair really is not so white as this photograph, which I enclose, +makes me. The sun seems to take an infernal pleasure in making me +venerable,--as if I were as old as himself." + +He had already, as we know, begun to meditate upon "The Dolliver +Romance," trudging to and fro upon his hill-top, which was called, at +home, "the mount of vision." But before proceeding with that, he began +the series of essays composing "Our Old Home," not yet feeling strong +enough for the more trying exertion of fiction. But the preparation of +these, charming as they are, brought no exhilaration to his mind. +"I am delighted," he writes to his publisher, "at what you tell me +about the kind appreciation of my articles, for I feel rather gloomy +about them myself.... I cannot come to Boston to spend more than a day, +just at present. It would suit me better to come for a visit when the +spring of next year is a little advanced, and if you renew your +hospitable proposition then, I shall probably be glad to accept it; +though I have now been a hermit so long, that the thought affects me +somewhat as it would to invite a lobster or a crab to step out of his +shell." + +His whole tone with regard to "Our Old Home" seems to have been one of +fatigue and discouragement. He had, besides, to deal with the harassing +question of the dedication to Franklin Pierce, which he solved in this +manly and admirable letter to his publisher:-- + +"I thank you for your note of the 15th instant, and have delayed my +reply thus long in order to ponder deeply on your advice, smoke cigars +over it, and see what it might be possible for me to do towards taking +it. I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me to withdraw +either the dedication or the dedicatory letter. My long and intimate +personal relations with Pierce render the dedication altogether proper, +especially as regards this book, which would have had no existence +without his kindness; and if he 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. As for the literary public, it must accept my book precisely +as I think fit to give it, or let it alone." + +By this time, the energy requisite for carrying on the Romance had sunk +still lower, so that he wrote:-- + +"I can't tell you when to expect an instalment of the Romance, if ever. +There is something preternatural in my reluctance to begin. I linger at +the threshold, and have a perception of very disagreeable phantasms to +be encountered if I enter. I wish God had given me the faculty of +writing a sunshiny book." + +And, a little later:-- + +"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." + +His inability to work has been illustrated in the numerous bulletins of +this period published by Mr. Fields: they show him at times despondent, +as in the extracts above, then again in a state of semi-resolution. At +another time there is mixed presentiment and humor in his report. + +"I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an effort as soon as I +see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful that (like most other +broken-down authors) I do not pester you with decrepit pages, and insist +upon your accepting them as full of the old spirit and vigor. That +trouble, perhaps, still awaits you, after I shall have reached a further +stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has, for the present, lost its temper +and its fine edge, and I have an instinct that I had better kept quiet. +Perhaps I shall have a new spirit of vigor, if I wait quietly for it; +perhaps not." + +But over all these last notes there hangs a melancholy shadow that makes +the flickering humor even sadder than the awesome conviction that he has +done with writing. How singular the mingled mood of that last letter, in +which he grimly jests upon the breaking-down of his literary faculty! +Here he announces, finally: "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." Yet the cause was not so much the +loss of literary power, as the physical exhaustion that had already worn +him away beyond recovery. He longed for England; and possibly if he +could have gone thither, the voyage, the milder climate, and the sense +of rest that he would have felt there, might have restored him. He had +friends in this country, however, who made attempts to break up the +disastrous condition into which he had so unexpectedly come. In May of +1863, when "Our Old Home" was printing, he received from his friend Mr. +Lowell this most charming invitation to come to Cambridge:-- + +MY DEAR HAWTHORNE:--I hope you have not forgotten that during +"anniversary week" you were to make me a little anniversary by a visit? +I have been looking forward to it _ever_ so long. My plan is that +you come on Friday, so as to attend the election-meeting of our club, +and then stay over Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, which is the last +day of my holidays. How will that do? I am glad to hear your book is +going through the press, and you will be nearer your proof-sheets here. +I have pencils of all colors for correcting in all moods of mind,--red +for sanguine moments when one thinks there is some use in writing at +all, blue for a modest depression, and black for times when one is +satisfied there is no longer an intelligent public nor one reader of +taste left in the world. You shall have a room to yourself, nearly as +high and quite as easy of access as your tower, and I pledge myself that +my crows, cat-birds, orioles, chimbley-swallows, and squirrels shall +present you with the freedom of their city in a hollow walnut, so soon +as you arrive. + +Now will you write and say when you are to be expected? I assure you I +have looked forward to your coming as one of my chiefest spring +pleasures, ranking it with the advent of the birds. + +Always cordially yours, + +J. R. LOWELL. + +"I have smoked a cigar over your kind invitation," wrote Hawthorne, in +answer, "and mean to come. There is a little bit of business weighing +upon me (literary business of course, an article for the magazine and +for my volume, which I ought to have begun and finished long ago), but I +hope to smash it in a day or two, and will meet you at the club on +Saturday. I shall have very great pleasure in the visit." + +But, at the last moment, he was obliged to give it up, being detained by +a cold. And there seemed indeed a fatality which interfered with all +attempts to thwart the coming evil. At the beginning of April, 1864, +completely broken down, yet without apparent cause, he set out southward +with Mr. William Ticknor. On arriving at Philadelphia he began to +improve; but Mr. Ticknor's sudden death overthrew the little he had +gained, and caused him to sink still more. It is not my purpose here to +dwell upon the sad and unbeautiful details of a last illness: these +things would make but a harsh closing chord in the strain of meditation +on Hawthorne's life which we have been following out,--a life so +beautiful and noble that to surround its ending with the remembrance of +mere mortal ailment has in it something of coarseness. But it was +needful to show in what way this great spirit bowed beneath the weight +of its own sympathy with a national woe. Even when Dr. Holmes saw him in +Boston, though "his aspect, medically considered, was very unfavorable," +and though "he spoke as if his work were done, and he should write no +more," still "there was no failing noticeable in his conversational +powers." "There was nothing in Mr. Hawthorne's aspect," wrote Dr. +Holmes, "that gave warning of so sudden an end as that which startled us +all." He passed on into the shadow as if of his own will; feeling that +his country lay in ruins, that the human lot carried with it more hate +and horror and sorrow than he could longer bear to look at; +welcoming--except as those dear to him were concerned--the prospect of +that death which he alone knew to be so near. It was on the 19th of May, +1864, that the news came from Plymouth, in New Hampshire,--whither he +had gone with Ex-President Pierce,--that Hawthorne was dead. Afterward, +it was recalled with a kind of awe that through many years of his life +Hawthorne had been in the habit, when trying a pen or idly scribbling at +any time, of writing the number sixty-four; as if the foreknowledge of +his death, which he showed in the final days, had already begun to +manifest itself in this indirect way long before. Indeed, he had himself +felt that the number was connected with his life in some fatal way. Five +days later he was carried to Sleepy Hollow, the beautiful cemetery where +he had been wont to walk among the pines, where once when living at the +Manse he had lain upon the grass talking to Margaret Fuller, when Mr. +Emerson came upon them, and smiled, and said the Muses were in the woods +that day. + +A simple stone, with the single word "Hawthorne" cut upon it, was placed +above him. He had wished that there should be no monument. He liked +Wordsworth's grave at Grasmere, and had written, "It is pleasant to +think and know that he did not care for a stately monument." Longfellow +and Lowell and Holmes, Emerson and Louis Agassiz, and his friends +Pierce, and Hillard, with Ellery Channing, and other famous men, +assembled on that peaceful morning to take their places in the funeral +train. Some who had not known him in life came long distances to see +him, now, and ever afterward bore about with them the memory of his +aspect, strong and beautiful, in his last repose. The orchards were +blossoming; the roadside-banks were blue with violets, and the lilies of +the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among the flowers, had come +forth in quiet companies, to look their last on his face, so white and +quiet too. So, while the batteries that had murdered him roared sullenly +in the distant South, the rites of burial were fulfilled over the dead +poet. Like a clear voice beside the grave, as we look back and listen, +Longfellow's simple, penetrating chant returns upon the ear. + +In vain to sum up, here, the loss unspeakable suffered in Hawthorne's +death; and no less vain the attempt to fix in a few words the +incalculable gain his life has left with us. When one remembers the +power that was unexhausted in him still, one is ready to impeach cold +Time and Fate for their treason to the fair prospect that lay before us +all, in the continuance of his career. We look upon these few great +works, that may be numbered on the fingers of a hand, and wonder what +good end was served by the silent shutting of those rich pages that had +just begun to open. We remember the tardy recognition that kept the +fountain of his spirit so long half concealed, and the necessities that +forced him to give ten of his best years to the sterile industry of +official duties. But there are great compensations. Without the youthful +period of hopes deferred, Hawthorne, as we have seen, would not have +been the unique force, the high, untrammelled thinker that be became +through that fortunate isolation; wanting the uncongenial contact of his +terms at Boston and Salem and Liverpool, it may be that he could not +have developed his genius with such balance of strength as it now shows; +and, finally, without the return to his native land, the national fibre +in him would have missed its crowning grace of conscientiousness. He +might in that case have written more books, but the very loss of these, +implying as it does his pure love of country, is an acquisition much +more positively valuable. + +There is a fitness, too, in the abrupt breaking off of his activity, in +so far as it gives emphasis to that incompleteness of any verbal +statement of truth, which he was continually insisting upon with his +readers. + +Hawthorne, it is true, expanded so constantly, that however many works +he might have produced, it seems unlikely that any one of them would +have failed to record some large movement in his growth; and therefore +it is perhaps to be regretted that his life could not have been made to +solely serve his genius, so that we might have had the whole sweep of +his imagination clearly exposed. As it is, he has not given us a large +variety of characters; and Hester, Zenobia, and Miriam bear a certain +general likeness one to another. Phoebe, however, is quite at the +opposite pole of womanhood; Hilda is as unlike any of them as it is easy +to conceive of her being; and Priscilla, again, is a feminine nature of +unique calibre, as weird but not so warm as Goethe's Mignon, and at the +same time a distinctly American type, in her nervous yet captivating +fragility. In Priscilla and Phoebe are embodied two widely opposed +classes of New England women. The male characters, with the exception of +Donatello and Hollingsworth, are not so remarkable as the feminine ones: +Coverdale and Kenyon come very close together, both being artistic and +both reflectors for the persons that surround them; and Dimmesdale is to +some extent the same character,--with the artistic escape closed upon +his passions, so that they turn within and ravage his heart,--arrested +and altered by Puritan influences. Chillingworth is perhaps too devilish +a shape of revenge to be discussed as a human individual. Septimius, +again, is distinct; and the characterization of Westervelt, in +"Blithedale," slight as it is, is very stimulating. Perhaps, after all, +what leads us to pronounce upon the whole fictitious company a stricture +of homogeneity is the fact that the author, though presenting us each +time with a set of persons sufficiently separate from his previous ones, +does not emphasize their differences with the same amount of external +description that we habitually depend upon from a novelist. The +similarity is more in the author's mode of presentation than in the +creations themselves. + +This monotone in which all the personages of his dramas share is nearly +related with some special distinctions of his genius. He is so +fastidious in his desire for perfection, that he can scarcely permit his +actors to speak loosely or ungrammatically: though retaining their +essential individuality, they are endowed with the author's own +delightful power of expression. This outward phasis of his work +separates it at once from that of the simple novelist, and leads us to +consider the special applicability to it of the term "romance." He had +not the realistic tendency, as we usually understand that, but he +possessed the power to create a new species of fiction. For the kind of +romance that he has left us differs from all compositions previously so +called. It is not romance in the sense of D'Urfé's or Scudéri's; it is +very far from coming within the scope of Fielding's "romances"; and it +is entirely unconnected with the tales of the German Romantic school. It +is not the romance of sentiment; nor that of incident, adventure, and +character viewed under a worldly coloring: it has not the mystic and +melodramatic bent belonging to Tieck and Novalis and Fouqué. There are +two things which radically isolate it from all these. The first is its +quality of revived belief. Hawthorne, as has been urged already, is a +great believer, a man who has faith; his belief goes out toward what is +most beautiful, and this he finds only in moral truth. With him, poetry +and moral insight are sacredly and indivisibly wedded, and their progeny +is perfect beauty. This unsparingly conscientious pursuit of the highest +truth, this metaphysical instinct, found in conjunction with a varied +and tender appreciation of all forms of human or other life, is what +makes him so decidedly the representative of a wholly new order of +novelists. Belief, however, is, not what he has usually been credited +with, so much as incredulity. But the appearance of doubt is +superficial, and arises from his fondness for illuminating fine +but only half-perceptible traces of truth with the torch of +superstition. Speaking of the supernatural, he says in his English +journal: "It is remarkable that Scott should have felt interested in +such subjects, being such a worldly and earthly man as he was; but then, +indeed, almost all forms of popular superstition do clothe the ethereal +with earthly attributes, and so make it grossly perceptible." This +observation has a still greater value when applied to Hawthorne himself. +And out of this questioning belief and transmutation of superstition +into truth--for such is more exactly his method--proceeds also that +quality of value and rarity and awe-enriched significance, with which he +irradiates real life until it is sublimed to a delicate cloud-image of +the eternal verities. + +If these things are limitations, they are also foundations of a vast +originality. Every greatness must have an outline. So that, although he +is removed from the list of novelists proper, although his spiritual +inspiration scares away a large class of sympathies, and although his +strictly New England atmosphere seems to chill and restrain his dramatic +fervor, sometimes to his disadvantage, these facts, on the other hand, +are so many trenches dug around him, fortifying his fair eminence. +Isolation and a certain degree of limitation, in some such sense as +this, belong peculiarly to American originality. But Hawthorne is the +embodiment of the youth of this country; and though he will doubtless +furnish inspiration to a long line of poets and novelists, it must be +hoped that they, likewise, will stand for other phases of its +development, to be illustrated in other ways. No tribute to Hawthorne is +less in accord with the biddings of his genius than that which would +merely make a school of followers. + +It is too early to say what position Hawthorne will take in the +literature of the world; but as his influence gains the ascendant in +America, by prompting new and _un_-Hawthornesque originalities, it +is likely also that it will be made manifest in England, according to +some unspecifiable ratio. Not that any period is to be distinctly +colored by the peculiar dye in which his own pages are dipped; but the +renewed tradition of a highly organized yet simple style, and still more +the masculine tenderness and delicacy of thought and the fine adjustment +of aesthetic and ethical obligations, the omnipresent truthfulness which +he carries with him, may be expected to become a constituent part of +very many minds widely opposed among themselves. I believe there is no +fictionist who penetrates so far into individual consciences as +Hawthorne; that many persons will be found who derive a profoundly +religious aid from his unobtrusive but commanding sympathy. In the same +way, his sway over the literary mind is destined to be one of no +secondary degree. "Deeds are the offspring of words," says Heine; +"Goethe's pretty words are childless." Not so with Hawthorne's. +Hawthorne's repose is the acme of motion; and though turning on an axis +of conservatism, the radicalism of his mind is irresistible; he is one +of the most powerful because most unsuspected revolutionists of the +world. Therefore, not only is he an incalculable factor in private +character, but in addition his unnoticed leverage for the thought of the +age is prodigious. These great abilities, subsisting with a temper so +modest and unaffected, and never unhumanized by the abstract enthusiasm +for art, place him on a plane between Shakespere and Goethe. With the +universality of the first only just budding within his mind, he has not +so clear a response to all the varying tones of lusty human life, and +the individuality in his utterance amounts, at particular instants, to +constraint. With less erudition than Goethe, but also less of the +freezing pride of art, he is infinitely more humane, sympathetic, holy. +His creations are statuesquely moulded like Goethe's, but they have the +same quick music of heart-throbs that Shakespere's have. Hawthorne is at +the same moment ancient and modern, plastic and picturesque. Another +generation will see more of him than we do; different interpreters will +reveal other sides. As a powerful blow suddenly descending may leave the +surface it touches unmarked, and stamp its impress on the substance +beneath, so his presence will more distinctly appear among those farther +removed from him than we. A single mind may concentrate your vision upon +him in a particular way; but the covers of any book must perforce shut +out something of the whole, as the trees in a vista narrow the +landscape. + +Look well at these leaves I lay before you; but having read them throw +the volume away, and contemplate the man himself. + + + + +APPENDIX I. + + +In May, 1870, an article was published in the "Portland Transcript," +giving some of the facts connected with Hawthorne's sojourn in Maine, as +a boy. This called out a letter from Alexandria, Va., signed "W. S.," +and purporting to come from a person who had lived at Raymond, in +boyhood, and had been a companion of Hawthorne's. He gave some little +reminiscences of that time, recalling the fact that Hawthorne had read +him some poetry founded on the Tarbox disaster, already +mentioned. [Footnote: See _ante_, p. 89.] Himself he described as +having gone to sea at twenty, and having been a wanderer ever since. In. +speaking of the date of the poetry, "We could not have been more than +ten years old," he said. This, of course, is a mistake, the accident +having happened in 1819, when Hawthorne was fourteen. And it is +tolerably certain that he did not even visit Raymond until he was +twelve. + +The letter called out some reminiscences from Mr. Robinson Cook, of +Bolster's Mills, in Maine, who had also known Hawthorne as a boy; some +poetry on the Tarbox tragedy was also found, and printed, which +afterward proved to have been written by another person; and one or two +other letters were published, not especially relevant to Hawthorne, but +concerning the Tarbox affair. After this, "W. S." wrote again from +Alexandria (November 23, 1870), revealing the fact that he had come into +possession, several years before, of the manuscript book from which he +afterward sent extracts. The book, he explained, was found by a man +named Small, who had assisted in moving a lot of furniture, among it a +"large mahogany bookcase" full of old books, from the old Manning House. +This was several years before the civil war, and "W. S." met Small in +the army, in Virginia. He reported that the book--"originally a bound +blank one not ruled," and "gnawed by mice or eaten by moths on the +edges"--contained about two hundred and fifty pages, and was written +throughout, "the first part in a boyish hand though legibly, and showing +in its progress a marked improvement in penmanship." The passages +reprinted in the present volume were sent by him, over the signature "W. +Sims," to the "Transcript," and published at different dates (February +11, 1871; April 22, 1871). Their appearance called out various +communications, all tending to establish their genuineness; but, beyond +the identification of localities and persons, and the approximate +establishing of dates, no decisive proof was forthcoming. Sims himself, +however, was recalled by former residents near Raymond; and there seemed +at least much inferential proof in favor of the notes. A long silence +ensued upon the printing of the second portion; and at the end of 1871 +it was made known that Sims had died at Pensacola, Florida. The third +and last supposed extract from Hawthorne's note-book was sent from +Virginia again, in 1873 (published June 21 of that year), by a person +professing to have charge of Sims's papers. This person was written to +by the editors of the "Transcript," but no reply has ever been received. +A relative of Hawthorne in Salem also wrote to the Pensacola journal in +which Sims's death was announced, making inquiry as to its knowledge of +him and as to the source of the mortuary notice. No reply was ever +received from this quarter, either. Sims, it is said, had been in the +secret service under Colonel Baker, of dreaded fame in war-days; and it +may be that, having enemies, he feared the notoriety to which his +contributions to journalism might expose him, and decided to die,--at +least so far as printer's ink could kill him. All these circumstances +are unfortunate, because they make the solution of doubts concerning the +early notes quite impossible, for the present. + +The fabrication of the journal by a person possessed of some literary +skill and familiar with the localities mentioned, at dates so long ago +as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible feat, but it is an extremely +improbable one. It is not likely that an ordinary impostor would hit +upon the sort of incident selected for mention in these extracts. Even +if he drew upon circumstances of his own boyhood, transferring them to +Hawthorne's, he must possess a singularly clear memory, to recall +matters of this sort; and to invent them would require a nice +imaginative faculty. One of the first passages, touching the "son of old +Mrs. Shane" and the "son of the Widow Hawthorne," is of a sort to +entirely evade the mind of an impostor. The whole method of observation, +too, seems very characteristic. If the portion descriptive of a raft and +of the manners of the lumbermen be compared with certain memoranda in +the "American Note-Books" (July 13 and 15, 1837), derived from somewhat +similar scenes, a general resemblance in the way of seizing +characteristics will be observed. Of course, if the early notes are +fabrications, it may be that the author of them drew carefully after +passages of the maturer journal, and this among others. But the +resemblance is crossed by a greater youthfulness in the early notes, it +seems to me, which it would be hard to produce artificially. The cool +and collected style of the early journal is not improbable in a boy like +Hawthorne, who had read many books and lived much in the companionship +of older persons. Indeed, it is very much like the style of "The +Spectator" of 1820. A noticeable coincidence is, that the pedler, +Dominicus Jordan, should be mentioned in both the journal and "The +Spectator." The circumstance that the dates should all have been said to +be missing from the manuscript book is suspicious. Yet the last extract +has the month and year appended, August, 1819. What is more important +is, that the date of the initial inscription is given as 1816; and at +the time when this was announced it had not been ascertained even by +Hawthorne's own family and relatives that he had been at Raymond so +early. But since the publications in the "Transcript," some letters have +come to light of which I have made use; and one of these, bearing date +July 21, 1818, to which I have alluded in another connection, speaks of +Raymond from actual recollection. "Does the Pond look the same as when I +was there? It is almost as pleasant at Nahant as at Raymond. I thought +there was no place that I should say so much of." The furnisher of the +notes, if he was disingenuous, might indeed have remembered that +Hawthorne was in Maine about 1816; he may also have relied on a +statement in the "Transcript's" editorial, to the effect that Hawthorne +was taken to Raymond in 1814. In that editorial, it is also observed: +"Hawthorne was then a lad of ten years." I have already said that Sims +refers to the period of the verses on the Tarboxes as being a time when +he and Hawthorne were "not more than ten years old." This, at first, +would seem to suggest that he was relying still further upon the +editorial. But if he had been taking the editorial statement as a basis +for fabrication, it is not likely that he would have failed to ascertain +exactly the date of the freezing of Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, which was 1819. +The careless way in which he alludes to this may have been the +inadvertence of an impostor trying to make his account agree with one +already published; but it is more likely that the sender of the notes +did not remember the precise year in which the accident occurred, and +was confused by the statement of the "Transcript." An impostor must have +taken more pains, one would think. It must also be noticed that "the +Widow _Haw_thorne" is spoken of in the notes. Sims, however, in his +preliminary letter, refers to the fact that "the universal pronunciation +of the name in Raymond was Hathorn,--the first syllable exactly as the +word 'hearth' was pronounced at that time"; and the explanation of the +spelling in the notes doubtless is that Sims, or whoever transcribed the +passage, changed it as being out of keeping with the now historic form +of the name. It is possible that further changes were also made by the +transcriber; and a theory which has some color is, that the object in +keeping the original manuscript out of the way may have been, to make it +available for expansions and embellishments, using the actual record as +a nucleus. + + + + +II. + + +The theme referred to in Chapter III. is given in full below. After the +earlier portion of the present essay had been stereotyped, an article by +Professor G. T. Packard, on Bowdoin College, was published in +"Scribner's Monthly," which contains this mention of Hawthorne:-- + +"The author's college life was prophetic of the after years, when he so +dwelt apart from the mass of men, and yet stirred so deeply the world's +sensibilities and delighted its fancy. His themes were written in the +sustained, finished style that gives to his mature productions an +inimitable charm. The late Professor Newman, his instructor in rhetoric, +was so impressed with Hawthorne's powers as a writer, that he not +infrequently summoned the family circle to share in the enjoyment of +reading his compositions. The recollection is very distinct of +Hawthorne's reluctant step and averted look, when he presented himself +at the Professor's study, and with girlish diffidence submitted a +composition which no man in his class could equal.... When the class was +graduated, Hawthorne could not be persuaded to join them in having their +profiles cut in paper, the only class picture of the time; nor did he +take part in the Commencement exercises. His classmates understood that +he intended to be a writer of romance, but none anticipated his +remarkable development and enduring fame. It seems strange that among +his admirers no one has offered him a fitting tribute by founding the +Hawthorne Professorship of English Literature in the college where, +under the tutelage of the accomplished and appreciative Professor +Newman, he was stimulated to cultivate his native gift." + +DE PATRIS CONSCRIPTIS ROMANORUM. + +Senatum Romanorum jam primum institutum, simplicem siniul atquo +praestantissimuni fuisse sentiant onmes. Imperium fint, quod populo aec +avaritis nee luxuria vitiato optimum videretar. Lecti fuerunt senatores, +non qui ambitiose potestatem eupiere, sesl qui senectute, qui sapientia, +qui virtute bellica vel privata insigues, in republica plurimam +pollebant. Hominum consiliis virtute tam singulari praeditorum paruit +populus libenter atque senatores at patres civilius venerati. Studium +illis paternum adhibuere. Nulla unquam respublica, quam turn Romana, nec +sanctior nec beatior t'uit; iis temporibus etenim solum in publicum +commodum principes administrabant; fidemque principibus populi habetant. +Sed virtute prisca reipublierc perdita, inimicitus mutuis patres +plebesque flagrare coeperunt, alienaque prosequi. Senatus in populum +tyrannice saeviit, atque hostem se monstravit potiue quam custodem +reipubliere. Concitatur vulgus studio libertatis repetendre, alque per +multa secula patrum plebisque contentiones historia Romana memorat; +patribus pristinam auctoriratem servare conatis, liccentiaque plebis +omnia jura spernante. Hoc modo usque ad Panieum bellum, res se habebant. +Tun pericula externa discordiam domesticam superabant, reipublicaeque +studium priscam patribus sapientiam, priscam populis reverentiam +redundit. Hae aetate omnibus virtutibus cnituit Roma. Senatus, jure +omnium consensu facto, opes suas prope ad inopiam plebis aequavit; +patriaeque solum amore gloria quaesita, pecunia niluii habita est. Sed +quuam Carthaginem reformidavit non diutius Roma, rediit respublica ad +vitia pristina. Patres luxuria solum populis praestiterunt, et vestigia +eorum populi secuti sunt. Senatus auctoritatem, ex illo ipso tempore, +annus unusquisque diminuit, donce in aerate Angasti interitus nobilium +humiliumque delectus omnino fere dignitatem conficerunt. Augustus +equidem antiquam magnificentiam patribus reddidit, sed fulgor tantum +liut sine fervore. Nunquam in republica senatoribus potestates +recuperatae. Postremum species etiam amissa est. + +HATHORNE. + + +THE ROMAN SENATE. + +Every one perceives that the Roman Senate, as it was originally +constituted, was a no less simple than illustrious body. It was a +sovereignty which appeared most desirable to a populace vitiated neither +by avarice nor luxury. The senators were chosen, not from those who were +ambitious of power, but those who wielded the largest influence in the +Republic through wisdom and warlike valor or private virtue. The +citizens bowed willingly to the counsels of men endowed with such +singular worth, and venerated the senators as fathers. The latter +exercised a paternal care. No republic ever was holier or more blessed +than that of Rome at this time; for in those days the rulers +administered for the public convenience alone, and the people had faith +in their rulers. But, the pristine virtue of the Republic lost, the +fathers and the commonalty began to blaze forth with mutual hostilities, +and to seek after the possessions of others. The Senate vented its wrath +savagely upon the people, and showed itself rather the enemy than the +guardian of the Republic. The multitude was aroused by the desire of +recovering liberty, and through a very long period Roman history +recounts the contentions of the fathers and the commonalty; the fathers +attempting to preserve their old authority, and the license of the +commons scorning every law. Affairs remained in this condition until the +Punic War. Then foreign perils prevailed over domestic discord, and love +of the Republic restored to the fathers their early wisdom, to the +people their reverence. At this period, Rome shone with every virtue. +The Senate, through the rightfully obtained consent of all parties, +nearly equalized its power with the powerlessness of the commonalty; and +glory being sought solely through love of the fatherland, wealth was +regarded as of no account. But when Rome no longer dreaded Carthage, the +commonwealth returned to its former vices. The fathers were superior to +the populace only in luxury, and the populace followed in their +footsteps. From that very time, every year diminished the authority of +the Senate, until in the age of Augustus the death of the nobles and the +selection of insignificant men almost wholly destroyed its dignity. +Augustus, to be sure, restored to the fathers their ancient +magnificence, but, great as was the fire (so to speak), it was without +real heat. Never was the power of the senators recovered. At last even +the appearance of it vanished. + + + + +III. + + +The lists of books referred to in Chapter IV. were recorded by different +hands, or in different ways at various dates, so that they have not been +made out quite satisfactorily. Some of the authors named below were +taken out a great many times, but the number of the volume is given in +only a few cases. It would seem, for example, that Voltaire's complete +works were examined by Hawthorne, if we judge by his frequent +application for some part of them, and the considerable number of +volumes actually mentioned. In this and in other cases, the same volume +is sometimes called for more than once. To make the matter clearer here, +I have reduced the entries to a simple list of the authors read, without +attempting to show how often a particular one was taken up. Few or none +of them were read consecutively, and the magazines placed together at +the end of my list were taken out at short intervals throughout the +different years. + +1830. + +Oeuvres de Voltaire. +Mémoire de Litérature. +Liancourt. +Oeuvres de Rousseau. +Mass. Historical Collections. +Trial and Triumph of Faith. +Oeuvres de Pascal. +Varenius' Geography. +Mickle's Lucian. +Dictionnaire des Sciences. +Pamela. (Vols. I., II.) +Life of Baxter. +Tournefort's Voyage. +Swift's Works. +Hitt on Fruit-Trees. +Bibliotheca Americana. +Ames's Antiquities. +Hamilton's Works. +Gifford's Juvenal. +Allen's Biographical Dictionary. +Fénélon. +Académie Royale des Inscriptions. +Mather's Apology. +Vertol's History of Sweden. +Taylor's Sermons. +Life of Luckington. +L'an 2440. +Montague's Letters. +English Botany. (3 vols.) +Gay's Poems. +Inchbald's Theatre. +Sowerby's English Botany. +Crabbe's Borough. +Crabbe's Bibliographical Dictionary. +Collection of Voyages (Hakluyt's?). +Lives of the Admirals. +British Zoölogy. + +1831 + +Los Eruditos. +Connoisseur. +Camilla. +Gifford's Persius. +Bartram's Travels. +Humphrey's Works. +Voltaire. +Pennant's British Zoology. +Mandeville's Travels. +Rehearsal Transposed. +Gay's Poems. +Pompey the Little. +Shaw's General Zoology. +Philip's Poems. +Sowerby's English Botany. +Racine. +Corneille. +Wilkinson's Memoirs and Atlas. +History of the Shakers. +The Confessional. +Calamy's Life of Baxter. +Académie Royale des Inscripts. +Essais de Montaigne. (Vols. I., II., III., IV.) +Cadell's Journey through Italy and Carniola. +Cobbet's Rule in France. +Temple's Works. (Vols. I., II., III.) +Asiatic Researches. +Cochran's Tour in Siberia. +Chardin's Travels. +Brandt's History of the Reformation. +Russell's Natural History. +Aleppo. (Vol. I.) +Answer to the Fable of the Bees. +Hanway's Travels. +Memoirs of C. J. Fox. +Bayle's Critical Dictionary. (Vols. II., V., VI.) +State Trials. (Vols. I., II., IV., V., VI.) +Tales of a Traveller. +Dictionnaire des Sciences. (Vol. XVII.) +Bacon's Works. (Vol. II.) +Gordon's Tacitus. +Colquhoun on the Police. +Cheyne on Health. +Pope's Homer. (Vol I.) +Letters: De Maintenon. (Vol. IX.) +Reichard's Germany. +Oeuvres de Rousseau. +Notes on the West Indies by Prichard. +Crishull's Travels in Turkey. + +1832-33. + +Clarendon's Tracts. +History of England. +Prose Works of Walter Scott. (Vols. III., V., VI.) +Feltham's Resolves. +Roscoe's Sovereigns. +Histoire de l'Académie. +South America. +Savages of New Zealand. +Stackhouse's History of the Bible. +Dryden's Poems. +Tucker's Light of Nature. +History of South Carolina. +Poinsett's Notes on Mexico. +Brace's Travels. +Browne's Jamaica. +Collins's New South Wales. +Broughton's Dictionary. +Seminole War. +Shaw's Zoology. +Reverie. +Gifford's Pitt. +Curiosities of Literature. +Massinger. +Literary Recollections. +Coleridge's Aids to Reflection. +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. +Paris and Fonblanque. +Elia. +Gardens and Menagerie. +Medical Jurisprudence. +History of Paris. +Scott's Prose Works. +Kittell's Specimens American Poetry. +Lister's Journey. +Annals of Salem. +Library of Old English Prose Writers. +Memoirs of Canning. +Miscellaneous Works of Scott. +Jefferson's Writings. +History of Andover. +Good's Book of Nature. +History of Haverhill. +Madden's Travels. (Vols. I., II.) +Riedesel's Memoirs. +Boston Newspapers (1736, 1739, 1754, 1762, 1771, 1783). +Drake's Mornings in Spring. +Drake's Evenings in Autumn. +Anecdotes of Bowyer. +Gouverneur Morris. (Vols. I., II.) +Bryan Walton's Memoirs. +Moses Mendelssohn. +Collingwood. +Felt's Annals. +Strutt's Sports and Pastimes. +Schiller. +Mrs. Jameson. (2 vols.) +Thatcher's Medical Biography. +History of Plymouth. +Crabbe's Universal Dictionary. +Lewis's History of Lynn. +A Year in Spain, by a Young American. (Vols. I., II.) +Croker's Boswell. +Deane's History of Scituate. +Diplomatic Correspondence. (Vols. I., II.) +Temple's Travels. (Vol. II.) +Fuller's Holy State. +Remarkables of Increase Mather. +History of Portland. (Vols. I., II.) +Practical Tourist. +Elements of Technology. +Heber's Life, by Taylor. +Ductor Substantium. +Heber's Travels in India. (Vols. I., II.) +Byron's Works. +Travels in Brazil and Buenos Ayres. +History of Spain. +Franklin's Works. +Mental Cultivation. + +1835. + +Life of Gouverneur Morris. +Hamilton's Progress of Society. +Twiner's Sacred History. +Encyclopaedia. +Life of Arthur Lee. +Life of Sir Humphry Davy. +Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. +Prior's Poems. (Vol. I.) +Jefferson's Writings. (Vols. I., II.) +Memoirs of the Tower of London. +History of King's Chapel. +Memoirs of Dr. Burney. +Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I, II., III.) +Life of Livingstone. + +1836. + +Life of Hamilton. (Vol. I.) +Debates in Parliament. (Vol. I.) +Curiosities of Literature (Vol. I.) +Combe on the Constitution of Man. +Babbage on Economy of Machinery. +Eulogies on Jefferson and Adams. +Hone's Every Day Book. (Vols. I., III.) +Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design. (Vols. I., II.) +Mende's Guide to Observation of Nature. +Cobbett's Cottage Economy. +Douglas's Summary. (Vol. I.) +Practical Tourist. (Vols. I., II.) +Dick on Improvement of Society. +Bush's Life of Mohammed. +Temple's Travels in Peru. (Vol. I.) +Gay's Poems. +Pliny's Natural History. +Coleridge's Table-Talk. +Letters from Constantinople. (Vols. I., II.) +Reynolds's Voyages. +Adventures on Columbia River, by Ross Cox. +Baine's History of Cotton Manufacture. +History of Nantucket. +Travels in South America. +Müller's Universal History. +Antar. A Bedoueen Romance. +Lives of the Philosophers. (Vols. I., II.) +Description of Trades. +Colman's Visit to England. +Ludolph's History of Ethiopia. +Griffin's Remains. +McCree's Life of Knox. +Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy. +Voyage de la mer du Sud an Nord. +Biographia Literaria. +The Stranger in America. +Raumer's England in 1835. +Random Recollections of the House of Lords. +The German Student. +Sparks's American Biography. +Brewster's Natural Magic. +Prior's Life of Goldsmith. +Sparks's Washington. +Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft. +Scott's Life of Bonaparte. (3 vols.) + +1837. + +Washington's Writings. +Martineau's Miscellany. +Wraxall's Memoirs. +Bancroft's United States History. +Rush, on the Human Voice. +Drake's Indian Biography. +Wordsworth's Poetical Works. +Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. +Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. +Bayle's Historical Memoirs of Plymouth County. +Life of Jefferson, by Tucker. +Random Recollections of the House of Commons. +Specimens of American Poetry. + +1838. + +Life of Jefferson. +Brown's Novels. +Parr's Works. +Select Comedies. +Froissart's Ancient Chronology. +Byron's Works. +Plutarch's Lives. +London Encyclopedia of Architecture. +Gentleman's Magazine. +Monthly Magazine. +Monthly Review. +European Magazine. +Christian Examiner. +Edinburgh Magazine. +Annual Register. +Quarterly Review. +Southern Review. +Worcester's Magazine. +North American Review. +United States Service Journal. +Court Magazine. +Museum of Literature and Science. +Westminster Review. +London Monthly Magazine. +Eclectic Review. +Foreign Quarterly Review. +Blackwood's Magazine. +Metropolitan Magazine. +New England Magazine. +British Critic. +American Encyclopaedia. +Rees's Cyclopaedia. +Gifford's Juvenal. + + + + +INDEX. + + +Addison, Joseph +Allegory and symbolism +Ambitious Guest, The +America, Hawthorne's sentiment about returning to +American Magazine +American Note-Books, record of youth in +American nurture of Hawthorne's genius +American quality in literature +Andrews, Ferdinand +Apollyon, name of cat +Artist of the Beautiful, The +Atmosphere, Hawthorne's susceptibility to +Autobiographies + +Balzac's method of dealing with sin +Bancroft, George +Baudelaire +Bay writers, nickname given by Church Review +Beelzebub, Hawthorne's cat +Belief, Hawthorne's +Bewick Company +Biography, Hawthorne's feeling about +Birth-mark, The +Blithedale Romance + its relation to Brook Farm + real incident applied in + when written + remarks on +Bloody Footstep +Boston Custom-House +Boston Token, The +Bowdoin College + passage from "Fanshawe" descriptive of +Bridge, Horatio + prognostic of, concerning Hawthorne +Brig Fair American, Ballad of +Brook Farm, origin of + Hawthorne's aim in going to + length of stay there + trenchant remark upon, in Blithedale +Brown, Brockden +Buchanan, James +Buds and Bird-Voices +Bunyan, compared with Milton + with Hawthorne +Burroughs, Rev. Dr. Charles, note from, to Hawthorne +Bryant, William Cullen + +Celestial Railroad, The +Characters of Hawthorne +Chippings with a Chisel +Chorley, H. F. +Christmas Banquet, The +Church Review + attack of, on The Scarlet Letter +Cilley, Jonathan +Clarendon's History +Coleridge, S. T. +Conception of Character, Hawthorne's method of +Contact of life and death +Contradictions of critics +Cooper, J. Fenimore +Cooper Memorial letter of Hawthorne +Coverdale, Miles, origin of name + character of, how related to Hawthorne +Curtis, George William + letters from Hawthorne to +Curwin Mansion +Cushing, Caleb +Custom-House, prefatory chapter on the + excitement over it in Salem + +Democratic Review +Devil in Manuscript, The +Dickens +Dixey, William, name in Seven Gables +Doctor Heidegger's Experiment +Dolliver Romance, The +Drake, J. R. +Dramatic quality in Hawthorne +Drowne's Wooden Image +D'Urfé + +Early Notes, discovery of + passages from +Earth's Holocaust +Eccentricity in Salem +Edinburgh Review, stricture of, upon Irving +Emerson's English Traits +Endicott and The Red Cross + passage from, bearing on Scarlet Letter +Endicotts, anecdote of +English Note-Books, characteristics of +Evangeline, origin of + Hawthorne's review of + +Fame, in what way desirable +Fancy's Show-Box +Faust +"Fanshawe" + abstract of + passages from +Fearing, Master, and Hawthorne +Fielding, Henry +Fields, J. T., mistake of +Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking at +Fire worship +First Church of Salem +First publication by Hawthorne +Foote, Caleb +Fouqué +French and Italian Note-Books +Froissart + +Gautier, Theophile +Goethe +Godwin, William +Goldsmith +Goodrich, S. G. + employs Hawthorne as editor + difficulties with +Grandfather's Chair + publication of +Gray Champion, The + +Hathorne, Elizabeth C. Manning, + mother of Nathaniel Hawthorne, + piety of, her inconsolableness + at loss of her husband +Hathorne, John, judge in witchcraft + trials +Hathorne, Joseph, Benjamin, + Daniel +Hathorne, Nathaniel, father of Nathaniel, + death of; Hawthorne's + resemblance to +Hathorne, William; his persecution + of Quakers; his will +Haunted Mind, The +HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, birth of + changes spelling of name + birthplace of; childhood of; + lameness in boyhood; + fondness for cats; scholarship + of, at college; English + compositions of; Latin theme + of, (in full, Appendix); + reading of; love + of books; first printed + article of; college associations + of; literary struggles + of; pecuniary difficulties + of; Democratic sympathies + of; his inability to + distinguish tunes; social + nature of; error as to long + obscurity of; anecdotes of; + value of these in + general; his love of solitude; + healthiness of; + shyness; considerateness + for others; personal appearance; + G. W. Curtis's + reminiscence of; his simplicity + of habits; love of books; + abstraction; moral enthusiasm + of, characterized; + unsuspiciousness of; introspection + of, how exaggerated; + distaste for society, how explainable; + in what greater than + Irving; ghostly atmosphere + of; humor of; American quality of; effect of civil + war upon; death of; his + grave; burial; literary + and intellectual influence of +Heine, Heinrich +Helwyse, Gervase +Hillard, George S. +Hoffman, Charles Fenno +Hogg's Tales +Holmes, Oliver Wendell; letter + from, to Hawthorne +Horace +House of the Seven Gables, The; + Hathorne history; composition + of; originals for the + house; survey of +Howells, W. D., Hawthorne's remark + to + +Invisible struggles of genius +Irving, Washington; comparison + with Hawthorne; humor + of; attitude of, in England; + his use of native + material; his histories; + style of + +John Ingefield's Thanksgiving +Johnson, Samuel +Journal of an African Cruiser +Journal of a Solitary Man + +Kingsley's Greek Fairy-Tales + +Latin Theme of Hawthorne; + in full, Appendix +Lawrence, Lieutenant, killed off + Marblehead +Lenox, removal to +Letters of Hawthorne, in boyhood, + from college; + from Connecticut and New Hampshire; + to Longfellow; + to Bridge; + to Curtis; + to Motley; + to Lowell +Leutze +Limitations of Hawthorne +Liverpool consulate; + reduction in receipts of; + unjust criticism of Hawthorne in +Longfellow, Henry W.; + review of Twice-Told Tales; + letter to Hawthorne +Loring, Dr. G. B. +Lowell, James Russell; + letter from + +Maine, Hawthorne's sojourn in, in boyhood +Manning, Elizabeth Clarke, Hawthorne's mother +Manning's Folly +Manning, Richard +Manning, Robert +Manning, Samuel +Manuscript sketch for Septimius +Marble Faun, The; + examination of +Marine outrages, Hawthorne's wish +to redress +Marvell, Andrew +Maturity in Hawthorne, earliness of +Maule, Thomas +Maypole of Merry Mount, The +Melville, Herman; + private review of Seven Gables by +Michael Angelo +Milton compared with Bunyan and Hawthorne +Minister's Black Veil, The +Mitford, Miss, Letter from, to Hawthorne +Mosses from an Old Manse; + first issue of; + criticism of +Motley, John Lothrop, letter of, to Hawthorne +Mozart +Mrs. Bullfrog + +New England civilization; + early character +Newman, Professor +Nomenclature of fiction +Novalis + +Oberon +Objectivity of Hawthorne +Old Apple-Dealer, The +Oliver, B. L. +Our Old Home + +Packard, Professor G. T.; + Appendix +Papers of an old Dartmoor prisoner +Paulding, J. K. +Peabody, Miss E. P., acquaintance with Hawthorne +Peabody, Miss Sophia +Peter Parley's History, written by Hawthorne +Pierce, Franklin; + Hawthorne's Life of; + (sentiments in, touching slavery; + resulting abuse of Hawthorne;) + dedication of Our Old Home to +Pilgrim's Progress, Hawthorne's reading of; + allusions to, in his works +Plato +Plymouth Colony enactment against adultery, foot-note +Poe's criticism on Hawthorne; +similarities of, to Hawthorne; + effectiveness of; + subjectivity of; doubtful + sanity of; his ratiocination; + foreign influence of +Pope, Alexander +Procession of Life, The +Prophetic Pictures, The +Pseudonymes of Hawthorne (foot-note) +Puritan imagination +Puritans, Hawthorne's view of +Pyncheon, Clifford, how resembling Poe +Pynchons, complaints of the, against Seven Gables + +Rappaccini's Daughter +Raymond, Maine, removal to +Ripley, George +Roger Malvin's Burial +Rossetti-Morris school +Rousseau + +Salem, as a native soil; Hawthorne's + sentiment for; aspects + of; origin of name; + trade +Salem Custom-House +Sand, George +Sanity of highest genius + +Scarlet Letter; origin + of; publication of; + Leutze's coincidence; + passage compared with Bunyan; + theme of revenge in; + analysis of the romance; + as a work of art +Scotland and New England +Scott, Sir Walter; Hawthorne's + estimate of +Scudéri; Madeleine de +Sebago Lake +Sense of form in Hawthorne; + in Poe +Septimius Felton; symbolism + of; origin of +"Seven Tales of my Native Land." +Shakespere +Shelley's Latin verses; The + Cenci, compared with Marble + Faun +Sights from a Steeple +Sims, William, finder of supposed + Early Notes, Appendix +Sin, consciousness of, in Hawthorne; + how conducive to originality +Slavery, Hawthorne's sentiments + concerning +Snow Image +Sparhawk House, Kittery + "Spectator," The; extracts + from +Spenser +St. John's, John Hathorne's attack + on +Story, Joseph +Sumner, Charles, note of, to Hawthorne +Sunday at Home +Supernatural, Hawthorne's use of +Surroundings of genius assist but + do not produce it + + +Taine's Notes on England +Tales of the Province House +Tanglewood Tales +Term-Bill at College +Thackeray +Thomson, James +Thoreau's Legend of the Wayside +Tieck +Toll-Gatherer's Day +Tragedy of isolation +True Stones +Twice-Told Tales; + temperament in style of; first + collection of; second + +Union of the States, Hawthorne's + feeling about +Union Street +Upham's "Salem Witchcraft." + +Verses by Hawthorne, at college +Virgil +Virtuoso's Collection +Voltaire + +Wayside, The, purchase of +Wedding Knell, The +Weird, The, in Scotland and New + England +West Newton, removal to +Whipple, Edwin, objection to remark + of; Hawthorne's pleasure in + reviews written by +White, John, Rev. +White Old Maid, The +Widowhood, sentiment of, expressed + by Hawthorne +Winthiop, John +Witchcraft +Witch-ointment +Witch-pins +Wonder-Book +Worcester, Dr. J. E. + +Young Goodman Brown. +Youth of Hawthorne, habits in; + valuable formative results + of + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A STUDY OF HAWTHORNE *** + +This file should be named 8sthw10.txt or 8sthw10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8sthw11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8sthw10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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