"I have by no means an inconvenient multitude of friends; but if
they ever do appear a little too numerous, it is when I am making a
list of those to whom presentation copies are to be sent. Please
send one to General Pierce, Horatio Bridge, R.W. Emerson, W.E.
Channing, Longfellow, Hillard, Sumner, Holmes, Lowell, and Thompson
the artist. You will yourself give one to Whipple, whereby I shall
make a saving. I presume you won't put the portrait into the book.
It appears to me an improper accompaniment to a new work.
Nevertheless, if it be ready, I should be glad to have each of these
presentation copies accompanied by a copy of the engraving put
loosely between the leaves. Good by. I must now trudge two miles to
the village, through rain and mud knee-deep, after that accursed
proof-sheet. The book reads very well in proofs, but I don't believe
it will take like the former one. The preliminary chapter was what
gave 'The Scarlet Letter' its vogue."
The engraving he refers to in this letter was made from a portrait by
Mr. C.G. Thompson, and at that time, 1851, was an admirable likeness. On
the 6th of March he writes:--
"The package, with my five heads, arrived yesterday afternoon, and
we are truly obliged to you for putting so many at our disposal.
They are admirably done. The children recognized their venerable
sire with great delight. My wife complains somewhat of a want of
cheerfulness in the face; and, to say the truth, it does appear to
be with a bedevilled melancholy; but it will do all the better for
the author of 'The Scarlet Letter.' In the expression there is a
singular resemblance (which I do not remember in Thompson's picture)
to a miniature of my father."
His letters to me, during the summer of 1851, were frequent and
sometimes quite long. "The House of the Seven Gables" was warmly
welcomed, both at home and abroad. On the 23d of May he writes:--
"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 (this steel pen makes me write
awfully). ---- ---- 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. He further complains that I speak
disrespectfully of the ----'s in Grandfather's Chair. He writes more
in sorrow than in anger, though there is quite enough of the latter
quality to give piquancy to his epistle. The joke of the matter is,
that I never heard of his grandfather, nor knew that any Pyncheons
had ever lived in Salem, but took the name because it suited the
tone of my book, and was as much my property, for fictitious
purposes, as that of Smith. I have pacified him by a very polite and
gentlemanly letter, and if ever you publish any more of the Seven
Gables, I should like to write a brief preface, expressive of my
anguish for this unintentional wrong, and making the best reparation
possible else these wretched old Pyncheons will have no peace in the
other world, nor in this. Furthermore, there is a Rev. Mr. ----,
resident within four miles of me, and a cousin of Mr. ----, who
states that he likewise is highly indignant. Who would have dreamed
of claimants starting up for such an inheritance as the House of the
Seven Gables!
"I mean, 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; these, I think,
will be enough to make up a volume. As a framework, I shall have a
young college student telling these stories to his cousins and
brothers and sisters, during his vacations, sometimes at the
fireside, sometimes in the woods and dells. Unless I greatly
mistake, these old fictions will work up admirably for the purpose;
and I shall aim at substituting a tone in some degree Gothic or
romantic, or any such tone as may best please myself, instead of the
classic coldness, which is as repellant as the touch of marble.
"I give you these hints of my plan, because you will perhaps think
it advisable to employ Billings to prepare some illustrations. There
is a good scope in the above subjects for fanciful designs.
Bellerophon and the Chimera, for instance: the Chimera a fantastic
monster with three heads, and Bellerophon fighting him, mounted on
Pegasus; Pandora opening the box; Hercules talking with Atlas, an
enormous giant who holds the sky on his shoulders, or sailing across
the sea in an immense bowl; Perseus transforming a king and all his
subjects to stone, by exhibiting the Gorgon's head. No particular
accuracy in costume need be aimed at. My stories will bear out the
artist in any liberties he may be inclined to take. Billings would
do these things well enough, though his characteristics are grace
and delicacy rather than wildness of fancy. The book, if it comes
out of my mind as I see it now, ought to have pretty wide success
amongst young people; and, of course, I shall purge out all the old
heathen wickedness, and put in a moral wherever practicable. For a
title how would this do: 'A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys'; or,
'The Wonder-Book of Old Stories'? I prefer the former. Or 'Myths
Modernized for my Children'; that won't do.
"I need a little change of scene, and meant to have come to Boston
and elsewhere before writing this book; but I cannot leave home at
present."
Throughout the summer Hawthorne was constantly worried by people who
insisted that they, or their families in the present or past
generations, had been deeply wronged in "The House of the Seven Gables."
In a note, received from him on the 5th of June, he says:--
"I have just received a letter from still another claimant of the
Pyncheon estate. I wonder if ever, and how soon, I shall get a just
estimate of how many jackasses there are in this ridiculous world.
My correspondent, by the way, estimates the number of these Pyncheon
jackasses at about twenty; I am doubtless to by remonstrated with by
each individual. After exchanging shots with all of them, I shall
get you to publish the whole correspondence, in a style to match
that of my other works, and I anticipate a great run for the volume.
"P.S. My last correspondent demands that another name be
substituted, instead of that of the family; to which I assent, in
case the publishers can be prevailed on to cancel the stereotype
plates. Of course you will consent! Pray do!"
Praise now poured in upon him from all quarters. Hosts of critics, both
in England and America, gallantly came forward to do him service, and
his fame was assured. On the 15th of July he sends me a jubilant letter
from Lenox, from which I will copy several passages:--
"Mrs. Kemble writes very good accounts from London of the reception
my two romances have met with there. She says they have made a
greater sensation than any book since 'Jane Eyre'; but probably she
is a little or a good deal too emphatic in her representation of the
matter. At any rate, she advises that the sheets of any future book
be sent to Moxon, and such an arrangement made that a copyright may
be secured in England as well as here. Could this be done with the
Wonder-Book? And do you think it would be worth while? I must see
the proof-sheets of this book. It is a cursed bore; for I want to be
done with it from this moment. Can't you arrange it so that two or
three or more sheets may be sent at once, on stated days, and so my
journeys to the village be fewer?
"That review which you sent me is a remarkable production. There is
praise enough to satisfy a greedier author than myself. I set it
aside, as not being able to estimate how far it is deserved. I can
better judge of the censure, much of which is undoubtedly just; and
I shall profit by it if I can. But, after all, there would be no
great use in attempting it. There are weeds enough in my mind, to be
sure, and I might pluck them up by the handful; but in so doing I
should root up the few flowers along with them. It is also to be
considered, that what one man calls weeds another classifies among
the choicest flowers in the garden. But this reviewer is certainly
a man of sense, and sometimes tickles me under the fifth rib. I beg
you to observe, however, that I do not acknowledge his justice in
cutting and slashing among the characters of the two books at the
rate he does; sparing nobody, I think, except Pearl and Phoebe. Yet
I think he is right as to my tendency as respects individual
character.
"I am going to begin to enjoy the summer now, and to read foolish
novels, if I can get any, and smoke cigars, and think of nothing at
all; which is equivalent to thinking of all manner of things."
The composition of the "Tanglewood Tales" gave him pleasant employment,
and all his letters, during the period he was writing them, overflow
with evidences of his felicitous mood. He requests that Billings should
pay especial attention to the drawings, and is anxious that the porch of
Tanglewood should be "well supplied with shrubbery." He seemed greatly
pleased that Mary Russell Mitford had fallen in with his books and had
written to me about them. "Her sketches," he said, "long ago as I read
them, are as sweet in my memory as the scent of new hay." On the 18th of
August he writes:--
"You are going to publish another thousand of the Seven Gables. I
promised those Pyncheons a preface. What if you insert the
following?
"(The author is pained to learn that, in selecting a name for the
fictitious inhabitants of a castle in the air, he has wounded the
feelings of more than one respectable descendant of an old Pyncheon
family. He begs leave to say that he intended no reference to any
individual of the name, now or heretofore extant; and further, that,
at the time of writing his book, he was wholly unaware of the
existence of such a family in New England for two hundred years
back, and that whatever he may have since learned of them is
altogether to their credit.)
"Insert it or not, as you like. I have done with the matter."
I advised him to let the Pyncheons rest as they were, and omit any
addition, either as note or preface, to the romance.
Near the close of 1851 his health seemed unsettled, and he asked me to
look over certain proofs "carefully," for he did not feel well enough
to manage them himself. In one of his notes, written from Lenox at that
time, he says:--
"Please God, I mean to look you in the face towards the end of next
week; at all events, within ten days. I have stayed here too long
and too constantly. To tell you a secret, I am sick to death of
Berkshire, and hate to think of spending another winter here. But I
must. The air and climate do not agree with my health at all; and,
for the first time since I was a boy, I have felt languid and
dispirited during almost my whole residence here. O that Providence
would build me the merest little shanty, and mark me out a rood or
two of garden-ground, near the sea-coast. I thank you for the two
volumes of De Quincey. If it were not for your kindness in supplying
me with books now and then, I should quite forget how to read."
Hawthorne was a hearty devourer of books, and in certain moods of mind
it made very little difference what the volume before him happened to
be. An old play or an old newspaper sometimes gave him wondrous great
content, and he would ponder the sleepy, uninteresting sentences as if
they contained immortal mental aliment. He once told me he found such
delight in old advertisements in the newspapers at the Boston Athenaeum,
that he had passed delicious hours among them. At other times he was
very fastidious, and threw aside book after book until he found the
right one. De Quincey was a special favorite with him, and the Sermons
of Laurence Sterne he once commended to me as the best sermons ever
written. In his library was an early copy of Sir Philip Sidney's
"Arcadia," which had floated down to him from a remote ancestry, and
which he had read so industriously for forty years that it was nearly
worn out of its thick leathern cover. Hearing him say once that the old
English State Trials were enchanting reading, and knowing that he did
not possess a copy of those heavy folios, I picked up a set one day in a
bookshop and sent them to him. He often told me that he spent more
hours over them and got more delectation out of them than tongue could
tell, and he said, if five lives were vouchsafed to him, he could employ
them all in writing stories out of those books. He had sketched, in his
mind, several romances founded on the remarkable trials reported in the
ancient volumes; and one day, I remember, he made my blood tingle by
relating some of the situations he intended, if his life was spared, to
weave into future romances. Sir Walter Scott's novels he continued
almost to worship, and was accustomed to read them aloud in his family.
The novels of G.P.R. James, both the early and the later ones, he
insisted were admirable stories, admirably told, and he had high praise
to bestow on the works of Anthony Trollope. "Have you ever read these
novels?" he wrote to me in a letter from England, some time before
Trollope began to be much known in America. "They precisely suit my
taste; solid and substantial, written on the strength of beef and
through the inspiration of ale, and just as real as if some giant had
hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with
all its inhabitants going about their daily business and not suspecting
that they were made a show of. And these books are as English as a
beefsteak. Have they ever been tried in America? It needs an English
residence to make them thoroughly comprehensible; but still I should
think that the human nature in them would give them success anywhere."
I have often been asked if all his moods were sombre, and if he was
never jolly sometimes like other people. Indeed he was; and although the
humorous side of Hawthorne was not easily or often discoverable, yet
have I seen him marvellously moved to fun, and no man laughed more
heartily in his way over a good story. Wise and witty H----, in whom
wisdom and wit are so ingrained that age only increases his subtile
spirit, and greatly enhances the power of his cheerful temperament,
always had the talismanic faculty of breaking up that thoughtfully sad
face into mirthful waves; and I remember how Hawthorne writhed with
hilarious delight over Professor L----'s account of a butcher who
remarked that "Idees had got afloat in the public mind with respect to
sassingers." I once told him of a young woman who brought in a
manuscript, and said, as she placed it in my hands, "I don't know what
to do with myself sometimes, I'm so filled with _mammoth thoughts_." A
series of convulsive efforts to suppress explosive laughter followed,
which I remember to this day.
He had an inexhaustible store of amusing anecdotes to relate of people
and things he had observed on the road. One day he described to me, in
his inimitable and quietly ludicrous manner, being _watched_, while on a
visit to a distant city, by a friend who called, and thought he needed a
protector, his health being at that time not so good as usual. "He stuck
by me," said Hawthorne, "as if he were afraid to leave me alone; he
stayed past the dinner hour, and when I began to wonder if he never took
meals himself, he departed and set another man to _watch_ me till he
should return. That man _watched_ me so, in his unwearying kindness,
that when I left the house I forgot half my luggage, and left behind,
among other things, a beautiful pair of slippers. They _watched_ me so,
among them, I swear to you I forgot nearly everything I owned."
* * * * *
Hawthorne is still looking at me in his far-seeing way, as if he were
pondering what was next to be said about him. It would not displease
him, I know, if I were to begin my discursive talk to-day by telling a
little incident connected with a famous American poem.
Hawthorne dined one day with Longfellow, and brought with him a friend
from Salem. After dinner the friend said: "I have been trying to
persuade Hawthorne to write a story, based upon a legend of Acadie, and
still current there; a legend of a girl who, in the dispersion of the
Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed her life in waiting
and seeking for him, and only found him dying in a hospital, when both
were old." Longfellow wondered that this legend did not strike the fancy
of Hawthorne, and said to him: "If you have really made up your mind not
to use it for a story, will you give it to me for a poem?" To this
Hawthorne assented, and moreover promised not to treat the subject in
prose till Longfellow had seen what he could do with it in verse. And so
we have "Evangeline" in beautiful hexameters, --a poem that will hold
its place in literature while true affection lasts. Hawthorne rejoiced
in this great success of Longfellow, and loved to count up the editions,
both foreign and American, of this now world-renowned poem.
I have lately met an early friend of Hawthorne's, older than himself,
who knew him intimately all his life long, and I have learned some
additional facts about his youthful days. Soon after he left college he
wrote some stories which he called "Seven Tales of my Native Land." The
motto which he chose for the title-page was "We are Seven," from
Wordsworth. My informant read the tales in manuscript, and says some of
them were very striking, particularly one or two Witch Stories. As soon
as the little book was well prepared for the press he deliberately threw
it into the fire, and sat by to see its destruction.
When about fourteen he wrote out for a member of his family a list of
the books he had at that time been reading. The catalogue was a long
one, but my informant remembers that The Waverley Novels, Rousseau's
Works, and The Newgate Calender were among them. Serious remonstrances
were made by the family touching the perusal of this last work, but he
persisted in going through it to the end. He had an objection in his
boyhood to reading much that was called "true and useful." Of history in
general he was not very fond, but he read Froissart with interest, and
Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. He is remembered to have said at
that time "he cared very little for the history of the world before the
fourteenth century." After he left college he read a great deal of
French literature, especially the works of Voltaire and his
contemporaries. He rarely went into the streets during the daytime,
unless there was to be a gathering of the people for some public
purpose, such as a political meeting, a military muster, or a fire. A
great conflagration attracted him in a peculiar manner, and he is
remembered, while a young man in Salem, to have been often seen looking
on, from some dark corner, while the fire was raging. When General
Jackson, of whom he professed himself a partisan, visited Salem in 1833,
he walked out to the boundary of the town to meet him,--not to speak to
him, but only to look at him. When he came home at night he said he
found only a few men and boys collected, not enough people, without the
assistance he rendered, to welcome the General with a good cheer. It is
said that Susan, in the "Village Uncle," one of the "Twice-Told Tales,"
is not altogether a creation of his fancy. Her father was a fisherman
living in Salem, and Hawthorne was constantly telling the members of his
family how charming she was, and he always spoke of her as his
"mermaid." He said she had a great deal of what the French call
_espièglerie_. There was another young beauty, living at that time in
his native town, quite captivating to him, though in a different style
from the mermaid. But if his head and heart were turned in his youth by
these two nymphs in his native town, there was soon a transfer of his
affections to quite another direction. His new passion was a much more
permanent one, for now there dawned upon him so perfect a creature that
he fell in love irrevocably; all his thoughts and all his delights
centred in her, who suddenly became indeed the mistress of his soul. She
filled the measure of his being, and became a part and parcel of his
life. Who was this mysterious young person that had crossed his
boyhood's path and made him hers forever? Whose daughter was she that
could thus enthrall the ardent young man in Salem, who knew as yet so
little of the world and its sirens? She is described by one who met her
long before Hawthorne made her acquaintance as "the prettiest low-born
lass that ever ran on the greensward," and she must have been a radiant
child of beauty, indeed, that girl! She danced like a fairy, she sang
exquisitely, so that every one who knew her seemed amazed at her perfect
way of doing everything she attempted. Who was it that thus summoned all
this witchery, making such a tumult in young Hawthorne's bosom? She was
"daughter to Leontes and Hermione," king and queen of Sicilia, and her
name was Perdita! It was Shakespeare who introduced Hawthorne to his
first real love, and the lover never forgot his mistress. He was
constant ever, and worshipped her through life. Beauty always captivated
him. Where there was beauty he fancied other good gifts must naturally
be in possession. During his childhood homeliness was always repulsive
to him. When a little boy he is remembered to have said to a woman who
wished to be kind to him, "Take her away! She is ugly and fat, and has a
loud voice."
When quite a young man he applied for a situation under Commodore Wilkes
on the Exploring Expedition, but did not succeed in obtaining an
appointment. He thought this a great misfortune, as he was fond of
travel, and he promised to do all sorts of wonderful things, should he
be allowed to join the voyagers.
One very odd but characteristic notion of his, when a youth, was, that
he should like a competent income which should neither increase nor
diminish, for then, he said, it would not engross too much of his
attention. Surrey's little poem, "The Means to obtain a Happy Life,"
expressed exactly what his idea of happiness was when a lad. When a
school-boy he wrote verses for the newspapers, but he ignored their
existence in after years with a smile of droll disgust. One of his
quatrains lives in the memory of a friend, who repeated it to me
recently:--
"The ocean hath its silent caves,
Deep, quiet, and alone;
Above them there are troubled waves,
Beneath them there are none."
When the Atlantic Cable was first laid, somebody, not knowing the author
of the lines, quoted them to Hawthorne as applicable to the calmness
said to exist in the depths of the ocean. He listened to the verse, and
then laughingly observed, "I know something of the deep sea myself."
In 1836 he went to Boston, I am told, to edit the "American Magazine of
Useful Knowledge," for which he was to be paid a salary of six hundred
dollars a year. The proprietors soon became insolvent, so that he
received nothing, but he kept on just the same as if he had been paid
regularly. The plan of the work proposed by the publishers of the
magazine admitted no fiction into its pages. The magazine was printed on
coarse paper and was illustrated by engravings painful to look at. There
were no contributors except the editor, and he wrote the whole of every
number. Short biographical sketches of eminent men and historical
narratives filled up its pages. I have examined the columns of this
deceased magazine, and read Hawthorne's narrative of Mrs. Dustan's
captivity. Mrs. Dustan was carried off by the Indians from Haverhill,
and Hawthorne does not much commiserate the hardships she endured, but
reserves his sympathy for her husband, who was _not_ carried into
captivity, and suffered nothing from the Indians, but who, he says, was
a tenderhearted man, and took care of the children during Mrs. D.'s
absence from home, and probably knew that his wife would be more than a
match for a whole tribe of savages.
When the Rev. Mr. Cheever was knocked down and flogged in the streets of
Salem and then imprisoned, Hawthorne came out of his retreat and visited
him regularly in jail, showing strong sympathy for the man and great
indignation for those who had maltreated him.
Those early days in Salem,--how interesting the memory of them must be
to the friends who knew and followed the gentle dreamer in his budding
career! When the whisper first came to the timid boy, in that "dismal
chamber in Union Street," that he too possessed the soul of an artist,
there were not many about him to share the divine rapture that must have
filled his proud young heart. Outside of his own little family circle,
doubting and desponding eyes looked upon him, and many a stupid head
wagged in derision as he passed by. But there was always waiting for him
a sweet and honest welcome by the pleasant hearth where his mother and
sisters sat and listened to the beautiful creations of his fresh and
glowing fancy. We can imagine the happy group gathered around the
evening lamp! "Well, my son," says the fond mother, looking up from her
knitting-work, "what have you got for us to-night? It is some time since
you read us a story, and your sisters are as impatient as I am to have a
new one." And then we can hear, or think we hear, the young man begin in
a low and modest tone the story of "Edward Fane's Rosebud," or "The
Seven Vagabonds," or perchance (O tearful, happy evening!) that tender
idyl of "The Gentle Boy!" What a privilege to hear for the first time a
"Twice-Told Tale," before it was even _once_ told to the public! And I
know with what rapture the delighted little audience must have hailed
the advent of every fresh indication that genius, so seldom a visitant
at any fireside, had come down so noiselessly to bless their quiet
hearthstone in the sombre old town. In striking contrast to Hawthorne's
audience nightly convened to listen while he read his charming tales and
essays, I think of poor Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, facing those
hard-eyed critics at the house of Madame Neckar, when as a young man and
entirely unknown he essayed to read his then unpublished story of "Paul
and Virginia." The story was simple and the voice of the poor and
nameless reader trembled. Everybody was unsympathetic and gaped, and at
the end of a quarter of an hour Monsieur de Buffon, who always had a
loud way with him, cried out to Madame Neckar's servant, "Let the horses
be put to my carriage!"
Hawthorne seems never to have known that raw period in authorship which
is common to most growing writers, when the style is "overlanguaged,"
and when it plunges wildly through the "sandy deserts of rhetoric," or
struggles as if it were having a personal difficulty with Ignorance and
his brother Platitude. It was capitally said of Chateaubriand that "he
lived on the summits of syllables," and of another young author that "he
was so dully good, that he made even virtue disreputable." Hawthorne had
no such literary vices to contend with. His looks seemed from the start
to be
"Commercing with the skies,"
and he marching upward to the goal without impediment. I was struck a
few days ago with the untruth, so far as Hawthorne is concerned, of a
passage in the Preface to Endymion. Keats says: "The imagination of a
boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but
there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the
character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition
thick-sighted." Hawthorne's imagination had no middle period of
decadence or doubt, but continued, as it began, in full vigor to the
end.
* * * * *
In 1852 I went to Europe, and while absent had frequent most welcome
letters from the delightful dreamer. He had finished the "Blithedale
Romance" during my wanderings, and I was fortunate enough to arrange for
its publication in London simultaneously with its appearance in Boston.
One of his letters (dated from his new residence in Concord, June 17,
1852) runs thus:--
"You have succeeded admirably in regard to the 'Blithedale Romance,'
and have got £150 more than I expected to receive. It will come in
good time, too; for my drafts have been pretty heavy of late, in
consequence of buying an estate!!! and fitting up my house. What a
truant you are from the Corner! I wish, before leaving London, you
would obtain for me copies of any English editions of my writings
not already in my possession. I have Routledge's edition of 'The
Scarlet Letter,' the 'Mosses,' and 'Twice-Told Tales'; Bohn's
editions of 'The House of the Seven Gables,' the 'Snow-Image' and
the 'Wonder-Book,' and Bogue's edition of 'The Scarlet
Letter';--these are all, and I should be glad of the rest. I meant
to have written another 'Wonder-Book' this summer, but another task
has unexpectedly intervened. General Pierce of New Hampshire, the
Democratic nominee for the Presidency, was a college friend of mine,
as you know, and we have been intimate through life. He wishes me to
write his biography, and I have consented to do so; somewhat
reluctantly, however, for Pierce has now reached that altitude when
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.... I have
written to Barry Cornwall, and shall probably enclose the letter
along with this. I don't more than half believe what you tell me of
my reputation in England, and am only so far credulous on the
strength of the £200, and shall have a somewhat stronger sense of
this latter reality when I finger the cash. Do come home in season
to preside over the publication of the Romance."
He had christened his estate The Wayside, and in a postscript to the
above letter he begs me to consider the name and tell him how I like it.
Another letter, evidently foreshadowing a foreign appointment from the
newly elected President, contains this passage:--
"Do make some inquiries about Portugal; as, for instance, in what
part of the world it lies, and whether it is an empire, a kingdom,
or a republic. Also, and more particularly, the expenses of living
there, and whether the Minister would be likely to be much pestered
with his own countrymen. Also, any other information about foreign
countries would be acceptable to an inquiring mind."
When I returned from abroad I found him getting matters in readiness to
leave the country for a consulship in Liverpool. He seemed happy at the
thought of flitting, but I wondered if he could possibly be as contented
across the water as he was in Concord. I remember walking with him to
the Old Manse, a mile or so distant from The Wayside, his new residence,
and talking over England and his proposed absence of several years. We
strolled round the house, where he spent the first years of his married
life, and he pointed from the outside to the windows, out of which he
had looked and seen supernatural and other visions. We walked up and
down the avenue, the memory of which he has embalmed in the "Mosses,"
and he discoursed most pleasantly of all that had befallen him since he
led a lonely, secluded life in Salem. It was a sleepy, warm afternoon,
and he proposed that we should wander up the banks of the river and lie
down and watch the clouds float above and in the quiet stream. I recall
his lounging, easy air as he tolled me along until we came to a spot
secluded, and ofttimes sacred to his wayward thoughts. He bade me lie
down on the grass and hear the birds sing. As we steeped ourselves in
the delicious idleness, he began to murmur some half-forgotten lines
from Thomson's "Seasons," which he said had been favorites of his from
boyhood. While we lay there, hidden in the grass, we heard approaching
footsteps, and Hawthorne hurriedly whispered, "Duck! or we shall be
interrupted by somebody." The solemnity of his manner, and the thought
of the down-flat position in which we had both placed ourselves to avoid
being seen, threw me into a foolish, semi-hysterical fit of laughter,
and when he nudged me, and again whispered more lugubriously than ever,
"Heaven help me, Mr. ---- is close upon us!" I felt convinced that if
the thing went further, suffocation, in my case at least, must ensue.
He kept me constantly informed, after he went to Liverpool, of how he
was passing his time; and his charming "English Note-Books" reveal the
fact that he was never idle. There were touches, however, in his private
letters which escaped daily record in his journal, and I remember how
delightful it was, after he landed in Europe, to get his frequent
missives. In one of the first he gives me an account of a dinner where
he was obliged to make a speech. He says:--
"I tickled up John Bull's self-conceit (which is very easily done)
with a few sentences of most outrageous flattery, and sat down in a
general puddle of good feeling." In another he says: "I have taken a
house in Rock Park, on the Cheshire side of the Mersey, and am as
snug as a bug in a rug. Next year you must come and see how I live.
Give my regards to everybody, and my love to half a dozen.... I wish
you would call on Mr. Savage, the antiquarian, if you know him, and
ask whether he can inform me what part of England the original
William Hawthorne came from. He came over, I think in 1634.... It
would really be a great obligation if he could answer the above
query. Or, if the fact is not within his own knowledge, he might
perhaps indicate some place where such information might be obtained
here in England. I presume there are records still extant somewhere
of all the passengers by those early ships, with their English
localities annexed to their names. Of all things, I should like to
find a gravestone in one of these old churchyards with my own name
upon it, although, for myself, I should wish to be buried in
America. The graves are too horribly damp here."
The hedgerows of England, the grassy meadows, and the picturesque old
cottages delighted him, and he was never tired of writing to me about
them. While wandering over the country, he was often deeply touched by
meeting among the wild-flowers many of his old New England
favorites,--bluebells, crocuses, primroses, foxglove, and other flowers
which are cultivated in out gardens, and which had long been familiar to
him in America.
I can imagine him, in his quiet, musing way, strolling through the
daisied fields on a Sunday morning and hearing the distant church-bells
chiming to service. His religion was deep and broad, but it was irksome
for him to be fastened in by a pew-door, and I doubt if he often heard
an English sermon. He very rarely described himself as _inside_ a
church, but he liked to wander among the graves in the churchyards and
read the epitaphs on the moss-grown slabs. He liked better to meet and
have a talk with the _sexton_ than with the _rector_.
He was constantly demanding longer letters from home; and nothing gave
him more pleasure than, monthly news from "The Saturday Club," and
detailed accounts of what was going forward in literature. One of his
letters dated in January, 1854, starts off thus:--
"I wish your epistolary propensities were stronger than they are.
All your letters to me since I left America might be squeezed into
one.... I send Ticknor a big cheese, which I long ago promised him,
and my advice is, that he keep it in the shop, and daily, between
eleven and one o'clock, distribute slices of it to your half-starved
authors, together with crackers and something to drink.... I thank
you for the books you send me, and more especially for Mrs. Mowatt's
Autobiography, which seems to me an admirable book. Of all things I
delight in autobiographies; and I hardly ever read one that
interested me so much. She must be a remarkable woman, and I cannot
but lament my ill fortune in never having seen her on the stage or
elsewhere.... I count strongly upon your promise to be with us in
May. Can't you bring Whipple with you?"
One of his favorite resorts in Liverpool was the boarding-house of good
Mrs. Blodgett, in Duke Street, a house where many Americans have found
delectable quarters, after being tossed on the stormy Atlantic. "I have
never known a better woman," Hawthorne used to say, "and her motherly
kindness to me and mine I can never forget." Hundreds of American
travellers will bear witness to the excellence of that beautiful old
lady, who presided with such dignity and sweetness over her hospitable
mansion.
On the 13th of April, 1854, Hawthorne wrote to me this characteristic
letter from the consular office in Liverpool:--
"I am very glad that the 'Mosses' have come into the hands of our
firm; and I return the copy sent me, after a careful revision. When
I wrote those dreamy sketches, I little thought that I should ever
preface an edition for the press amidst the bustling life of a
Liverpool consulate. Upon my honor, I am not quite sure that I
entirely comprehend my own meaning, in some of these blasted
allegories; but I remember that I always had a meaning, or at least
thought I had. I am a good deal changed since those times; and, to
tell you the truth, my past self is not very much to my taste, as I
see myself in this book. Yet certainly there is more in it than the
public generally gave me credit for at the time it was written.
"But I don't think myself worthy of very much more credit than I
got. It has been a very disagreeable task to read the book. The
story of 'Rappacini's Daughter' was published in the Democratic
Review, about the year 1844; and it was prefaced by some remarks on
the celebrated French author (a certain M. de l'Aubépine), from
whose works it was translated. I left out this preface when the
story was republished; but I wish you would turn to it in the
Democratic, and see whether it is worth while to insert it in the
new edition. I leave it altogether to your judgment.
"A young poet named ---- has called on me, and has sent me some
copies of his works to be transmitted to America. It seems to me
there is good in him; and he is recognized by Tennyson, by Carlyle,
by Kingsley, and others of the best people here. He writes me that
this edition of his poems is nearly exhausted, and that Routledge is
going to publish another enlarged and in better style.
"Perhaps it might be well for you to take him up in America. At all
events, try to bring him into notice; and some day or other you may
be glad to have helped a famous poet in his obscurity. The poor
fellow has left a good post in the customs to cultivate literature
in London!
"We shall begin to look for you now by every steamer from Boston.
You must make up your mind to spend a good while with us before
going to see your London friends.
"Did you read the article on your friend De Quincey in the last
Westminster? It was written by Mr. ---- of this city, who was in
America a year or two ago. The article is pretty well, but does
nothing like adequate justice to De Quincey; and in fact no
Englishman cares a pin for him. We are ten times as good readers and
critics as they.
"Is not Whipple coming here soon?"
Hawthorne's first visit to London afforded him great pleasure, but he
kept out of the way of literary people as much as possible. He
introduced himself to nobody, except Mr. ----, whose assistance he
needed, in order to be identified at the bank. He wrote to me from 24
George Street, Hanover Square, and told me he delighted in London, and
wished he could spend a year there. He enjoyed floating about, in a sort
of unknown way, among the rotund and rubicund figures made jolly with
ale and port-wine. He was greatly amused at being told (his informants
meaning to be complimentary) "that he would never be taken for anything
but an Englishman." He called Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade,"
just printed at that time, "a broken-kneed gallop of a poem." He
writes:--
"John Bull is in high spirits just now at the taking of Sebastopol.
What an absurd personage John is! I find that my liking for him
grows stronger the more I see of him, but that my admiration and
respect have constantly decreased."
One of his most intimate friends (a man unlike that individual of whom
it was said that he was the friend of everybody that did not need a
friend) was Francis Bennoch, a merchant of Wood Street, Cheapside,
London, the gentleman to whom Mrs. Hawthorne dedicated the English
Note-Books. Hawthorne's letters abounded in warm expressions of
affection for the man whose noble hospitality and deep interest made his
residence in England full of happiness. Bennoch was indeed like a
brother to him, sympathizing warmly in all his literary projects, and
giving him the benefit of his excellent judgment while he was sojourning
among strangers. Bennoch's record may be found in Tom Taylor's admirable
life of poor Haydon, the artist. All literary and artistic people who
have had the good fortune to enjoy his friendship have loved him. I
happen to know of his bountiful kindness to Miss Mitford and Hawthorne
and poor old Jerdan, for these hospitalities happened in my time; but he
began to befriend all who needed friendship long before I knew him. His
name ought never to be omitted from the literary annals of England; nor
that of his wife either, for she has always made her delightful fireside
warm and comforting to her husband's friends.
Many and many a happy time Bennoch, Hawthorne, and myself have had
together on British soil. I remember we went once to dine at a great
house in the country, years ago, where it was understood there would be
no dinner speeches. The banquet was in honor of some society,--I have
quite forgotten what,--but it was a jocose and not a serious club. The
gentleman who gave it, Sir ----, was a most kind and genial person, and
gathered about him on this occasion some of the brightest and best from
London. All the way down in the train Hawthorne was rejoicing that this
was to be a dinner without speech-making; "for," said he, "nothing would
tempt me to go if toasts and such confounded deviltry were to be the
order of the day." So we rattled along, without a fear of any impending
cloud of oratory. The entertainment was a most exquisite one, about
twenty gentlemen sitting down at the beautifully ornamented table.
Hawthorne was in uncommonly good spirits, and, having the seat of honor
at the right of his host, was pretty keenly scrutinized by his British
brethren of the quill. He had, of course, banished all thought of
speech-making, and his knees never smote together once, as he told me
afterwards. But it became evident to my mind that Hawthorne's health was
to be proposed with all the honors. I glanced at him across the table,
and saw that he was unsuspicious of any movement against his quiet
serenity. Suddenly and without warning our host rapped the mahogany, and
began a set speech of welcome to the "distinguished American romancer."
It was a very honest and a very hearty speech, but I dared not look at
Hawthorne. I expected every moment to see him glide out of the room, or
sink down out of sight from his chair. The tortures I suffered on
Hawthorne's account, on that occasion, I will not attempt to describe
now. I knew nothing would have induced the shy man of letters to go down
to Brighton, if he had known he was to be spoken at in that manner. I
imagined his face a deep crimson, and his hands trembling with nervous
horror; but judge of my surprise, when he rose to reply with so calm a
voice and so composed a manner, that, in all my experience of
dinner-speaking, I never witnessed such a case of apparent ease.
(Easy-Chair C ---- himself, one of the best makers of after-dinner or
any other speeches of our day, according to Charles Dickens,--no
inadequate judge, all will allow,--never surpassed in eloquent effect
this speech by Hawthorne.) There was no hesitation, no sign of lack of
preparation, but he went on for about ten minutes in such a masterly
manner, that I declare it was one of the most successful efforts of the
kind ever made. Everybody was delighted, and, when he sat down, a wild
and unanimous shout of applause rattled the glasses on the table. The
meaning of his singular composure on that occasion I could never get him
satisfactorily to explain, and the only remark I ever heard him make, in
any way connected with this marvellous exhibition of coolness, was
simply, "What a confounded fool I was to go down to that speech-making
dinner!"
During all those long years, while Hawthorne was absent in Europe, he
was anything but an idle man. On the contrary, he was an eminently busy
one, in the best sense of that term; and if his life had been prolonged,
the public would have been a rich gainer for his residence abroad. His
brain teemed with romances, and once I remember he told me he had no
less than five stories, well thought out, any one of which he could
finish and publish whenever he chose to. There was one subject for a
work of imagination that seems to have haunted him for years, and he has
mentioned it twice in his journal. This was the subsequent life of the
young man whom Jesus, looking on, "loved," and whom he bade to sell all
that he had and give to the poor, and take up his cross and follow him.
"Something very deep and beautiful might be made out of this," Hawthorne
said, "for the young man went away sorrowful, and is not recorded to
have done what he was bidden to do."
One of the most difficult matters he had to manage while in England was
the publication of Miss Bacon's singular book on Shakespeare. The poor
lady, after he had agreed to see the work through the press, broke off
all correspondence with him in a storm of wrath, accusing him of
pusillanimity in not avowing full faith in her theory; so that, as he
told me, so far as her good-will was concerned, he had not gained much
by taking the responsibility of her book upon his shoulders. It was a
heavy weight for him to bear in more senses than one, for he paid out of
his own pocket the expenses of publication.
I find in his letters constant references to the kindness with which he
was treated in London. He spoke of Mrs. S.C. Hall as "one of the best
and warmest-hearted women in the world." Leigh Hunt, in his way, pleased
and satisfied him more than almost any man he had seen in England. "As
for other literary men," he says in one of his letters, "I doubt whether
London can muster so good a dinner-party as that which assembles every
month at the marble palace in School Street."
All sorts of adventures befell him during his stay in Europe, even to
that of having his house robbed, and his causing the thieves to be tried
and sentenced to transportation. In the summer-time he travelled about
the country in England and pitched his tent wherever fancy prompted. One
autumn afternoon in September he writes to me from Leamington:--
"I received your letter only this morning, at this cleanest and
prettiest of English towns, where we are going to spend a week or
two before taking our departure for Paris. We are acquainted with
Leamington already, having resided here two summers ago; and the
country round about is unadulterated England, rich in old castles,
manor-houses, churches, and thatched cottages, and as green as
Paradise itself. I only wish I had a house here, and that you could
come and be my guest in it; but I am a poor wayside vagabond, and
only find shelter for a night or so, and then trudge onward again.
My wife and children and myself are familiar with all kinds of
lodgement and modes of living, but we have forgotten what home
is,--at least the children have, poor things! I doubt whether they
will ever feel inclined to live long in one place. The worst of it
is, I have outgrown my house in Concord, and feel no inclination to
return to it.
"We spent seven weeks in Manchester, and went most diligently to the
Art Exhibition; and I really begin to be sensible of the rudiments
of a taste in pictures."
It was during one of his rambles with Alexander Ireland through the
Manchester Exhibition rooms that Hawthorne saw Tennyson wandering about.
I have always thought it unfortunate that these two men of genius could
not have been introduced on that occasion. Hawthorne was too shy to seek
an introduction, and Tennyson was not aware that the American author was
present. Hawthorne records in his journal that he gazed at Tennyson with
all his eyes, "and rejoiced more in him than in all the other wonders of
the Exhibition." When I afterwards told Tennyson that the author whose
"Twice-Told Tales" he happened to be then reading at Farringford had met
him at Manchester, but did not make himself known, the Laureate said in
his frank and hearty manner: "Why didn't he come up and let me shake
hands with him? I am sure I should have been glad to meet a man like
Hawthorne anywhere."
At the close of 1857 Hawthorne writes to me that he hears nothing of the
appointment of his successor in the consulate, since he had sent in his
resignation. "Somebody may turn up any day," he says, "with a new
commission in his pocket." He was meanwhile getting ready for Italy, and
he writes, "I expect shortly to be released from durance."