Hawthorne has himself drawn the picture of the Old Manse in Concord. He
has given to it that quiet richness of coloring which ideally belongs
to an old country mansion. It seemed so fitting a residence for one
who loves to explore the twilight of antiquity--and the gloomier
the better--that the visitor, among the felicities of whose life was
included the freedom of the Manse, could not but fancy that our author's
eyes first saw the daylight enchanted by the slumberous orchard behind
the house, or tranquillized into twilight by the spacious avenue in
front. The character of his imagination, and the golden gloom of its
blossoming, completely harmonize with the rusty, gable-roofed old house
upon the river-side, and the reader of his books would be sure that his
boyhood and youth knew no other friends than the dreaming river and the
melancholy meadows and drooping foliage of its vicinity.
Since the reader, however, would greatly mistake if he fancied this,
in good sooth, the ancestral halls of the Hawthornes--the genuine
Hawthorne-den--he will be glad to save the credit of his fancy by
learning that it was here our author's bridal tour--which commenced in
Boston, then three hours away--ended, and his married life began. Here,
also, his first child was born, and here those sad and silver mosses
accumulated upon his fancy, from which he heaped so soft a bed for our
dreaming. "Between two tall gate-posts of rough hewn stone (the gate
itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch) we beheld
the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue
of black-ash trees." It was a pleasant spring day in the year 1843,
and as they entered the house nosegays of fresh flowers, arranged by
friendly hands, welcomed them to Concord and summer.
The dark-haired man, who led his wife along the avenue that afternoon,
had been recently an officer of the customs in Boston, before which he
had led a solitary life in Salem. Graduated with Longfellow at Bowdoin
College, in Maine, he had lived a hermit in respectable Salem, an
absolute recluse even from his own family, walking out by night and
writing wild tales by day, most of which were burnt in his bachelor
fire, and some of which, in newspapers, magazines, and annuals, led a
wandering, uncertain, and mostly unnoticed life.
Those tales among this class which were attainable he collected into a
small volume, and apprizing the world that they were "twice-told", sent
them forth anew to make their own way, in the year 1841. But he piped to
the world, and it did not sing. He wept to it, and it did not mourn. The
book, however, as all good books do, made its way into various hearts.
Yet the few penetrant minds which recognized a remarkable power and a
method of strange fascination in the stories did not make the public nor
influence the public mind. "I was," he says in the last edition of these
tales, "the most unknown author in America". Full of glancing wit, of
tender satire, of exquisite natural description, of subtle and strange
analysis of human life, darkly passionate and weird, they yet floated
unhailed barks upon the sea of publicity--unhailed, but laden and
gleaming at every crevice with the true treasure of Cathay. Bancroft,
then Collector in Boston, prompt to recognize and to honor talent, made
the dreaming story-teller a surveyor in the custom-house, thus opening
to him a new range of experience. From the society of phantoms he
stepped upon Long Wharf and plumply confronted Captain Cuttle and Dirk
Hatteraick. It was no less romance to our author. There is no greater
error of those who are called "practical men" than the supposition that
life is, or can be, other than a dream to a dreamer. Shut him up in a
counting-room, barricade him with bales of merchandise, and limit his
library to the ledger and cash-book and his prospect to the neighboring
signs; talk "Bills receivable" and "Sundries Dr. to cash" to him
forever, and you are only a very amusing or very annoying phantom to
him. The merchant-prince might as well hope to make himself a poet, as
the poet a practical or practicable man. He has laws to obey not at
all the less stringent because men of a different temperament refuse
to acknowledge them, and he is held to a loyalty quite beyond their
conception.
So Captain Cuttle and Dirk Hatteraick were as pleasant figures to our
author in the picture of life as any others. He went daily upon the
vessels, looked and listened and learned, was a favorite of the sailors
as such men always are, did his work faithfully, and, having dreamed his
dream upon Long Wharf, was married and slipped up to the Old Manse and
a new chapter in the romance. It opened in "the most delightful little
nook of a study that ever offered its snug seclusion to a scholar". Of
the three years in the Old Manse the prelude to the _Mosses_ is the
most perfect history, and of the quality of those years the _Mosses_
themselves are sufficient proof. They were mostly written in the little
study, and originally published in the _Democratic Review_, then edited
by Hawthorne's friend O'Sullivan.
To the inhabitants of Concord, however, our author was as much a phantom
and a fable as the old pastor of the parish, dead half a century before,
and whose faded portrait in the attic was gradually rejoining its
original in native dust. The gate, fallen from its hinges in a remote
antiquity, was never rehung. "The wheel-track leading to the door"
remained still overgrown with grass. No bold villager ever invaded the
sleep of "the glimmering shadows" in the avenue. At evening no lights
gleamed from the windows. Scarce once in many months did the single old
knobby-faced coachman at the railroad bring a fare to "Mr. Hawthorne's".
"_Is_ there anybody in the old house?" sobbed the old ladies in despair,
imbibing tea of a livid green. That knocker, which everybody had enjoyed
the right of lifting to summon the good old pastor, no temerity now
dared to touch. Heavens! what if the figure in the mouldy portrait
should peer, in answer, over the eaves, and shake solemnly its decaying
surplice! Nay, what if the mysterious man himself should answer the
summons and come to the door! It is easy to summon spirits--but if they
come? Collective Concord, moving in the river meadows, embraced the
better part of valor and left the knocker untouched. A cloud of romance
suddenly fell out of the heaven of fancy and enveloped the Old Manse:
"In among the bearded barley
The reaper reaping late and early"
did not glance more wistfully towards the island of Shalott and its
mysterious lady than the reapers of Concord rye looked at the Old Manse
and wondered over its inmate.
Sometimes in the forenoon a darkly clad figure was seen in the little
garden-plot putting in corn or melon seed, and gravely hoeing. It was
a brief apparition. The farmer passing towards town and seeing the
solitary cultivator, lost his faith in the fact and believed he had
dreamed when, upon returning, he saw no sign of life, except, possibly,
upon some Monday, the ghostly skirt of a shirt flapping spectrally in
the distant orchard. Day dawned and darkened over the lonely house.
Summer with "buds and bird-voices" came singing in from the South, and
clad the old ash-trees in deeper green, the Old Manse in profounder
mystery. Gorgeous autumn came to visit the story-teller in his little
western study, and, departing, wept rainbows among his trees. Winter
impatiently swept down the hill opposite, rifling the trees of each
last clinging bit of summer, as if thrusting aside opposing barriers and
determined to search the mystery. But his white robes floated around
the Old Manse, ghostly as the decaying surplice of the old pastor's
portrait, and in the snowy seclusion of winter the mystery was as
mysterious as ever.
Occasionally Emerson or Ellery Channing or Henry Thoreau--some poet, as
once Whittier, journeying to the Merrimac, or an old Brook-Farmer who
remembered Miles Coverdale with Arcadian sympathy--went down the avenue
and disappeared in the house. Sometimes a close observer, had he been
ambushed among the long grasses of the orchard, might have seen the host
and one of his guests emerging at the back door and, sauntering to the
river-side, step into the boat, and float off until they faded in the
shadow. The spectacle would not have lessened the romance. If it were
afternoon--one of the spectrally sunny afternoons which often bewitch
that region--he would be only the more convinced that there was
something inexplicable in the whole matter of this man whom nobody knew,
who was never once seen at town-meeting, and concerning whom it was
whispered that he did not constantly attend church all day, although he
occupied the reverend parsonage of the village and had unmeasured acres
of manuscript sermons in his attic, besides the nearly extinct portrait
of an utterly extinct clergyman. Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk Lewis were
nothing to this, and the awe-stricken observer, if he could creep safely
out of the long grass, did not fail to do so quietly, fortifying his
courage by remembering stories of the genial humanity of the last old
pastor who inhabited the Manse, and who for fifty years was the bland
and beneficent Pope of Concord. A genial, gracious old man, whose memory
is yet sweet in the village, and who, wedded to the grave traditions of
New England theology, believed of his young relative Waldo Emerson, as
Miss Flite, touching her forehead, said of her landlord, that he was
"_m_, quite _m_", but was proud to love in him the hereditary integrity
of noble ancestors.
This old gentleman--an eminent figure in the history of the Manse and in
all reminiscences of Concord--partook sufficiently of mundane weaknesses
to betray his mortality. Hawthorne describes him watching the battle
of Concord from his study window. But when the uncertainty of that
dark moment had so happily resulted, and the first battle-ground of the
Revolution had become a spot of hallowed and patriotic consideration,
it was a pardonable pride in the good old man to order his servant,
whenever there was company, to assist him in reaping the glory due
to the owner of a spot so sacred. Accordingly, when some reverend or
distinguished guest sat with the pastor in his little parlor, or, of
a summer evening, at the hospitable door under the trees, Jeremiah or
Nicodemus, the cow-boy, would deferentially approach and inquire,
"Into what pasture shall I turn the cow tonight, sir?"
And the old gentleman would audibly reply:
"Into the battle-field, Nicodemus, into the battle-field."
Then naturally followed wonder, inquiry, a walk in the twilight to the
river-bank, the old gentleman's story, the corresponding respect of the
listening visitor, and the consequent quiet complacency and harmless
satisfaction in the clergyman's bosom. That throb of pride was the
one drop of peculiar advantage which the pastor distilled from the
Revolution. He could not but fancy that he had a hand in so famous
a deed accomplished upon land now his own, and demeaned himself
accordingly with continental dignity.
The pulpit, however, was his especial sphere. There he reigned supreme;
there he exhorted, rebuked, and advised, as in the days of Mather. There
he inspired that profound reverence of which he was so proud, and which
induced the matrons of the village, when he was coming to make a visit,
to bedizen the children in their Sunday suits, to parade the best
teapot, and to offer the most capacious chair. In the pulpit he
delivered everything with the pompous cadence of the elder New England
clergy, and a sly joke is told at the expense of his even temper, that
on one occasion, when loftily reading the hymn, he encountered a blot
upon the page quite obliterating the word; but without losing the
cadence, although in a very vindictive tone at the truant word, or the
culprit who erased it, he finished the reading as follows:
"He sits upon His throne above,
Attending angels bless,
While Justice, Mercy, Truth--and another word
which is blotted out--
Compose His princely dress."
We linger around the Old Manse and its occupants as fondly as Hawthorne,
but no more fondly than all who have been once within the influence of
its spell. There glimmer in my memory a few hazy days, of a tranquil and
half-pensive character, which I am conscious were passed in and around
the house, and their pensiveness I know to be only that touch of
twilight which inhered in the house and all its associations. Beside the
few chance visitors I have named there were city friends occasionally,
figures quite unknown to the village, who came preceded by the
steam-shriek of the locomotive, were dropped at the gate-posts, and were
seen no more. The owner was as much a vague name to me as to any one.
During Hawthorne's first year's residence in Concord 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
bright eyes 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 quietly there 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 that 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."
Thus he remained in my memory, a shadow, a phantom, until more than a
year afterwards. Then I came to live in Concord. Every day I passed his
house, but when the villagers, thinking that perhaps I had some clew to
the mystery, said, "Do you know this Mr. Hawthorne?" I said "No," and
trusted to time.
Time justified my confidence, and one day I, too, went down the avenue
and disappeared in the house. I mounted those mysterious stairs to that
apocryphal study. I saw "the cheerful coat of paint, and golden-tinted
paper-hangings, lighting up the small apartment; while the shadow of a
willow-tree, that swept against the overhanging eaves, attempered the
cheery western sunshine." I looked from the little northern window
whence the old pastor watched the battle, and in the small dining-room
beneath it, upon the first floor, there were
"Dainty chicken, snow-white bread,"
and the golden juices of Italian vineyards, which still feast insatiable
memory.
Our author occupied the Old Manse for three years. During that time he
was not seen, probably, by more than a dozen of the villagers. His walks
could easily avoid the town, and upon the river he was always sure of
solitude. It was his favorite habit to bathe every evening in the river,
after nightfall, and in that part of it over which the old bridge
stood, at which the battle was fought. Sometimes, but rarely, his
boat accompanied another up the stream, and I recall the silent and
preternatural vigor with which, on one occasion, he wielded his paddle
to counteract the bad rowing of a friend who conscientiously considered
it his duty to do something and not let Hawthorne work alone; but who,
with every stroke, neutralized all Hawthorne's efforts. I suppose he
would have struggled until he fell senseless, rather than ask his
friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand
without talking to him, it is quite useless to talk, because it is
immaterial whether such a man understands or not. 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 had 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. It was a Barmecide feast of discourse, from which a
greater satisfaction resulted than from an actual banquet.
When a formal attempt was made to desert this style of conversation, the
result was ludicrous. Once Emerson and Thoreau arrived to pay a call.
They were shown into the little parlor upon the avenue, and Hawthorne
presently entered. Each of the guests sat upright in his chair like a
Roman senator. "To them" Hawthorne, like a Dacian king. The call went
on, but in a most melancholy manner. The host sat perfectly still, or
occasionally propounded a question which Thoreau answered accurately,
and there the thread broke short off. Emerson delivered sentences that
only needed the setting of an essay to charm the world; but the whole
visit was a vague ghost of the Monday-evening club at Mr. Emerson's--it
was a great failure. Had they all been lying idly upon the river brink,
or strolling in Thoreau's blackberry pastures, the result would have
been utterly different. But imprisoned in the proprieties of a parlor,
each a wild man in his way, with a necessity of talking inherent in the
nature of the occasion, there was only a waste of treasure. This was the
only "call" in which I ever knew Hawthorne to be involved.
In Mr. Emerson's house, I said, it seemed always morning. But
Hawthorne's black-ash trees and scraggy apple-boughs shaded
"a land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
I do not doubt that the lotus grew along the grassy marge of the Concord
behind his house, and it was served, subtly concealed, to all his
guests. The house, its inmates, and its life lay, dream-like, upon the
edge of the little village. You fancied that they all came together
and belonged together, and were glad that at length some idol of your
imagination, some poet whose spell had held you and would hold you
forever, was housed as such a poet should be.
During the lapse of the three years since the bridal tour of twenty
miles ended at the "two tall gate-posts of rough-hewn stone", a little
wicker wagon had appeared at intervals upon the avenue, and a placid
babe, whose eyes the soft Concord day had touched with the blue of its
beauty, lay looking tranquilly up at the grave old trees, which sighed
lofty lullabies over her sleep. The tranquillity of the golden-haired
Una was the living and breathing type of the dreamy life of the Old
Manse. Perhaps, that being attained, it was as well to go. Perhaps our
author was not surprised nor displeased when the hints came, "growing
more and more distinct, that the owner of the old house was pining for
his native air". One afternoon I entered the study, and learned from its
occupant that the last story he should ever write there was written. The
son of the old pastor yearned for his homestead. The light of another
summer would seek its poet in the Old Manse, but in vain.
While Hawthorne had been quietly writing in the "most delightful little
nook of a study", Mr. Polk had been elected President, and Mr. Bancroft,
in the cabinet, did not forget his old friend, the surveyor in the
custom-house. There came suggestions and offers of various attractions.
Still loving New England, would he tarry there, or, as inspector of
woods and forests in some far-away island of the southern sea, some
hazy strip of distance seen from Florida, would he taste the tropics?
He meditated all the chances, without immediately deciding. Gathering up
his household gods, he passed out of the Old Manse as its heir entered,
and before the end of summer was domesticated in the custom-house of his
native town of Salem. This was in the year 1846. Upon leaving the
Old Manse he published the _Mosses_, announcing that it was the
last collection of tales he should put forth. Those who knew him and
recognized his value to our literature trembled lest this was the last
word from one who spoke only pearls and rubies. It was a foolish fear.
The sun must shine, the sea must roll, the bird must sing, and the
poet write. During his life in Salem, of which the introduction to _The
Scarlet Letter_ describes the official aspect, he wrote that romance.
It is inspired by the spirit of the place. It presents more vividly than
any history the gloomy picturesqueness of early New England life. There
is no strain in our literature so characteristic or more real than that
which Hawthorne had successfully attempted in several of his earlier
sketches, and of which _The Scarlet Letter_ is the great triumph. It
became immediately popular, and directly placed the writer of stories
for a small circle among the world's masters of romance.
Times meanwhile changed, and presidents with them. General Taylor was
elected, and the Salem collector retired. It is one of the romantic
points of Hawthorne's quiet life that its changes have been so
frequently determined by political events, which, more than all others,
are the most entirely foreign to his tastes and habits. He retired
to the hills of Berkshire, the eye of the world now regarding his
movements. There he lived a year or two in a little red cottage upon the
"Stockbridge Bowl", as a small lake near that town is called. In this
retreat he wrote _The House of the Seven Gables_, which more deeply
confirmed the literary position already acquired for him by the first
romance. The scene is laid in Salem, as if he could not escape a strange
fascination in the witch-haunted town of our early history. It is the
same black canvas upon which plays the rainbow-flash of his fancy,
never, in its brightest moment, more than illuminating the gloom. This
marks all his writings. They have a terrible beauty, like the siren, and
their fascination is as sure.
After six years of absence Hawthorne returned to Concord, where he
purchased a small house formerly occupied by Orphic Alcott. When that
philosopher came into possession it was a miserable little house of
two peaked gables. But the genius which recreated itself in devising
graceful summer-houses, like that for Mr. Emerson, already noticed, soon
smoothed the new residence into some kind of comeliness. It was an old
house when Mr. Alcott entered it, but his tasteful finger touched it
with picturesque grace.
Not like a tired old drudge of a house, rusting into unhonored decay,
but with a modest freshness that does not belie the innate sobriety of
a venerable New England farm-house, the present residence of our author
stands, withdrawn a few yards from the high-road to Boston, along which
marched the British soldiers to Concord bridge. It lies at the foot of a
wooded hill, a neat house of a "rusty olive hue", with a porch in
front, and a central peak, and a piazza at each end. The genius for
summer-houses has had full play upon the hill behind. Here, upon the
homely steppes of Concord, is a strain of Persia. Mr. Alcott built
terraces and arbors and pavilions of boughs and rough stems of trees,
revealing--somewhat inadequately, perhaps--the hanging gardens of
delight that adorn the Babylon of his orphic imagination. The hill-side
is no unapt emblem of his intellectual habit, which garnishes the arid
commonplaces of life with a cold poetic aurora, forgetting that it is
the inexorable law of light to deform as well as adorn. Treating life as
a grand epic poem, the philosophic Alcott forgets that Homer must nod
or we should all fall asleep. The world would not be very beautiful nor
interesting if it were all one huge summit of Mont Blanc.
Unhappily, the terraced hill-side, like the summer-house upon Mr.
Emerson's lawn, "lacks technical arrangement", and the wild winds play
with these architectural toys of fancy, like lions with humming-birds.
They are gradually falling, shattered, and disappearing. Fine
locust-trees shade them and ornament the hill with perennial beauty.
The hanging gardens of Semiramis were not more fragrant than Hawthorne's
hill-side during the June blossoming of the locusts. A few young elms,
some white-pines and young oaks, complete the catalogue of trees. A
light breeze constantly fans the brow of the hill, making harps of the
tree-tops and singing to our author, who, "with a book in my hand, or
an unwritten book in my thoughts", lies stretched beneath them in the
shade.
From the height of the hill the eye courses, unrestrained, over the
solitary landscape of Concord, broad and still, broken only by the
slight wooded undulations of insignificant hillocks. The river is not
visible, nor any gleam of lake. Walden Pond is just behind the wood in
front, and not far away over the meadows sluggishly steals the river. It
is the most quiet of prospects. Eight acres of good land lie in front of
the house, across the road, and in the rear the estate extends a little
distance over the brow of the hill.
This latter is not good garden-ground, but it yields that other crop
which the poet "gathers in a song". Perhaps the world will forgive
our author that he is not a prize farmer, and makes but an indifferent
figure at the annual cattle-show. We have seen that he is more nomadic
than agricultural. He has wandered from spot to spot, pitching a
temporary tent, then striking it for "fresh fields and pastures new".
It is natural, therefore, that he should call his house "The Wayside"--a
bench upon the road where he sits for a while before passing on. If
the wayfarer finds him upon that bench he shall have rare pleasure in
sitting with him, yet shudder while he stays. For the pictures of our
poet have more than the shadows of Rembrandt. If you listen to his
story, the lonely pastures and dull towns of our dear old homely New
England shall become suddenly as radiant with grace and terrible with
tragedy as any country and any time. The waning afternoon in Concord,
in which the blue-frocked farmers are reaping and hoeing, shall set
in pensive glory. The woods will forever after be haunted with strange
forms. You will hear whispers and music "i' the air". In the softest
morning you will suspect sadness; in the most fervent noon a nameless
terror. It is because the imagination of our author treads the almost
imperceptible line between the natural and the supernatural. We are all
conscious of striking it sometimes. But we avoid it. We recoil and hurry
away, nor dare to glance over our shoulders lest we should see phantoms.
What are these tales of supernatural appearances, as well authenticated
as any news of the day--and what is the sphere which they imply? What is
the more subtle intellectual apprehension of fate and its influence
upon imagination and life? Whatever it is, it is the mystery of the
fascination of these tales. They converse with that dreadful realm as
with our real world. The light of our sun is poured by genius upon the
phantoms we did not dare to contemplate, and lo! they are ourselves,
unmasked, and playing our many parts. An unutterable sadness seizes the
reader as the inevitable black thread appears. For here genius assures
us what we trembled to suspect, but could not avoid suspecting, that the
black thread is inwoven with all forms of life, with all development of
character.
It is for this peculiarity, which harmonizes so well with ancient
places, whose pensive silence seems the trance of memory musing over the
young and lovely life that illuminated its lost years--that Hawthorne is
so intimately associated with the Old Manse. Yet that was but the tent
of a night for him. Already, with the _Blithedale Romance_, which
is dated from Concord, a new interest begins to cluster around "The
Wayside".
I know not how I can more fitly conclude these reminiscences of Concord
and Hawthorne, whose own stories have always a saddening close, than by
relating an occurrence which blighted to many hearts the beauty of
the quiet Concord river, and seemed not inconsistent with its lonely
landscape. It has the further fitness of typifying the operation of our
author's imagination: a tranquil stream, clear and bright with sunny
gleams, crowned with lilies and graceful with swaying grass, yet doing
terrible deeds inexorably, and therefore forever after of a shadowed
beauty.
Martha was the daughter of a plain Concord farmer, a girl of delicate
and shy temperament, who excelled so much in study that she was sent
to a fine academy in a neighboring town, and won all the honors of
the course. She met at the school, and in the society of the place,
a refinement and cultivation, a social gayety and grace, which were
entirely unknown in the hard life she had led at home, and which by
their very novelty, as well as because they harmonized with her own
nature and dreams, were doubly beautiful and fascinating. She enjoyed
this life to the full, while her timidity kept her only a spectator;
and she ornamented it with a fresher grace, suggestive of the woods and
fields, when she ventured to engage in the airy game. It was a sphere
for her capacities and talents. She shone in it, and the consciousness
of a true position and general appreciation gave her the full use of
all her powers. She admired and was admired. She was surrounded by
gratifications of taste, by the stimulants and rewards of ambition. The
world was happy, and she was worthy to live in it. But at times a cloud
suddenly dashed athwart the sun--a shadow stole, dark and chill, to the
very edge of the charmed circle in which she stood. She knew well what
it was and what it foretold, but she would not pause nor heed. The sun
shone again; the future smiled; youth, beauty, and all gentle hopes and
thoughts bathed the moment in lambent light.
But school-days ended at last, and with the receding town in which they
had been passed the bright days of life disappeared, and forever. It
is probable that the girl's fancy had been fed, perhaps indiscreetly
pampered, by her experience there. But it was no fairy-land. It was an
academy town in New England, and the fact that it was so alluring is a
fair indication of the kind of life from which she had emerged, and to
which she now returned. What could she do? In the dreary round of petty
details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no
companions of any sympathy--for the family of a hard-working New England
farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor are
cow-boys Corydons--with no opportunity of retirement and cultivation,
for reading and studying--which is always voted "stuff" under such
circumstances--the light suddenly quenched out of life, what was she to
do?
"Adapt herself to her circumstances. Why had she shot from her sphere in
this silly way?" demands unanimous common-sense in valiant heroics.
The simple answer is, that she had only used all her opportunities, and
that, although it was no fault of hers that the routine of her life
was in every way repulsive, she did struggle to accommodate herself to
it--and failed. When she found it impossible to drag on at home, she
became an inmate of a refined and cultivated household in the village,
where she had opportunity to follow her own fancies, and to associate
with educated and attractive persons. But even here she could not escape
the feeling that it was all temporary, that her position was one of
dependence; and her pride, now grown morbid, often drove her from the
very society which alone was agreeable to her. This was all genuine.
There was not the slightest strain of the _femme incomprise_ in her
demeanor. She was always shy and silent, with a touching reserve which
won interest and confidence, but left also a vague sadness in the mind
of the observer. After a few months she made another effort to rend the
cloud which was gradually darkening around her, and opened a school for
young children. But although the interest of friends secured for her a
partial success, her gravity and sadness failed to excite the sympathy
of her pupils, who missed in her the playful gayety always most winning
to children. Martha, however, pushed bravely on, a figure of tragic
sobriety to all who watched her course. The farmers thought her a
strange girl, and wondered at the ways of a farmer's daughter who was
not content to milk cows and churn butter and fry pork, without further
hope or thought. The good clergyman of the town, interested in her
situation, sought a confidence she did not care to bestow, and so,
doling out a, b, c, to a wild group of boys and girls, she found that
she could not untie the Gordian knot of her life, and felt, with terror,
that it must be cut.
One summer evening she left her father's house and walked into the
fields alone. Night came, but Martha did not return. The family became
anxious, inquired if any one had noticed the direction in which she
went, learned from the neighbors that she was not visiting, that
there was no lecture or meeting to detain her, and wonder passed into
apprehension. Neighbors went into the adjacent woods and called, but
received no answer. Every instant the awful shadow of some dread event
solemnized the gathering groups. Every one thought what no one dared
whisper, until a low voice suggested "the river". Then, with the
swiftness of certainty, all friends, far and near, were roused, and
thronged along the banks of the stream. Torches flashed in boats that
put off in the terrible search. Hawthorne, then living in the Old Manse,
was summoned, and the man whom the villagers had only seen at morning
as a musing spectre in his garden, now appeared among them at night
to devote his strong arm and steady heart to their service. The boats
drifted slowly down the stream--the torches flared strangely upon
the black repose of the water, and upon the long, slim grasses that,
weeping, fringed the marge. Upon both banks silent and awe-stricken
crowds hastened along, eager and dreading to find the slightest trace of
what they sought. Suddenly they came upon a few articles of dress, heavy
with the night-dew. No one spoke, for no one had doubted the result. It
was clear that Martha had strayed to the river and quietly asked of its
stillness the repose she sought. The boats gathered around the spot.
With every implement that could be of service the melancholy search
began. Long intervals of fearful silence ensued, but at length, towards
midnight, the sweet face of the dead girl was raised more placidly to
the stars than ever it had been to the sun.
"Oh! is it weed or fish or floating hair--
A tress o' golden hair,
O' drowned maiden's hair,
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee."
So ended a village tragedy. The reader may possibly find in it the
original of the thrilling conclusion of the _Blithedale Romance_, and
learn anew that dark as is the thread with which Hawthorne weaves his
spells, it is no darker than those with which tragedies are spun, even
in regions apparently so torpid as Concord.