Hawthorne, in 1836, that this cheerful and sanguine friend made up his
mind to find out why Hawthorne could not get a volume of tales
published. He applied to Goodrich for information, and received an
answer, October 20, 1836, in which it was stated that if a guarantee of
two hundred and fifty dollars were furnished by Bridge, an edition of
one thousand copies, costing four hundred and fifty dollars and paying
Hawthorne a royalty of ten per cent, would be issued. Goodrich was not
himself a publisher, at that time, and he elsewhere says that he had
previously attempted to have the Stationers' Company, which now
undertook the volume on Bridge's guarantee, publish it, but without
success; he adds that he relinquished his own rights to Hawthorne, who
had sold the tales to him so far as they had appeared in "The Token,"
and that he also joined in the bond given by Bridge; but in these
remarks he seems to be taking credit to himself, for the tales were
valueless to him and his property in them was of a sort not often
claimed by an editor, while Bridge took the real risk. This transaction
was unknown to Hawthorne at the time, and Bridge felt obliged to warn
him not to be too grateful to Goodrich. A glance at the other letters of
this month shows that Bridge was almost alarmed by Hawthorne's
depression, and endeavoring in thoughtful ways to reassure him, as well
as to bring him forward in public. "I have just received your last," he
writes, October 22, 1836, "and do not like its tone at all. There is a
kind of desperate coolness about it that seems dangerous. I fear you are
too good a subject for suicide, and that some day you will end your
mortal woes on your own responsibility." The prospect of the book, even,
was not wholly an undoubted blessing to Hawthorne, now he had come to
its realization, and in December, on Christmas Day, the work being then
in proofs, Bridge writes to him again:--
"Whether your book will sell extensively may be doubtful; but that is of
small importance in the first one you publish. At all events, keep up
your spirits till the result is ascertained; and, my word for it, there
is more honor and emolument in store for you, from your writings, than
you imagine. The bane of your life has been self-distrust. This has kept
you back for many years; which, if you had improved by publishing, would
long ago have given you what you must now wait a short time for. It may
be for the best, but I doubt it.
"I have been trying to think what you are so miserable for. Although you
have not much property, you have good health and powers of writing,
which have made, and can still make, you independent.
"Suppose you get but $300 per annum for your writings. You can, with
economy, live upon that, though it would be a tight squeeze. You have no
family dependent upon you, and why should you 'borrow trouble'?
"This is taking the worst view of your case that it can possibly bear.
It seems to me that you never look at the bright side with any hope or
confidence. It is not the philosophy to make one happy.
"I expect, next summer, to be full of money, a part of which shall be
heartily at your service, if it comes."
Before the new volume went to press Hawthorne had made a connection,
apparently on the editor's initiative, with S. Gaylord Clark's
"Knickerbocker Magazine," and contributed to it, in the January number,
"The Fountain of Youth," now known as "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"; and
in the opening months of the year he was engaged in preparing his usual
group of articles for the next "Token." Goodrich had also offered to him
a new "Peter Parley" book, on the manners and customs of all nations,
for three hundred dollars, but this Hawthorne seems to have declined.
"Twice-Told Tales" [Footnote: _Twice-Told Tales_. By Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Boston: American Stationers' Co. John B. Russell, 1837. 12mo,
cloth. Pp. 334. It contained the following tales: The Gray Champion,
Sunday at Home, The Wedding Knell, The Minister's Black Veil, The
May-Pole of Merry Mount, The Gentle Boy, Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe,
Little Annie's Ramble, Wakefield, A Rill from the Town Pump, The Great
Carbuncle, The Prophetic Pictures, David Swan, Sights from a Steeple,
The Hollow of the Three Hills, The Vision of the Fountain, Fancy's Show
Box, Dr. Heidegger's Experiment.] appeared, under the author's name,
from the press of the Boston American Stationers' Co., early in March,
1837. It contained eighteen pieces only, out of the thirty-six
undoubtedly by Hawthorne published up to this time, to neglect all
others which have been ascribed to him during this period; and it must
reflect his own judgment of what was best in his work. Far as it was
from being a complete collection, it was large and varied enough to
afford an adequate experiment of the public taste, and it included all
those articles, whether tale or essay, which had made him known in the
circle of his readers. The reception of the volume was, he thought,
cool, but it sold somewhat from the first, and within two months six or
seven hundred copies had been disposed of. Goodrich states that it "was
deemed a failure for more than a year, when a breeze seemed to rise and
fill its sails, and with it the author was carried on to fame and
fortune." Bridge was much pleased with the success of his venture, and
when he met Goodrich, in April, some of his good feeling overflowed upon
him: "I like him very much better than before," he wrote. "He told me
that the book was successful. It seemed that he was inclined to take too
much credit to himself for your present standing, on the ground of
having early discovered and brought you forward. But, on the whole, I
like him much." Hawthorne's view of Goodrich is contained in a letter
written to his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Peabody, twenty years later:--
"As regards Goodrich's accounts of the relations between him and me, it
is funny enough to see him taking the airs of a patron; but I do not
mind it in the least, nor feel the slightest inclination to defend
myself or be defended. I should as soon think of controverting his
statement about my personal appearance (of which he draws no very lovely
picture) as about anything else that he says. So pray do not take up the
cudgels on my behalf; especially as I perceive that your recollections
are rather inaccurate. For instance, it was Park Benjamin, not Goodrich,
who cut up the 'Storyteller.' As for Goodrich, I have rather a kindly
feeling towards him, and he himself is a not unkindly man, in spite of
his propensity to feed and fatten himself on better brains than his own.
Only let him do that, and he will really sometimes put himself to some
trouble to do a good-natured act. His quarrel with me was, that I broke
away from him before he had quite finished his meal, and while a portion
of my brain was left; and I have not the slightest doubt that he really
felt himself wronged by my so doing. Really, I half think so too. He was
born to do what he did, as maggots to feed on rich cheese."
There is something too little generous in this. The record shows beyond
any cavil that Goodrich was the first and most constant friend of
Hawthorne in the way of helping him to get his work before the public;
he was also interested in him, thoughtful for him, and gave him hack
work to do, which, though it be a lowly is a true service, however
unwelcome the task may be in itself; and he used such influence as he
had in introducing Hawthorne to other employers and to publishers.
During these twelve years it may fairly be said that Goodrich was the
only person, not a relative, who cared for Hawthorne's genius or did
anything for him until Park Benjamin appeared as a second in the
periodical world and Horatio Bridge came to the rescue as a business
friend. It is true that Goodrich did not succeed in exploiting his
author; but he paid him the market price and gave him his chance, and
after all those days were not for Goodrich what our days have since
become for men of his calibre. Advertisement was not then the tenth
Muse.
If the papers were "cool," as Hawthorne thought, there was a word of
comfort here and there in the periodicals. "The American Monthly
Magazine," recalling its announcement of Hawthorne as the author of
these tales in the preceding fall, took occasion in a notice of "The
Token" for 1838 to flatter itself that the new volume was due to its own
suggestion; and the writer, who is presumably Park Benjamin, renews his
old praise. A later notice of the book itself, ascribed by Mr. Lathrop
to Charles Fenno Hoffman, appeared in March, 1838, and, while somewhat
ineffective and sentimental, discovers at the end the right new word to
say: "His pathos we would call New England pathos, if we were not afraid
it would excite a smile; it is the pathos of an American, of a New
Englander. It is redolent of the images, objects, thoughts, and feelings
that spring up in that soil and nowhere else." It was, however, to
Longfellow that both Bridge and Hawthorne looked to help his old college
mate's book with the criticism that would have the accent of good taste
and literary authority, and would carry weight in those higher social
circles where fame was lost and won, at least as was then believed.
Hawthorne sent him the volume as soon as it was issued, with a note
regretting that they were not better acquainted at college and
expressing his gladness in Longfellow's success as a writer, author of
"Outre-Mer," and also in obtaining his Harvard professorship; and some
three months later he followed this with a letter, so characteristic and
valuable autobiographically that it cannot be passed over, and
interesting also as beginning that easy and amiable friendliness which
continued between them unbroken thereafter:--
"Not to burden you with my correspondence, 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; 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."
Longfellow's notice of "Twice-Told Tales" appeared in the July number of
"The North American Review," and gave perhaps more pleasure to Hawthorne
than he had hoped for; and in acknowledging it he mentions, with a
home-touch that carries more gratitude than a score of golden phrases,
the happiness that "my mother, my two sisters, and my old maiden aunt"
have had in it. The notice itself is elegant, kindly, warm even, with
the old-fashioned academic distinction of manner, through which the
young poet's picturesque fancy keeps playing, like a flutter of light;
it gives one a strange sense of old-world youthfulness to read it now.
Its characteristic passages, apart from this glamour, are its praise of
the lucid style and of the home-bred quality, "the nationality" of the
Tales: "The author has chosen his themes among the traditions of New
England, the dusty legends of 'the good old colony times when we lived
under a king.' This is the right material for story." But,
notwithstanding the good-will of Hawthorne's few friends, and this
handsome treatment by that one of them who had the greatest opportunity
to applaud him, his place was not yet won.
Meanwhile, his political friends had not been idle. The problem of a
livelihood, of an active share in the world's business, which Hawthorne
now sincerely desired, was not likely to be much advanced by the
publication of this volume. In any case, it would seem that Hawthorne's
friends were agreed that what he needed was to be got into an entirely
different set of surroundings, to have a change of scene. It was,
perhaps, with some such idea that Pierce suggested to him to join the
South Sea Exploring Expedition, then being planned by Reynolds, as
historian. There is something humorous, unconscious though it was, in
sending Hawthorne from the monotony and loneliness of Salem to seek
society in the polar regions, though no hint of it appears in the
correspondence. The scheme appealed to Hawthorne, however, and he was
desirous to go; but though his friends were active in his interest, and
brought the Maine and New Hampshire delegations to support his
candidacy, success was doubtful, and, the expedition being temporarily
abandoned, the plan came to nothing. On its failure Hawthorne went to
visit Bridge at his home in Augusta, Maine, and passed the month of July
with him very happily, as he tells at large in his Note-Books of that
period.
On his return to Salem at midsummer he could hardly have flattered
himself on any perceptible change in his position. He fell into the old
life of rambling about the country and writing new tales; and, except
that he was in communication with his old friends, Bridge, Pierce, and
Cilley, and occasionally saw them in Boston, he was as much isolated and
without prospects as ever. The connection he had established with "The
Knickerbocker Magazine" he had kept up by contributing to it "A Bell's
Biography" as by the author of "Twice-Told Tales," in March, and he now
published, in the September issue, "Edward Fane's Rosebud" anonymously.
The publication of the book had attracted to him the notice of the new
"Democratic Review," edited by John O'Sullivan, a young fellow of
enterprise, spirits, and an Irish charm, who had solicited Hawthorne to
contribute to it, early in April. In reply to this application,
presumably, "A Toll Gatherer's Day," as by the author of "Twice-Told
Tales," appeared in the October number. The stories which Hawthorne had
prepared in the spring for "The Token" of 1838 now came out in the fall
of 1837, five in number: two of them, "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure" and
"The Shaker Bridal" as by the author of the "Twice-Told Tales," and
three anonymously, "Night Scenes under an Umbrella," "Endicott and the
Red Cross," and "Sylph Etheredge." He still persistently neglected to
put his own name to his work. There was a reason for his anonymity in
"The Token," but elsewhere he continued his old custom, and was to be
known habitually only under the style "The Author of 'Twice-Told
Tales,'" which he adopted henceforth. To this time belong some further
traces of a more varied mixing with society in Salem than he had
hitherto shown. He attended the meetings of a club at Miss Burley's,
where the transcendental group appears to have gathered, and among them
Jones Very. The most singular episode of the time, however, is one that
would hardly be credited, had it not been mentioned by those who should
have known the truth. It is said that Hawthorne's sympathies were so
engaged by a lady who confided to him the injurious treatment she
alleged she had suffered from an acquaintance that he challenged the man
to a duel; he went to Washington for the purpose, and was only withdrawn
from the affair, under the advice of Cilley and Pierce, by the discovery
that he had been practiced upon by the lady, who had been led on by a
spirit of mischief or malice to deceive him, there being no basis for
the affair. A dark turn is given to the incident by the suggestion that
it was the citing of this example of Hawthorne's to his friend Cilley
which persuaded the latter to enter on the duel with Graves, in which he
lost his life not long after these events. Bridge, however, denies that
this was the case, and he should have known. Just when this incident
occurred is not stated; but Hawthorne's solitude in Salem must have been
less complete than has been represented in order for it to occur at all;
and it must be believed that he had at all times associates, whom he met
in one way and another, both men and women, however small the circle.
The period of twelve years which he used to refer to as the time of his
isolation in Salem had now come to an end; but he remained in the old
house for some time longer, though with a difference in his mood and
life. The habit of seclusion and the sense of separation from the world
had been somewhat broken up by the rally that his college friends, led
by Bridge, had made for him and the feeling of renewed companionship
with them, as well as by his appearance before the public in his own
right as the author of "Twice-Told Tales;" the old state of affairs,
however, was not ended by these things, but by a more vital matter.
There can be no doubt that in his own mind the acquaintance and growing
intimacy which now sprang up between himself and Sophia Peabody
coincided with the disappearance of the solitary depression of these
years,--for him the twelve years ended when he first saw this small,
graceful, intensely alive invalid, dressed in a simple white wrapper,
who had come down from her room to meet him in the family parlor. She
might seem, indeed, like himself, rather a "visitant" than an inhabitant
of this planet, and their courtship not unlike one of his own stories of
half immaterial lovers who go hand in hand, with sentiments for
sentences and great heedlessness of mortal matters, to an idyllic union
of hearts. He rose, on her entrance, to greet her, and looked at her
with great intentness; and it immediately occurred to her sister that he
would fall in love with her.
The narrative of this love-making has been very fully told, and in the
most lifelike way, since the characters have been allowed to speak for
themselves in their diaries and letters. It is a story so touched with
delicacies, and with such shades of humor, too, as to defy any
re-telling; even to outline it seems crude, because the effect lies all
in the details of trifles, phrases, and spontaneous things. The Peabody
family was of a type that flourished in that period, as good as was ever
produced on this soil, with the most sterling qualities, and blending an
intellectual culture of transcendental kinship with practical and
hospitable duties. The home, which was one of very moderate means, was
characterized by a moral high-mindedness pervading its life, and by
those literary and artistic tastes then spreading in the community,
which, though it is easy to smile at them in a vein of latter-day
superiority, were everywhere the signs of a nascent intellectual life
among our people. In this case, the fruits are the best comment on the
home, for of the three daughters, the eldest, Elizabeth, passed a much
honored and long life as a teacher in Boston, the friend of every good
cause; the second, Mary, became the wife of Horace Mann; and the third,
Sophia, the wife of Hawthorne. The Peabodys had been neighbors of the
Hawthornes in much earlier years, and the elder children had been little
playmates together; but the family had removed from Salem, and came back
again in 1828. It was not, however, till 1837, on the publication of
"Twice-Told Tales," that Elizabeth Peabody recognized in the author the
same person she had known as a child. She took steps to renew the
acquaintance with his sisters, and so to meet him again, till by many
little attentions, notes, books, walks, flowers, and whatever she could
invent, she succeeded in establishing an interchange of social civility
between the two houses. She affords, in her recollections, the best
glimpse of Hawthorne's mother. "Madame Hawthorne," she says, "always
looked as if she had walked out of an old picture, with her antique
costume, and a face of lovely sensibility and great brightness--for she
did not _seem_ at all a victim of morbid sensibility, notwithstanding
her all but Hindoo self-devotion to the manes of her husband. She
was a woman of fine understanding and very cultivated mind. But she
had very sensitive nerves." Elizabeth, Hawthorne's sister, was
strong-minded but abnormally retired, jealous of her brother, and not
much disposed to have him stolen out of the house. Louisa was more
companionable, and with his mother would sit with Hawthorne after tea;
and there was an old maiden aunt flitting about in the little garden,
apparently as recluse as the rest. With these feminine members of the
household Elizabeth Peabody made friends, and though a year elapsed in
the process, she then had her reward in receiving Hawthorne and his
sisters, who one evening came to call. She ran upstairs to her sister,
exclaiming, "Oh, Sophia, you must get up and dress and come down! The
Hawthornes are here, and you never saw anything so splendid as he
is,--he is handsomer than Lord Byron!" But Sophia did not come down, and
it was only on the second call that the two met as has been described.