LITTLE MISERY: 1825-1835
During the War of the American Revolution, the officers of the French
fleet, which was stationed at Newport, invented a game of cards, called
“Boston,” of which one peculiarity was, that under certain conditions,
whoever held the lowest hand would win the count. This was called
“Little Misery,” and this was the kind of hand which Nathaniel Hawthorne
had to play for fifteen years after leaving Bowdoin College. Only his
indomitable will could have carried him through it.
A college graduate who lacks the means to study a profession, and who
has no influential relative to make a place for him in the world,
finds himself in a most discouraging position. The only thing that his
education has fitted him to do is, to teach school, and he may not be
adapted to this, on account of some personal peculiarity. There was,
and I suppose is still, a prejudice among mercantile men against college
graduates, as a class of proud, indolent, neglectful persons, very
difficult to instruct. Undoubtedly there are many such, but the innocent
have to suffer with the guilty. It is natural that a man who has not had
a liberal education should object to employing a subordinate who knows
Latin and Greek. Whether Hawthorne’s Uncle Robert, who had thus
far proved to be his guardian genius, would have educated him for a
profession, we have no means of knowing. This would mean of course a
partial support for years afterward, and it is quite possible that Mr.
Manning considered his duties to his own children paramount to it. What
he did for Nathaniel may have been the best he could, to give him
the position of book-keeper for the stage-company. This was of course
Pegasus in harness (or rather at the hitching-post), but it is excellent
experience for every young man; although the compensation in Hawthorne’s
case was small and there could be no expectation of future advancement.
In this dilemma he decided to do the one thing for which Nature
intended him,--to become a writer of fiction,--and he held fast to this
determination in the face of most discouraging obstacles. He composed
a series of short stories,--echoes of his academic years,--which he
proposed to publish under the title of Wordsworth’s popular poem, “We
Are Seven.” One of these is said to have been based on the witchcraft
delusion, and it is a pity that it should not have been preserved,
but their feminine titles afford no indication of their character. He
carried them to a publisher, who received him politely and promised to
examine them, but one month passed after another without Hawthorne’s
hearing from him, so that he concluded at length to make inquiries.
[Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 124.] The publisher confessed that he had
not even undertaken to read them, and Nathaniel carried them back,
with a sinking heart, to his little chamber in the house on Herbert
Street,--where he may have had melancholy thoughts enough for the next
few weeks.
Youth, however, soon outgrows its chagrins. In less than two years
Hawthorne was prepared to enter the literary lists, equipped with a
novelette, called “Fanshawe”; but here again he was destined to meet
with a rebuff. After tendering it to a number of publishers without
encouragement, he concluded to take the risk of publishing it
himself. This only cost him a few hundred dollars, but the result was
unsatisfactory, and he afterward destroyed all the copies that he could
regain possession of.
Hawthorne’s genius was of slow development. He was only twenty-four when
he published this rather immature work, and it might have been better if
he had waited longer. It was to him what the “Sorrows of Werther” was
to Goethe, but while the “Sorrows of Werther” made Goethe famous in many
countries, “Fanshawe” fell still-born. The latter was not more imitative
of Scott than the “Sorrows of Werther” is of Rousseau, and now that
we consider it in the cool critical light of the twentieth century,
we cannot but wonder that the “Sorrows of Werther” ever produced such
enthusiasm. It is quite as difficult to see why “Fanshawe” should not
have proved a success. It lacks the grace and dignity of Hawthorne’s
mature style, but it has an ingenious plot, a lively action, and is
written in sufficiently good English. One would suppose that its faults
would have helped to make it popular, for portions of it are so exciting
as to border closely on the sensational. It may be affirmed that when
a novel becomes so exciting that we wish to turn over the pages and
anticipate the conclusion, either the action of the story is too heated
or its incidents are too highly colored. The introduction of pirates in
a work of fiction is decidely sensational, from Walter Scott downward,
and, though Hawthorne never fell into this error, he approaches closely
to it in “Fanshawe.” There is some dark secret between the two villains
of the piece, which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for the
imagination. This is a characteristic of all his longer stories. There
is an unknown quantity, an insoluble point, in them, which tantalizes
the reader.
What we especially feel in “Fanshawe” is the author’s lack of social
experience. His heroine at times behaves in a truly feminine manner, and
at others her performances make us shiver. Her leaving her guardian’s
house at midnight to go off with an unknown man, whom her maidenly
instinct should have taught her to distrust, even if Fanshawe had not
warned her against him, might have been characteristic of the Middle
Ages, but is certainly not of modern life. Bowdoin College evidently
served Hawthorne as a background to his plot, although removed some
distance into the country, and it is likely that the portrait of the
kindly professor might have been recognized there. Ward’s Tavern serves
for the public-house where the various characters congregate, and
there is a high rocky ledge in the woods, or what used to be woods at
Brunswick, where the students often tried their skill in climbing, and
which Hawthorne has idealized into the cliff where the would-be abductor
met his timely fate. The trout-brook where Bridge and Hawthorne used to
fish is also introduced.
Fanshawe himself seems like a house of which only two sides have been
built. There are such persons, and it is no wonder if they prove to be
short-lived. Yet the scene in which he makes his noble renunciation of
the woman who is devoted to him, purely from a sense of gratitude, is
finely and tenderly drawn, and worthy of Hawthorne in his best years.
The story was republished after its author’s death, and fully deserves
its position in his works.
It was about this time (1827) that Nathaniel Hathorne changed his name
to Hawthorne. No reason has ever been assigned for his doing so, and he
had no legal right to do it without an act of the Legislature, but
he took a revolutionary right, and as his family and fellow-citizens
acquiesced in this, it became an established fact. His living relatives
in the Manning family are unable to explain his reason for it. It may
have been for the sake of euphony, or he may have had a fanciful notion,
that such a change would break the spell which seemed to be dragging his
family down with him. Conway’s theory that it was intended to serve him
as an incognito is quite untenable. His name first appears with a _w_ in
the Bowdoin Triennial Catalogue of 1828.
There are very few data existing as to Hawthorne’s life during his first
ten years of manhood, but it must have been a hard, dreary period for
him. The Manning children, Robert, Elizabeth and Rebecca, were now
growing up, and must have been a source of entertainment in their way,
and his sister Louisa was always a comfort; but Horatio Bridge, who made
a number of flying visits to him, states that he never saw the
elder sister, even at table,--a fact from which we may draw our own
conclusions. Hawthorne had no friends at this time, except his college
associates, and they were all at a distance,--Pierce and Cilley both
flourishing young lawyers, one at Concord, New Hampshire, and the other
at Thomaston, Maine,--while Longfellow was teaching modern languages at
Bowdoin. He had no lady friends to brighten his evenings for him, and
if he went into society, it was only to be stared at for his personal
beauty, like a jaguar in a menagerie. He had no fund of the small
conversation which serves like oil to make the social machinery run
smoothly. Like all deep natures, he found it difficult to adapt himself
to minds of a different calibre. Salem people noticed this, and his
apparent lack of an object in life,--for he maintained a profound
secrecy in regard to his literary efforts,--and concluded that he was
an indolent young man without any faculty for business, and would never
come to good in this world. No doubt elderly females admonished him for
neglecting his opportunities, and small wits buzzed about him as they
have about many another under similar conditions. It was Hans Andersen’s
story of the ugly duck that proved to be a swan.
No wonder that Hawthorne betook himself to the solitude of his own
chamber, and consoled himself like the philosopher who said, “When I am
alone, then I am least alone.” He had an internal life with which only
his most intimate friends were acquainted, and he could people his room
with forms from his own fancy, much more real to him than the palpable
_ignota_ whom he passed in the street. Beautiful visions came to him,
instead of sermonizing ladies, patronizing money-changers, aggressive
upstarts, grimacing wiseacres, and that large class of amiable,
well-meaning persons that makes up the bulk of society. We should not be
surprised if angels sometimes came to hover round him, for to the pure
in heart heaven descends upon earth.
There is a passage in Hawthorne’s diary under date of October 4, 1840,
which has often been quoted; but it will have to be quoted again, for
it cannot be read too often, and no biography of him would be adequate
without it. He says:
“Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber where I used to sit in days
gone by....This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands
upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few
of them have become visible to the world. If ever I should have a
biographer, he ought to make great mention of this chamber in my
memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my
mind and character were formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful,
and here I have been despondent. And here I sat a long, long time,
waiting patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why
it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,--at
least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were
already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed.
But oftener I was happy,--at least as happy as I then knew how to be, or
was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out
in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,--not indeed, with a loud roar
of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,--and forth I went,
but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my solitude
till now ... and now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many
years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the
viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the
world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly
dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the
multitude.... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come,
I still kept the dew of my youth, and the freshness of my heart.”
During these dismal years Horatio Bridge was Hawthorne’s good genius.
The letters that Hawthorne wrote to him have not been preserved, but we
may judge of their character by Bridge’s replies to him--always frank,
manly, sympathetic and encouraging. Hawthorne evidently confided his
troubles and difficulties to Bridge, as he would to an elder brother.
Bridge finally destroyed Hawthorne’s letters, not so much on account
of their complaining tone as for the personalities they contained;
[Footnote: Horatio Bridge, 69.] and this suggests to us that there was
still another side to Hawthorne’s life at this epoch concerning which
we shall never be enlightened. A man could not have had a better friend
than Horatio Bridge. He was to Hawthorne what Edward Irving was to
Carlyle; and the world is more indebted to them both than it often
realizes.
There is in fact a decided similarity between the lives of Carlyle and
Hawthorne, in spite of radical differences in their work and characters.
Both started at the foot of the ladder, and met with a hard, long
struggle for recognition; both found it equally difficult to earn their
living by their pens; both were assisted by most devoted friends, and
both finally achieved a reputation among the highest in their own time.
If there is sometimes a melancholy tinge in their writings, may we
wonder at it? Pericles said, “We need the theatre to chase away the
sadness of life,” and it might have benefited the whole Hawthorne
family to have gone to the theatre once a fortnight; but there were few
entertainments in Salem, except of the stiff conventional sort, or
in the shape of public dances open to firemen and shop-girls. Long
afterward, Elizabeth Hawthorne wrote of her brother:
“His habits were as regular as possible. In the evening after tea he
went out for about an hour, whatever the weather was; and in winter,
after his return, he ate a pint bowl of thick chocolate--(not cocoa, but
the old-fashioned chocolate) crumbed full of bread: eating never
hurt him then, and he liked good things. In summer he ate something
equivalent, finishing with fruit in the season of it. In the evening we
discussed political affairs, upon which we differed in opinion; he being
a Democrat, and I of the opposite party. In reality, his interest in
such things was so slight that I think nothing would have kept it
alive but my contentious spirit. Sometimes, when he had a book that he
particularly liked, he would not talk. He read a great many novels.”
[Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 125.]
If Elizabeth possessed the genius which her brother supposed, she
certainly does not indicate it in this letter; but genius in the ore is
very different from genius smelted and refined by effort and experience.
The one important fact in her statement is that Hawthorne was in the
habit of taking solitary rambles after dark,--an owlish practice,
but very attractive to romantic minds. Human nature appears in a more
pictorial guise by lamplight, after the day’s work is over. The groups
at the street corners, the glittering display in the watchmaker’s
windows, the carriages flashing by and disappearing in the darkness, the
mysterious errands of foot-passengers, all served as object-lessons for
this student of his own kind.
Jonathan Cilley once said:
“I love Hawthorne; I admire him; but I do not know him. He lives in a
mysterious world of thought and imagination which he never permits me to
enter.” [Footnote: Packard’s “Bowdoin College,” 306.]
Long-continued thinking is sure to take effect at last, either in words
or in action, and Hawthorne’s mind had to disburden itself in some
manner. So, after the failure of “Fanshawe,” he returned to his original
plan of writing short stories, and this time with success. In January,
1830, the well-known tale of “The Gentle Boy” was accepted by S. G.
Goodrich, the editor of a Boston publication called the _Token_, who was
himself better known in those days under the _nom de plume_ of “Peter
Parley.” “The Wives of the Dead,” “Roger Malvin’s Burial,” and “Major
Molineaux” soon followed. In 1833 he published the “Seven Vagabonds,”
and some others. The New York _Knickerbocker_ published the “Fountain of
Youth” and “Edward Fayne’s Rosebud.” After 1833 the _Token_ and the
_New England Magazine_ [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 175.] stood ready to
accept all the short pieces that Hawthorne could give them, but they
did not encourage him to write serial stories. However, it was not the
custom then for writers to sign their names to magazine articles,
so that Hawthorne gained nothing in reputation by this. Some of his
earliest pieces were printed over the signature of “Oberon.”
An autumn expedition to the White Mountains, Lake Champlain and Lake
Ontario, and Niagara Falls, in 1832, raised Hawthorne’s spirits and
stimulated his ambition. He wrote to his mother from Burlington,
Vermont, September 16:
“I have arrived in safety, having passed through the White Hills,
stopping at Ethan Crawford’s house, and climbing Mt. Washington. I have
not decided as to my future course. I have no intention of going into
Canada. I have heard that cholera is prevalent in Boston.”
It was something to have stood on the highest summit east of the Rocky
Mountains, and to have seen all New England lying at his feet. A hard
wind in the Crawford Notch, which he describes in his story of “The
Ambitious Guest,” must have been in his own experience, and as he passed
the monument of the ill-fated Willey family he may have thought that
he too might become celebrated after his death, even as they were
from their poetic catastrophe. This expedition provided him with the
materials for a number of small plots.
The ice was now broken; but a new class of difficulties arose before
him. American literature was then in the bud and promised a beautiful
blossoming, but the public was not prepared for it. Monthly magazines
had a precarious existence, and their uncertainty of remuneration
reacted on the contributors. Hawthorne was poorly paid, often obliged to
wait a long time for his pay, and occasionally lost it altogether. For
his story of “The Gentle Boy,” one of the gems of literature, which
ought to be read aloud every year in the public schools, he received the
paltry sum of thirty-five dollars. Evidently he could not earn even a
modest maintenance on such terms, and his letters to Bridge became more
despondent than ever.
Goodrich, who was a writer of the Andrews Norton class, soon perceived
that Hawthorne could make better sentences than his own, and engaged him
to write historical abstracts for his pitiful Peter Parley books, paying
him a hundred dollars for the whole work, and securing for himself all
the credit that appertained to it. Everybody knew who Peter Parley was,
but it has only recently been discovered that much of the literature
which passed under his name was the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The editor of a New York magazine to which Hawthorne contributed a
number of sketches repeatedly deferred the payment for them, and finally
confessed his inability to make it,--which he probably knew or intended
beforehand. Then, with true metropolitan assurance, he begged of
Hawthorne the use of certain unpublished manuscripts, which he still
had in his possession. Hawthorne with unlimited contempt told the fellow
that he might keep them, and then wrote to Bridge:
“Thus has this man, who would be considered a Mæcenas, taken from a
penniless writer material incomparably better than any his own brain can
supply.” [Footnote: Horatio Bridge, 68, 69.]
Whether this New York periodical was the _Knickerbocker_ or some
other, we are not informed; neither do we know what Bridge replied
to Hawthorne, who had closed his letter with a malediction, on the
aforesaid editor, but elsewhere in his memoirs he remarks:
“Hawthorne received but small compensation for any of this literary
work, for he lacked the knowledge of business and the self-assertion
necessary to obtain even the moderate remuneration vouchsafed to writers
fifty years ago.” [Footnote: Horatio Bridge, 77.]
If Horatio Bridge had been an author himself, he would not have written
this statement concerning his friend. Magazine editors are like men in
other professions: some of them are honorable and others are less so;
but an author who offers a manuscript to the editor of a magazine
is wholly at his mercy, so far as that small piece of property is
concerned. The author cannot make a bargain with the editor as he can
with the publisher of his book, and is obliged to accept whatever the
latter chooses to give him. Instances have been known where an editor
has destroyed a valuable manuscript, without compensation or explanation
of any kind. Hawthorne was doing the best that a human being could under
the conditions that were given him. Above all things, he was true to
himself; no man could be more so.
Yet Bridge wrote to him on Christmas Day, 1836:
“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 long time for. It may be for the
best, but I doubt it.”
Nothing is more trying in misfortune than the ill-judged advice of
well-meaning friends. There is no nettle that stings like it. To expect
Hawthorne to become a literary genius, and at the same time to develop
the peculiar faculties of a commercial traveller or a curb-stone broker,
was unreasonable. In the phraseology of Sir William Hamilton, the
two vocations are “non-compossible.” Bridge himself was undertaking
a grandly unpractical project about this time: nothing less than an
attempt to dam the Androscoggin, a river liable to devastating floods;
and in this enterprise he was obliged to trust to a class of men who
were much more uncertain in their ways and methods than those with whom
Hawthorne dealt. Horatio Bridge had not studied civil engineering,
and the result was that before two years had elapsed the floods on the
Androscoggin swept the dam away, and his fortune with it.
In the same letter we also notice this paragraph concerning another
Bowdoin friend:
“And so Frank Pierce is elected Senator. There is an instance of what a
man can do by trying. With no very remarkable talents, he at the age
of thirty-four fills one of the highest stations in the nation. He is a
good fellow, and I rejoice at his success.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i.
148.]
Pierce certainly possessed the cap of Fortunatus, and it seems as if
there must have been some magic faculty in the man, which enabled him to
win high positions so easily; and he continued to do this, although he
had not distinguished himself particularly as a member of Congress, and
he appeared to still less advantage among the great party leaders in the
United States Senate. He illustrated the faculty for “getting elected.”
In October, 1836, the time arrived for settling the matrimonial wager
between Hawthorne and Jonathan Cilley, which they had made at college
twelve years before. Bridge accordingly examined the documents which
they had deposited with him, and notified Cilley that he was under
obligation to provide Hawthorne with an octavo of Madeira.
Cilley’s letter to Hawthorne on this occasion does not impress one
favorably. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 144.] It is familiar and jocose,
without being either witty or friendly, and he gives no intimation in
it of an intention to fulfil his promise. Hawthorne appears to have sent
the letter to Bridge, who replied:
“I doubt whether you ever get your wine from Cilley. His inquiring of
you whether he had really lost the bet is suspicious; and he has written
me in a manner inconsistent with an intention of paying promptly; and if
a bet grows old it grows cold. He wished me to propose to you to have
it paid at Brunswick next Commencement, and to have as many of our
classmates as could be mustered to drink it. It may be Cilley’s idea to
pay over the balance after taking a strong pull at it; if so, it is well
enough. But still it should be tendered within the month.”
In short, Cilley behaved in this matter much in the style of a tricky
Van Buren politician, making a great bluster of words, and privately
intending to do nothing. He was running for Congress at the time on
the Van Buren ticket, and it is quite likely that the expenses of the
campaign had exhausted his funds. That he should never have paid the bet
was less to Hawthorne’s disadvantage than his own.
It was now that Horatio Bridge proved himself a true friend, and equally
a man. In the spring of 1836 Goodrich had obtained for Hawthorne
the editorship of the _American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining
Knowledge_, with a salary of five hundred dollars; [Footnote: Conway,
45.]but he soon discovered that he had embarked on a ship with a rotten
hulk. He started off heroically, writing the whole of the first number
with the help of his sister Elizabeth; but by midsummer the concern was
bankrupt, and he retired to his lonely cell, more gloomy and despondent
than before. There are few sadder spectacles then that of a man seeking
work without being able to obtain it; and this applies to the man of
genius as well as to the day laborer.
Horatio Bridge now realized that the time had come for him to interfere.
He recognized that Hawthorne was gradually lapsing into a hypochondria
that might terminate fatally; that he was Goethe’s oak planted in a
flowerpot, and that unless the flower-pot could be broken, the oak
would die. He also saw that Hawthorne would never receive the public
recognition that was due to his ability, so long as he published
magazine articles under an assumed name. He accordingly wrote to
Goodrich--fortunately before his mill-dam gave way--suggesting the
publication of a volume of Hawthorne’s stories, and offered to guarantee
the publisher against loss. This proposition was readily accepted, but
Bridge might have made a much better bargain. What it amounted to was,
the half-profit system without the half-profit. The necessary papers
were exchanged and Hawthorne gladly acceded to Goodrich’s terms. Bridge,
however, had cautioned Goodrich not to inform Hawthorne of his share in
the enterprise, and the consequence of this was that he shortly received
a letter from Hawthorne, informing him of the good news--which he knew
already--and praising Goodrich, to whom he proposed to dedicate his new
volume. Bridge’s generosity had come back to him, dried and salted,--as
it has to many another.
What could Bridge do, in the premises? Goodrich had written to Hawthorne
that the publisher, Mr. Howes, was confident of making a favorable
arrangement _with a man of capital who would edit the book_; but Bridge
did not know this, and he suspected Goodrich of sailing into Hawthorne’s
favor under a false flag. He therefore wrote to Hawthorne, November 17,
1836:
“I fear you will hurt yourself by puffing Goodrich _undeservedly_,--for
there is no doubt in my mind of his selfishness in regard to your work
and yourself. I am perfectly aware that he has taken a good deal of
interest in you, but when did he ever do anything for you without a
_quid pro quo_? The magazine was given to you for $100 less than it
should have been. The _Token_ was saved by your writing. Unless you
are already committed, do not mar the prospects of your _first_ book by
hoisting Goodrich into favor.”
This prevented the dedication, for which Hawthorne was afterward
thankful enough. The book, which was the first volume of “Twice Told
Tales” came from the press the following spring, and proved an immediate
success, although not a highly lucrative one for its author. With
the help of Longfellow’s cordial review of it in the _North American_
it established Hawthorne’s reputation on a firm and irrefragable basis.
All honor to Horatio.
As if Hawthorne had not seen a sufficiently long “winter of discontent”
already, his friends now proposed to obtain the position of secretary
and chronicler for him on Commodore Jones’s exploring expedition to the
South Pole! Franklin Pierce was the first to think of this, but Bridge
interceded with Cilley to give it his support, and there can be no doubt
that they would have succeeded in obtaining the position for Hawthorne,
but the expedition itself failed, for lack of a Congressional
appropriation. The following year, 1838, the project was again brought
forward by the administration, and Congress being in a more amiable
frame of mind granted the requisite funds; but Hawthorne had now
contracted new ties in his native city, bound, as it were, by an
inseparable cord stronger than a Manila hawser, and Doctor Nathaniel
Peabody’s hospitable parlors were more attractive to him than anything
the Antarctic regions could offer.
We have now entered upon the period where Hawthorne’s own diary
commences, the autobiography of a pure-minded, closely observing man;
an invaluable record, which began apparently in 1835, and was continued
nearly until the close of his life; now published in a succession of
American, English and Italian note-books. In it we find records of what
he saw and thought; descriptive passages, afterward made serviceable
in his works of fiction, and perhaps written with that object in view;
fanciful notions, jotted down on the impulse of the moment; records
of his social life; but little critical writing or personal
confessions,--although the latter may have been reserved; from
publication by his different editors. It is known that much of his diary
has not yet been given to the public, and perhaps never will be.
In July, 1837, Hawthorne went to Augusta, to spend a month with his
friend Horatio Bridge; went fishing with him, for what they called
white perch, probably the saibling; [Footnote: The American saibling, or
golden trout, is only indigenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and
to a small lake near Augusta.] and was greatly entertained with the
peculiarities of an idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of that
language, whom Bridge, in the kindness of his heart, had taken into his
own house. The last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, but did
not bring the Madeira with him, and Hawthorne has left this rather
critical portrait of him in his diary:
“Friday, July 28th.--Saw my classmate and formerly intimate friend,
----, for the first time since we graduated. He has met with good
success in life, in spite of circumstances, having struggled upward
against bitter opposition, by the force of his abilities, to be a member
of Congress, after having been for some time the leader of his party in
the State Legislature. We met like old friends, and conversed almost as
freely as we used to do in college days, twelve years ago and more. He
is a singular person, shrewd, crafty, insinuating, with wonderful tact,
seizing on each man by his manageable point, and using him for his own
purpose, often without the man’s suspecting that he is made a tool of;
and yet, artificial as his character would seem to be, his conversation,
at least to myself, was full of natural feeling, the expression of which
can hardly be mistaken, and his revelations with regard to himself had
really a great deal of frankness. A man of the most open nature might
well have been more reserved to a friend, after twelve years separation,
than ---- was to me. Nevertheless, he is really a crafty man,
concealing, like a murder-secret, anything that it is not good for him
to have known. He by no means feigns the good feeling that he professes,
nor is there anything affected in the frankness of his conversation; and
it is this that makes him so fascinating. There is such a quantity of
truth and kindliness and warm affections, that a man’s heart opens
to him, in spite of himself. He deceives by truth. And not only is
he crafty, but, when occasion demands, bold and fierce like a tiger,
determined, and even straightforward and undisguised in his measures,--a
daring fellow as well as a sly one.”
This can be no other than Jonathan Cilley; like many of his class, a
man of great good humor but not over-scrupulous, so far as the means he
might make use of were concerned. He did not, however, prove to be as
skilful a diplomat as Hawthorne seems to have supposed him. The
duel between Cilley and Graves, of Kentucky, has been so variously
misrepresented that the present occasion would seem a fitting
opportunity to tell the plain truth concerning it.
President Jackson was an honest man, in the customary sense of the term,
and he would have scorned to take a dollar that was not his own; but he
suffered greatly from parasites, who pilfered the nation’s money,--the
natural consequence of the spoils-of-office system. The exposure of
these peculations gave the Whigs a decided advantage, and Cilley, who
had quickly proved his ability in debate, attempted to set a back-fire
by accusing Watson Webb, the editor of the _Courier and Enquirer_, of
having been bribed to change the politics of his paper. The true facts
of the case were, that the paper had been purchased by the Whigs, and
Webb, of course, had a right to change his politics if he chose to;
and the net result of Cilley’s attack was a challenge to mortal combat,
carried by Representative Graves, of Kentucky. Cilley, although a man of
courage, declined this, on the ground that members of Congress ought
not to be called to account outside of the Capitol, for words spoken in
debate. “Then,” said Graves, “you will at least admit that my friend is
a gentleman.”
This was a fair offer toward conciliation, and if Cilley had been
peaceably inclined he would certainly have accepted it; but he
obstinately refused to acknowledge that General Webb was a gentleman,
and in consequence of this he received a second challenge the next day
from Graves, brought by Henry A. Wise, afterward Governor of Virginia.
Cilley still objected to fighting, but members of his party urged him
into it: the duel took place, and Cilley was killed.
It may be said in favor of the “code of honor” that it discourages
blackguardism and instructs a man to keep a civil tongue; but it is
not always possible to prevent outbursts of temper, especially in hot
climates, and a man’s wife and children should also be considered.
Andrew Jackson said at the close of his life, that there was nothing he
regretted so much as having killed a human being in a duel. Man rises by
humility, and angels fall from pride.
Hawthorne wrote a kindly and regretful notice of the death of his old
acquaintance, which was published in the _Democratic Review_, and which
closed with this significant passage:
“Alas, that over the grave of a dear friend, my sorrow for the
bereavement must be mingled with another grief--that he threw away such
a life in so miserable a cause! Why, as he was true to the Northern
character in all things else, did he swerve from his Northern principles
in this final scene?” [Footnote: Conway, 63.]
It will be well to bear this in mind in connection with a somewhat
similar incident, which we have now to consider.
An anecdote has been repeated in all the books about Hawthorne published
since 1880, which would do him little credit if it could be proved,--a
story that he challenged one of his friends to a duel, at the
instigation of a vulgar and unprincipled young woman. Horatio Bridge
says in reference to it:
“This characteristic was notably displayed several years later, when a
lady incited him to quarrel with one of his best friends on account of
a groundless pique of hers. He went to Washington for the purpose of
challenging the gentleman, and it was only after ample explanation had
been made, showing that his friend had behaved with entire honor, that
Pierce and Cilley, who were his advisers, could persuade him to be
satisfied without a fight.” [Footnote: Bridge, 5.]
How the good Horatio could have fallen into this pit is unimaginable,
for a double contradiction is contained in his statement. “Some time
after this,” that is after leaving college, would give the impression
that the affair took place about 1830, whereas Pierce and Cilley were
not in Washington together till five or six years later--probably seven
years later. Moreover, Hawthorne states in a letter to Pierce’s friend
O’Sullivan, on April 1, 1853, that he had never been in Washington up to
that time. The Manning family and Mrs. Hawthorne’s relatives never heard
of the story previous to its publication.
The internal evidence is equally strong against it. What New England
girl would behave in the manner that Hawthorne’s son represents this
one to have done? What young gentleman would have listened to such a
communication as he supposes, and especially the reserved and modest
Hawthorne? One can even imagine the aspect of horror on his face at such
an unlady-like proceeding. The story would be an ignominious one
for Hawthorne, if it were credible, but there is no occasion for our
believing it until some tangible evidence is adduced in its support.
There was no element of Quixotism in his composition, and it is quite
as impossible to locate the identity of the person whom Hawthorne is
supposed to have challenged.