PEGASUS IS FREE: 1850-1852
Frederick W. Loring, that bright young poet who was so soon lost to
us, once remarked: “Appreciation is to the artist what sunshine is
to flowers. He cannot expand without it.” The success of “The Scarlet
Letter” proved that all Hawthorne’s genius required was a little
moderate encouragement,--not industry but opportunity. His pen, no
longer slow and hesitating, moved freer and easier; the long pent-up
flood of thoughts, emotions, and experiences had at length found an
outlet; and the next three years were the most productive of his life.
His first impulse, however, was to escape from Salem. Although his
removal from office had been a foregone conclusion, Hawthorne felt a
certain degree of chagrin connected with it, and also imagined a certain
amount of animosity toward himself which made the place uncomfortable
to him. He was informed that the old Sparhawk mansion, close to the
Portsmouth Navy Yard, was for sale or to rent, and the first of May,
Hawthorne went thither to consider whether it would serve him for
a home. [Footnote: Lathrop, 225.] One would suppose that sedate old
Portsmouth, with its courteous society and its dash of military life,
would have suited Hawthorne even better than Concord; but he decided
differently, and he returned to meet his family in Boston, where he
made the acquaintance of Professor Ticknor, who introduced him at
the Athenaeum Library. He saw Hildreth at the Athenæum working on his
history of the United States; sat for his portrait to C. E. Thompson;
went to the theatre; studied human nature in the smoking-room at
Parker’s; and relaxed himself generally. He must have stayed with
his family at Doctor Peabody’s on West Street, for he speaks of the
incessant noise from Washington Street, and of looking out from the back
windows on Temple Place. This locates the house very nearly.
Two months later, July 5, 1850, he was at Lenox, in the Berkshire
Mountains. Mrs. Caroline Sturgis Tappan, a brilliant Boston lady,
equally poetic and sensible, owned a small red cottage there, which she
was ready to lease to Hawthorne for a nominal rent. Lowell was going
there on account of his wife, a delicate flower-like nature already
beginning to droop. Doctor Holmes was going on account of Lowell, and
perhaps with the expectation of seeing a rattlesnake; Fields was going
on account of Lowell and Holmes. Mrs. Frances Kemble, already the most
distinguished of Shakespearian readers, had a summer cottage there;
and it was hoped that in such company Hawthorne would at last find the
element to which he properly belonged.
Unfortunately Hawthorne took to raising chickens, and that seems to have
interested him more than anything else at Lenox. He fell in cordially
with the plans of his friends; ascended Monument Mountain, and went
on other excursions with them; but it may be more than suspected that
Lowell and Holmes did most of the talking. He assimilated himself more
to Holmes perhaps than to any of the others. His meeting with
Mrs. Kemble must have been like a collision of the centrifugal and
centripetal forces; and for once, Hawthorne may be said to have met
his antipodes. They could sincerely admire one another as we all do,
in their respective spheres; but such a chasm as yawned between them in
difference of temperament, character, and mode of living, could not have
been bridged over by Captain Eads.
Fannie Kemble, as she was universally called, had by long and
sympathetic reading of Shakespeare transformed herself into a woman
of the Elizabethan era, and could barely be said to belong to the
nineteenth century. Among other Elizabethan traits she had acquired an
unconsciousness of self, together with an enormous self-confidence, and
no idea of what people thought of her in polite society ever seems to
have occurred to her. She had the heart of a woman, but mentally she was
like a composite picture of Shakespeare’s _dramatis personae_, and that
Emerson should have spoken of her as “a great exaggerated creature” is
not to be wondered at. In her own department she was marvellous.
The severity of a mountain winter and the disagreeableness of its
thawing out in spring, is atoned for by its summer,--that fine
exhilarating ether, which seems to bring elevated thoughts, by virtue
of its own nature. Hawthorne enjoyed this with his children and his
chickens; and his wife enjoyed it with him. It is evident from her
letters that she had not been so happy since their first year at the
Old Manse. She had now an opportunity to indulge her love of artistic
decoration, in adorning the walls of their little red cottage, which has
since unfortunately been destroyed by fire. She even began to give her
daughter, who was only six years old, some instruction in drawing. The
following extract concerning her husband, from a letter written to her
mother, is charmingly significant of her state of mind at this time.
“Beauty and the love of it, in him, are the true culmination of the
good and true, and there is no beauty to him without these bases. He
has perfect dominion over himself in every respect, so that to do the
highest, wisest, loveliest thing is not the least effort to him, any
more than it is to a baby to be innocent. It is his spontaneous act,
and a baby is not more unconscious in its innocence. I never knew such
loftiness, so simply borne. I have never known him to stoop from it in
the most trivial household matter, any more than in a larger or more
public one.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 373.]
Truly this gives us a beautiful insight into their home-life, and
Hawthorne himself could not have written a more accurate eulogium.
As intimated in the last chapter, we all make our way through life by
correcting our daily trespasses, and Hawthorne was no exception to
it; but as a mental analysis of this man at his best Mrs. Hawthorne’s
statement deserves a lasting recognition.
“THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES”
It was not until early frosts and shortening days drove Hawthorne within
doors that he again took up his writing, but who can tell how long he
had been dreaming over his subject? Within five months, or by the last
week of January, “The House of the Seven Gables” was ready for the
press. There is no such house in Salem, exactly as he describes it; but
an odd, antiquated-looking structure at No. 54 Turner Street is supposed
to have served him for the suggestion of it. The name is picturesque and
well suited to introduce the reader to a homely suburban romance.
The subject of the story goes back to the witchcraft period, and its
active principle is a wizard’s curse, which descends from one generation
to another, until it is finally removed by the marriage of a descendant
of the injured party to a descendant of the guilty one. Woven together
with this, there is an exposition of mesmerism, or, as it is now called,
Christian Science, with its good and evil features.
Each of Hawthorne’s larger romances has a distinct style and quality of
its own, apart from the fine individualized style of the author. Lathrop
makes an excellent remark in regard to “The House of the Seven Gables,”
that the perfection of its art seems to stand between the reader and
his subject. It resembles in this respect those Dutch paintings whose
enamelled surface seems like a barrier to prevent the spectator from
entering the scenes which they represent. It would be a mistake to
consider this a fault, but one cannot help noticing the accuracy with
which the subordinate details of the plot are elaborated. Is it possible
that this is connected in a way with the rarefied atmosphere of Lenox,
in which distant objects appear so sharply defined?
“The House of the Seven Gables” might be symbolized by two paintings, in
the first of which Hepzibah Pyncheon stands as the central figure, her
face turned upward in a silent prayer for justice, her brother Clifford,
with his head bowed helplessly, at one side, and the judge, with his
chronic smile of satisfaction, behind Clifford; on the other side the
keen-eyed Holgrave would appear, sympathetically watching the progress
of events, with Phoebe Pyncheon at his left hand. Old Uncle Banner and
little Ned Higgins might fill in the background. In the second picture
the stricken judge would be found in a large old-fashioned arm-chair,
with Clifford and Hepzibah flying through a doorway to the right, while
Phoebe and Holgrave, the one happy and the other startled, enter on the
left.
Hepzibah, not Phoebe, is the true heroine of the romance,--or at least
its central figure. Nowhere do we look more deeply into Hawthorne’s
nature than through this sympathetic portrait of the cross-looking old
maid, whose only inheritance is the House of the Seven Gables, in which
she has lived many years, poor, solitary, friendless, with a disgrace
upon her family, only sustained by the hope that she may yet be a help
and comfort to her unfortunate brother. The jury before whom Clifford
was tried believed him to be guilty, but his sister never would believe
it. She lives for him and suffers with him. Hawthorne does not mitigate
the unpleasantness of her appearance, but he instructs us that there is
a divine spark glowing within. Very pitiful is her attempt to support
the enfeebled brother by keeping a candy store; but noble and heroic
is her resistance to the designs of her tyrannical cousin. It is her
intrepidity that effects the crisis of the drama.
Both Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon are examples of what fine
portraiture Hawthorne could accomplish in exceptional or abnormal
personalities, without ever descending to caricature. Judge Pyncheon has
been criticised as being too much of a stage villain, but the same might
be alleged of Shakespeare’s (or Fletcher’s) Richard III. What is he, in
effect, but a Richard III. reduced to private life? Moreover, his habit
of smiling is an individual trait which gives him a certain distinction
of his own. Usually,
Faces ever blandly smiling
Are victims of their own beguiling.
But Judge Pyncheon is a candidate for the governorship, and among the
more mercenary class of politicians smiling often becomes a habit for
the sake of popularity. Hawthorne might have added something to the
judge’s _personale_ by representing him with a droll wit, like James
Fiske, Jr., or some others that we have known, and he might have exposed
more of his internal reflections; but he serves as a fair example of
the hard, grasping, hypocritical type of Yankee. We see only one side of
him, but there are men, and women too, who only have one side to their
characters.
It has been affirmed that Hawthorne made use of the Honorable Mr.
Upham, the excellent historian of Salem witchcraft, as a model for Judge
Pyncheon, and that this was done in revenge for Mr. Upham’s inimical
influence in regard to the Salem surveyorship. It is impossible, at this
date, to disentangle the snarl of Hawthorne’s political relations in
regard to that office, but Upham had been a member of Congress and
was perhaps as influential a Whig as any in the city. If Hawthorne was
removed through his instrumentality, he performed our author a service,
which neither of them could have realized at the time. Hawthorne,
however, had a strong precedent in his favor in this instance; namely,
Shakespeare’s caricature of Sir Thomas Luce, as Justice Shallow in “The
Merry Wives of Windsor”; but there is no reason why we should think
better or worse of Mr. Upham on this account.
Phoebe Pyncheon is an ideal character, the type of youthful New England
womanhood, and the most charming of all Hawthorne’s feminine creations.
Protected by the shield of her own innocence, she leaves her country
home from the same undefined impulse by which birds fly north in spring,
and accomplishes her destiny where she might have least expected to meet
with it. She fills the whole book with her sunny brightness, and like
many a young woman at her age she seems more like a spirit than a
character. Her maidenly dignity repels analysis, and Hawthorne himself
extends a wise deference to his own creation.
The future of a great nation depends more on its young women than upon
its laws or its statesmen.
In regard to Holgrave, we have already said somewhat; but he is so
lifelike that it seems as if he must have been studied from one of the
younger members of the Brook Farm association; perhaps the one of whom
Emerson tells us, [Footnote: Lecture on Brook Farm.] that he spent his
leisure hours in playing with the children, but had “so subtle a mind”
that he was always consulted whenever important business was on foot.
He is visible to our mental perspective as a rather slender man, above
medium height, with keen hazel eyes, a long nose, and long legs, and
quick and lively in his movements. Phoebe has a more symmetrical figure,
bluish-gray eyes, a complexion slightly browned from going without her
hat, luxuriant chestnut-brown hair, always quiet and graceful. We
have no doubt that Holgrave made a worthy husband for her, and that he
occasionally took a hand in public affairs.
Judge Pyncheon’s duplicity is revealed to Holgrave by the medium of a
daguerreotype. Men or women who are actors in real life should avoid
being photographed, for the camera is pretty sure to penetrate their
hypocrisy, and expose them to the world as they actually are. Every
photograph album is to a certain extent a rogues’ gallery, in which our
faults, peculiarities, and perhaps vices are ruthlessly portrayed
for the student of human nature. If a merchant were to have all his
customers photographed, he would soon learn to distinguish those who
were not much to be trusted.
Notice also Hawthorne’s eye for color. When Clifford, Hepzibah, and
Phoebe are about to leave the seven-gabled house for the last time, “A
plain, but handsome dark-green barouche” is drawn to the door. This
is evidently his idea of a fine equipage; and it happens that the
background of Raphael’s “Pope Julius” is of this same half-invisible
green, and harmonizes so well with the Pope’s figure that few realize
its coloring.
The plot of this picturesque story is the most ingenious of Hawthorne’s
life, but sufficiently probable throughout to answer the purpose of a
romance, and it is the only one of Hawthorne’s larger works which ends
happily. It was brought out by Ticknor & Company at Easter 1850,--less
than ten weeks after it was finished; but we think of the House of the
Seven Gables as standing empty, deserted and forlorn.
In December Emerson had written to Hawthorne concerning a new magazine
in which he and Lowell were interested, and if Hawthorne would only
give it his support its success could not be questioned. What Hawthorne
replied to this invitation has never been discovered, but he had seen
too many such periodicals go to wreck to feel much confidence in this
enterprise. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 381.] It is of more importance
now that Emerson should have addressed him as “My dear Hawthorne,” for
such cordial friendliness was rare in “the poet of the pines.” Mrs.
Alcott once remarked that Emerson never spoke to her husband otherwise
than as “Mr. Alcott,” and it is far from likely that he ever spoke to
Hawthorne differently from this. The conventionalities of letter-writing
run back to a period when gentlemen addressed one another--and perhaps
felt so too--in a more friendly manner than they do at present.
Works of fiction and sentimental poetry stir up a class of readers which
no other literature seems to reach, and Hawthorne was soon inundated
with letters from unknown, and perhaps unknowable, admirers; but the
most remarkable came from a man named Pyncheon, who asserted that his
grandfather had been a judge in Salem, and who was highly indignant at
the use which Hawthorne had made of his name. [Footnote: Conway, 135.]
This shows how difficult it is for a writer of fiction or a biographer
to escape giving offence. The lightning is sure to strike somewhere.
“THE SNOW IMAGE”
The question now was, what next? As it happened, the next important
event in the Hawthorne family was the advent of their younger daughter,
born like Agassiz, “in the lovely month of May,” and amid scenery as
beautiful as the Pays de Vaud. Her father named her Rose, in defiance of
Hillard’s objection to idyllic nomenclature; and as a child she
seemed much like the spirit of that almost fabulous flower, the wild
orange-rose. Ten years later, she was the most graceful girl in the
Concord dancing-school, and resembled her elder sister so closely that
they could not have been mistaken for anything but sisters. As she grew
older she came more and more to resemble her mother.
It was said that Hawthorne’s “Wonder Book” originated in his telling
free versions of the Greek myths to his children on winter evenings; and
also that Horace Mann’s boys, who were almost exactly of the same age
as Una and Julian, participated in the entertainment. This may have
happened the following winter at Newton, but could hardly have taken
place at Lenox; and otherwise it is quite impossible to identify all the
children with botanical names in Hawthorne’s introduction. Julian
once remarked, at school, that he believed that he was the original of
Squash-blossom, and that is as near as we can get to it. Some of them
may have been as imaginary as the ingenious Mr. Eustace Bright, and
might serve as well to represent one group of children as another.
The book was written very rapidly, at an average of ten pages a day, and
it has Hawthorne’s grace and purity of style, but it does not belong
to the legitimate series of his works. It is an excellent book for the
young, for they learn from it much that every one ought to know; but
to mature minds the original fables, even in a translation, are more
satisfactory than these Anglo-Saxon versions in the “Wonder Book.”
The collection of tales which passes by the name of “The Snow Image” is
a much more serious work. “The Great Stone Face” and one or two others
in the collection were prepared at Salem for the same volume as “The
Scarlet Letter,” but judiciously excluded by Mr. Fields. “The Snow
Image” itself, however, is plainly derived from Hawthorne’s own
experience during the winter at Lenox. The common-sensible farmer and
his poetic wife could not be mistaken for Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne, but
the two sportive children are easily identified as Una and Julian. They
are not only of the same age, but the “slight graceful girl” and “chubby
red-cheeked boy” describes them exactly. The idea has been derived from
the fable of the Greek sculptor Pygmalion whose statue came to life.
That seems far enough off to be pleasantly credible, but to have such
a transubstantiation take place in the front yard of a white-fenced
American residence, is rather startling. Yet Hawthorne, with the help of
the twilight, carries us through on the broad wings of his imagination,
even to the melting of the little snow-sister before an airtight stove
in a close New England parlor. The moral that Hawthorne draws from this
fable might be summed up in the old adage, “What is one man’s meat
is another man’s poison”; but it has a deeper significance, which the
author does not seem to have perceived. The key-note of the fable is the
same as that in Goethe’s celebrated ballad, “The Erl King”; namely, that
those things which children imagine, are as real to them as the facts of
the external world. Nor do we altogether escape from this so long as we
live.
The origin of “The Great Stone Face” is readily traced to the profile
face in the Franconia Mountains,--which has not only a strangely
human appearance, but a grave dignified expression, and, as a natural
phenomenon, ranks next to Niagara Falls. The value of the fable,
however, has perhaps been over-estimated. It is an old story in a modern
garb, the saying so often repeated in the Book of Isaiah: “The last
shall be first, and the first shall be last.” The man Ernest, who
is much in his ways like Hawthorne himself, spends his leisure in
contemplating the Great Stone Face, and thus acquires a similar
expression in his own. The wealthy merchant, the famous general, the
great party leader, and the popular poet, all come upon the scene; but
not one of them appears to advantage before the tranquil countenance
of the Great Stone Face. Finally, Ernest in his old age carries off
the laurel; and in this Hawthorne hits the mark, for it is only through
earnestness that man becomes immortal. Yet, one would suppose that
constantly gazing at a face of stone, would give one a rather stony
expression; as sculptors are liable to become statuesque from their
occupation.
Another Dantean allegory, and fully equal in power to any Canto in
Dante’s “Inferno,” is the story of “Ethan Brandt,” or “The Unpardonable
Sin.” We have a clew to its origin in the statement that it was part of
an unfinished romance; presumably commenced at Concord, but afterward
discarded, owing to the author’s dissatisfaction with his work--an
illustration of Hawthorne’s severe criticism of his own writing.
The scene is laid at a limekiln in a dark and gloomy wood, where a
lime-burner, far from human habitations, is watching his fires at night.
To him Ethan Brandt appears, a strange personage, long known for his
quest after the unpardonable sin, and the solitude echoes back the
gloominess of their conversation. Finally, the lime-burner fixes his
fires for the night, rolls himself up in his blanket, and goes to sleep.
When he awakes in the morning, the stranger is gone, but, on ascending
the kiln to look at his caldron, he finds there the skeleton of a man,
and between its ribs a heart of white marble. This is the unpardonable
sin, for which there is neither dispensation nor repentance. Ethan
Brandt has committed suicide because life had become intolerable on such
conditions.
The summer of 1851 in Lenox was by no means brilliant. It had not yet
become the tip end of fashion, and Hawthorne’s chief entertainment seems
to have been the congratulatory letters he received from distinguished
people. Mrs. Frances Kemble wrote to him from England, announcing the
success of his book there, and offering him the use of her cottage, a
more palatial affair than Mrs. Tappan’s, for the ensuing winter. Mrs.
Hawthorne, however, felt the distance between herself and her relatives,
and perhaps they both felt it. Mrs. Hawthorne’s sister Mary, now Mrs.
Horace Mann, was living in West Newton, and the last of June Mrs.
Hawthorne went to her for a long summer visit, taking her two daughters
with her and leaving Julian in charge of his father, with whom it may be
affirmed he was sufficiently safe. It rarely happens that a father and
son are so much together as these two were, and they must have become
very strongly attached.
For older company he had Hermann Melville, and G. P. R. James, whose
society he may have found as interesting as that of more distinguished
writers, and also Mr. Tappan, whom Hawthorne had learned to respect for
his good sense and conciliatory disposition--a true peace-maker among
men and women. Burill Curtis, the amateur brother of George W. Curtis,
came to sketch the lake from Hawthorne’s porch, and Doctor Holmes turned
up once or twice. On July 24 Hawthorne wrote to his friend Pike at
Salem: [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 151.]
“By the way, if I continue to prosper as heretofore in the literary
line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a place; and if you should
hear of one, say worth from $1500 to $2000, I wish you would keep your
eye on it for me. I should wish it to be on the seacoast, or at all
events with easy access to the sea.”
The evident meaning of this is that the Hawthornes had no desire to
spend a second winter in the Berkshire hills. The world was large, but
he knew not where to rest his head. Mrs. Hawthorne solved the problem
on her return to Lenox, and it was decided to remove to West Newton when
cold weather came. Thither they went November 21 in a driving storm
of snow and sleet,--a parting salute from old Berkshire,--and reached
Horace Mann’s house the same evening.
Nobody knows where the Hawthornes lived in Newton. The oldest survivors
of both families were only five years of age at that time. Mrs.
Hawthorne’s father also resided in Newton that winter, and it is more
than likely that they made their residence with him. Julian Hawthorne
has a distinct recollection of the long freight-trains with their clouds
of black smoke blowing across his father’s ground during the winter; so
they could not have lived very far from the Worcester railroad. Horace
Mann’s house is still standing, opposite a school-house on the road
from the station, where a by-way meets it at an acute angle. The
freight-trains and their anthracite smoke must have had a disturbing
influence on Hawthorne’s sensibility.
The long-extended town of Newton, which is now a populous city, has much
the best situation of any of the Boston suburbs--on a moderately
high range of hills, skirted by the Charles River, both healthful and
picturesque. It is not as hot in summer nor so chilly at other seasons
as Concord, and enjoys the advantage of a closer proximity to the city.
Its society is, and always has been, more liberal and progressive than
Salem society in Hawthorne’s time. Its citizens, mainly professional and
mercantile men, are active, intelligent, and sensible, without being
too fastidious. It was a healthful change for Hawthorne, and we are not
surprised to find that his literary work was affected by it. Mrs. L.
Maria Child lived there at the time, and so did Celia Thaxter, although
not yet known to fame. The sound, penetrating intelligence of Horace
Mann may have also had its salutary effect.
“THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE”
Hawthorne’s “Wonder Book” and “The Snow Image” were expressed to Ticknor
& Company before leaving Lenox, and “The Blithedale Romance” may also
have been commenced before that change of base. We only know, from his
diary, that it was finished on the last day of April, 1852, and that he
received the first proof-sheets of it two weeks later--which shows what
expedition publishers can make, when they feel inclined.
The name itself is somewhat satirical, for Hawthorne did not find the
life at Brook Farm very blithesome, and in the story, with the exception
of the sylvan masquerade, there is much more rue than heart’s-ease, as
commonly happens in his stories. The tale ends tragically, and without
the gleam of distant happiness which lights up the last scenes of
“The Scarlet Letter.” It commences with a severe April snowstorm, an
unfavorable omen; the same in which Hawthorne set out to join the West
Roxbury community.
And yet the name is not without a serious meaning--a stern, sad moral
significance. The earth is not naturally beautiful, for rank Nature ever
runs to an excess. It is only beautiful when man controls and remodels
it; but what man makes physically, he can unmake spiritually. We pass
by a handsome estate, a grand arcade of elms over its avenue, spacious
lawns, an elegant mansion, a luxurious flower-garden; but we are
informed that happiness does not dwell there, that its owner is a
misanthropic person, whose nature has been perverted by the selfishness
of luxury; that there are no pleasant parties on the lawn, no happy
wooing in that garden, no marriage festivals in those halls; and those
possessions, which might have proved a blessing to generations yet
unborn, are no better than a curse and a whited sepulchre. How many such
instances could be named.
It may have occurred to Hawthorne, that, if George Ripley, instead of
following after a will-o’-the-wisp notion, which could only lead him
into a bog, had used the means at his disposal to cultivate Brook
Farm in a rational manner, and had made it a hospitable rendezvous for
intellectual and progressive people,--an oasis of culture amid the
wide waste of commercialism,--the place might well have been called
Blithedale, and Mr. Ripley would have inaugurated a movement as rare as
it was beneficial. It was only at a city like Boston, whose suburbs were
pleasant and easily accessible, that such a plan could be carried out;
and it was only a man of Mr. Ripley’s scholarship and intellectual
acumen who could have drawn together the requisite elements for it. It
looks as if he missed an opportunity.
We should avoid, however, confounding George Ripley with Hawthorne’s
Hollingsworth. It is quite possible that Hawthorne made use of certain
traits in Ripley’s character for this purpose, and also that he may
have had some slight collision with him, such as he represents in “The
Blithedale Romance;” but Ripley was an essentially veracious nature,
who, as already remarked, carried out his experiment to its logical
conclusion. Hollingsworth, on the contrary, proposes to pervert
the trust confided to him, in order to establish at Blithedale an
institution for the reformation of criminals, by which proceeding he
would, after a fashion, become a criminal himself. At the same time, he
plays fast and loose with the affections of Zenobia and Priscilla, who
are both in love with him, designing to marry the one who would make
the most favorable match for his purpose. It is through the junction of
these two streams of evil that the catastrophe is brought about.
Priscilla is evidently taken from the little seamstress whom Hawthorne
mentions in his diary for October 9, 1841, and if she ever discovered
this, she could hardly have been displeased, for she is one of his most
lovable creations; not so much of an ideal as Phoebe Pyncheon, for she
is older and has already seen hard fortune. Her quiet, almost submissive
ways at first excite pity rather than admiration, but at length we
discover that there is a spirit within her, which shines through its
earthly envelope, like the twinkling of a star.
Zenobia has a larger nature and a more gifted mind than Priscilla, but
also a more mixed character. Her name suggests a queenly presence and
she is fully conscious of this. She does not acquire an equal influence
over the other sex, for she is evidently in love with herself. She is
described as handsome and attractive, but no sooner had “Blithedale”
been published than people said, “Margaret Fuller” [Footnote: the name
of Zenobia is not very remotely significant of Margaret Fuller. Palmyra
was the centre of Greek philosophy in Zenobia’s time, and she also
resembled Margaret in her tragical fate.]--although Margaret Fuller was
rather plain looking, and never joined the Brook Farm association.
If this surmise be correct, it leads to a curious consideration. After
painting a portrait of Zenobia in Chapter VI of “Blithedale,” quite
worthy of Rubens or Titian, he remarks, through the incognito of Miles
Coverdale, in the first part of Chapter VII, that Priscilla reminds him
of Margaret Fuller, and says this to Priscilla herself. Now it proves in
the sequel that Priscilla and Zenobia are half-sisters, but it would
be as difficult to imagine this from anything that is said in the
story about them, as it is to understand how the shy, undemonstrative
Priscilla could have reminded Coverdale of the brilliant and aggressive
leader of the Transcendentalists.
The introduction of Margaret Fuller’s name in that place comes abruptly
on the reader, and momentarily dispels the illusion of the tale. Was
Hawthorne conscious of the undercurrent of relationship, which he had
already formulated in his mind, between Priscilla and Zenobia; or what
is more likely, did he make the comparison in order to lead his readers
away from any conceptions they might have formed in regard to the
original of his heroine? If the latter supposition be true, he certainly
was not very successful, for in either case it is evident that Margaret
Fuller was prominent in his thoughts at the time he wrote those two
chapters.
Hawthorne’s idea of her, however, should not be accepted as a finality.
What Emerson and other friends have said concerning her should also be
considered in order to obtain a just impression of a woman who combined
more varied qualities than perhaps any other person of that
time. Hawthorne says of Zenobia, that she was naturally a stump
oratoress,--rather an awkward expression for him--and that “her mind was
full of weeds.” Margaret Fuller was a natural orator, and her mind was
full of many subjects in which Hawthorne could take little interest. She
was a revolutionary character, a sort of female Garibaldi, who attacked
old Puritan traditions with a two-edged sword; she won victories for
liberalism, but left confusion behind her. Like all such characters, she
made friends and enemies wherever she went. She sometimes gave offence
by hasty impulsive utterances, but more frequently by keenly penetrating
arguments for the various causes which she espoused. Only a woman could
deliver such telling shots.
Lowell, who was fond of an argument himself, did not like her better
than Hawthorne did. There may be some truth in what he says in “The
Fable for Critics,” that the expression of her face seemed to suggest a
life-long familiarity with the “infinite soul”; but Margaret Fuller was
sound at heart, and when she talked on those subjects which interested
her, no one could be more self-forgetful or thoroughly in earnest. At
times, she seemed like an inspired prophetess, and if she had lived
two thousand years earlier, she might have been remembered as a sibyl.
[Footnote: See Appendix B.]
“The Blithedale Romance” is written with a freer pen and less carefully
than “The House of the Seven Gables,” and is so much the better; for
the author’s state of mind in which he is writing will always affect the
reader more or less, and if the former feels under a slight constraint
the latter will also. A writer cannot be too exact in ascertaining the
truth,--Macaulay to the contrary,--but he can trouble himself too much
as to the expression of it. At the same time, “The Blithedale Romance”
is the least poetic of Hawthorne’s more serious works (which is the same
as saying that it is more like a novel), for the reason that Hawthorne
in this instance was closer to his subject. It is also more of a
personal reminiscence, and less an effort of the imagination. He has
included in it a number of descriptive passages taken from his Brook
Farm diary; most notably the account of that sylvan masquerade, in
which Coverdale finds his former associates engaged on his return to
Blithedale in the autumn. Perhaps this is the reason why the book has so
pleasant a flavor--a mellow after-thought of old associations.
An air of mystery adds an enchantment to a work of art, whether in
poetry, painting, or sculpture,--perhaps also in music; but there is a
difference in kind between mystery and uncertainty. We do not like to
be left half in the dark, in regard to things which we think we ought
to know. There is a break in Hawthorne’s chain of evidence against
Hollingsworth and Zenobia, which might possibly have been filled to
advantage. He would certainly have been non-suited, if his case had been
carried into court. We are permitted to suppose that Zenobia, in
order to clear her path of a successful rival, assists the mountebank,
Westervelt, to entrap Priscilla, over whom he possesses a kind
hypnotic power, and to carry her off for the benefit of his mountebank
exhibitions; but it remains a supposition and nothing more. We cannot
but feel rejoiced, when Hollingsworth steps onto the platform and
releases Priscilla from the psychological net-work in which she is
involved, and from which she has not sufficient will-power to free
herself. He certainly deserves her hand and fortune; but, as to
his condemnatory charges against Zenobia, which led directly to her
suicide,--what could they have been? Was there nothing more than the
trick she had attempted upon Priscilla? And if he accused her of that
only, why should he suffer perpetual remorse on account of her death?
Surely there was need of further explanation here, for the catastrophe
and its consequences are out of all proportion to the apparent cause.
His account of the recovery of Zenobia’s body is a close transcript of
the search for that unfortunate school-mistress, who drowned herself
in Concord River; and it is possible that, if Hawthorne had not been
present on that occasion, the plot might have terminated in some other
manner.
The story closes without a ray of hope for Hollingsworth; but the reader
can perceive one in the generous devotion of his single-minded wife,
even if Hawthorne did not.