HOMEWARD BOUND: 1860-1862
There is no portion of Hawthorne’s life concerning which we know less
than the four years after his return from England to his native land. He
was so celebrated that every eye was upon him; boys stopped their games
to see him pass by, and farmers stood still in the road to stare at him.
He was Hawthorne the famous, and every movement he made was remembered,
every word spoken by him was recorded or related, and yet altogether it
amounts to little enough. Letters have been preserved in number,--many
of his own and others from his English friends, and those from his
wife to her relatives; but they do not add much to the picture we have
already formed in our minds of the man. As he said somewhere, fame had
come too late to be a satisfaction to him, but on the contrary more
of an annoyance. Hawthorne left Leamington the last of March, and
transferred his family to Bath, which he soon discovered to be the
pleasantest English city he had lived in yet,--symmetrically laid out,
like a Continental city, and built for the most part of a yellowish
sandstone; not unlike in appearance the travertine of which St. Peter’s
at Rome is built. The older portion of the city lies in a hollow among
the hills, like an amphitheatre, and the more recent additions rise upon
the hill-sides above it to a considerable height. This is the last note
of enthusiasm in his writings; and in the next entry in his diary, which
was written at Lothrop Motley’s house, Hertford Street, London, May 16,
he makes this ominous confession: “I would gladly journalize some of
my proceedings, and describe things and people, but I find the same
coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England.”
It is only too evident that from this time literary composition, which
had been the chief recreation of his youth, and in which he had always
found satisfaction until now, was no longer a pleasure to him. It is
the last entry in his journal, at least for more than two years, and
whatever writing he accomplished in the mean time was done for the sake
of his wife and children. Dickens had a similar experience the last year
of his life. Clearly, Hawthorne’s nervous force was waning.
On May 15, Hawthorne and Motley were invited to dine by Earl Dufferin,
that admirable diplomat and one of the pleasantest of men. In fact, if
there was a person living who could make Hawthorne feel perfectly at his
ease, it was Dufferin. Motley provided some entertainment or other for
his guest every day, and Hawthorne confessed that the stir and activity
of London life were doing him “a wonderful deal of good.” What he seems
to have needed at this time was a vigorous, objective employment that
would give his circulation a start in the right direction; but how was
he to obtain that?
He enjoyed one last stroll with Henry Bright through Hyde Park and along
the Strand, and found time to say a long farewell to Francis Bennoch:
the last time he was to meet either of them on this side of eternity.
He returned to Bath the 1st of June, and ten days later they all
embarked for Boston,--as it happened, by a pleasant coincidence, with
the same captain with whom they had left America seven years before.
Mrs. Hawthorne’s sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, prepared their house at
Concord for their reception, and there they arrived at the summer
solstice.
The good people of Concord had been mightily stirred up that spring,
by an attempt to arrest Frank B. Sanborn and carry him forcibly to
Washington,--contrary to law, as the Supreme Court of the State decided
the following day. The marshal who arrested him certainly proceeded more
after the manner of a burglar than of a civil officer, hiding himself
with his _posse comitatus_ in a barn close to Sanborn’s school-house,
watching his proceedings through the cracks in the boards, and finally
arresting him at night, just as he was going to bed; but the alarm was
quickly sounded, and the whole male population of the place, including
Emerson, turned out like a swarm of angry hornets, and the marshal and
his posse were soon thankful to escape with their bones in a normal
condition. A few nights later, the barn, which was owned by a prominent
official in the Boston Custom House, was burned to the ground (the
fire-company assisting), as a sacrifice on the altar of personal
liberty.
The excitement of this event had not yet subsided when the arrival of
the Hawthorne family produced a milder and more amiable, but no less
profound, sensation in the old settlement; and this was considerably
increased by the fact that for the first month nothing was seen of
them, except a sturdy-looking boy fishing from a rock in Concord River,
opposite the spot where his father and Channing had discovered the
unfortunate school-mistress. Old friends made their calls and were
cordially received, but Hawthorne himself did not appear in public
places; and it was soon noticed that he did not take the long walks
which formerly carried him to the outer limits of the town. He was
sometimes met on the way to Walden Pond, either alone or in company with
his son; but Bronson Alcott more frequently noticed him gliding along
in a ghost-like manner by the rustic fence which separated their two
estates, or on the way to Sleepy Hollow. When the weather became cooler
he formed a habit of walking back and forth on the hill-side above his
house, where the bank descends sharply like a railroad-cut, with dwarf
pines and shrub oaks on the further side of it. He wore a path there,
which is described in “Septimius Felton,” and it is quite possible that
the first inception of that story entered his mind while looking down
upon the Lexington road beneath him, and imagining how it appeared while
filled with marching British soldiers.
About July 10, 1860, the scholars of Mr. Sanborn’s school, male and
female, gave an entertainment in the Town Hall, not unlike Harvard Class
Day. Mrs. Hawthorne and her eldest daughter appeared among the guests,
and attracted much attention from the quiet grace and dignity of their
manners; but there was an expression of weariness on Miss Una’s face,
which contrasted strangely with the happy, blithesome looks of the
school-girls. Some idea of the occasion may be derived from a passing
remark of Mrs. Hawthorne to a Harvard student present: “My daughter will
be happy to dance with you, sir, if I can only find her.”
In September Hawthorne wrote to James T. Fields: [Footnote: Mrs. J. T.
Fields, 118.]
“We are in great trouble on account of our poor Una, in whom the bitter
dregs of that Roman fever are still rankling, and have now developed
themselves in a way which the physicians foreboded. I do not like to
write about it, but will tell you when we meet. Say nothing.”
Miss Una was evidently far from well, and her father’s anxiety for her
sensibly affected his mental tone.
He was invited at once to join the Saturday Club, popularly known at
that time as the Atlantic Club, because its most conspicuous members
were contributors to that periodical. Hawthorne did not return in season
to take part in the Club’s expedition to the Adirondack Mountains,
concerning which Doctor Holmes remarked that, considering the number of
rifles they carried, it was fortunate that they all returned alive. The
meetings of the Club came but once a month, and as the last train to
Concord was not a very late one, Judge Hoar had his carryall taken down
to Waltham on such occasions, and thence he, with Hawthorne and Emerson,
drove back to Concord through the woods in the darkness or moonlight;
and Hawthorne may have enjoyed this as much as any portion of the
entertainment.
A club whose membership is based upon celebrity reminds one rather of a
congregation of stags, all with antlers of seven tines. There was every
shade of opinion, political, philosophical and religious, represented
in the Saturday Club, and if they never fought over such subjects it was
certainly much to their credit. Very little has been divulged of what
took place at their meetings; but it is generally known that in the
winter of 1861 Longfellow was obliged to warn his associates that if
they persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged to leave their
company; Sumner being looked upon by the Democrats and more timid
Republicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; as if any one man
could prop a house up when it was about to fall. After the War began,
this naturally came to an end, and Sumner was afterwards invited to join
the Club, with what satisfaction to Hoar, Lowell, and Holmes it might be
considering rather curiously to inquire. We can at least feel confident
that Hawthorne had no share in this. He did not believe in fighting
shadows, and he at least respected Sumner for his frankness and
disinterestedness.
Such differences of opinion, however, are not conducive to freedom of
discussion. Henry James, Sr., lifts the veil for a moment in a letter to
Emerson, written about this time, [Footnote: Memoir of Bronson Alcott;
also the “Hawthorne Centenary.”] and affords us a picture of
Hawthorne at the Saturday Club, which might bear the designation of a
highly-flavored caricature. According to Mr. James, John M. Forbes, the
Canton millionaire, preserved the balance at one end of the table, while
Hawthorne, an oasis in a desert, served as the nearest approach to a
human being, at the other. “How he buried his eyes in his plate and ate
with such a voracity! that no one should dare to ask him a question.”
We do not realize the caricaturist in Henry James, Jr., so readily,
on account of his elastic power of expression; but the relationship is
plain and apparent. Both father and son ought to have been baptized in
the Castalian Fount. There are those who have been at table with both
Hawthorne and the elder James, and without the slightest reflection on
Mr. James, have confessed their preference for the quiet composure and
simple dignity of Hawthorne. In truth Hawthorne’s manners were above
those of the polished courtier or the accomplished man of fashion:
they were poetic manners, and in this respect Longfellow most nearly
resembled him of all members of the Club; although Emerson also had
admirable manners and they were largely the cause of his success. It
would have done no harm if Emerson had burned this letter after its
first perusal, but since it is out of the bag we must even consider it
as it deserves.
Hawthorne must have enjoyed the meetings of the Club or he would not
have attended them so regularly. He wrote an account of the first
occasion on which he was present, giving an accurate description of the
dinner itself and enclosing a diagram of the manner in which the guests
were seated, but without any commentary on the proceedings of the day.
It was, after all, one of the nerve-centres of the great world, and an
agreeable change from the domestic monotony of the Wayside. Thackeray
would have descried rich material for his pen in it, but Hawthorne’s
studies lay in another direction. Great men were not his line in
literature.
Meanwhile Mrs. Hawthorne and her daughter were transforming their
Concord home into a small repository of the fine arts. Without much
that would pass by the title of elegance, they succeeded in giving it
an unpretentious air of refinement, and one could not enter it without
realizing that the materials of a world-wide culture had been brought
together there. Hawthorne soon found the dimensions of the house too
narrow for the enlarged views which he had brought with him from abroad,
and he designed a tower to be constructed at one corner of it, similar
to, if not so lofty as that of the Villa Manteuto. This occupied him
and the dilatory Concord carpenter for nearly half a year; and meanwhile
chaos and confusion reigned supreme. There was no one whose ears could
be more severely offended by the music of the carpenter’s box and the
mason’s trowel than Hawthorne, and he knew not whether to fly his home
or remain in it. Not until all this was over could he think seriously of
a new romance.
He made his study in the upper room of the tower; a room exactly twenty
feet square, with a square vaulted ceiling and five windows,--too many,
one would suppose, to produce a pleasant effect of light,--and walls
papered light yellow. There he could be as quiet and retired as in the
attic of his Uncle Robert Manning’s house in Salem. Conway states that
he wrote at a high desk, like Longfellow, and walked back and forth in
the room while thinking out what he was going to say. The view from his
windows extended across the meadows to Walden woods and the Fitchburg
railroad track, and it also commanded the Alcott house and the road
to Concord village. It was in this work-shop that he prepared “Our Old
Home” for the press and wrote the greater part of “Septimius Felton” and
“The Dolliver Romance.”
The War was a new source of distraction. It broke out before the tower
was finished, stimulating Hawthorne’s nerves, but disturbing that
delicate mental equilibrium upon which satisfactory procedure of his
writing depended. On May 26, 1861, he wrote to Horatio Bridge:
“The war, strange to say, has had a beneficial effect upon my spirits,
which were flagging wofully before it broke out. But it was delightful
to share in the heroic sentiment of the time, and to feel that I had a
country,--a consciousness which seemed to make me young again. One
thing as regards this matter I regret, and one thing I am glad of. The
regrettable thing is that I am too old to shoulder a musket myself, and
the joyful thing is that Julian is too young.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne,
ii. 276.]
Hawthorne’s patriotism was genuine and deep-seated. He was not the only
American whom the bombardment of Fort Sumter had awakened to the fact
that he had a country. What we have always enjoyed, we do not think of
until there is danger of losing it. In the same letter, he confesses
that he does not quite understand “what we are fighting for, or what
definite result can be expected. If we pummel the South ever so hard,
they will love us none the better for it; and even if we subjugate them,
our next step should be to cut them adrift.”
There were many in those times who thought and felt as Hawthorne did.
Douglas said in the Senate, “Even if you coerce the Southern States and
bring them back by force, it will not be the same Union.” A _people_
does not necessarily mean a _nation_; for the idea of nationality is of
slow growth, and is in a manner opposed to the idea of democracy; for
if the right of government depends on the consent of the governed,
the primary right of the governed must be to abrogate that government
whenever they choose to do so. Hawthorne was simply a consistent
democrat; but time has proved the fallacy of Douglas’s statement, and
that a forcible restoration of the Union was entirely compatible with
friendliness and mutal good-will between the different sections of the
country,--after slavery, which was the real obstacle to this, had been
eliminated. If the States east of the Alleghanies should attempt to
separate from the rest of the nation, it would inevitably produce a war
similar to that of 1861.
Hawthorne even went to the length at this time of proposing to arm the
negroes, and preparing them “for future citizenship by allowing them
to fight for their own liberties, and educating them through heroic
influences.” [Footnote: The “Hawthorne Centenary,” 197.] When George
L. Stearns was organizing the colored regiments in Tennessee in 1863
he wrote concerning his work, in almost exactly these terms; and the
inference is plain that Hawthorne might have been more of a humanitarian
if his early associations had been different.
Such an original character as Bronson Alcott for a next-door neighbor
could not long escape Hawthorne’s penetrating glance. Alcott was
an interesting personality, perfectly genuine, frank, kindly and
imperturbably good-humored. He had a benevolent aspect, and in general
appearance so much resembled the portraits of Benjamin Franklin that his
ingenious daughters made use of him in charades and theatricals for that
purpose. Hawthorne had known him many years earlier, and had spoken very
pleasantly of him in his first publication of “The Hall of Fantasy.” He
even said, “So calm and gentle was he, so quiet in the utterance of
what his soul brooded upon, that one might readily conceive his Orphic
Sayings to well up from a fountain in his breast, which communicated
with the infinite abyss of thought,”--rather an optimistic view for
Hawthorne. Alcott’s philosophy had the decided merit, which Herbert
Spencer’s has not, of a strong affirmation of a Great First Cause, and
our direct responsibility thereto: but it was chiefly the philosophy of
Plotinus; and his constant reiteration of a “lapse” in human nature from
divine perfection (which was simply the Donatello phase expressed in
logic), with the various corollaries deduced from it, finally became
as wearisome as the harp with a single string. Whether he troubled
Hawthorne in that way, is rather doubtful, for even as a hobby-rider,
Alcott was a man of Yankee shrewdness and considerable tact. Rose
Hawthorne says that “he once brought a particularly long poem to read,
aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing from which
they never recovered.” What poem this could have been I have no idea,
but in his later years Alcott wrote some excellent poetry, and those who
ought to know do not think that he bored Hawthorne very severely. They
frequently went to walk together, taking Julian for a make-weight, and
Hawthorne could easily have avoided this if he had chosen. There are
times for all of us when our next-door neighbors prove a burden; and it
cannot be doubted that in most instances this is reciprocal. [Footnote:
Rose Hawthorne, however, writes charmingly of the Alcotts. Take this
swift sketch, among others: “I imagine his slightly stooping, yet tall
and well-grown figure, clothed in black, and with a picturesque straw
hat, twining itself in and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning
home with gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders.”]
Alcott was a romance character of exceptional value, and Hawthorne
recognized this, but did not succeed in inventing a plot that would suit
the subject. The only one of Hawthorne’s preparatory sketches given
to the public--in which we see his genius in the “midmost heat
of composition”--supposes a household in which an old man keeps a
crab-spider for a pet, a deadly poisonous creature; and in the same
family there is a boy whose fortunes will be mysteriously affected in
some manner by this dangerous insect. He did not proceed sufficiently to
indicate for us how this would turn out, but he closes the sketch with
the significant remark, “In person and figure Mr. Alcott”; from which it
may be inferred that the crab-spider was intended to symbolize Alcott’s
philosophy, and the catastrophe of the romance would naturally result
from the unhealthy mental atmosphere in which the boy grew up,--a
catastrophe which in Alcott’s family was averted by the practical
sagacity of his daughters. The idea, however, became modified in its
application.
It is with regret that we do not allot a larger space to this important
sketch, for it is clearly an original study (like an artist’s drawing)
of the unfinished romance which was published in 1883 under the title
of “Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret.” Long lost sight of in the mass of
Hawthorne’s manuscripts, this last of his posthumous works was reviewed
by the critics with some incredulity, and Lathrop had the hardihood to
publicly assert that no such romance by Hawthorne’s pen existed, thereby
casting a gratuitous slander on his own brother-in-law. We may have our
doubts in regard to the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, for we have
no absolute standard by which to judge of Shakespeare’s style, but the
“style, the matter, and the drift” of “Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret” are
so essentially Hawthornish that a person experienced in judging of such
matters should not hesitate long in deciding that it belongs in the same
category with “Fanshawe” and “The Dolliver Romance.” It is even possible
to determine, from certain peculiarities in its style, the exact period
at which it was written; which must have been shortly after Hawthorne’s
return from Europe. In addition to this, if further evidence were
required, its close relationship to the aforementioned sketch is a fact
which no sophistry can reason away. [Footnote: This sketch was published
in the _Century_, January, 1883.]
The bloody footstep suggested to Hawthorne by the antediluvian print in
the stone step at Smithell’s Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the key-note
of this romance; but the eccentric recluse, the big crab-spider, the
orphaned grandchild, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in it. Alcott,
however,--and his identity cannot be mistaken,--does not play the
leading part in the piece, but comes in at the fifth chapter, only to
disappear mysteriously in the eighth; the orphan boy is companioned by
a girl of equal age, and these two bright spirits, mutually sustaining
each other, cast a radiance over the old Doctor in his dusty, frowsy,
cobwebby study, which brings out the external appearance and internal
peculiarities of the man, in the most vivid manner. The dispositions and
appearances of the two children are also contrasted, as Raphael might
have drawn and contrasted them, if he had painted a picture on a similar
subject.
The crab-spider is one of the most horrible of Nature’s creations.
Hawthorne saw one in the British Museum and it seems to have haunted his
imagination ever afterward. Why the creature should have been introduced
into this romance is not very clear, for it plays no part in the
development of the plot. The spider hangs suspended over the old
Doctor’s head like the sword of Damocles, and one would expect it to
descend at the proper moment in the narrative, and make an end of him
with its nippers; but Doctor Grimshawe dies a comparatively natural
death, and the desiccated body of the spider is found still clinging to
the web above him. The man and the insect were too closely akin in the
modes and purposes of their lives for either to outlast the other. There
is nothing abnormal in the fact of Doctor Grimshawe’s possessing this
dangerous pet; for all kinds of poisonous creatures have a well-known
fascination for the medical profession. Doctor Holmes amused himself
with a rattlesnake.
In spite of its unpleasant associations with spiders and blood-stains,
“Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret” is one of the most interesting of
Hawthorne’s works, containing much of his finest thought and most
characteristic description. The portrait of the grouty old Doctor
himself has a solidity of impast like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, and the
grave-digger, who has survived from colonial times, carries us back
involuntarily to the burial scene in “Hamlet.” Alcott, whose name is
changed to Colcord, is not treated realistically, but rather idealized
in such kindly sympathetic manner as might prevent all possibility of
offence at the artistic theft of his personality. The plot, too, is a
most ingenious one, turning and winding like a hare, and even diving out
of sight for a time; but only to reappear again, as the school-master
Colcord does, with a full and satisfactory explanation of its mysterious
course. To judge from the appearance of the manuscript, this romance was
written very rapidly, and there are places in the text which intimate
this; but it vies in power with “The Scarlet Letter,” and why Hawthorne
should have become dissatisfied with it,--why he should have failed
to complete, revise, and publish it--can only be accounted for by the
mental or nervous depression which was now fastening itself upon him.
It is noticeable, however, that where the plot is transferred to English
ground Hawthorne’s writing has much the same tone and quality that we
find in “Our Old Home.” External appearances seem to impede his insight
there; but this is additional proof of the authenticity of the work.
[Footnote: There are many other evidences; such as, “after-dinner
speeches on the necessity of friendly relations between England and
the United States,” and “the whistling of the railway train, _two_ or
_three_ times a day.”]
Shortly after the battle of Bull Run Hawthorne went with his boy to
recuperate at Beverly Farms, leaving his wife and daughters at the
Wayside, and the letters which passed between these two divisions of
the family, during his absence, give some very pretty glimpses of their
idyllic summer life. Mrs. Hawthorne “cultivated her garden,” and gave
drawing lessons to the neighbors’ children, while her husband, forty
miles away, was fishing and bathing. The Beverly shore has not a
stimulating climate, but is very attractive in summer to those who do
not mind a few sultry nights from land breezes. It was near enough to
Salem for Hawthorne to revive the reminiscences of his youth (which
become more and more precious after the age of fifty), without obtruding
himself on the gaze of his former townsmen or of the young lady “who
wished she could poison him.” [Footnote: W. D. Howells’ Memoirs.] It
is to be hoped that he saw something of his sister Elizabeth again, the
last remnant of his mother’s household, who for some inscrutable reason
had never visited him at Concord.
We note here a curious circumstance; namely, that Hawthorne appears to
have lost the art of writing short sketches. It will be recollected that
twenty years earlier he did not feel equal to anything beyond this, and
that it cost him a strenuous effort to escape from the habit. Now when
he would have liked to return to that class of composition he could not
do so. Fields would have welcomed anything from his pen (so severe a
critic he was of himself), but his name does not appear in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ from July, 1861, to June, 1862, and it cannot be doubted that
with the education of his son before him, the remuneration would have
been welcome. It was not until nearly a year later that he conceived the
idea of cutting his English Note-book into sections, and publishing them
as magazine articles.
From this time forth, one discouragement followed another. In the
autumn of 1861 the illness of his daughter, which he had expected and
predicted, came to pass in a violent form. The old Roman virus, kept
under in her blood, for a time, by continual changes of air and climate,
at last gained the mastery, and brought her once more in danger of her
life. She had to be removed to the house of her aunt, Mrs. Mann, who
lived in the centre of the town, on account of her father’s nerves, so
that the Concord doctor could attend her at night when necessary. It was
the severest and most protracted case of fever that the physician had
ever known to be followed by a recovery. Miss Una did recover, but the
mental strain upon her father was even more exhausting than that which
her previous illness had caused, and he was not in an equal condition to
bear it.
“Septimius Felton” may have been written about this time (perhaps during
his daughter’s convalescence), but his family knew nothing of it, until
they discovered the manuscript after his death. When it was published
ten years later, the poet Whittier spoke of it as a failure, and
Hawthorne would seem to have considered it so; for he left it in an
unfinished condition, and immediately began a different story on the
same theme,--the elixir of life. It has no connection with the sketch
already mentioned, in which Alcott’s personality becomes the mainspring,
but with another abortive romance, called “The Ancestral Footstep,”
which Hawthorne commenced while he was in England. It is invaluable for
the light it throws on his method of working. Descriptive passages
are mentioned in it “to be inserted” at a later time, meanwhile
concentrating his energy on more important portions of the narrative.
Half way through the story he changed his original plan, transforming
the young woman who previously had been Septimius’s sweetheart to
Septimius’s sister; and it may have been the difficulty of adjusting
this change to the portion previously written, that discouraged
Hawthorne from completing the romance. But the work suffers also from a
tendency to exaggeration. The name of Hagburn is unpleasantly realistic,
and Doctor Portsoaken, with his canopy of spider-webs hanging in noisome
festoons above his head, is closely akin to the repulsive. The amateur
critic who averred that he could not read Hawthorne without feeling
a sensation as if cobwebs were drawn across his face, must have had
“Septimius Felton” in mind. Yet there are refreshing passages in it, and
the youthful English officer who kisses Septimius’s sweetheart before
his eyes, and afterward fights an impromptu duel with him, dying as
cheerfully as he had lived, is an original and charming character. The
scene of the story has a peculiar interest, from the fact that it is
laid at Hawthorne’s own door; the Feltons are supposed to have lived at
the Wayside and the Hagburns in the Alcott house.
The firm of Ticknor & Fields now began to feel anxious on Hawthorne’s
account, and the last of the winter the senior partner proposed a
journey to Washington, which was accordingly accomplished in the second
week of March. Horatio Bridge was now chief of a bureau in the Navy
Department, and was well qualified to obtain for his veteran friend an
inside position for whatever happened to be going on. In the midst of
the turmoil and excitement of war, Hawthorne attracted as much attention
as the arrival of a new ambassador from Great Britain. Secretary Stanton
appointed him on a civil commission to report concerning the condition
of the Army of the Potomac. He was introduced to President Lincoln,
and made excursions to Harper’s Ferry and Fortress Monroe. Concerning
General McClellan, he wrote to his daughter on March 16:
“The outcry opened against Gen. McClellan, since the enemy’s retreat
from Manassas, is really terrible, and almost universal; because it is
found that we might have taken their fortifications with perfect ease
six months ago, they being defended chiefly by wooden guns. Unless he
achieves something wonderful within a week, he will be removed from
command, at least I hope so; I never did more than half believe in him.
By a message from the State Department, I have reason to think that
there is money enough due me from the government to pay the expenses of
my journey. I think the public buildings are as fine, if not finer, than
anything we saw in Europe.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 309.]
General McClellan was not a great man, and Hawthorne’s opinion of him is
more significant from the fact that at that time McClellan was expected
to be the Joshua who would lead the Democratic party out of its
wilderness. On his return to Concord, Hawthorne prepared a commentary
on what he had seen and heard at the seat of war, and sent it to the
_Atlantic Monthly_; but, although patriotic enough, his melancholy
humor was prominent in it, and Fields particularly protested against his
referring to President Lincoln as “Old Abe,” although the President was
almost universally called so in Washington; and the consequence of
this was that Hawthorne eliminated everything that he had written about
Lincoln in his account,--which might be called “dehamletizing” the
subject. In addition to this he wrote a number of foot-notes purporting
to come from the editor, but really intended to counteract the
unpopularity of certain statements in the text. This was not done with
any intention to deceive, but, with the exception of Emerson and a few
others who could always recognize Hawthorne’s style, the readers of the
_Atlantic_ supposed that these foot-notes were written by either James
T. Fields or James Russell Lowell, who had been until recently the
editor of the Magazine,--a practical joke which Hawthorne enjoyed
immensely when it was discovered to him.
This contribution, essay, or whatever it may be called, had only a
temporary value, but it contained a prediction, which has been often
recollected in Hawthorne’s favor; namely, that after the war was
over “one bullet-headed general after another would succeed to the
presidential chair.” In fact, five generals, whether bullet-headed or
not, followed after Lincoln and Johnson; and then the sequence came
to an end apparently because the supply of politician generals was
exhausted. Certainly the Anglo-Saxon race yields to no other in
admiration for military glory.
Fields afterward published Hawthorne’s monograph on President Lincoln,
and, although it is rather an unsympathetic statement of the man, it
remains the only authentic pen-and-ink sketch that we have of him. Most
important is his recognition of Lincoln as “essentially a Yankee” in
appearance and character; for it has only recently been discovered
that Lincoln was descended from an old New England family, and that
his ancestors first emigrated to Virginia and afterward to Kentucky.
[Footnote: Essay on Lincoln in “True Republicanism.”] Hawthorne says of
him:
“If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I should have taken him for
a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. [Footnote: The country
school-master of that time.--Ed.] He was dressed in a rusty black
frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the
suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his figure,
and had grown to be the outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on
his feet. His hair was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat
bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb
that morning, after the disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a
nightcap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such effeminacies. His
complexion is dark and sallow, betokening, I fear, an insalubrious
atmosphere around the White House; he has thick black eyebrows and
impending brow; his nose is large, and the lines about his mouth are
very strongly denned.
“The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere
in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed,
illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look
out of his eyes, and an expression of homely sagacity, that seems
weighted with rich results of village experience. A great deal of native
sense; no bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at heart, and
thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,--at least, endowed with a
sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.... But on the whole,
I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human
sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would
as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been
practicable to put in his place.” [Footnote: “Yesterdays with Authors,”
99.]
This is not a flattered portrait, like those by Lincoln’s political
biographers; neither is it an idealized likeness, such as we may
imagine him delivering his Gettysburg Address. It is rather an external
description of the man, but it is, after all, Lincoln as he appeared in
the White House to the innumerable visitors, who, as sovereign American
citizens, believed they had a right to an interview with the people’s
distinguished servant.
Hawthorne’s European letter-bag in 1862 is chiefly interesting for Henry
Bright’s statement that the English people might have more sympathy with
the Union cause in the War if they could understand clearly what the
national government was fighting for; and that Lord Houghton and Thomas
Hughes were the only two men he had met who heartily supported the
Northern side. Perhaps Mr. Bright would have found it equally as
difficult to explain why the British Government should have made war
upon Napoleon for twelve consecutive years.
Henry Bright, moreover, seemed to be quite as much interested in a new
American poet, named J. G. Holland, and his poem called “Bitter-Sweet.”
Lord Houghton agreed with him that it was a very remarkable poem, and
they wished to know what Hawthorne could tell them about its author. As
Holland was not recognized as a poet by the Saturday Club, Hawthorne’s
answer on this point would be very valuable if we could only obtain a
sight of it. Holland was in certain respects the counterpart of Martin
F. Tupper.
In the summer of this year Hawthorne went to West Goldsboro’, Maine, an
unimportant place opposite Mount Desert Island, taking Julian with him;
a place with a stimulating climate but a rather foggy atmosphere. He
must have gone there for his health, and it is pathetic to see how
the change of climate braced him up at first, so that he even made the
commencement of a new diary, and then, as always happens in such cases,
it let him down again to where he was before. He did not complain, but
he felt that something was wrong with him and he could not tell what it
was.
Wherever he went in passing through the civilized portion of Maine, he
found the country astir with recruits who had volunteered for the war,
so that it seemed as if that were the only subject which occupied men’s
minds. He says of this in his journal:
“I doubt whether any people was ever actuated by a more genuine and
disinterested public spirit; though, of course, it is not unalloyed with
baser motives and tendencies. We met a train of cars with a regiment
or two just starting for the South, and apparently in high spirits.
Everywhere some insignia of soldiership were to be seen,--bright
buttons, a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, and sometimes
a round-shouldered bumpkin in the entire uniform. They require a great
deal to give them the aspect of soldiers; indeed, it seems as if they
needed to have a good deal taken away and added, like the rough clay of
a sculptor as it grows to be a model.”
Such is the last entry in his journal. Hawthorne was not carried off his
feet by the excitement of the time, but looked calmly on while others
expended their patriotism in hurrahing for the Union. What he remarks
concerning the volunteers was perfectly true Men cannot change their
profession in a day, and soldiers are not to be made out of farmers’
boys and store clerks simply by clothing them in uniform, no matter how
much courage they may have. War is a profession like other professions,
and requires the severest training of them all.