IMMORTALITY
In the autumn of 1862 there was great excitement in Massachusetts.
President Lincoln had issued his premonitory proclamation of
emancipation, and Harvard College was stirred to its academic depths.
Professor Joel Parker, of the Law School, pronounced Lincoln’s action
unconstitutional, subversive of the rights of property, and a most
dangerous precedent. With Charles Eliot Norton and other American
Tories, Parker headed a movement for the organization of a People’s
Party, which had for its immediate object the defeat of Andrew for
Governor and the relegation of Sumner to private life. The first they
could hardly expect to accomplish, but it was hoped that a sufficient
number of conservative representatives would be elected to the
Legislature to replace Sumner by a Republican, who would be more to
their own minds; and they would be willing to compromise on such a
candidate as Honorable E. R. Hoar,--although Judge Hoar was innocent
of this himself and was quite as strongly anti-slavery as Sumner. The
movement came to nothing, as commonly happens with political movements
that originate in universities, but for the time being it caused a great
commotion and nowhere more so than in the town of Concord. Emerson was
never more emphatic than in demanding the re-election of Andrew and
Sumner.
How Hawthorne felt about this and how he voted in November, can only be
conjectured by certain indications, slight, it is true, but all pointing
in one direction. As long since explained, he entertained no very
friendly feeling toward the Cotton Whigs; his letter to his daughter
concerning Gen. McClellan, who set himself against the proclamation
and was removed in consequence, should be taken into consideration;
and still more significant is the letter to Horatio Bridge, in which
Hawthorne proposed the enlistment of negro soldiers. Doctor George B.
Loring, of Salem, always a loyal friend to the Hawthorne family, came
to Concord in September to deliver an address at the annual cattle-show,
and visited at the Wayside. He had left the Democratic party and become
a member of the Bird Club, which was then the centre of political
influence in the State. As a matter of course he explained his new
position to Hawthorne. He had long felt attracted to the Republican
party, and but for his influential position among his fellow-Democrats,
he would have joined it sooner. Parties were being reconstructed. Half
the Democrats had become Republicans; and a considerable portion of the
Whigs had joined the Democratic party. The interests of the Republic
were in the hands of the Republican party and it ought to be supported.
We can believe that Hawthorne listened to him with close attention.
It was in the spring of 1862 that I first became well acquainted with
the Hawthorne family, which seemed to exist in an atmosphere of purity
and refinement derived from the man’s own genius. Julian visited me at
our house in Medford during the early summer, where he made great havoc
among the small fruits of the season. We boxed, fenced, skated, played
cricket and studied Cicero together. As my father was one of the most
revolutionary of the Free-Soilers, this may have amused Hawthorne as an
instance of the Montagues and Capulets; but I found much sympathy with
my political notions in his household. When the first of January came
there was a grand celebration of the Emancipation in Boston Music Hall.
Mrs. Hawthorne and Una were very desirous to attend it, and I believe
they both did so--Miss Una at all events. If Mrs. Hawthorne’s opinions
could be taken in any sense as a reflection of her husband’s mind, he
was certainly drifting away from his old associations.
In October, 1862, Hawthorne published the first of a series of studies
from English life and scenery, taken chiefly from his Note-book, and he
continued this at intervals until the following summer, when Ticknor
& Fields brought them out with some additions in book form as “Our Old
Home;” a volume which has already been considered in these pages. It was
not a favorable time for the publication of classic literature, for the
whole population of the United States was in a ferment; and moreover the
unfriendly attitude of the English educated classes toward the cause of
the Union, was beginning to have its effect with us. In truth it seemed
rather inconsistent that the philanthropic Gladstone, who had always
professed himself the friend of freedom, should glorify Jefferson Davis
as the founder of a new nation--a republic of slaveholders. In addition
to this, Hawthorne insisted on dedicating the volume to President
Pierce, and when his publishers protested that this would tend to make
the book unpopular, he replied in a spirited manner, that if that was
the case it was all the more reason why Pierce’s friends should signify
their continued confidence in him. This may have made little difference,
however, for comparatively few readers notice the dedication of a
book until after they have purchased it; and we like Hawthorne for his
firmness in this instance.
In England the book produced a sensation of the unfavorable sort.
Hawthorne’s attack on the rotundity of the English ladies, whatever may
have been his reason for it, was, to speak reservedly, somewhat lacking
in delicacy. It stirred up a swarm of newspaper enemies against him;
and proved a severe strain to the attachment of his friends there. Henry
Bright wrote to him:
“It really was too bad, some of the things you say. You talk like a
cannibal. Mrs. Heywood says to my mother, ‘I really believe you and
I were the only ladies he knew in Liverpool, and we are not like
beefsteaks.’ So all the ladies are furious.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne,
ii. 280. Good Mrs. Alcott also objected stoutly to the reflections on
her sex.]
But Hawthorne was no longer what he had been, and allowance should be
made for this.
Hawthorne’s chief interest at this time, however, lay in the preparation
of his son for Harvard College. Julian was sixteen in August and,
considering the itinerant life he had lived, well advanced in his
studies. He was the best-behaved boy in Concord, in school or out, and
an industrious though not ambitious scholar. He was strong, vigorous
and manly; and his parents had sufficient reason to be proud of him. To
expect him, however, to enter Harvard College at the age of seventeen
was somewhat unreasonable. His father had entered Bowdoin at that age,
but the requirements at Harvard were much more severe than at Bowdoin;
enough to make a difference of at least one year in the age of the
applicant. For a boy to enter college in a half-fitted condition is
simply to make a false start in life, for he is only too likely to
become discouraged, and either to drag along at the foot of the class or
to lose his place in it altogether. Hawthorne may have felt that the end
of earthly affairs was close upon him, and wished to see his son started
on the right road before that came; but Emerson also had an interest in
having Julian go to college at exactly this time; namely, to obtain him
as a chum for his wife’s nephew, with the advantage of a tutor’s room
thrown in as an extra inducement. He advised Hawthorne to place
Julian in charge of a Harvard professor who was supposed to have a
sleight-of-hand faculty for getting his pupils through the examinations.
Julian worked bravely, and succeeded in entering Harvard the following
July; but he was nine months (or a good school year), younger than the
average of his class.
Hawthorne did not leave home this summer (1863), and the only letter we
have of his was the one to James T. Fields concerning the dedication of
“Our Old Home,” which was published in the autumn. Julian states that
his father spent much of his time standing or walking in his narrow
garden before the house, and looking wistfully across the meadows to
Walden woods. His strength was evidently failing him, yet he could not
explain why--nor has it ever been explained.
One bright day in November two of us walked up from Cambridge with
Julian and lunched at his father’s. Mr. Hawthorne received us cordially,
but in a tremulous manner that betrayed the weakness of his nerves. As
soon as Julian had left the room, he said to us, “I suppose it would be
of little use to ask you young gentlemen what sort of a scholar Julian
is.” H---- replied to this, that we were neither of us in the division
with him, but that he had heard nothing unfavorable in regard to his
recitations; and I told him that Julian went to the gymnasium with me
every evening, and appeared to live a very regular kind of life.
This seemed to please Mr. Hawthorne very much, and he soon produced a
decanter of port, and, his son having entered the room again, he said,
“I want to teach Julian the taste of good wine, so that he will learn to
avoid those horrible punches, which I am told you have at Harvard.” We
all laughed greatly at this, which was afterward increased by Julian’s
saying that the only punches he had yet seen were those which the
sophomores gave us in the foot-ball fight,--or some such statement. It
was a bright occasion for all of us, and when Mrs. Hawthorne and her
daughters entered the room, such a beautiful group as they all formed
together! And Hawthorne himself seemed ten years younger than when he
first greeted us.
He was the most distinguished-looking man that I ever beheld, and
no sensible person could meet him without instantly recognizing his
superior mental endowment. His features were not only classic
but grandly classic; and his eyes large, dark, luminous,
unfathomable--looking into them was like looking into a deep well. His
face seemed to give a pictorial reflection of whatever was taking place
about him; and again became like a transparency through which one could
see dim vistas of beautiful objects. The changes of expression on it
were like the sunshine and clouds of a summer day--perhaps thunder
clouds sometimes, with flashes of lightning, which his son may still
remember; for where there is a great heart there will always be great
heat.
“THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE”
According to James T. Fields, the ground-plan of this work was laid
the preceding winter, but Hawthorne became dissatisfied with the way in
which the subject developed itself and so set the manuscript aside until
he could come to it again with fresh inspiration. With the more bracing
weather of September he commenced on it again, and wrote during the next
two months that portion which we now have. On December 1 he forwarded
two chapters to Ticknor & Fields, requesting to have them set up so that
he could see them in print and obtain a retrospective view of his work
before he proceeded further. Yet on December 15 he wrote again, saying
that he had not yet found courage to attack the proofs, and that all
mental exertion had become hateful to him. [Footnote: “Yesterdays with
Authors,” 115.] He was evidently feeling badly, and for the first time
Mrs. Hawthorne was seriously anxious for him. Four days later she wrote
to Una, who was visiting in Beverly:
“Papa is comfortable to-day, but very thin and pale and weak. I give him
oysters now. Hitherto he has had only toasted crackers and lamb and
beef tea. I am very impatient that he should see Dr. Vanderseude, but he
wants to go to him himself, and he cannot go till it be good weather....
The splendor and pride of strength in him have succumbed; but they can
be restored, I am sure. Meanwhile he is very nervous and delicate; he
cannot bear anything, and he must be handled like the airiest Venetian
glass.” [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 333.]
He divided his time between lying on a sofa and sitting in an arm-chair;
and he did not seem very comfortable in either position. It was long
since he had attended meetings of the Saturday Club.
It is clear from this that Hawthorne had not recently consulted a doctor
concerning his condition, and perhaps not at all. He may have been right
enough in supposing that no common practitioner could give him help, but
there was at that time one of the finest of physiologists in Boston,
Dr. Edward H. Clark, who cured hundreds of sick people every year, as
quietly and unostentatiously as Dame Nature herself. He was a graduate
of the University of Pennsylvania, and as such not generally looked upon
with favor by the Boston medical profession, but when Agassiz’s large
brain gave way in 1868, Dr. Brown-Séquard telegraphed to him from Europe
to consult Edward Clark, and Doctor Clark so improved his health that
Agassiz afterward enjoyed a number of years of useful work. Perhaps he
might have accomplished as much for Hawthorne; but how was Hawthorne in
his retired and uncommunicative life to know of him? There are decided
advantages in living in the great world, and in knowing what goes on
there,--if one only can.
It is doubtful if Hawthorne ever opened the proof of “The Dolliver
Romance.” In February he wrote to Fields that he could not possibly
go on with it, and as it had already been advertised for the _Atlantic
Monthly_, a notification had to be published concerning the matter,
which startled Longfellow, Whittier and other old friends of Hawthorne,
who were not in the way of knowing much about him. The fragment that we
now have of it was printed in the _Atlantic_ many years after his death.
It was the last expiring ember of Hawthorne’s genius, blazing up
fitfully and momentarily with the same brightness as of old, and then
disappearing like Hawthorne himself into the unknown and the unknowable.
It is a fragment, and yet it seems complete, for it is impossible to
imagine how the story could have been continued beyond its present
limits; and Hawthorne left no word from which we can conjecture his
further intentions in regard to it.
There was an old apothecary in Concord, named Reynolds, a similar man
to, but not so aged as, Hawthorne’s Doctor Dolliver; and he also had a
son, a bright enterprising boy,--too bright and spirited to suit Boston
commercialism,--who went westward in 1858 to seek his fortune, nor
have I ever heard of his return. The child Pansie, frisking with her
kitten--a more simple, ingenuous, and self-centred, but also less
sympathetic nature than the Pearl of Hester Prynne--may have been
studied from Hawthorne’s daughter Rose. There also lived at Concord
in Hawthorne’s time a man with the title of Colonel, a pretentious,
self-satisfied person, who corresponded fairly to his description of
Colonel Dabney, in “The Dolliver Romance.” Neither is it singular that
the apothecary’s garden should have bordered on a grave-yard, for there
are two old cemeteries in Concord in the very centre of the town.
I know of no such portrait of an old man as Doctor Dolliver in art or
literature,--except perhaps Tintoretto’s portrait of his aged self, in
the Louvre. We not only see the customary marks of age upon him, but we
feel them so that it seems as if we grew old and stiff and infirm as we
read of him; and the internal life of old age is revealed to us, not by
confessions of the man himself, but by every word he speaks and every
act he does as if the writer were a skilful tragedian upon the stage.
It seems as if Hawthorne must have felt all this himself during the last
year of his life, to describe it so vividly; but he ascends by these
infirm steps to loftier heights than ever before, and the scene in which
he represents Doctor Dolliver seated at night before the fire in his
chamber after Pansie had been put to bed, is the noblest passage in the
whole cycle of Hawthorne’s art; one of those rare passages written in
moments of gifted insight, when it seems as if a higher power guided the
writer’s hand. It is given here entire, for to subtract a word from it
would be an irreparable injury.
“While that music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And there
were seasons, it might be, happier than even these, when Pansie had been
kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir Dolliver sat by his fireside
gazing in among the massive coals, and absorbing their glow into those
cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or
fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them
in by-gone years. Over our friend’s face, in the rosy flicker of the
fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made
him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child
Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him
beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features and brighten into
joy, yet not so vividly as to break his evening quietude. The gate of
heaven had been kindly left ajar, that this forlorn old creature
might catch a glimpse within. All the night afterwards, he would be
semi-conscious of an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses
of an old man’s slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a faint
thrilling of the heart-strings, as if there had been music just now
wandering over them.”
So Jacob in the desert saw angels descending and ascending on a ladder
from Heaven. Discouraged, depressed, the door closed upon his earthly
hopes, not only for himself, but for those whom he loves much better
than himself, so far as he could ever be a help and a providence to
them, Hawthorne finds a purer joy and a higher hope in the depths of his
own spirit.
In the second chapter, or fragment, of this romance, Doctor Dolliver,
followed by Pansie, goes out into the garden one frosty October morning,
and while the apothecary is digging at his herbs, the imitative child,
with an instinctive repulsion for everything strange and morbid, pulls
up the fatal plant from which the elixir of life was distilled, and
frightened at her grandfather’s chiding, runs with it into the cemetery
where it is lost among the graves and never seen again. This account
stands by itself, having no direct connection with what precedes or
follows; but the delineation is so vivid, the poetic element in it so
strong, that it may be said to stand without assistance, and does not
require the name of Hawthorne to give it value.
In the conclusion, the elixir of life proves to be an elixir of death;
extremes meet and are reconciled. As he says in “The Marble Faun,” joy
changes to sorrow and sorrow is laughed away; the experience of both
being that which is really valuable. Doctor Dolliver and Pansie are
figures for the end and the beginning of life; the Old Year and the
New. Such is the sum of Hawthorne’s philosophy--the ultimate goal of his
thought. There could have been no more fitting consummation of his work.
The cycle of his art is complete, and death binds the laurel round his
brow.
A HERO’S END
After Hawthorne’s letter of February 25, Fields felt that he ought to
make an effort in his behalf. Fields’s partner, W. D. Ticknor, was also
ailing, and it was arranged that he and Hawthorne should go on a journey
southward as soon as the weather permitted. Doctor Holmes was consulted,
and the last of March Hawthorne came to Boston and met Holmes at
Fields’s house. Holmes made an examination, which was anything but
satisfactory to his own mind; in fact, he was appalled at the condition
in which he found his former companion of the Saturday Club. “He was
very gentle,” Holmes says; “very willing to answer questions, very
docile to such counsel as I offered him, but evidently had no hope of
recovering his health. He spoke as if his work were done, and he should
write no more.” [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1864.] The doctor,
however, must have been mistaken in supposing that Hawthorne was
suffering from the same malady that carried off General Grant, for no
human being could die in that manner without suffering greater pain
than Hawthorne gave any indication of; and the sedatives which Holmes
prescribed for him could only have resulted in a weakening of
the nerves. He even warned Hawthorne against the use of alcoholic
stimulants, to which for some time he had been more or less accustomed.
Hawthorne and Ticknor went to New York, and two days later Ticknor was
able to write to Mrs. Hawthorne that her husband appeared to be much
improved. How cruelly disappointing to meet him at their own door four
days later, haggard, weary and more dispirited than when he had left the
Wayside on March 26! He had proceeded to Philadelphia with Ticknor, and
there at the Continental Hotel Ticknor was suddenly seized with a mortal
malady and died almost in Hawthorne’s arms, before the latter could
notify his family in Boston that he was ill. What a severe ordeal for a
man who was strong and well, but to a person in Hawthorne’s condition it
was like a thunderbolt. Ticknor’s son came to him at once, and together
they performed the necessary duties of the occasion, and made their
melancholy way homeward. Nothing, perhaps, except a death in his
own family, could have had so unfavorable an effect upon Hawthorne’s
condition.
Some good angel now notified Franklin Pierce of the serious posture
of affairs, and he came at once to Concord to offer his services in
Hawthorne’s behalf. However, he could propose nothing more hopeful than
a journey in the uplands of New Hampshire, and for this it would be
necessary to wait for settled weather. So Hawthorne remained at home for
the next month without his condition becoming apparently either better
or worse. At length, on May 13, the ex-President returned and they went
together the following day.
We will not linger over that leave-taking on the porch of the Wayside;
so pathetic, so full of tenderness, even of despair, and yet with a
slender ray of hope beneath the leaden cloud of anxiety. To Hawthorne it
must have seemed even more discouraging than to his wife and children,
though none of them could have suspected that the end would be so soon.
* * * * *
On the morning of May 20, I had just returned from my first recitation
when Julian Hawthorne appeared at my room in the Massachusetts
dormitory, and said, like a man gasping for breath, “My father is
dead, and I want you to come with me.” Fields had sent him word
through Professor Gurney, who knew how to deliver such a message in the
kindliest manner. We went at once to Fields’s house on Charles Street,
where Mrs. Fields gave Julian the little information already known to
them through a dispatch from Franklin Pierce,--that his father died
during his sleep in the night of May 18, at the Pemmigewasset House,
Plymouth, New Hampshire. After this we wandered about Boston, silent and
aimless, until the afternoon train carried him to Concord. He greatly
dreaded meeting the gaze of his fellow-townsmen, and confessed that he
wanted to hide himself in the woods like a wounded deer. [Footnote:
The passage in “A Fool of Nature,” in which he describes Murgatroyd’s
discovery of his father’s death, must have been a reminiscence of this
time--a passage of the finest genius.]
On Wednesday, May 18, Hawthorne and Pierce drove from Centre Harbor to
Plymouth, a long and rather rough journey to be taken in a carriage.
Hawthorne, however, did not make much complaint of this, nor did he
seem to be unusually fatigued. He retired to his room soon after
nine o’clock, and was sleeping comfortably an hour later. Pierce was
evidently nervous about him, for he went in to look at him at two in the
morning, and again at four; and the last time he discovered that life
was extinct. Hawthorne had died in his sleep as quietly and peacefully
as he had lived. There is the same mystery in his death that there was
in his life, and it is difficult to assign either an immediate or a
proximate cause for it. With such a physique, and his simple, regular
habits of life, he ought to have reached the age of ninety. General
Pierce believed that he died of paralysis, and that is the most probable
explanation; but it was not like the usual cases of paralysis at
Hawthorne’s age; for, as we have seen, the process of disintegration and
failure of his powers had been going on for years. Nor did this follow,
as commonly happens, a protracted period of adversity, but it came upon
him during the most prosperous portion of his life. The first ten years
following upon his marriage were years of anxiety, self-denial and even
hardship; but other men, Alcott, for example, have suffered as much and
yet lived to a good old age. It may have been “the old dull pain” which
Longfellow associated with him, filing perpetually on the vital cord. It
was part of the enigmatic side of his nature.
The last ceremonies of respect to the earthly remains of Hawthorne
were performed at Concord on May 23, 1864, in the Unitarian Church, a
commodious building, [Footnote: In 1899 this building was burned to
the ground, and a new church has been erected on the same spot.] well
adapted to the great concourse of mourners who gathered there on this
occasion. Reverend James Freeman Clarke, who had united Hawthorne and
Sophia Peabody in marriage twenty-two years before, was now called upon
to preside over the last act in their married life. The simple eloquence
of his address penetrated to the heart of every person present.
“Hawthorne had achieved a twofold immortality,--and his immortality on
earth would be a comforting presence to all who mourned him. The noblest
men of the age had gathered there, to testify to his worth as a man
as well as to his genius as a writer.” Faces were to be seen in that
assembly that were never beheld in Concord before. Among these was the
soldierly figure and flashing eye of the poet Whittier. Longfellow,
Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, Alcott and Hillard were present; and
ex-President Pierce shook hands with Judge Hoar over Hawthorne’s bier.
After the services the assembly of mourners proceeded to Sleepy Hollow
cemetery, and there the mortal remains of Hawthorne were buried under
the pine trees on the same hill-side where he and Emerson and Margaret
Fuller conversed together on the summer afternoon twenty years before.
He needs no monument, for he has found a place in the universal pantheon
of art and literature.
* * * * *
It would seem advisable at this parting of the ways to say something of
Hawthorne’s religious convictions. He went as a boy with his mother and
sisters to the East Church in Salem, a society of liberal tendencies
and then on the verge of Unitarianism. All the Manning family attended
service there, but at a later time Robert Manning separated from it and
joined an orthodox society. Hawthorne’s mother and his sister Louisa
became Unitarians, and at Madam Hawthorne’s death in 1848 the funeral
services were conducted by Reverend Thomas T. Stone, of the First
Salem Church. It is presumable that Nathaniel Hawthorne also became
a Unitarian, so far as he can be considered a sectarian at all; but
certain elements of the older faith still remained in his mental
composition. It cannot be questioned that the strong optimism in
Emerson’s philosophy was derived from Doctor Channing’s instruction, and
it is equally certain that Hawthorne could never agree to this. Whatever
might be the origin of evil or its abstract value, he found it too
potent an element in human affairs to be quietly reasoned out of
existence. Whatever might be the ultimate purpose of Divine Providence,
the witchcraft prosecutions were an awful calamity to those who were
concerned in them. In this respect he resembled David A. Wasson, one of
the most devout religious minds, who left the church of Calvin (as it
was in his time), without ever becoming a Unitarian or a radical. Miss
Rebecca Manning says:
“I never knew of Hawthorne’s going to church at all, after I remember
about him, and do not think he was ever in the habit of going. I think
he may have gone sometimes when he was in England, but I do not know
about it. Somewhere in Julian or Rose Hawthorne’s reminiscences, there
is mention made of his reading family prayers, when he was in England.
He, as also his mother and sisters were people of deeply religious
natures, though not always showing it by outward observances.”
A Concord judge and an old Free-Soil politician once attended a
religious convention, and after the business of the day was over they
went to walk together. The politician confessed to the judge that he had
no very definite religious belief, for which the judge thought he
did himself great injustice; but is not that the most advanced and
intelligent condition of a man’s religious faith? How can we possess
clear and definite ideas of the grand mystery of Creation? Consider only
this simple metaphysical fact, that space has no limit, and that we
can neither conceive a beginning of time nor imagine time without a
beginning. What is there outside of the universe? The brain reels as
we think of it. The time has gone by when a man can say to himself
definitely, I believe this or I believe that; but we know at least that
we, “the creature of a day,” cannot be the highest form of intelligence
in this wonderful world. We thought that we lived in solid bodies, but
electric rays have been discovered by which the skeletons inside of us
become visible. The correlation and conservation of forces brings us
very close to the origin of all force; and yet in another sense we are
as far off as ever from the perception of it.
This would seem to have been also Hawthorne’s position in regard to
religious faith. What do we know of the religious belief of Michel
Angelo, of Shakespeare, or of Beethoven? We cannot doubt that they
were sincerely and purely religious men; but neither of them made any
confession of their faith. Vittoria Colonna may have known something of
Michel Angelo’s belief, but Vasari does not mention it; and Beethoven
confessed it was a subject that he did not like to talk about. The
deeper a man’s sense of the awe and mystery which underlies Nature, the
less he feels inclined to expose it to the public gaze. Hawthorne’s own
family did not know what his religious opinions were--only that he was
religious. One may imagine that the reticent man would be more reticent
on this subject than on any other; but we can feel confident that at
least he was not a sceptic, for the confirmed sceptic inevitably becomes
a chatterer. He walks to Walden Pond with Hillard and Emerson on
Sunday, and confesses his doubts as to the utility of the Church (in its
condition at that time), for spiritual enlightenment; but in regard to
the great omnipresent fact of spirituality he has no doubt. In “The Snow
Image” he makes a statue come to life, and says in conclusion that if a
new miracle is ever wrought in this world it will be in some such simple
manner as he has described.
To the poetic mind, which is after all the highest form of intellect,
the grand fact of existence is a sufficient miracle. The rising of
the sun, the changes of the seasons, the blooming of flowers and the
ripening of the grain, were all miracles to Hawthorne, and none the less
so because they are continually being repeated. The scientists tell us
that all these happen according to natural laws: perfectly true, but WHO
was it that made those laws? WHO is it that keeps the universe running?
Laws made for the regulation of human affairs by the wisest of men often
prove ineffective, and inadequate to the purpose for which they were
intended; but the laws of Nature work with unfailing accuracy. The boy
solves his problem in algebra, finding out the unknown quantity by those
values which are given him; and can we not also infer something of the
_unknown_ from the great panorama that passes unceasingly before us? The
one thing that Hawthorne could not have understood was, how gifted minds
like Lucretius and Auguste Comte could recognize only the evidence of
their senses, and deliberately blind themselves to the evidence of their
intellects. He who denies the existence of mind as a reality resembles
a person looking for his spectacles when they are on his nose; but it is
the imagination of the poet that leads civilization onward to its goal.
College life is rather generally followed by a period of scepticism,
partly owing in former times to the enforced attendance at morning
prayers, and still more perhaps to the study of Greek and Latin authors.
During what might be called Hawthorne’s period of despair, he could not
very well have obtained consolation from the traditional forms of divine
worship; at least, such has been the experience of all those who have
passed through the Wertherian stage, so far as we know of them. It is a
time when every man has to strike the fountain of spiritual life out of
the hard rock of his own existence; and those are fortunate who, like
Moses and Hawthorne, strike forcibly enough to accomplish this. It is
the “new birth from above,” in the light of which religious forms seem
of least importance.
One effect of matrimony is commonly a deepening of religious feeling,
but it is not surprising that Hawthorne should not have attended church
after his marriage. His wife had not been accustomed to church-going,
on account of the uncertainty of her health; the Old Manse was a long
distance from the Concord tabernacle; Hawthorne’s associates in Concord,
with the exception of Judge Keyes, were not in the habit of going to
church; and the officiating minister, both at that time and during
his later sojourn, was not a person who could have been intellectually
attractive to him. Somewhat similar reasons may have interfered with his
attendance after his return to Salem; and during the last fifteen years
of his life, he was too much of a wanderer to take a serious interest
in the local affairs of the various places he inhabited; but he was
desirous that his children should go to church and should be brought up
in honest Christian ways.
Little more need to be said concerning Hawthorne’s character as a
man. It was not so perfect as Longfellow’s, to whom all other American
authors should bow the head in this respect--the Washington of poets;
and yet it was a rare example of purity, refinement, and patient
endurance. His faults were insignificant in comparison with his virtues,
and the most conspicuous of them, his tendency to revenge himself for
real or fancied injuries, is but a part of the natural instinct in us
to return the blows we receive in self-defence. Wantonly, and of his own
accord, he never injured human being. His domestic life was as pure and
innocent as that which appeared before the world; and Mrs. Hawthorne
once said of him in my presence that she did not believe he ever
committed an act that could properly be considered wrong. It was like
his writing, and his “wells of English undefiled” were but as a synonym
for the clear current of his daily existence.
The ideality in Hawthorne’s face was so conspicuous that it is
recognizable in every portrait of him. It was not the cold visionary
expression of the abstract thinker, but a human poetic intelligence,
which resolved all things into a spiritual alembic of its own. It is
this which elevates him above all writers who only deal with the outer
world as they find it, and add nothing to it from their own natures.
George Brandes, the Danish critic and essayist, speaks of Hawthorne
somewhere as “the baby poet;” but we suspect that if he had ever met the
living Hawthorne, he would have stood very much in awe of him. It would
not have been like meeting Ernest Rénan or John Stuart Mill. Although
Hawthorne was not splenetic or rash, there was an occasional look in his
eye which a prudent person might beware of. He was emphatically a man of
courage.
The wide and liberal interest which German scholars and writers have so
long taken in the literature of other nations, has resulted in founding
an informal literary tribunal in Germany, to which the rest of the world
is accustomed to appeal. A. E. Schönbach, one of the most recent German
writers on universal literature, gives his impression of Hawthorne in
the following statement:
“I find the distinguishing excellence of Hawthorne’s imaginative
writings in the union of profound, keen, psychological development of
characters and problems with the most lucid objectivity and a joyous
modern realism. Occasionally there appears a light and delicate humor,
sometimes hidden in a mere adjective, or little phrase which lights up
the gloomiest situation with a gentle ray of hope. Far from unimportant
do I rate the charm of his language, its purity, its melody, its
graceful flexibility, the wealth of vocabulary, the polish which rarely
betrays the touch of the file. After, or with George Eliot, Hawthorne
is the first English prose writer of our century. At the same time he
sacrifices nothing of his peculiar American quality. Not only does he
penetrate into the most secret inner movements of the old colonial life,
as no one else has done, and reproduces the spirit of his forefathers
with a power of intuition which no historical work could equal; but
in all his other works, from the biography of General Pierce, to the
‘Marble Faun,’ Hawthorne shows the freshness and keenness, the precision
and lucidity, and other qualities not easy to describe, which belong
to American literature. He is its chief representative.” [Footnote:
“Gesammelte Aufsatze zur neueren Litteratur,” p. 346.]
Hawthorne has always been accorded a high position in literature, and as
time goes on I believe this will be increased rather than diminished. In
beauty of diction he is the first of American writers, and there are few
that equal him in this respect in other languages. It is a pleasure to
read him, simply for his form of expression, and apart from the meaning
which he conveys in his sentences. It is like the grace of the Latin
races,--like Dante and Chateaubriand; and the adaptation of his words is
so perfect that we never have to think twice for his meaning. In
those editions called the Elzevirs, which are so much prized by book
collectors, the clearness and legibility of the type result from such a
fine proportion of space and line that no other printer has succeeded in
imitating it; and there is something similar to this in the construction
of Hawthorne’s sentences.
He is the romance writer of the English language; and there is no form
of literature which the human race prizes more. How many translations
there have been of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and of “The Sorrows of
Werther”! The latter is not one of Goethe’s best, and yet it made him
famous at the age of twenty-eight. The novel deals with what is new and
surprising; the romance with what is old and universal. In “The Vicar of
Wakefield” we have the old story of virtue outwitted by evil, which is
in its turn outwitted by wisdom. There is nothing new in it except the
charming exposition which Goldsmith’s genius has given to the subject.
Thackeray ridiculed “The Sorrows of Werther,” and in the light of
matured judgment the tale appears ridiculous; but it strikes home to the
heart, because we all learn wisdom through such experiences, of which
young Werther’s is an extreme instance. It was only another example of
the close relation that subsists between comedy and tragedy.
It cannot be questioned that “The Scarlet Letter” ranks above “The
Sorrows of Werther;” nor is it less evident that “The Marble Faun” falls
short of “Wilhelm Meister” and “Don Quixote.” [Footnote: See “Cervantes”
in _North American Review_, May, 1905] Hawthorne’s position, therefore,
lies between these two--nearer perhaps to “Werther” than to “Wilhelm
Meister.” In certain respects he is surpassed by the great English
novelists: Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens and Marian Evans; but he
in turn surpasses them all in the perfection and poetic quality of
his art. There is much poetry in Scott and Dickens, a little also
in Thackeray and Miss Evans, but Hawthorne’s poetic vein has a more
penetrating tone, and appeals more deeply than Scott’s verses. If power
and versatility of characterization were to be the test of imaginative
writing, Dickens would push closely on to Shakespeare; but we do not go
to Shakespeare to read about Hamlet or Falstaff, or for the sake of
the story, or even for his wisdom, but for the _tout ensemble_--to
read Shakespeare. Raphael painted a dozen or more pictures on the same
subject, but they are all original, interesting and valuable, because
Raphael painted them. If it were not for the odd characters and variety
of incident in Dickens’s novels they would hardly be worth reading.
Hawthorne’s _dramatis personæ_ is not a long one, for his plots do not
admit of it, but his characters are finely drawn, and the fact that
they have not become popular types is rather in their favor. There
are Dombeys and Shylocks in plenty, but who has ever met a Hamlet or a
Rosalind in real life?
A certain English writer promulgated a list of the hundred superior
authors of all times and countries. There were no Americans in his
catalogue, but he admitted that if the number was increased to one
hundred and eighteen Hawthorne and Emerson might be included in it.
Doubtless he had not heard of Webster or Alexander Hamilton, and many of
his countrymen would be inclined to place Longfellow before Emerson.
I have myself frequently counted over the great writers of all times and
languages, weighing their respective values carefully in my mind, but I
have never been able to discover more than thirty-five authors who seem
to me decidedly superior to Hawthorne, nor above forty others who might
be placed on an equality with him. [Footnote: Appendix C.] This, of
course, is only an individual opinion, and should be accepted for what
it is worth; but there are many ancient writers, like Hesiod, Xenophon,
and Catullus, whose chief value resides in their antiquity, and a much
larger number of modern authors, such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, Freytag,
and Ruskin, who have been over-estimated in their own time. Petrarch,
and the author of “Gil Bias,” might be placed on a level with Hawthorne,
but certainly not above him. Those whom he most closely resembles in
style and subject matter are Goldsmith, Manzoni, and Auerbach.
Yet Hawthorne is essentially a domestic writer,--a poetizer of the
hearth-stone. Social life is always the proper subject for works of
fiction, and political life should never enter into them, except as
a subordinate element; but there is a border-land between the two, in
which politics and society act and react on each other, and it is from
this field that the great subjects for epic and dramatic poetry have
always been reaped. Hawthorne only knew of this by hearsay. Of the
strenuous conflict that continually goes on in political centres like
London and New York, a struggle for wealth, for honor, and
precedence; of plots and counterplots, of foiled ambition and ruined
reputations,--with all this Hawthorne had but slight acquaintance. We
miss in him the masculine vigor of Fielding, the humanity of Dickens,
and the trenchant criticism of Thackeray; but he knew that the true
poetry of life (at the present time) was to be found in quiet nooks and
in places far off from the turbulent maelstrom of humanity, and in his
own line he remains unrivalled.
PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE
Hawthorne had no more vanity in his nature than is requisite to preserve
a good appearance in public, but he always sat for his portrait when
asked to do so, and this was undoubtedly the most sensible way. He was
first painted by Charles Osgood in 1840, a portrait which has at least
the merit of a fine poetic expression. He was afterward painted by
Thompson, Healy, and Emanuel Leutze, and drawn in crayon by Rowse and
Eastman Johnson. Frances Osborne also painted a portrait of him from
photographs in 1893, an excellent likeness, and notable especially for
its far-off gaze. Of all these, Rowse’s portrait is the finest work of
art, for Rowse was a man of genius, but there is a slight tendency to
exaggeration in it, and it does not afford so clear an idea of Hawthorne
as he was, as the Osborne portrait. Healy was not very successful with
Hawthorne, and Miss Lander’s bust has no merit whatever. The following
list contains most of the portraits and photographs of Hawthorne now
known to exist, with their respective ownerships and locations.
Oil portrait painted by Charles Osgood, in 1840. Owned by Mrs. Richard
C. Manning.
Crayon portrait drawn by Eastman H. Johnson, in 1846. Owned by Miss
Alice M. Longfellow.
Oil portrait painted by George P. A. Healy, in 1850. Now in the
possession of Kirk Pierce, Esq.
Oil portrait by Miss H. Frances Osborne, after a photograph by Silsbee,
Case & Co., Boston.
Crayon portrait drawn by Samuel W. Rowse, in 1866. Owned by Mrs. Annie
Fields.
Engraving after the portrait painted in 1850 by Cephas G. Thompson.
Owned by Hon. Henry C. Leach.
The Grolier Club bronze medallion, made in 1892, by Ringel d’Illzach.
Owned by B. W. Pierson.
Cabinet photograph, bust, by Elliott & Fry, London. Owned by Mrs.
Richard C. Manning.
Card photograph, full length, seated, with book in right hand, by Black
& Case, Boston.
Cabinet photograph, three-quarter length, standing beside a pillar, copy
by Mackintire of the original photograph.
Card photograph, three-quarter length, seated, from Warren’s
Photographic Studio, Boston.
Card photograph, bust, by Brady, New York, with autographic signature.
Owned by Hon. Henry C. Leach.
Bust in the Concord (Massachusetts) Public Library, by Miss Louise
Lander.
Card photograph, bust, from Warren’s Photographic Studio, Boston. Owned
by Mrs. Richard C. Manning.
Oil portrait by Emanuel Leutze, painted in April, 1852. Owned by Julian
Hawthorne.
Photograph by Mayall, London. The so-called “Motley photograph.”
Two photographs by Brady, full length; one seated, the other standing.
Photograph showing Hawthorne, Ticknor and Fields standing together.
_Editions of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Books published under his own
Direction_
Fanshawe: A Tale, Boston, 1828. Twice-Told Tales, Boston, 1837.
Another edition, Boston, 1842.
Peter Parley’s Universal History, Boston, 1837. The Gentle Boy: A
Thrice-Told Tale, Boston, 1839. Grandfather’s Chair: A History for
Youth, Boston, 1841. Famous Old People: or Grandfather’s Chair II,
Boston, 1841. Liberty Tree: The Last Words of Grandfather’s Chair,
Boston, 1841. Biographical Stories for Children, Boston, 1842.
Historical Tales for Youth, Boston, 1842. The Celestial Railroad,
Boston, 1843. Mosses from an Old Manse, New York, 1846, 1851. The
Scarlet Letter, Boston, 1850. True Stories from History and Biography,
Boston, 1851. The House of the Seven Gables, Boston, 1852. A Wonder-Book
for Girls and Boys, Boston, 1851. Another edition, Boston, 1857.
The Snow-Image and Other Tales, Boston, 1852. Another edition, Boston
The Blithedale Romance, Boston, 1852. Life of Franklin Pierce, Boston,
1852. Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys, Boston, 1853. Transformation,
or the Romance of Monte Beni, Smith & Elder, London, 1860. The Marble
Faun, or the Romance of Monte Beni, Boston, 1860. Our Old Home, Boston,
1863.
_A complete list of Hawthorne’s contributions to American magazines will
be found in the appendix to Conway’s “Life of Hawthorne.”_
Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Hawthorne [Footnote: Read at the Emerson Club, at
Boston, January 2, 1906]
In 1892, when I was constructing the volume known as “Sketches from
Concord and Appledore,” I said in comparing Emerson with Hawthorne that
one was like _day_, and the other like _night_. I was not aware that
four years earlier M. D. Conway had made a similar statement in his
Life of Hawthorne, which was published in London. Miss Rebecca Manning,
Hawthorne’s own cousin, still living at the age of eighty and an
admirable old lady, distinctly confirms my statement, that “wherever
Hawthorne went he carried twilight with him.” Emerson, on the contrary,
was of a sanguine temperament and an essentially sunny nature. His
writings are full of good cheer, and the opening of his Divinity School
Address is as full of summer sunshine as the finest July day. It was
only necessary to see him look at the sunshine from his own porch to
recognize how it penetrated into the depths of his nature.
It would seem consistent with the rational order of things, that _day_
should be supplemented by _night_, and _night_ again by _day_; and here
we are almost startled by the completeness of our allegory. We sometimes
come across faces in the streets of a large city, which show by their
expression that they are more accustomed to artificial light than to the
light of the sun. Mrs. Emerson was one of these. She never seemed to
be fully herself, until the lamps were lighted. Her pale face seemed to
give forth moonlight, and its habitual expression was much like that
of a Sister of Charity. It was said of her that she was the last in
the house to retire at night, always reading or busying herself with
household affairs, until twelve or one o’clock; but this mode of life
would appear to have been suited to her organization, for in spite of
her colorless look she lived to be over ninety.
So far I can tread upon firm earth, without drawing upon my imagination,
but in regard to Mrs. Hawthorne I cannot speak with the same assurance,
for I only became acquainted with her after her husband’s health had
begun to fail, and the anxiety in her face was strongly marked; yet I
have reason to believe that her temperament was originally sanguine and
optimistic, and that she alternated from dreamy, pensive moods to bright
vivacious ones. She certainly was very different from her husband. Her
sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was the most sanguine person of her time,
and her introduction of the kindergarten into America was accomplished
through her unbounded hopefulness. The Wayside, where Mrs. Hawthorne
lived, has an extended southern exposure. The house was always full of
light, which is not often the case with New England country houses; and
when she lived at Liverpool, where sunshine is a rare commodity, she
became unwell, so that Mr. Hawthorne was obliged to send her to Madeira
in order to avert a dangerous illness.
These two estimable ladies were alike in the excellence of their
housekeeping, the purity of their manners, their universal kindliness,
and their devotion to the welfare of their husbands and children. It was
a pleasure to pass them on the road-side; the fare at their tables was
always of the nicest, even if it happened to be frugal; and people of
all classes could have testified to their helpful liberality. In these
respects they might almost have served as models, but otherwise they
were as different as possible. Mrs. Emerson was of a tall, slender, and
somewhat angular figure (like her husband), but she presided at table
with a grace and dignity that quite justified his favorite epithet of
“Queenie.” There was even more of the Puritan left in her than there was
in him, and although she encouraged the liberal movements and tendencies
of her time, one always felt in her mental attitude the inflexibility of
the moral law. To her mind there was no shady border-land between right
and wrong, but the two were separated by a sharply defined line, which
was never to be crossed, and she lived up to this herself, and, in
theory at least, she had but little mercy for sinners. On one occasion I
was telling Mr. Emerson of a fraudulent manufacturing company, which had
failed, as it deserved to, and which was found on investigation to
have kept two sets of books, one for themselves, and another for
their creditors. Mrs. Emerson listened to this narrative with evident
impatience, and at the close of it she exclaimed, “This world has become
so wicked that if I were the maker of it, I should blow it up at once.”
Emerson himself did not like such stories; and although he once said
that “all deaf children ought to be put in the water with their faces
downward,” he was not always willing to accept human nature for what it
really is.
Mrs. Emerson did not agree with her husband’s religious views; neither
did she adopt the transcendental faith, that the idea of God is innate
in the human mind, so that we cannot be dispossessed of it. She
belonged to the conservative branch of the Unitarian Church, which
was represented by Reverend James Freeman Clarke and Doctor Andrew P.
Peabody. The subject was one which was permitted to remain in abeyance
between them, but Mrs. Emerson was naturally suspicious of those
reverend gentlemen who called upon her husband, and this may have been
the reason why he did not encourage the visits of clergymen like
Samuel Johnson, Samuel Longfellow, and Professor Hedge, whom he
greatly respected, and who should have been by good rights his chosen
companions. I suppose all husbands are obliged to make these domestic
compromises.
Mrs. Emerson had also something of the spirit-militant in her. When
David A. Wasson came to dine at Mr. Emerson’s invitation, she said to
him, by way of grace before meat: “I see you have been carrying on a
controversy with Reverend Mr. Sears, of Wayland, and you will excuse me
for expressing my opinion that Mr. Sears had the best of it.” But
after sounding this little nourish of trumpets, she was as kindly and
hospitable as any one could desire. She was one of the earliest recruits
to the anti-slavery cause,--not only a volunteer, but a recruiting
officer as well,--and she made this decision entirely of her own mind,
without any special encouragement from her husband or relatives. At the
time of John Brown’s execution she wanted to have the bells tolled in
Concord, and urged her husband energetically to see that it was done.
Mrs. Emerson was always thoroughly herself. There never was the
shadow of an affectation upon her; nor more than a shadow of
self-consciousness--very rare among conscientious persons. One of her
fine traits was her fondness for flowers, which she cultivated in
the little garden between her house and the mill-brook, with a loving
assiduity. She is supposed to have inspired Emerson’s poem, beginning:
“O fair and stately maid, whose eyes
Were kindled in the upper skies
At the same torch that lighted mine:
For so I must interpret still
Thy sweet dominion o’er my will,
A sympathy divine.”
There are other references to her in his published writings, which only
those who were personally acquainted with her would recognize.
* * * * *
Mrs. Hawthorne belonged to the class of womankind which Shakespeare
has typified in Ophelia, a tender-hearted, affectionate nature, too
sensitive for the rough strains of life, and too innocent to recognize
the guile in others. This was at once her strength and her weakness;
but it was united, as often happens, with a fine artistic nature, and
superior intelligence. Her face and manners both gave the impression of
a wide and elevated culture. One could see that although she lived
by the wayside, she had been accustomed to enter palaces. Her long
residence in England, her Italian experience, her visit to the Court of
Portugal, her enjoyment of fine pictures, poetry, and architecture, the
acquaintance of distinguished men and women in different countries,
had all left their impress upon her, combined in a quiet and lady-like
harmony. Her conversation was cosmopolitan, and though she did not
quite possess the narrative gift of her sister Elizabeth, it was often
exceedingly interesting.
Hawthorne has been looked upon as the necrologist of the Puritans, and
yet a certain coloring of Puritanism adhered to him to the last. It was
his wife who had entirely escaped from the old New England conventicle.
Severity was at the opposite pole from her moral nature. Tolerant and
charitable to the faults of others, her only fault was the lack of
severity. She believed in the law of love, and when kind words did not
serve her purpose she let matters take what course they would, trusting
that good might fall, “At last far off at last to all.”
I suspect her pathway was by no means a flowery one. Mrs. Emerson’s life
had to be as stoical as her husband’s, and Mrs. Hawthorne’s, previous
to the Liverpool consulate,--the consulship of Hawthorne,--was even more
difficult. No one knew better than she the meaning of that heroism which
each day requires. A writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_, reviewing Julian
Hawthorne’s biography of his father, emphasizes, “the dual selfishness
of Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne.” Insensate words! There was no room for
selfishness in the lives they led. In a certain sense they lived almost
wholly for one another and for their children; but Hawthorne himself
lived for all time and for all mankind, and his wife lived through him
to the same purpose. The especial form of their material life was as
essential to its spiritual outgrowth as the rose-bush is to the rose;
and it would be a cankered selfishness to complain of them for it.
Appendices
APPENDIX A
There is at least one error in the Symmes diary, which is however
explainable, and need not vitiate the whole of it. It has been
ascertained that the drowning of Henry Jackson in Songo River by being
kicked in the mouth by another boy while swimming, took place in 1828,
so that the statement to that effect in the diary, must have been
interpolated. As it happened, however, another Henry Jackson was drowned
in the Songo River, so Mr. Pickard says, more than twenty years before
that, and it is quite possible that young Hawthorne overheard some talk
about that catastrophe, and mistook it for a recent event; and that
Symmes afterwards confounding the two Jacksons and the difference in
time, amended Hawthorne’s statement as we now have it. Mr. Pickard says
in a recent letter:
“This item alone led me to doubt. But I cannot doubt, the more I reflect
upon it, that H. himself had a hand in most, if not all, the other
items. Who but his uncle could have written that inscription? The negro
Symmes could not have composed that--only a man of culture.”... “The
sketch of the sail on Sebago Lake surely was written by some one who
was in that party. Symmes _might_ have been there, but he was a genius
deserving the fame of a Chatterton if he really did this. Three of that
party I personally knew--one (Sawyer) was a cousin of my grandfather.
His sleight of hand, his skill with rifle, his being a ‘votary of
chance,’ are traditions in my family.”
This does not differ essentially from the opinion I have already
expressed in Chapter II. F. B. Sanborn, who is one of the best-informed
of living men in regard to Hawthorne, takes a similar view.
APPENDIX B
In February, 1883, a review of “Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife” was
published in the _Atlantic Monthly_, evidently written by a person with
no good-will toward the family. Editors ought to beware of such reviews,
for their character is easily recognized, and the effect they produce
often reacts upon the publication that contains them. In the present
instance, the ill-humor of the writer had evidently been bottled up for
many years.
To place typographical errors to the debit of an author’s account--not
very numerous for a work of eight hundred pages--suggests either
an inexperienced or a strongly prejudiced critic. This is what the
_Atlantic_ writer begins with, and he (or she) next proceeds to complain
that the book does not contain a complete bibliography of Hawthorne’s
works; although many excellent biographies have been published without
this, and it is quite possible that Hawthorne’s son preferred not to
insert it. No notice is taken of the many fine passages in the book,
like the apostrophe upon Hawthorne’s marriage, [Footnote: J. Hawthorne,
i. 242,] and that excellent description of the performances of a
trance medium at Florence, but continues in an ascending climax of
fault-finding until he (or she) reaches the passage from Hawthorne’s
Roman diary concerning Margaret Fuller. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i.
30-35.]
If public opinion has any value, this passage concerning Margaret
Fuller’s marriage ought not to have been published; but what can
Margaret Fuller’s friends and admirers expect? Do they think that
a young American woman can go to a foreign country, and live with a
foreign gentleman, in defiance of the customs of modern society, without
subjecting herself to the severest criticism? It is true that she
married Count d’Ossoli before her child was born, and her friends, who
were certainly an enlightened class, always believed that she acted
throughout from the most honorable motives (my own opinion is, that she
acted in imitation of Goethe), but how can they expect the great mass
of mankind to think so? Hawthorne had a right to his opinion, as well
as Emerson and Channing, and although it was certainly not a very
charitable opinion, we cannot doubt that it was an honest one. In regard
to the marriage tie, Hawthorne was always strict and conservative.
This is the climax of the _Atlantic_ critique, and its anti-climax is
an excoriation of Hawthorne’s son for neglecting to do equal and exact
justice to James T. Fields. This truly is a grievous accusation. Fields
was Hawthorne’s publisher and would seem to have taken a personal and
friendly interest in him besides, but we cannot look on it as a wholly
unselfish interest. It was not like Hillard’s, Pierce’s, and Bridge’s
interest in Hawthorne. If Fields had not been his publisher, it is not
probable that Hawthorne would have made his acquaintance; and if his
son has not enlarged on Fields’s good offices in bringing “The Scarlet
Letter” before the public, there is an excellent reason for it, in the
fact that Fields had already done so for himself in his “Yesterdays with
Authors.” That Fields’s name should have been omitted in the index to
“Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife,” may have been an oversight; but, at
all events, it is too microscopic a matter to deserve consideration in a
first-class review.
Are we become such babies, that it is no longer possible for a writer to
tell the plain, ostensible truth concerning human nature, without having
a storm raised about his head for it? George P. Bradford and Martin F.
Tupper are similar instances, and like Boswell have suffered the penalty
which accrues to men of small stature for associating with giants.
APPENDIX C
The great poets and other writers of all nations whom I conceive to
be superior to Hawthorne, may be found in the following list: Homer,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle,
Demosthenes, Theocritus, Plutarch; Horace, Virgil, Cicero, Tacitus;
Dante, Tasso, Petrarch; Cervantes, Calderon, Camoens; Molière, Racine,
Descartes, Voltaire; Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant; Swedenborg;
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, and perhaps Burns and Byron;
Alexander Hamilton, Napoleon.
These also may be placed more on an equality with Hawthorne, although
there will of course always be wide differences of opinion on that
point: Hesiod, Herodotus, Menander, Aristophases; Livy, Cæsar,
Lucretius, Juvenal; Ariosto, Macchiavelli, Manzoni, Lope de Vega, Buthas
Pato; Corneille, Pascal, Rousseau; Wieland, Klopstock, Heine, Auerbach;
Spenser, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Fielding, Pope, Scott, Wordsworth,
Shelley, Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Froude; Webster, Emerson, Wasson.
Sappho, Bion, Moschus, and Cleanthes were certainly poets of a high
order, but only some fragments of their poetry have survived. Gottfried
of Strassburg, the Minnesinger, might be included, and some of the
finest English poetry was written by unknown geniuses of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. Ballads like “Chevy Chace” and the “Child
of Elle” deserve a high place in the rank of poetry; and the German
“Reineke Fuchs” is in its way without a rival. There may be other
French, German, and Spanish writers of exceptional excellence with whom
I am unacquainted, but I do not feel that any French or German novelists
of the last century ought to be placed on a level with Hawthorne--only
excepting Auerbach. Victor Hugo is grandiloquent, and the others all
have some serious fault or limitation. I suppose that not one in ten of
Emerson’s readers has ever heard of Wasson, but he was the better prose
writer of the two, and little inferior as a poet. More elevated he could
not be, but more profound, just, logical and humane--that is, more like
Hawthorne. Emerson could not have filled his place on the _Atlantic
Monthly_ and the _North American Review_.
Index
Adams, John Quincy
After-dinner speeches
Alcott, A. Bronson
“Ambitious Guest, The,”
“Ancestral Footstep, The,”
_Antinous_ of the villa Ludovisi
“Arabella,” the ship
Arnold, Matthew
“Artist of the Beautiful, The,”
Athenæan Society
Atlantic Club
Aurelius, Marcus
Bacon’s, Miss, volume published
Balzac
Bancroft, George
Beethoven
Bennoch, Francis
“Blithedale Romance”
Blodgett’s boarding-house
“Bloody Footstep”
“Birth Mark, The,”
“Bosom Serpent, The,”
Bradford, George P
Brandes, Danish critic
Bridge, Horatio,
Bright, Henry A.
Brook Farm
Brown, John
Browning and Carlyle
Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning, Robert
Buchanan, President
Carlyle and Hawthorne
Castor and Pollux, statues of
“Celestial Railroad, The”
Cenci, Beatrice, portrait of
Channing, Ellery
Channing, William H.
Cilley and Graves duel
Cilley, Jonathan
description of
Clarke, Edward H.
Clarke, Rev. Dr. James F.
“Code of Honor,” the
College skepticism
Columbia, statue of
Concord River
Conway, Rev. M. D.
Crab spider, the
Crawford, sculptor
“Critique of Pure Reason, The”
Curtis, George William
Dallas, George M.
Dante’s _Inferno_
Dickens
“Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret”
Dolliver, Dr.
“Dolliver Romance, The”
Donatello’s crime
Dwight, John S., musical critic
Elgin marbles
Eliot, George
Emerson
essays
Emerson, Mrs. R. W.
her figure
religious views
English lakes
“English Note-book”
English scenery
Essex County people
Evans, Marian
“Fancy’s Show Box”
“Fanshawe”
“Faun of Praxiteles”
“Felton, Septimius,”
Fielding
Fields, James T
Florentine art
Fourier
Fuller, Margaret
as Zenobia
her marriage
Gardner, E. A., Prof
Genius, its growth
“Gentle Boy, The,”
Ghosts
Gibson, sculptor
his tinted Eves and Venuses
Gladstone, William E., on transcendentalism
Godkin, E. L.
Goethe
Golden Age, A
Goodrich, S. G., editor
“Great Carbuncle, The,”
“Great Stone Face, The,”
Guilty glimpses at hired models
Gurney, Prof. E. W.
“Hall of Fantasy, The,”
Harris, Dr. William T.
Harvard Law School
Hathorne, Daniel
Hathorne, John
witches’ judge
his last will
his gravestone
Hathorne, Joseph
Hathorne, Nathaniel
Hathorne, William
Letter to British Ministry
Hawthorne, Elizabeth
Hawthorne, Julian
Hawthorne, Louisa
her death
Hawthorne, Mrs. Sophia Peabody
becomes engaged to Hawthorne
writes to her mother
encourages her husband
praises her husband
is out of health
goes to Madeira
is presented at court
the original of Hilda
at Concord
her opinions
character and style
Hawthorne, Nathaniel,
his English ancestors
family name
birthplace
his lameness
early poetry
life at Sebago
his first diary
the budding of his genius
fits for college
“Pin Society”
religious instruction
decides on his vocation
has the measles
his life at Bowdoin
outdoor sports
is fined for gambling
graduates at Bowdoin
decides his profession
publishes “Fanshawe”
changes his name
despondency
goes to Lake Champlain
wins his bet with Cilley
commences his diary
his supposed challenge
thanks Longfellow
goes to Berkshire Hills
character of his diary
his engagement
enters Custom House
goes to Brook Farm
his marriage
his true Arcadia
his skating
opinion of Emerson
birth of a daughter
his indolence
style as an author
returns to Robert Manning’s house
is appointed Surveyor of the Port
son Julian is born
occupies house on Mall street
is removed from office
publishes “Scarlet Letter”
method of development
sits for his portrait; goes to Lenox
publishes “House of Seven Gables”
birth of his daughter Rose
leaves Lenox for Newton
returns to Concord
writes the “Life of Pierce”
the Liverpool consulate
sails for England
as an office-holder
his life in England
makes a speech
kindness to Delia Bacon
resigns the Consulate
as a law writer
goes to Paris
arrives at Rome
journeys to Florence
goes to the Vatican
on modern sculpture
returns to Rome
visits Geneva
summer at Redcar
publishes the “Marble Faun
Hawthorne the famous
begins to dislike writing
returns to Concord
method of writing
patriotism
proposes to arm negroes
preparatory sketches
sojourns at Beverly Farms
last entry in his journal
dedicates book to President Pierce
at home
personal appearance
seriously ill
Hawthorne’s philosophy
his death
his funeral
religious convictions
his position in literature
Hawthorne, Rose, her birth
her memoirs
Hawthorne’s mother
her character
her death
Hawthorne, Una, her birth
severe illness of
Hilda, character of
her tower
Hillard, George S.
Hoar, Miss Elizabeth
Holiday epauletes
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Hosmer, Harriet
Houghton, Lord
“House of the Seven Gables, The”
Howe, Dr. Samuel G.
Hunt, suicide of Miss
Italian Note-book
Jackson, Andrew
James, Henry, Jr.
James, Henry, Sr.
Jameson, Mrs. Anna
Jerrold, Douglas
Kansas-Nebraska Bill
Kant, Immanuel
Kemble, Frances
Kitridge, Doctor
“Lady Eleanor’s Mantle”
_Laocoön_
Lathrop, George P.
Leamington
Lincoln, President
Liverpool Consulate
Longfellow, Henry W.
reviews Hawthorne
Loring, Frederick W.
Loring, Dr. George B.
Lowell, James Russell
Mann, Horace
Mann, Mrs. Horace
Manning family
Manning, Rebecca
Manning, Richard
Manning, Robert
“Marble Faun, The,” English reviews of
analysis of
its original
McClellan, General George B.
McMichael, Morton
Melville, Hermann
Mexican War
Michel Angelo
his _Last Judgment and Moses_
“Miroir, Monsieur du”
“Mosses from an Old Manse”
Motley’s opinions
“Mrs. Bullfrog”
Niagara Falls, visit to
_North American Review_
Nurse, Rebecca, a witch
Offensive partisanship
“Old Manse,” the
“Ontario Steamboat, The”
O’Sullivan, an editor
“Our Old Home”
Parker, Theodore
Peabody, Elizabeth
Peabody, Sophia Amelia
Philadelphia Hock Club
Pickard, Samuel T.
Pierce, Franklin
elected Senator
goes to the war
nominated for President
his father
various
Pike, William B.
Poetic mind, the
Politicians, opinion of
Portraits of Hawthorne by Osgood, Healy, Rowse, and
others
Positivists
Powers, Hiram
his _America_
Prescott, George L
Prince of Wales
Pyncheon, Clifford
Quakers, persecution of
Raphael’s _Transfiguration_
“Rappacini’s Daughter”
Reform Club of London
Ripley, George
Rock Ferry
Roman Carnival
Runnel, Mary, sweetheart of Daniel Hathorne
Ruskin
Sailors maltreated
Salem architecture
Salem, situation of
Salem society
Salem’s sea-captains
Sanborn, Frank B., attempt to kidnap
“Scarlet Letter, The,”
Schönbach, A. E., German critic
“Select Party, The,”
Shakespeare, authorship of
Epitaph
Shaw, Chief Justice
Shelley
Sheridan’s Ride
“Sights from a Steeple”
Silsbee, Edward
Sistine Chapel
Skepticism of evil
Slavery Question
“Snow Image”
Spartan discipline
Story, William W.
St. Petersburg _Venus_
Sumner and Motley
Sumner, Charles
Swartwout’s defalcation
Symms, William, a mulatto
“Tanglewood Tales”
Taylor, President
Thoreau
of marriage
Ticknor, W. D., death of
Tituba, the Aztec
Tragedy, character of
Trance medium, a
Transcendentalism
essence of
Tupper, Martin Farquhar
Turner, J. M. W.
“Twice Told Tales”
“Unpardonable Sin, The,”
Upham, the historian
Vanity of Women
Vasari
_Venus dé Medici_
“Vicar of Wakefield”
Victor Hugo
Villa Manteüto
“Virtuoso’s Collection, The,”
“Vision at the Fountain, The,”
Ward’s Tavern
Warwick Castle
Wasson, David A
Waters, Henry F., researches of
Wayside, The
Webster, Daniel
West Roxbury commune
Whittier, the poet
Wig Castle in Wigton
Witchcraft persecution
Wood, Warrington
Worcester, Doctor, the lexicographer
“Young Goodman Brown”