THE LEAVE-TAKING
A few words from a letter of Emerson's to my mother, written after my
father's death, will give a true impression of the friendship which
existed strongly between the two lovers of their race, who, though
they did not have time to meet often, may be said to have been
together through oneness of aim:--
CONCORD, 11th July [1864].
DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--Guests and visitors prevented me from writing
you, last evening, to thank you for your note, and to say how much
pleasure it gives me, that you find succor and refreshment in
sources so pure and lofty. The very selection of his images proves
Behman poet as well as saint, yet a saint first, and poet through
sanctity. It is the true though severe test to put the Teacher to,--to
try if his solitary lessons meet our case. And for these thoughts and
experiences of which you speak, their very confines and approaches
lift us out of the world. I have twice lately proposed to see you, and
once was on my way, and unexpectedly prevented. I have had my own pain
in the loss of your husband. He was always a mine of hope to me, and
I promised myself a rich future in achieving at some day, when we
should both be less engaged to tyrannical studies and habitudes, an
unreserved intercourse with him. I thought I could well wait his time
and mine for what was so well worth waiting. And as he always appeared
to me superior to his own performances, I counted this yet untold
force an insurance of a long life. Though sternly disappointed in the
manner and working, I do not hold the guarantee less real. But I must
use an early hour to come and see you to say more.
R. W. EMERSON.
If my father expected a full renewal of comradeship with American men
of his own circle, and even the deeper pleasure of such friendship in
a maturer prime alluded to by Emerson, circumstances sadly intervened.
The thunderstorm of the war was not the only cause of his retiring
more into himself than he had done in Europe, although he felt that
sorrow heavily. Or perhaps I might say with greater correctness that
when he appeared, it was without the joyous air that he had lately
displayed in England, among his particular friends, when his literary
work was over for the time being after the finishing of "Monte Beni."
I remember that he often attended the dinners of the Saturday Club. A
bill of fare of one of the banquets, but belonging to an early date,
1852, read: "Tremont House. Paran Stevens, Proprietor. Dinner for
Twelve Persons, at three o'clock." A superb menu follows, wherein
canvas-back ducks and madeira testify to the satisfaction felt by the
gentlemen whose names my father penciled in the order in which they
sat; Mr. Emerson, Mr. Clough, Mr. Ellery Channing, Mr. Charles Sumner,
Mr. Theodore Parker, Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Lowell, Mr. Greenough, Mr.
Samuel Ward, and several others making the shining list. His keen care
for the health of his forces induced him to hold back from visits even
to his best friends, if he were very deeply at work, or paying more
rapidly than usual from his capital of physical strength, which had
now begun to sink. Lowell tried to fascinate him out of seclusion, in
the frisky letter given in "A Study of Hawthorne;" but very likely did
not gain his point, since Longfellow and others had infrequent success
in similar attempts.
I chanced to discover the impression my father made upon Dr. Holmes,
as we sat beside each other at a dinner given by the Papyrus Club of
Boston more than fifteen years ago, on ladies' night. That same
evening I dashed down a verbatim account of part of our conversation,
which I will insert here.
He passed his card over to my goblet, and took mine. "That is the
simplest way, is it not?" he asked.
"I was just going to introduce myself," said I. Then Mrs. Elizabeth
Stoddard sat down by me, and I turned to speak with her.
In a moment Dr. Holmes held my card forward again. "Now let me see!"
he said.
"And you don't know who I am, yet?" I asked.
He smiled, gazed at the card through his eyeglasses, and leaned
towards me hesitatingly. "And what _was_ your name?" he ventured.
"Rose Hawthorne."
He started, and beamed. "There!--I _thought_--but you understand
how--if I had made a mistake--Could anything have been worse if you
had _not_ been? I was looking, you know, for the resemblance. Some
look I seemed to discover, but "----
"The complexion," I helped him by interrupting, "is entirely
different."
He went on: "I was--no, I cannot say I was intimate with your
father, as others may have been; and yet a very delightful kind of
intercourse existed between us. I did not see him often; but when I
did, I had no difficulty in making him converse with me. My
intercourse with your mother was also of a very gratifying nature." To
this I earnestly replied respecting the admiration of my parents for
him. "I delighted in suggesting a train of thought to your father,"
Dr. Holmes ran on, in his exquisitely cultured way, and with the
_esprit_ which has surprised us all by its loveliness. "Perhaps he
would not answer for some time. Sometimes it was a long while before
the answer came, like an echo; but it was sure to come. It was as if
the high mountain range, you know!--_The house-wall there_ would have
rapped out a speedy, babbling response at once; but _the mountain_!--I
not long ago was visiting the Custom House at Salem, the place in
which your father discovered those mysterious records that unfolded
into 'The Scarlet Letter.' Ah, how suddenly and easily genius renders
the spot rare and full of a great and new virtue (however ordinary and
bare in reality) when _it_ has looked and dwelt! A light falls upon
the place not of land or sea! How much he did for Salem! Oh, the
purple light, the soft haze, that now rests upon our glaring New
England! He has _done_ it, and it will never be harsh country again.
How perfectly he understood Salem!"
"Salem is certainly very remarkable," I responded.
"Yes, certainly so," he agreed. "Strange folk! Salem had a type of
itself in its very harbor. The ship America, at Downer's wharf, grew
old and went to pieces in that one spot, through years. Bit by bit it
fell to atoms, but never ceded itself to the new era. So with Salem,
precisely. It is the most delightful place to visit for this reason,
because it so carefully retains the spirit of the past; and 'The House
of the Seven Gables'!" Dr. Holmes smiled, well knowing the
intangibility of that house.
Said I: "The people are rich in extraordinary oddities. At every turn
a stranger is astonished by some intense characteristic. One feels
strongly its different atmosphere."
"And their very surroundings bear them out!" Dr. Holmes cried,
vivacious in movement and glance as a boy. "Where else are the little
door-yards that hold their glint of sunlight so tenaciously, like the
still light of wine in a glass? Year after year it is ever there, the
golden square of precious sunbeams, held on the palm of the jealous
garden-patch, as we would hold the vial of radiant wine in our hand!
Do you know?" He so forcibly appealed to my ability to follow his
thought that I seemed to know anything he wished. "I hope I shall not
be doing wrong," he continued,--"I hope not,--in asking if you have
any preference among your father's books; supposing you read them,
which I believe is by no means always the case with the children of
authors."
"I am surprised by that remark. After the age of fifteen, when I read
all my father's writings except 'The Scarlet Letter,' which I was told
to reserve till I was eighteen, I did not study his books thoroughly
till several years ago, in order to cherish the enjoyment of fresh
effects,--except 'The Marble Faun,' which I think I prefer."
He answered: "I feel that 'The Scarlet Letter' is the greatest. It
will be, it seems to me, the one upon which his future renown will
rest."
I admitted that I also considered it the greatest. In the above
conversation I was entranced by what I have experienced often: the
praise of my father's personality or work (in many cases by people who
have never met him) is not only the courtesy that might be thought
decorous towards a member of his family, or the bright zest of a
student of literature, but also the glowing ardor of a creature
feeling itself a part of him in spirit; one who longs for the human
sweetness of the grasp of his hand; who longs to hear him speak, to
meet his fellowship, but finds the limit reached in saying, at a
distance of time and space, "I love him!" I have lowered my eyes
before the emotion to be observed in the faces of some of his readers
who were trying to reach him through a spoken word of eagerness. Very
few have seen him, but how glad I am to cross their paths! Dr.
Holmes's warmth of enthusiasm was so radiant that it could not be
forgotten. It lit every word with the magic of the passion we feel for
what is perfect, unique, and beyond our actual possession, now and
forever.
Towards the last an unacknowledged fear took hold of my mother's
consciousness, so that she gave every evidence of foretelling my
father's death without once presenting the possibility to herself.
This little note of mine, dated April 4, 1864, six weeks before he
died, shows the truth:--
"I am so glad that you are getting on so well; but for your own sake I
think you had better stay somewhere till you get entirely well. Mamma
thought from the last letter from Mr. Ticknor that you were not so
well; but Julian explained to her that, as Mr. Ticknor said in every
line that you were better, he did not see how it could possibly be. I
do not either."
From the first year of our return to America letters and visitors from
abroad had interrupted the sense of utter quiet; and many friends
called in amiable pilgrimage. But a week of monotony is immensely
long, and a few hours of zest are provokingly short. Nature and
seclusion are welcome when, at our option, we can bid them good-by.
All England is refreshing with the nearness of London. In the rush of
cares and interruptions which we suppose will kill the opportunity,
while we half lose ourselves and our intellectual threads of
speculation, the flowers of inspiration suddenly blow, the gems flash
color. This is a pleasant, but not always an essential satisfaction;
yet, in my father's case, I think his life suffered with peculiar
severity from the sudden clashing aside of manly interests which he
had already denied to himself, or which circumstances had denied to
him, with the utmost persistence ever known in so perceptive a genius.
He undoubtedly had a large store of inherited experiences to draw
upon; he was richly endowed with these, and could sit and walk alone,
year after year (except for occasional warm reunions with friends of
the cleanest joviality), and feel the intercourse with the world, of
his ancestors, stirring in his veins. He tells us that this was
ghostly pastime; but it is an inheritance that makes a man well
equipped and self-sustained, for all that. When too late, the great
men about him realized that they had estimated his presence very
cheaply, considering his worth. Should he frequently have sought them
out, and asked if they were inclined to spare a chat to Hawthorne; or
should they have insisted upon strengthening their greatness from his
inimitably pure and unerring perception and his never weary
imagination? It is impossible to ignore the superiority of his
simplicity of truth over the often labored searchings for it of the
men and women he knew, whose very diction shows the straining after
effect, the desire to enchant themselves with their own minds, which
is the bane of intellect, or else the uneasy skip and jump of a wit
that dares not keep still. As time ripens, these things are more and
more apparent to all, as they were to him. In a manner similar to
Emerson's, who spoke of his regret for losing the chance of
associating fully with my father, Longfellow wrote to my mother:--
CAMBRIDGE, June 23, 1864.
DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I have long been wishing to write to you, to
thank you for your kind remembrance, in sending me the volume of
Goldsmith, but I have not had the heart to do it. There are some
things that one cannot say; and I hardly need tell you how much I
value your gift, and how often I shall look at the familiar name on
the blank leaf--a name which, more than any other, links me to my
youth.
I have written a few lines trying to express the impressions of May
23, and I venture to send you a copy of them. I had rather no one
should see them but yourself; as I have also sent them to Mr. Fields
for the "Atlantic." I feel how imperfect and inadequate they are; but
I trust you will pardon their deficiencies for the love I bear his
memory. More than ever I now regret that I postponed from day to day
coming to see you in Concord, and that at last I should have seen your
house only on the outside! With deepest sympathy, Yours truly,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
To go back to our Concord amusements. Mr. Bright caroled out a
greeting not very long after our return:--
WEST DERBY, September 8, 1860.
MY DEAR MR. HAWTHORNE,--Of course not!--I knew you 'd never write to
me, though you declared you would. Probably by this time you've
forgotten us all, and sent us off into mistland with Miriam and
Donatello; possibly all England looks by this time nothing but
mistland, and you believe only in Concord and its white houses, and
the asters on the hill behind your house, and the pumpkins in the
valley below. Well, at any rate I have not forgotten you or yours; and
I feel that, now you have left us, a pleasure has slipped out of our
grasp. Do you remember all our talks in that odious office of yours;
my visits to Rock-ferry; my one visit, all in the snow, to Southport;
our excursions into Wales, and through the London streets, and to
Rugby and to Cambridge; and how you plucked the laurel at Addison's
Bilton, and found the skeleton in Dr. Williams's library; and lost
your umbrella in those dark rooms in Trinity; and dined at Richmond,
and saw the old lady looking like a maid of honor of Queen Charlotte's
time; and chatted at the Cosmopolitan; and heard Tom Hughes sing the
"Tight Little Island;" and--But really I must stop, and can only trust
that now at last you will be convinced of my existence, and remember
your promise, and write me a good long letter about everything and
everybody. "The Marble Faun" [manuscript] is now in process of
binding. The photograph came just as I had begun to despair of it, and
I lost not a moment in putting the precious manuscript into my
binder's hands. I've been for a week's holiday at Tryston, and met
several friends of yours: Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hughes, Mrs. and Miss
Procter, Mrs. Milnes. The latter spoke most affectionately about you.
And so did Mrs. Ainsworth, whom I met two days ago. But she says you
promised to write her the story of the Bloody Footstep ["The Ancestral
Footstep "], and have never done it. I'm very fond of Mrs. Ainsworth;
she talks such good nonsense. She told us gravely, the other day, that
the Druses were much more interesting than the Maronites, because they
sounded like Drusus and Rome, whereas the Maronites were only like
marrons glaces, etc. The H----s are at Norris Green. Mrs. H. is
becoming "devout," and will go to church on Wednesdays and Fridays. I
want news from your side. What is Longfellow about? Tell me about
"Leaves of Grass," which I saw at Milnes's. Who and what is the
author; and who buy and who read the audacious (I use mildest epithet)
book? I must now bring this letter to an end. Emerson will have
forgotten so humble a person as I am; but I can't forget the pleasant
day I spent with him. Ask Longfellow to come over here very soon.
And for yourself, ever believe me most heartily yours,
H. A. BRIGHT.
He writes to my mother, "Thank you for the precious autograph letters,
and the signatures of the various generals in your war. . . . What a
pleasant account you give of Julian. Remember me to him. What a big
fellow he has become, and formidable. I sincerely hope he 's given up
his old wish to 'kill an Englishman, some day!' Don't forget us all,
for we think of all of you." He speaks of my father's friendship as
"the proudest treasure of my life."
A friend of Mr. Bright's pardons my father's unfeeling indifference by
a request:--
WALTHAM HOUSE, WALTHAM CROSS, August 10, 1861.
DEAR MR. HAWTHORNE,--Am I not showing my Christian charity when, in
spite of the terrible disappointment which I felt at your broken
promise to come with Bright to smoke a cigar with me about this time
last year, I entreat you, in greeting Mr. Anthony Trollope, who with
his wife is about to visit America, to give him an extra welcome and
shake of the hand, for the sake of yours most sincerely and
respectfully,
W. W. SYNGE.
I will quote two letters from Mr. Chorley, written before we left
England, to show that even writers and friends there could be a trifle
irksome in comment. My mother amused me sometimes by telling me how
she had written warringly to this noted critic (a cherished
acquaintance), when he had printed a disquisition upon "Monte Beni"
which did not hit the bull's-eye. But the last supplementary chapter
in the Romance was due to his fainting desire for more revelation,--a
chapter which my father and mother looked upon as entirely useless,
and British.
13 EATON PLACE, WEST, March 6, '60.
DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I cannot but affectionately thank you for your
remembrance of me, and your patience with my note.--If I do not return
on my own critical fancies about the "Romance" (and pray, recollect, I
am the last who would assume that critics wear a mail celestial, and
as such can do no wrong)--it may be from some knowledge, that those
who have lived with a work while it is growing--and those who greet
it, when it is born, complete into life,--cannot see with the same
eyes. I don't think, if we three sate together, and could talk the
whole dream out, a matter, by the way, hardly possible, we should have
so much difference as you fancy--so much did I enjoy, and so deeply
was I stirred by the book, that (let alone past associations and
predilections) I neither read, nor wrote (meant to write, that is) in
a caviling spirit: but that which simply and clearly seemed to present
itself in regard to a book which had possessed me (for better for
worse) in no common degree--by one on whom (I think is known) I set no
common store.--If I have seemed to yourselves hasty or superficial or
flippant--all I can say is, such was not my meaning.--Surely the best
things can bear the closest looking at,--whether as regards beauty or
blemish.--
I repeat that, while I thank you affectionately for the trouble you
have taken to expostulate with my frowardness (if so it be)--I am just
as much concerned if what was printed gave any pain. But, when I look
again (I have been interrupted twenty times since I began this)--did I
not say that Hilda was "cousin"--that is, family likeness, not
identity--though it means, what I meant, the same sort of light of
purity and grace, and redemption let into a maze, through somewhat the
same sort of chink.--I totally resist any idea of mannerism, dear
friend Hawthorne,--on your part,--and as to the story growing on you,
as you grow into it: well, I dare' say that has happened ere
this:--the best creations have come by chance: and if Hawthorne did
not mean to excite an interest when he wanted merely to make a Roman
idyl, why did we go into those Catacombs?--
Might I say (like Moliere's old woman) how earnestly I desire, that
for a second edition, a few more openings of the door should be added
to the story--towards its close?
You have been so kind in bearing with me,--in coming to me when in
London,--and in remembering the nothing I could do here to make you
welcome, as I fancied you might like best to be welcomed,--that I
venture to send you this letter out of my heart,--and if there be
nonsense in it, or what may seem spectacled critical pedantry, I must
trust to your good nature to allow for them.
Won't you come to town again? and wont you eat another cosy dinner at
my table?--And pray, dear friend Hawthorne, don't be so long
again:--and pray, once for all, recollect that you have no more
faithful nor real literary friend (perhaps, too, in other ways might I
show it) Than yours as always,
HENRY N. CHORLEY.
P. S. This is a sort of salad note, written both to "He" and "She" (as
they said in old duetts)--once again, excuse every incoherence. I am
still very ill--and have all the day been interrupted.
13 EATON PLACE, WEST, March 10, '60.
DEAR MRS. HAWTHORNE,--I assure you I feel the good nature not to be on
my side of the treaty. It is not common for a critic to get any kind
construction, or to be credited with anything save a desire to show
ingenuity, no matter whether just or unjust.--Most deeply, too, do I
feel the honor of having a suggestion such as mine adopted,--I thought
when my letter had gone that I had written in a strange, random humor,
and that had I got a "Mind your own business" sort of answer, it was
no more than such unasked-for meddling might expect. I am glad with
all my heart at what you tell me about the success of the tale. But
we really will not wait so long for number five?
To-day's train takes you my Italian story:--I had every trouble in the
world to find a publisher for it: having the gift of no-success in a
very remarkable degree. The dedication tells its own story. It was
begun in 1848:--and ended not before the Italian war broke out.--Some
of my few readers (within a dozen) are aggrieved at my having only
told part of the story of Italian patriotism.--I meant it merely as a
picture of manners: and have seen too much of the class "refugee," not
to have felt how they have as a class retarded, not aided, the cause
of real freedom and high morals. I should have sent it before, but I
always feel, like Teresa Panza, when she sent acorns to the Duchess.
You will come to town, and eat in my quiet corner before you go, I
know:--Perhaps, I may call on you at Easter: as there is just a chance
of my being at Birmingham.
There is an old house, Compton Wingates, that I very much want to see.
Has Hawthorne seen it?
Once more thank you affectionately,--these sort of passages are among
the very few set-offs to the difficulties of a harsh life and all
ungracious career. My seeing you face to face was, I assure you, one
of my best pleasures in 1859. Ever yours faithfully,
HENRY N. CHORLEY.
Hawthorne had returned, for the purpose of cherishing American loyalty
in his children, from a scene that was after his own heart, even to
the actors in it. He had hoped for quietude and the inimitable flavor
of home, of course; but this hope was chiefly a self-persuasion. The
title of his first book after returning, "Our Old Home," was a concise
confession. He would have considered it a base resource to live abroad
during the war, bringing up his son in an alien land, however dear and
related it might be to our bone and sinew; and if his children did not
enjoy the American phase of the universe in its crude stage, he, at
any rate, had done his best to make them love it. His loyalty was
always something flawless. A friend might treat him with the grossest
dishonor, but he would let you think he was himself deficient in
perception or in a proper regard for his money before he would let you
guess that his friend should be denounced. With loyal love, he had,
for his part, wound about New England the purple haze of which Dr.
Holmes spoke in ecstasy, because he had found his country standing
only half appreciated, though with a wealth of virtue and meaning that
makes her fairer every year. With love, also, he came home, after
having barely tasted the delights of London and Oxford completeness.
In Concord he entered upon a long renunciation. Of necessity this was
beneficial to his art. He was now fully primed with observation, and
"The Dolliver Romance," hammered out from several beginnings that he
successively cast aside, appeared so exquisitely pure and fine because
of the hush of fasting and reflection which environed the worker. It
is the unfailing history of great souls that they seem to destroy
themselves most in relation to the world's happiness when they most
deserve and acquire a better reward. He was starving, but he steadily
wrote. He was weary of the pinched and unpromising condition of our
daily life, but he smiled, and entertained us and guided us with
unflagging manliness, though with longer and longer intervals of
wordless reserve. I was never afraid to run to him for his sympathy,
as he sat reading in an easy-chair, in some one of those positions of
his which looked as if he could so sit and peruse till the end of
time. I knew that his response would be so cordially given that it
would brim over me, and so melodiously that it would echo in my heart
for a great while; yet it would be as brief as the single murmurous
stroke of one from a cathedral tower, half startling by its intensity,
but which attracts the birds, who wing by preference to that lofty
spot. A source of deep enjoyment to my father was a long visit from
his sister, Ebie Hawthorne (he having given her that pretty title
instead of any other abbreviation of Elizabeth). I came to know her
very well in after-years, and was astonished at her magic resemblance
to my father in many ways. I always felt her unmistakable power. She
was chock-full of worldly wisdom, though living in the utmost monastic
retirement, only allowing herself to browse in two wide regions,--the
woods and literature. She knew the latest news from the papers, and
the oldest classics alongside of them. She was potentially, we
thought, rather hazardous, or perverse. But language refuses to
explain her. Her brother seemed not to dream of this, yet no doubt
relished the fact that a nature as unique as any he had drawn sparkled
in his sister. She was a good deal unspiritual in everything; but all
besides in her was fine mind, wisdom, and loving-kindness of a lazy,
artistic sort. That is to say, she was unregenerate, but excellent;
and she fascinated like a wood-creature seldom seen and observant,
refined and untrained. My sister was devoted to her, and says, for
the hundredth time, in a passage among many pages of their
correspondence bequeathed to me:--
My OWN DEAR AUNTIE,--I was made very happy by your letter this week.
What perfectly charming letters you write! Now, don't laugh and say I
am talking nonsense; it is really true. You make the simplest things
interesting by your way of telling them; and your observations and
humor are so keen that I often feel sorry the world does not know
something of them. I never remember you to have told me anything
twice, and that can be said of very few people; but there are few
enough people in the least like you, my dearest auntie. . . .
Aunt Ebie did not look romantic, or, exactly mysterious, as I first
saw her. But she puzzled me splendidly nevertheless. She was knitting
some very heavy blue socks in our library, and her needles were
extremely large and shining. I do not know why she had undertaken this
prosaic occupation. Everybody was, to be sure, knitting socks for the
soldiers at that time; but somehow aunt Ebie did not strike me as
absolutely benevolent, and I doubt if she would have labored very
eagerly for a soldier whom she had never seen. She desired to teach
me to knit; and, as I was really afraid of her, I pretended to be
anxious to learn.
I had been told that it was almost an impossibility to get her to
travel even a few miles; that the excitement of change and crowds, and
danger from steam and horse, made her extremely tremulous and
wretched. I was the more impressed by these quavers in her because I
also knew that she had sufficient strength of character to upset a
kingdom, if she chose; that she could use a sceptre of keen sarcasm
which made heads roll off on all sides; that there was nothing which
her large, lustrous eyes could not see, and nothing they could not
conceal. To think, then, that she trembled beside a steam-engine made
her a problem.
She wore a quaintly round dress of lightish-brown mohair, which would
not fall into graceful folds. So there she sat in the little library,
knitting Titanically; and I sat alone with her, learning to round
Hatteras at the heel in a swirl of contradictory impressions. I felt
that she ought to have been dressed in soft dark silks, with a large,
half-idle fan before her lips.
She quickly saw that I was a miniature mystery/ myself, and presently
got me out into the woods. Here I came into contact with her for the
first time.
She stepped along under the trees with great deliberation, holding up
the inflexible mohair skirt as if it could tear on brambles or in
gales, and looking around quickly and ardently at the sound of a
bird-note or the glance of a squirrel-leap; her great eyes peering for
a moment from their widely opened lids, and then disappearing utterly
again under those white veils. Her dark brown, long lashes and broadly
sweeping eyebrows were distinct against the pallor of her skin, which
was so delicately clear, yet vigorous, that I felt its gleam as one
feels the moon, even if I were not looking directly at her. By and by
her cheeks took on a dawn-flush of beautiful pink. The perfection of
her health was shown, until her last sickness, by this girlish glow of
color in her wood-rambles.
Long before we had arrived at a particularly nice flower or species of
moss, she knew it was to be found, and gathered it up as Fate makes a
clean sweep of all its opportunities. I was almost as happy when out
of doors with her as when I was with my father. She had the same
eloquence in her silences; and when she spoke, it was with a sympathy
that played upon one's whole perception, as a harp is swept
inclusively of every string by an eager hurry of music. Still, aunt
Ebie seemed to love moss and leaves as much as some people love souls,
and I thought she had chosen them as the least dangerous objects of
affection; whereas my father seemed most to love souls, and would have
saved mine or another's at the expense of all the forests and vines of
Eden.
To Miss Peabody I wrote of this visit in a manner which shows its
reviving effect upon me:--
MY DEAR AUNT LIZZIE,--I like to get your letters, as they tell about
everything which everybody does not do. What a pleasant time I did
have with aunt Ebie Hawthorne last summer! It was last summer; and all
the lovely flowers were nodding, and the sun shone with all its might,
and we each took a basket and a book and stayed all the afternoon. We
brought home heaps of flowers and greens. I never had such a pleasant
time here in the woods. In England my nurse Fanny and I used to take
long walks on Sunday through the lanes, or into the parks; and take
baskets and pick baskets full of daisies, pink-and-white. Then we
went into the endless lanes, long, without a single sign of house or
cottage (until we came to walk so far as to come to a little village).
Nobody came along in rattling gigs or carriages; on Sunday you would
not meet a person. With great ditches on each side, filled with tall
grass as high as yourself, if you chose to get down into it. But I
used to jump across, to get wild hawthorn and rose and honeysuckle and
wall-flowers, and make great bunches of them. And then the buttercups
and daisies and violets in the green grass! For in the lanes there was
not a sign of earth,--all high, green grass. The sun shining so hot
that you could go in your house-dress but for the properness of it.
But I cannot explain and you cannot imagine; you must go to the place
and look for yourself, and then you will know all about it. The parks
are not level at all, but are nothing but high hills all
together,--dear!--so lovely to run down and roll over on, and skip
rope and jump!
My father began to express his wishes in regard to provision for our
aunt in case of his death; to burn old letters; and to impart to my
mother and Una all that he particularly desired to say to them, among
other things his dislike of biographies, and that he forbade any such
matter in connection with himself in any distance of the future. This
command, respected for a number of years, has been, like all such
forcible and prophetic demurs, most signally set aside. It would take
long to explain my own modifications of opinion from arguments of
fierce resistance to the request for a biographical handling of him;
and it matters, no doubt, very little. Such a man must be thoroughly
known, as great saints are always sooner or later known, though
endeavoring to hide their victories of holiness and charity. Certainly
my father did not like to die, though he now wished to do so. My
mother, later, often spoke, in consolation for us and for herself, of
his dread of helpless old age; and she tried to be glad that his
desire to disappear before decrepitude had been fulfilled. But such
wise wishes are not carried out as we might choose. The sudden
transformation which took place in my father after his coming to
America was like an instant's change in the atmosphere from sunshine
to dusky cold. I have never had the least difficulty in explaining it
to myself.
One large item in the sum of his regrets was his unexpectedly narrowed
means. It would have required a generous amount of money to put The
Wayside and its grounds into the delectable order at first
contemplated, to bring them into any sort of English perfection, and
my parents found that they could not afford it; and so all resulted in
semi-comfort and rough appearances. This narrowing of means was caused
not a little by the want of veracity of a person whom my father had
trusted with entire affection and a very considerable loan, about
which we none of us ever heard again. A crust becomes more than
proverbially dry under these circumstances.
My mother bore every reverse nobly. She writes, after her husband's
death: "I have 'enjoyed life,' and 'its hard pinches' have not too
deeply bitten into my heart. But this has been because I am not only
hopeful and of indomitable credence by nature, but because this
temperament, together with the silent ministry of pain, has helped me
to the perfect, the unshadowed belief in the instant providence of
God; in his eternal love, patience, sweetness; in his shining face,
never averted. It is because I cannot be disappointed on account of
this belief. To stand and wait after doing all that is legitimate is
my instinct, my best wisdom, my inspiration; and I always hear the
still, small voice at last. If man would not babble so much, we could
much oftener hear God. The lesson of my life has been patience. It
has only made me feel the more humble that God has been so beyond
count benignant to me. I have been cushioned and pillowed with tender
love from the cradle. Such a mother seldom falls to the lot of
mortals. She was the angel of my life. Her looks and tones and her
acts of high-bred womanhood were the light and music and model of my
childhood. Then God joined my destiny with him who was to be all
relations in one. Pain passed away when my husband came. Poverty was
lighter than a thistle-down with such a power of felicity to uphold
it. With 'lowering clouds' I have never been long darkened, because
the sun above has been so penetrating that their tissue has directly
become silvered and goldened. Our own closed eyelids are too often the
only clouds between us and the ever-shining sun. I hold all as if it
were not mine, but God's, and ready to resign it."
It seemed to me a terrible thing that one so peculiarly strong,
sentient, luminous, as my father should grow feebler and fainter, and
finally ghostly still and white. Yet when his step was tottering and
his frame that of a wraith, he was as dignified as in the days of
greater pride, holding himself, in military self-command, even more
erect than before. He did not omit to come in his very best black coat
to the dinner-table, where the extremely prosaic fare had no effect
upon the distinction of the meal. He hated failure, dependence, and
disorder, broken rules and weariness of discipline, as he hated
cowardice. I cannot express how brave he seemed to me. The last time I
saw him, he was leaving the house to take the journey for his health
which led suddenly to the next world. My mother was to go to the
station with him,--she who, at the moment when it was said that he
died, staggered and groaned, though so far from him, telling us that
something seemed to be sapping all her strength; I could hardly bear
to let my eyes rest upon her shrunken, suffering form on this day of
farewell. My father certainly knew, what she vaguely felt, that he
would never return.
Like a snow image of an unbending but an old, old man, he stood for a
moment gazing at me. My mother sobbed, as she walked beside him to the
carriage. We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the
twilight, ever since.
INDEX OF PERSONS
[online ed: page numbers have been omitted.]
Aikens, Mr.
Ainsworth, Mrs.
Alcott, A. Bronson
Alcott, Mrs. A, B.
Alcott, Louisa M.
Alderson, Baron
Allston, Washington
Appleton, Thomas G.
Atherton, Mr.
Bacon, Miss Delia
Bancroft, George
Barber, Mr.
Barstow, B.
Barstow, Ellen
Bartol, Mr.
Bartol, Mrs.
Bennoch, Francis
Birch, Sir Thomas
Blodget, Mrs.
Boott, Miss Elizabeth
Boott, Frank
Bradford, George
Bremer, Miss Frederika
Bridge, Horatio
Bridge, Mrs. Horatio
Bright, Henry
Browne, William
Browning, Mr.
Browning, Mrs.
Brownson, Orestes
Bryant, Mr. and Miss
Buchanan, President
Burchmore, Captain Stephen
Burchmore, T.
Burley, Miss
Burns, Colonel, 244.
Burns, Major
Capen, Dr.
Cecil, Mr.
Channing, Dr.
Channing, Dr. W. E.
Channing, Edward
Channing, Ellery
Chorley, Henry N,
Clarke, Sarah
Cleveland, Henry
Clough, A. H.
Cochran, Misses
Colton, Mr.
Crampton, Mr.
Cranch, Christopher P.
Crauch, Judge
Crawford, Mr.
Crittendon, Mr.
Curtis, Burrill
Curtis, George W.
Cushman, Charlotte
De Quincey, Thomas
Dike, Mr.
Doughty, Mr.
Duffcrin, Lord
Dysie, Mr.
Ely, Mrs. R. S.
Emerson, Charles
Emerson, Mrs. R. W.
Emerson, R. W.
Fields, James T.
Fields, Mrs. James T.
Fleming, Lady le
Foote, Mrs. Caleb
Fuller, Margaret
Gardiner, Miss Sally
Gaskell, Mrs.
Goodrich, S. G.
Greene, Mrs. Anna
Greenough, Mr,
H., Mrs.
Hawthorne, Mrs.
Hawthorne, Elizabeth M.
Hawthorne, Louisa
Hillard, George S,
Hiliard, Mrs, Susan
Hoar, E. Rockwood
Hoar, Miss Elizabeth
Holden, George H.
Holland, Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Holmes, Dr. O. W.
Hooper, Ellen
Hooper, Samuel
Hosmer, Harriet
Hosmer, Mr.
Houghton, Lord
Howes, Mr.
Hughes, Thomas
Jackson, Miss
James, G. P. R.
Jerdan, William
Jones, George
King, John
Lane, Miss Harriet
Leitch, Captain
Lincoln, President
Lindsay, Richard
Littledale, Mr.
Liverpool, Mayor of
Longfellow, Henry W.
Loring, Dr. George
Loring, Mrs. George B.
Lowell, James R.
Lowell, Mrs. James R.
Lynch, Miss
Mann, Horace
Mann, Mrs. Horace
Manning, Miss Mary
Manning, Richard
Manning, Samuel
Mansfield, L. W.
Martineau, Miss Harriet
Martineau, Mrs. James
Melville, Herman
Meredith, Mr.
Miller, Colonel
Miller, Mr.
Miller, Mrs.
Mills, Mr.
Mitchell, Miss Maria
Moore, Bramley
Motley, John Lothrop
Motley, Mrs. J. L.
Mullet, George W.
Nurse, Rebecca
Ogden, Mr.
O'Sullivan, John
Palmer, General
Palmer, Mrs. General
Parker, Theodore
Peabody, Dr.
Peabody, Elizabeth P.
Peabody, George
Peabody, Mary T.
Peabody, Mrs.
Phillebrown, Mr.
Phillips, Jonathan
Pierce, President
Pike, William B.
Porter, Mary A.
Powers, Hiram
Prescott, Mrs.
Procter, It. W.
Putnam, Captain
Rathbone, Mrs. Richard
Rathbone, Mrs. William
Sanders, Mrs.
Sedgwick, Mrs.
Seymour, Governor, 364.
Shaw, Miss Anna
Shaw, Frank
Shaw, Sarah
Shepard, Miss Ada
Silsbee, Mr.
Squarey, Mr.
Squarey, Mrs.
Stevens, Paran
Stoddard, Mrs. Elizabeth
Story, William W.
Sturgis, M. L.
Sturgis, Mrs. Russell
Sumner, Charles
Synge, W. W.
Tabley, Lord Warremore de
Talfourd, Field
Talfourd, Sir Thomas
Tappan, Mr.
Tappan, Mrs.
Tennyson, Lord
Thompson, C. G.
Thoreau, Henry D.
Ticknor, George
Thaxter, Mr. and Mrs.
Upham, C. W.
Very, Jones
Ward, Mr. Samuel G.
Ward, Mrs. S. G.
Warren, Samuel,
Webster, Daniel,
Whipple, Colonel,
White, William,
Wordsworth, Mrs.
End of Project Gutenberg's Memories of Hawthorne, by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop