A transfigured cattle-pen--Emerson the hub of Concord--His
incorrigible modesty--Grocery-store sages--To make common
men feel more like Emerson than he did--His personal
appearance--His favorite gesture--A glance like the reveille
of a trumpet--The creaking boots--"The muses are in the
woods"--Emerson could not read Hawthorne--Typical versus
individual--Benefit from child-prattle--Concord-grape Bull--
Sounds of distant battle--Politics, sociology, and grape-
culture--The great white fence--Richard Henry Stoddard--A
country youth of genius--Whipple's Attic salt--An unwritten
romance--The consulship retires literature--Louisa's
tragedy--Hard hit--The spiritual sphere of good men--Nearer
than in the world--The return of the pilgrim.
My father's first look at "The Wayside" had been while snow was still
on the ground, and he had reported to his wife that it resembled a
cattle-pen.
But the family advent was effected in June, and although a heavy rain
had fallen while the domestic impedimenta were in transit, wetting the
mattresses and other exposed furniture, yet when the summer sun came out
things began to mend. My mother and Una came a day ahead of the others,
and with the help of carpenters and upholsterers, and a neighboring
Irishman and his wife for cleaning and moving purposes, they soon got
human order into the place of savage chaos. The new carpet was down in
the study, the walls had been already papered and the wood-work grained,
the pictures were hung in their places, and the books placed on their
shelves. By the time the father, the boy, the baby, and the nurse drove
up in the hot afternoon a home had been created for their reception.
Mr. Emerson was, and he always remained, the hub round which the wheel
of Concord's fortunes slowly and contentedly revolved. He was at
this time between forty-five and fifty years old, in the prime of
his beneficent powers. He had fulfilled the promise of his unique
youth--obeyed the voice at eve, obeyed at prime. The sweet austerity of
his nature had been mellowed by human sorrows--the loss of his brothers
and of his eldest son; he had the breadth and poise that are given by
knowledge of foreign lands, and friendships with the best men in them;
he had the unstained and indomitable independence of a man who has
always avowed his belief, and never failed to be true to each occasion
for truth; he had the tranquillity of faith and insight, and he was
alert with that immortal curiosity for noble knowledge the fruit of
which enriches his writings. Upon his modestly deprecating brows was
already set the wreath of a world-wide fame, and yet every village
farmer and store-keeper, and every child, found in his conversation the
wisdom and companionship suited to his needs, and was made to feel
that his own companionship was a valued gift. Emerson becomes more
extraordinary the further we get away from him in years; illustrating
the truth which Landor puts into the mouth of Barrow in one of his
Imaginary Conversations, that "No very great man ever reached the
standard of his greatness in the crowd of his contemporaries: this hath
always been reserved for the secondary." The wealth contained in his
essays has only begun to be put in general circulation, and the harvest
of his poetry is still more remote; while the sincere humility of the
man himself, who was the best incarnate example of many of his ideals,
still puzzles those critics who believe every one must needs be inferior
to his professions.
"Though I am fond of writing and of public speaking," said Emerson, "I
am a very poor talker, and for the most part prefer silence"; and he
went on to compare himself in this respect with Alcott, "the prince of
conversers." Alcott was undoubtedly the prince of fluency, and
Emerson rarely, in private dialogue, ventured to string together many
consecutive sentences; but the things he did say, on small occasion or
great, always hit the gold. On being appealed to, or when his turn came,
he would hang a moment in the wind, and then pay off before the
breeze of thought with an accuracy and force that gave delight with
enlightenment. The form was often epigrammatic, but the air with which
it was said beautifully disclaimed any epigrammatic consciousness or
intention. It was, rather, "I am little qualified to speak adequately,
but this, at least, does seem to me to be true." In the end, therefore,
as the interlocutor thought it all over, he was perhaps surprised to
discover that, little in quantity as Emerson may have said during the
talk, he had yet said more than any one else in substance. But it may be
admitted that he was even better in listening than in speech; his
look, averted but attentive, with a smile which seemed to postpone full
development to the moment when his companion should have uttered the
expected apple of gold in the picture of silver, was subtly stimulating
to the latter's intellect, and prompted him to outdo himself. His
questions were often revelations, discovering truth which the other
only then perceived, and thus beguiling him into admiration of his own
supposed intelligence. In this, as in other things, he acted upon the
precept that it is more blessed to give than to receive gratification;
he never seemed to need any other happiness than that of imparting it.
And so selflessly and insensibly were the riches of his mind and nature
communicated to the community that innocent little Concord could not
quite help believing that its wealth and renown were somehow a creation
of its own. The loafers in Walcott & Holden's grocery store were, in
their own estimation, of heroic stature, because of the unegoistic
citizen who dwelt over yonder among the pines. Emerson was a great man,
no doubt; but then he was no more than their own confessed equal, or
inferior!
This will and power to secularize himself is perhaps Emerson's unique
attribute. It is comparatively easy to stand on mountain-tops and to
ride Pegasus; but how many of those competent to such feats could at the
same time sit cheek by jowl with hucksters and teamsters without a trace
of condescension, and while rubbing shoulders with the rabble of the
street in town-meeting, speak without arrogance the illuminating and
deciding word? This, at last, is the true democracy that levels up
instead of down. An Emerson who can make common men feel more like
Emerson than he himself did is the kind of man we need to bring America
up to her ideals.
Emerson was ungainly in build, with narrow, sloping shoulders, large
feet and hands, and a projecting carriage of the head, which enhanced
the eagle-like expression of his glance and features. His head was
small; it was covered (in 1852) with light brown hair, fine and
straight; he was cleanshaven save for a short whisker; the peaked ends
of an uncomfortable collar appeared above the folds of a high, black
silk stock. His long-skirted black coat was commonly buttoned up; he
wore, on different occasions, a soft felt hat or a high silk one, the
latter, from use, having become in a manner humanized. On the street he
kept his face up as he walked along, and perceived the approach of an
acquaintance afar off, and the wise, slow smile gleamed about his mouth
as he drew near. "How do you do?" was sometimes his greeting; but more
often, "Good-bye!" or "Good-night!"--an original and more sensible
greeting. Though ungainly in formation, he was not ungraceful in bearing
and action; there was a fitness and harmony in his manifestations
even on the physical plan. On the lecture platform he stood erect and
unadorned, his hands hanging folded in front, save when he changed the
leaf of his manuscript, or emphasized his words with a gesture: his
customary one, simple but effective, was to clinch his right fist,
knuckles upward, the arm bent at the elbow, then a downward blow of the
forearm, full of power bridled. It was accompanied by such a glance
of the eyes as no one ever saw except from Emerson: a glance like the
reveille of a trumpet. Yet his eyes were not noticeably large, and their
color was greenish-gray; but they were well set and outlined in his
head, and, more than is the case with most men, they were the windows
of his soul. Wendell Phillips had an eloquent and intrepid eye, but it
possessed nothing approaching the eloquence and spiritual influence of
Emerson's. In every Lyceum course in Concord, Emerson lectured once or
twice, and the hall was always filled. One night he had the misfortune
to wear a pair of abominably creaking boots; every slightest change of
posture would be followed by an outcry from the sole-leather, and
the audience soon became nervously preoccupied in expecting them. The
sublimest thoughts were mingled with these base material accompaniments.
But there was nothing to be done, unless the lecturer would finish his
lecture in his stocking-feet, and we were fain to derive a fortuitous
inspiration from observing the unfaltering meekness with which our
philosopher accepted the predicament. I have forgotten the subject of
the lecture on that occasion, but the voice of the boots will always
sound in my memory.
In his own house Emerson shone with essential hospitality, and yet he
wonderfully effaced himself; any one but he might hold the centre of
the stage. You felt him everywhere, but if you would see him, you must
search the wings. He sat in his chair, bending forward, one leg crossed
over the other, his elbows often supported on his knee; his legs were
rather long and slender, and he had a way, after crossing his leg, of
hitching the instep of that foot under the calf of the other leg, so
that he seemed braided up. He seldom stood in a room, or paced to and
fro, as my father was fond of doing. But the two men were almost equally
addicted to outdoor walking, and both preferred to walk alone. Emerson
formed the habit of betaking himself to Walden woods, which extended to
within a mile or so of his door; thence would he return with an exalted
look, saying, "The muses are in the woods to-day"; and no one who has
read his Woodnotes can doubt that he found them there. Occasionally
Channing, Thoreau, or my father would be his companion; Alcott preferred
to busy himself about his rustic fences and summer-houses, or to sit
the centre of a circle and converse, as he called it; meaning to
soliloquize, looking round from face to face with unalterable faith and
complacency.
My father read Emerson with enjoyment; though more and more, as he
advanced in life, he was disposed to question the expediency of stating
truth in a disembodied form; he preferred it incarnate, as it appears in
life and in story. But he could not talk to Emerson; his pleasure in his
society did not express itself in that form. Emerson, on the other hand,
assiduously cultivated my father's company, and, contrary to his general
habit, talked to him continuously; but he could not read his romances;
he admitted that he had never been able to finish one of them. He loved
to observe him; to watch his silence, which was full of a kind of speech
which he was able to appreciate; "Hawthorne rides well his horse of the
night!" My father was Gothic; Emerson was Roman and Greek. But each was
profoundly original and independent. My father was the shyer and more
solitary of the two, and yet persons in need of human sympathy were able
to reach a more interior region in him than they could in Emerson. For
the latter's thought was concerned with types and classes, while the
former had the individual touch. He distrusted rules, but had faith
in exceptions and idiosyncrasies. Emerson was nobly and magnanimously
public; my father, exquisitely and inevitably private; together they met
the needs of nearly all that is worthy in human nature.
Emerson rose upon us frequently during our early struggles with our
new abode, like a milder sun; the children of the two families became
acquainted, the surviving son, Edward, two years my elder, falling to
my share. But Emerson himself also became my companion, with a humanity
which to-day fills me with grateful wonder. I remember once being taken
by him on a long walk through the sacred pine woods, and on another
occasion he laid aside the poem or the essay he was writing to entertain
Una in his study, whither she had gone alone and of her own initiative
to make him a call! It is easy to compliment a friend upon his children,
but how many of us will allow themselves to be caught and utilized by
them in this fashion? But Emerson's mind was so catholic, so humble, and
so deep that I doubt not he derived benefit even from child-prattle. His
wife rivalled him in hospitality, though her frail health disabled her
from entering into the physical part of social functions with the same
fortitude; in these first months we were invited to a party where we
were fellow-guests with all the other children of Concord. There they
were, their mothers with them, and everything in sight that a child at
a party could require. My new friend Edward mounted me on his pony, and
his father was at hand to catch me when I fell off. Such things sound
incredible, but they are true. A great man is great at all times, and
all over.
Thoreau, Channing, and Alcott were also visible to us at this time, but
of none of them do I find any trace in my memory; though I know, as
a matter of fact, that Channing and my father once permitted me to
accompany them on a walk round the country roads, which inadvertently
prolonged itself to ten miles, and I knew what it was to feel
foot-weary. But another neighbor of ours, hardly less known to fame,
though in a widely different line of usefulness, makes a very distinct
picture in my mind; this was Ephraim Wales Bull, the inventor of the
Concord grape. He was as eccentric as his name; but he was a genuine
and substantive man, and my father took a great liking to him, which was
reciprocated. He was short and powerful, with long arms, and a big head
covered with bushy hair and a jungle beard, from which looked out a pair
of eyes singularly brilliant and penetrating. He had brains to think
with, as well as strong and skilful hands to work with; he personally
did three-fourths of the labor on his vineyard, and every grape-vine had
his separate care. He was married and had three children, amiable
but less interesting than himself. He had, also, a tremendous temper,
evidenced by his heavy and high-arched eyebrows, and once in a while he
let slip upon his helpers in the vineyard this formidable wrath, which
could easily be heard in our peaceful precincts, like sounds of distant
battle. He often came over and sat with my father in the summer-house on
the hill, and there talked about politics, sociology (though under some
other name, probably), morals, and human nature, with an occasional
lecture on grape-culture. He permitted my sister and me to climb the
fence and eat all the grapes we could hold; it seems to me he could
hardly have realized our capacity. During our second summer he built a
most elaborate fence along the road-front of his estate; it must have
been three hundred yards long and it was as high as a man could reach;
the palings, instead of being upright, were criss-crossed over one
another, leaving small diamond-shaped interstices. The whole was painted
brilliant white, to match the liliputian cottage in which the Bull
family contrived (I know not how) to ensconce itself. When the fence was
built, Mr. Bull would every day come forth and pace slowly up and down
the road, contemplating it with the pride of a parent; indeed, it was no
puny achievement, and when I revisited Concord, thirty years later,
the great white fence was still there, with a few gaps in it, but still
effective. But the builder, and the grapes--where were they? Where are
Cheops, and the hanging gardens of Babylon?
Among many visitors came Richard Henry Stoddard, already a poet, but
anxious to supplement the income from his verses by a regular stipend
from the big pocket of Uncle Sam. His first coming was in summer, and
he and my father went up on the hill and sat in the summer-house there,
looking out upon the wide prospect of green meadows and distant woods,
but probably seeing nothing of them, their attention being withdrawn to
scenes yet fairer in the land of imagination and memory. Stoddard was
then, as always, a handsome man, strong and stanch, black-haired and
black-bearded, with strong eyes that could look both fierce and tender.
He was masculine, sensitive, frank, and humorous; his chuckle had
infinite merriment in it; but, as his mood shifted, there might be
tears in his eyes the next moment. He was at that time little more
than five-and-twenty years old, and he looked hardly that; he was a New
England country youth of genius. Nature had kindled a fire in him which
has never gone out. Like my father, he was affiliated with the sea, and
had its freshness and daring, though combined with great modesty, and he
felt honored by the affection with which he inspired the author of The
Scarlet Letter. It was not until his second visit, in the winter,
that the subject of a custom-house appointment for him came up; for my
father, being known as a close friend of the President, whose biography
he had written for the campaign, became the object of pilgrimages other
than literary ones. He received sound advice, and introductions, which
aided him in getting the appointment, and he held it for nearly twenty
years--more to the benefit of the custom-house than of poetry, no
doubt, though he never let poetry escape him, and he is to-day a mine
of knowledge and wisdom on literary subjects. There is an immense human
ardor, power, and pathos in Stoddard; better than any other American
poet does he realize the conception of his great English brother--the
love of love, the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn. The world has proved
impotent to corrupt his heroic simplicity; he loved fame much, but truth
more. He is a boy in his heart still, and he has sung songs which touch
whatever is sweetest, tenderest, and manliest in the soul of man.
[IMAGE: EDWIN P. WHIFFLE]
E. P. Whipple, essentially a man of letters, and famous in his day as a
critic of literature, appeared often in "The Wayside." His verdict on a
book carried weight; it was an era when literary criticism was regarded
seriously, and volumes devoted to critical studies had something more
than, a perfunctory vogue. He had written penetrating and cordial things
about my father's books, and foretold the high place which he would
ultimately occupy in our Pantheon. He was rich in the kind of Attic salt
which, was characteristic of Boston in the middle century; the product
of an almost excessive culture erected on sound, native brains. He had
abounding wit; not only wit of the sort that begets mirth, but that
larger and graver wit which Macaulay notices in Bacon's writings--a
pure, irradiating, intellectual light. It had often the effect of an
actual physical illumination cast upon the topic. He was magnificent as
a dinner-table companion. He was rather a short, thick-shouldered man,
with a big head on a short neck, a broad, projecting forehead, prominent
eyes, defended by shiny spectacles, and bushy whiskers. He is not
remembered now, probably because he never produced any organic work
commensurate with his huge talent. Analyses of the work of others,
however just, useful, and creative, do not endure unless they are
associated with writing of the independent sort. Whipple, with all his
ability and insight, never entered the imaginative field on his own
account, and in the press of wits he falls behind and is forgotten.
My father had come to Concord with the idea of a new romance in his
mind; he designed it to be of a character more cheerful than the
foregoing ones. It was never written, and but the slightest traces of
what it might have been are extant. Herman Melville had spent a day
with us at Concord, and he had suggested a story to Hawthorne; but the
latter, after turning it over in his mind, came to the conclusion that
Melville could treat the subject better than he could; but Melville
finally relinquished it also. It seems likely, however, that this
projected tale was not the one which Hawthorne had originally been
meditating. At all events, it was postponed in favor of a new book of
wonder-stories from Greek mythology--the first one having had immediate
popularity, and by the time this was finished, the occasion had arrived
which led to the writing of Pierce's biography. This, in turn, was
followed by the offer by the President to his friend of the Liverpool
consulate, then the most lucrative appointment in the gift of the
administration; and Hawthorne's acceptance of it caused all literary
projects to be indefinitely abandoned.
But even had there been time for the writing of another book, the death
of Hawthorne's sister Louisa would doubtless have unfitted him for a
while from undertaking it. This was the most painful episode connected
with his life; Louisa was a passenger on a Hudson River steamboat which
was burned. She was a gentle, rather fragile woman, with a playful humor
and a lovable nature; she had not the intellectual force either of her
brother or of her sister Elizabeth; but her social inclinations were
stronger than theirs. She was a delightful person to have in the house,
and her nephew and niece were ardently in love with her. She was on her
way to "The Wayside" when the calamity occurred, and we were actually
expecting her on the day she perished. Standing on the blazing deck,
with the panic and the death-scenes around her, the gentle woman had to
make the terrible choice between the river and the fire. She was alone;
there was none to advise or help her or be her companion in inevitable
death. Her thoughts must have gone to her brother, with his strength and
courage, his skill as a swimmer; but he was far away, unconscious of her
desperate extremity. She had to choose, and the river was her choice.
With that tragic conception of the drowning of Zenobia fresh in his
mind, the realization of his sister's fate must have gained additional
poignancy in my father's imagination. He was hard hit, and the traces of
the blow were manifest on him. After about a month, he made a journey to
the Isles of Shoals with Franklin Pierce, and in that breezy outpost
of the land he spent some weeks, much to his advantage. This was in the
autumn of 1852, and I recall well enough the gap in things which his
long absence made for me, and my perfect joy when the whistle of the
train at the distant railway station signalled his return. Twenty
minutes had to elapse before the railroad carriage could bring him
to our door; they were long and they were brief, after the manner
of minutes in such circumstances. He came, and there was a moment of
indescribable glory while he leaped from the carriage and faced the
situation on the doorstep of his home. His countenance was glowing with
health and the happiness of home-coming. I thought him, as I always did,
the most beautiful of human beings, by which I do not mean beautiful
in feature, for of that I was not competent to hold an opinion; but
beautiful in the feelings which he aroused in me beholding him. He was
beautiful to be with, to hear, touch, and experience. Such is the effect
of the spiritual sphere of good men, in whom nature and character
are harmonious. My father got his appointment from Washington in the
following March, 1853. His wife had but one solicitude in leaving
America; her mother was aged and in delicate health, and their parting
might be forever in this world. But a month before the appointment was
confirmed, her mother quietly and painlessly died. It was as if she had
wished not to be separated from her beloved daughter, and had entered
into the spiritual state in the expectation of being nearer to her there
than she could be in the world. My mother always affirmed that she
was conscious of her mother's presence with her on momentous occasions
during the remainder of her own life.
June came; the farewells were said, we were railroaded to Boston,
embarked on the Cunard steamship Niagara, Captain Leitch, and steamed
out of Boston Harbor on a day of cloudlessness and calm. Incoming
vessels, drifting in the smoothness, saluted us with their flags, and
the idle seamen stared at us, leaning over their bulwarks. The last
of the low headlands grew dim and vanished in the golden haze of the
afternoon. "Go away, tiresome old land!" sang out my sister and myself;
but my father, standing beside us, gazing westward with a serious look,
bade us be silent. Two hundred and twenty years had passed since our
first ancestor had sought freedom on those disappearing shores, and our
father was the first of his descendants to visit the Old Home whence he
came. What was to be the outcome? But the children only felt that the
ocean was pleasant and strange, and they longed to explore it. The
future and the past did not concern them.
V
A paddle-wheel ocean-liner--The hens, the cow, and the
carpenter--W. D. Ticknor--Our first Englishman--An
aristocratic acrobat--Speech that beggars eulogy--The boots
of great travellers--Complimentary cannon--The last
infirmity of noble republican minds--The golden promise: the
spiritual fulfilment--Fatuous serenity--Past and future--The
coquetry of chalk cliffs--Two kinds of imagination--The
thirsty island--Gloomy English comforts--Systematic
geniality--A standing puzzle--The respirator--Scamps, fools,
mendicants, and desperadoes--The wrongs of sailor-men--"Is
this myself?"--"Profoundly akin"--Henry Bright--Charm of
insular prejudice--No stooping to compromise--The battle
against dinner--"I'm glad you liked it!"--An English-,
Irish-, and Scotchman--An Englishman owns his country--A
contradiction in Englishmen--A hospitable gateway--Years of
memorable trifles.
The steamship Niagara was, in 1853, a favorable specimen of nautical
architecture; the Cunard Company had then been in existence rather less
than a score of years, and had already established its reputation for
safety and convenience. But, with the exception of the red smoke-stack
with the black ring round the top, there was little similarity between
the boat that took us to England and the mammoths that do that service
for travellers now adays. The Niagara was about two hundred and fifty
feet long, and was propelled by paddle-wheels, upon the summits of
whose curving altitudes we were permitted to climb in calm weather.
The interior decorations were neat and pretty, but had nothing of the
palatial and aesthetic gorgeousness which educates us in these later
ages. The company of passengers was so small that a single cow, housed
in a pen on deck, sufficed for their needs in the way of milk, and there
were still left alive and pecking contentedly about their coop a number
of fowls, after we had eaten all we could of their brethren at the ten
dinners that were served during the voyage. The crew, from the captain
down, were all able seamen, friendly and companionable, and not so
numerous but that it was easy to make their individual acquaintance. The
most engaging friend of the small people was the carpenter, who had his
shop on deck, and from whom I acquired that passion for the profession
which every normal boy ought to have, and from the practice of which I
derived deep enjoyment and many bloody thumbs and fingers for ten years
afterwards.
But we had companionship historically at least more edifying. William
D. Ticknor, the senior partner of my father's publishers, was the only
figure familiar at the outset. He was one of the most amiable of men,
with thick whiskers all round his face and spectacles shining over
his kindly eyes; a sturdy, thick-set personage, active in movement and
genial in conversation. It was James T. Fields who usually made the
trips to England; but on this occasion Fields got no farther than
the wharf, where the last object visible was his comely and smiling
countenance as he waved his adieux. Conspicuous among the group on the
after-deck, as we glided out of the smooth harbor of Boston, was an
urbane and dignified gentleman of perhaps sixty years of age, with a
clean-shaven mouth and chin, finely moulded, and with what Tennyson
would call an educated whisker, short and gray, defining the region
in front of and below his ears. He spoke deliberately, and in language
carefully and yet easily chosen, with intonations singularly distinct
and agreeable, giving its full value to every word. This was our first
native Englishman; no less a personage than Mr. Crampton, in fact, the
British Minister, who was on his way to Halifax. He had fine, calm,
quietly observant eyes, which were pleasantly employed in contemplating
the beauty of that summer seascape--an opalescent ocean, and islands
slumbering in the July haze. Near him stood a light-built, tall,
athletic individual, also obviously English, but thirty years younger;
full, also, of artistic appreciation; this was Field Talfourd, who was
an artist, and many things besides; a man proficient in all forms
of culture. His features were high and refined, and, without being
handsome, irresistibly attractive. He turned out to be a delightful
playmate for the children, and astonished them and the rest of the
company by surprising gymnastic feats in the rigging. The speech of
these two Britishers gave the untravelled American a new appreciation of
the beauty and significance of the English language. Not all Englishmen
speak good English, but when they do, they beggar eulogy.
[IMAGE: JAMES T. FIELDS, NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, AND WILLIAM D. TICKNOR]
George Silsbee was likewise of our party; he was an American of the
Brahman type, a child of Cambridge and Boston, a man of means, and an
indefatigable traveller. He had the delicate health and physique of the
American student of those days, when out-door life and games made no
part of our scholastic curricula. He may have been forty years old,
slight and frail, with a thin, clean-shaven face and pallid complexion,
but full of mind and sensibility. We do not heed travellers now, and I
am inclined to think they are less worth heeding than they used to be.
It is so easy to see the world in these latter days that few persons see
it to any purpose even when they go through the motions of doing so. But
to hear George Bradford or Silsbee talk of England, France, and Italy,
in the fifties, was a liberal education, and I used sometimes to stare
fascinated at the boots of these wayfarers, admiring them for the
wondrous places in which they had trodden. Silsbee travelled with his
artistic and historic consciousness all on board, and had so much to say
that he never was able to say it all.
But to my father himself were accorded the honors of the captain's
table, and for him were fired the salutes of cannon which thundered us
out of Boston Harbor and into Halifax. These compliments, however, were
paid to him not as a man of letters, but as a political representative
of his country, and, let a man be as renowned as he will on his personal
account, he will still find it convenient, in order to secure smooth and
agreeable conditions on his way through the world, to supplement that
distinction with recommendations from the State Department. Respect for
rank is the last infirmity even of noble republican minds, and it oils
the wheels of the progress of those who possess it. An American widow
of my later acquaintance, a lady of two marriageable daughters and small
social pretensions in her own country, toured Europe with success
and distinction, getting all the best accommodations and profoundest
obeisances by the simple device of placing the word "Lady" before her
modest signature in the hotel registers. She was a lady, of course, and
had a right so to style herself, and if snobbish persons chose to read
into the word more than it literally meant, that was not Mrs. Green's
affair.
American commerce still existed in 1853, and the Liverpool consulate was
supposed to have more money in it than any other office in the gift
of the administration. As a matter of fact, several of my father's
predecessors had retired from their tenure of office with something
handsome (pecuniarily speaking) to their credit; whether the means by
which it had been acquired were as handsome is another question. Be
that as it may, Congress, soon after my father's accession, passed a
law cutting down the profits about three-fourths, and he was obliged to
practise the strictest economy during his residence abroad in order to
come home with a few thousand dollars in his pocket. Nevertheless, the
dignity, in the official sense, of this consular post was considerable,
and it brought him, in combination with his literary fame, a good deal
more attention in England than he well knew what to do with. But, in one
way or another, he also made friends there who remained to the end among
the dearest of his life and more than countervailed all the time and
energy wasted on the Philistines.
The Atlantic, all the way across, with the exception of one brief
emotional disturbance between lunch and dinner-time, wore a smile of
fatuous serenity. The sun shone; the vast pond-surface oilily undulated,
or lay in absolute flatness, or at most defiled under our eyes in
endless squadrons of low-riding crests. My mother, whose last experience
of sea-ways had been the voyage to Cuba, in which the ship was all but
lost in a series of hurricanes, was captivated by this soft behavior,
and enjoyed the whole of it as much, almost, as her husband, who
expanded and drank in delight like a plant in the rain. But, in truth,
these must have been blessed hours for them both. Behind them lay nearly
eleven years of married life, spent in narrow outward circumstances,
lightened only towards the last by the promise of some relaxation from
strain, during which they had found their happiness in each other, and
in the wise and tender care of their children, and in the converse of
chosen friends. They had filled their minds with knowledge concerning
the beauties and interests of foreign lands, with but a slender
expectation of ever beholding them with bodily sight, but none the less
well prepared to understand and appreciate them should the opportunity
arrive. And now, suddenly, it had arrived, and they were on the way to
the regions of their dreams, with the prospect of comparative affluence
added. They had nearly twelve years of earthly sojourn together before
them, the afternoon sunshine to be clouded a little near the close by
the husband's failing health, but glorified more and more by mutual
love, and enriched with memories of all that had before been unfulfilled
imaginings. This voyage eastward was the space of contemplation between
the two periods, and the balm of its tranquillity well symbolized the
peace of soul and mind with which they awaited what the horizons were to
disclose.
The right way to approach England for the first time is not by the
west coast, but by the south, as Julius Caesar did, beckoned on by the
ghostly, pallid cliffs that seem to lift themselves like battlements
against the invader. It is historically open to question whether there
would have been any Roman occupation, or any Saxon or Norman one
either, for that matter, but for the coquetry of those chalk cliffs.
An adventurer, sighting the low and marshy shores of Lancashire, and
muddying his prows in the yellow waters of the Mersey, would be apt
to think that such a land were a good place to avoid. But the race of
adventurers has long since died out, and their place is occupied by the
wide-flying cormorants of commerce, to whom mud flats and rock deserts
present elysian beauties, provided only there be profit in them.
One kind of imagination has been superseded by another, and both are
necessary to the full exploitation of this remarkable globe that we
inhabit.
But even the level capes of Lancashire were alluring to eyes that saw
England, our venerable mother, loom behind them, with her thousand
years' pageantry of warfare and civilization. The egregious little
island is a thirsty place; the land drinks rain as assiduously as do its
inhabitants beer and other liquors. Heavy mists and clouds enveloped it
as we drew near, and ushered us up the Mersey into a brown omnipresence
of rain. The broad, clear sunshine of the Atlantic was left behind, and
we stood on wet decks and were transported to sloppy wharfs by means
of a rain-sodden and abominably smoking little tug-boat--as the way
was fifty years ago. Liverpool was a gray-stone labyrinth open to the
deluge, and its inhabitants went to and fro with umbrellas over their
heads and black respirators over their mouths, looking as if such were
their normal plight--as, indeed, it was. Much of this was not needed to
quench the enthusiasm of the children. The Waterloo Hotel, to which, by
advice of friends, we were driven, seemed by its very name to carry out
the idea of saturation, which the activities of nature so insistently
conveyed. It was intensely discomfortable, and though the inside of the
hotel was well supplied with gloomy English comforts, and the solemn
meals were administered with a ceremonious gravity that suggested their
being preliminaries to funerals, yet it was hard to be light-hearted.
The open-grate coal fires were the most welcome feature of this summer
season, and no doubt the wine list offered the best available substitute
for sunlight; but we had not been trained to avail ourselves of it.
We drank water, which certainly appeared an idle proceeding in such a
climate. In Liverpool, however, or in its suburbs, we were to live for
the better part of four years, and we must make the best of it. And
there is in English people, when rightly approached, a steady and
systematic geniality that not only makes handsome amends for their
weather, but also accounts for the otherwise singular fact that the
country is inhabited at all. A people with a smaller fund of interior
warmth could not have endured it. The French talk about conquering
England, but they could not hold it if they did, and it is one of the
standing puzzles of history how the Romans, an Italian race, were able
to maintain themselves under these skies during four centuries. It may
be objected that the present English population is not indigenous to the
island; but they are the survival of the fittest and toughest selected
from many aspirants. Nor can it be doubted that the British hunger for
empire in all parts of the world is due to nothing so much as to their
anxiety to have a plausible pretext for living elsewhere than at home.
My father took the rain, as he took everything that could not be helped,
philosophically, and it seemed to do him no harm; indeed, his health
was uniformly good all through his English residence. It did not suit so
well my mother, who was constitutionally delicate in the lungs; she was
soon obliged to adopt the English respirator, and finally was driven
to take refuge for the greater part of a year in Lisbon and Madeira,
returning only a little before the departure of the family for Italy in
1858. But there must have been in him an ancestral power of resistance
still effective after more than two centuries of transplantation; he
grew ruddy and robust while facing the mist and mirk, and inhaling the
smoky moisture that did service for air. Nor was his health impaired by
the long hours in the daily consulate--a grimy little room barely five
paces from end to end, with its dusty windows so hemmed in by taller
buildings that even had there been any sunshine to make the attempt, it
could never have succeeded in effecting an entrance through them. Here,
from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, he dealt with all
varieties of scamps and mendicants, fools and desperadoes, and all the
tribe of piratical cutthroats which in those days constituted a large
part of the merchant marine. Calamity, imbecility, and rascality were
his constant companions in that dingy little den; and the gloomy and
sooty skies without but faintly pictured the moral atmosphere which
they exhaled; he entered deeply into all their affairs, projects, and
complaints, feeling their troubles, probably, at least as keenly as
they did themselves, and yet he came out of it all with clear eyes and a
sound digestion. I presume the fact may have been that he unconsciously
regarded the whole affair somewhat as we do a drama in a theatre; it
works upon our sensibilities, and yet we do not believe that it is real.
There was nothing in the experience germane to his proper life; it could
not become a part of him, and therefore its posture towards him
remained inveterately objective. The only feature of it that quickened a
responsive chord in him was the revelation of the intolerable condition
of the sailors in many of our ships, and upon these abuses he enlarged
in his communications to Washington. Improvements were made in
consequence of his remonstrances; but the American merchant service had
already begun its downward career, and it is only very lately, owing to
causes which are too novel and peculiar to be intelligently discussed
as yet, that our flag is once more promising to compete against that of
England.
It would be misleading to say, however, that my father was not
interested in his consulate work; there was a practical side in him
which took hold of the business in man-fashion, and transacted it so
efficiently as to leave no room for criticism, and nobody can produce
voluntary effects without feeling in himself a reaction from them. He had
occasion to look into the privacy of many human hearts, to pity them and
advise them, and from such services and insights he no doubt obtained a
residue of wisdom which might be applied to his own ulterior uses.
These were indirect and incidental issues; but from the consulate qua
consulate Hawthorne was radically alien, and when he quitted it, he
carried away with him no taint or trace of it. As he says in his remarks
upon the subject, he soon came to doubt whether it were actually himself
who had been the incumbent of the office at all.
But Providence does not deny manna to man in his extremity, and to my
father it came in the shape of a few English friends, and in occasional
escapes from the office into the outside England where, after the
centuries of separation, he found so much with which he could still feel
profoundly akin. His most constant friendly visitor was Henry A. Bright,
a university man, the son of a wealthy local merchant, who sent ships
to Australia, and was related (as most agreeable Englishmen are--though
there are shining exceptions) to the aristocratic class. Bright, at this
time, could not have been over thirty years of age; he was intensely
English, though his slender figure and mental vivacity might make him
seem near to the conventional American type. But through him, as through
an open window, Hawthorne was enabled to see far into the very heart of
England. Bright not merely knew England; he was England, and England at
its best, and therefore also at its most insular and prejudiced. It
was unspeakably satisfying and agreeable to encounter a man at once so
uncompromising and so amiable, so wrong-headed (from the American point
of view) and so right-hearted. He was drawn to my father as iron is
drawn to the magnet; on every outward point they fought each other like
the knight errants of old, while agreeing inwardly, beneath the surface
of things, as few friends are able to agree. Each admired the other's
onslaughts and his prowess, and, by way of testifying his admiration,
strove to excel himself in his counter attacks. The debate was always
beginning, and in the nature of things it could never end; the effect
of their blows was only to hammer each the other more firmly into his
previous convictions. Probably all the things that are English and all
the things that are American never before or since received such full
and trenchant exposition as was given them by Hawthorne and by Bright.
The whole subject of monarchy and aristocracy as against republicanism
and democracy was threshed out to the last kernel by champions each of
whom was thoroughly qualified to vindicate his cause. Each, constrained
by the stress of battle to analyze and expound his beliefs more
punctually than ever before, thereby convinced himself while leaving his
adversary undaunted; and, of course, both were right. For this world is
so constituted that two things incompatible in outward manifestation may
in their roots be one and the same, and equally appeal to the suffrages
of honest men. England and America are healthy and vigorous in
proportion as they differ from each other, and a morbid and vicious
tendency in either is noticeable the moment either begins to take a
leaf from the other's book. My father and Bright could not have been the
lifelong friends that they were had either of them yielded his point or
stooped to compromise.
Apart from political matters, and such social themes as were nearly
allied to them, the two friends had many points of agreement and
sympathy. Bright had from the first been an ardent and intelligent
admirer of the romancer's writings, and though they might often differ
in their estimates of individual works, they were in hearty accord as
to the principles which underlie all literature and art. Upon matters
relating to society, my father was more apt to accept theories which
Bright might propound than to permit of their being illustrated in his
own person; he would admit, for example, that a consul ought to mingle
socially with the people to whom he was accredited; but when it came
to getting him out to dinner, in evening dress and with a speech in
prospect, obstacles started up like the armed progeny of the Dragon's
Teeth. For, though no one enjoyed real society more than he did, he was
ardently averse from conversing as an official with persons between whom
and himself as a man there could be little sympathy. Almost as much,
too, did he dislike to meet the polite world merely on the basis of the
books that he had written, which his entertainers were bound to
praise whether or not they had read or comprehended them, and to whose
well-meant but inexpert eulogies he must constantly respond with the
threadbare and pathetic phrase, "I'm glad you liked it." Bright, of
course, insisted that fame and position carried obligations which must
be met, and he was constantly laying plots to inveigle or surprise
his friend into compliance. He often succeeded, but he failed quite as
frequently, so that, as a Mrs. Malaprop might have said, Hawthorne as
a social lion was a rara avis, from first to last. The foible of
artificial, as distinguished from spontaneous, society is that it so
seldom achieves simple human relations.
Another chief friend of his was Francis Bennoch. England would never
have seemed "our old home" to my father, without the presence and
companionship of these two men. Both had literary leanings, both were
genial, true, and faithful; but in other respects they were widely
dissimilar. Bright was of the pure Saxon type; Bennoch represented Great
Britain at large; there were mingled in him English, Irish, and
Scotch ancestry. In himself he was a superb specimen of a human being;
broad-shouldered, straight, and vigorous, massive but active, with a
mellow, joyful voice, an inimitable brogue, sparkling black eyes full
of hearty sunshine and kindness, a broad and high forehead over bushy
brows, and black, wavy hair. He bubbled over with high spirits, humor,
and poetry, being, indeed, a poet in achievement, with a printed
and bound volume to show for it--songs, lyrics, and narrative poems,
composed in the spirit of Burns and Scott. He was at this time one
of the handsomest men in England, with a great heart, warmer than any
summer England ever knew, and a soul of ardor and courage, which sent
through his face continual flashes of sympathy and fellowship. One
naturally thought and spoke of him in superlatives; he was the kindest,
jolliest, most hospitable, most generous and chivalrous of men, and
his affection and admiration for my father were also of the superlative
kind. He had made a fortune in the wool business, and had an office
in Wood Street, London; but his affairs permitted him to make frequent
excursions to Liverpool, and to act as his American friend's guide
and cicerone to many places in England which would otherwise have been
unknown to him. My father enjoyed these trips immensely; Bennoch's
companionship gave the right keynote and atmosphere to the sights they
saw. A real Englishman owns his country, and does the honors of it to a
visitor as if it were his private estate. Discussions of politics and of
the principles of government never arose between these two, as they did
between my father and Bright; for Bennoch, though one of the most loyal
and enthusiastic of her Majesty's subjects, and full of traditional
respect for the British nobility, was by nature broadly democratic,
and met every man as an equal and a brother. One often finds this
contradiction in Englishmen; but it is such logically only. A man
born to the traditions of monarchy and aristocracy accepts them as the
natural background of his ideas, just as the English landscape is the
setting of his house and park; he will vindicate them if assailed; but
ordinarily they do not consciously affect his mental activities, and he
will talk good republicanism without being aware of it. The monarchy is
a decoration, a sentiment, a habit; as a matter of fact, England is more
democratic in many essentials than we have as yet learned how to
be. Bennoch was not a university man, and lacked the historical
consciousness that Bright so assiduously cultivated; he lived by feeling
and intuition more than by deliberate intellectual judgments. He was
emotional; tears would start to his eyes at a touch of pathos or pity,
as readily as the laughter of a moment before. So lovable, gallant,
honest, boyish a man is seldom born into this modern world-boyish as
only the manliest men can be. He died thirty years after the time I
write of, the same fresh and ardent character as ever, and loving and
serving Hawthorne's children for Hawthorne's sake. I shall have occasion
to mention him hereafter; but I have dwelt upon him here, both because
he made it forever impossible for any one who knew him well to do other
than love the land which could breed such a man, and because, for the
American Hawthorne, he was as a hospitable gate-way through which the
England of his dreams and imaginings was entered upon as a concrete and
delightful reality.
With Bright and Bennoch on his right hand and on his left, then, my
father began his English experience. The two are frequently mentioned
in his English journals, and Bennoch figures as one of the subordinate
characters in the posthumous romance called Doctor Grimshawe's Secret.
It is but a sketch of him, however, and considerably modified from the
brilliant and energetic reality. Meanwhile the consul began to accustom
himself to the routine of the consulate, and his family, leaving the
sombre respectability of the Waterloo Hotel, moved, first, to the
hospitable boarding-house of Mrs. Blodgett, and afterwards to a private
dwelling in Rock Park, Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the Mersey,
where we were destined to dwell for several years. They were years full
of events very trifling in themselves, but so utterly different from
everything American as to stamp themselves upon the attention and the
memory. It is the trifling things that tell, and give character to
nations; extraordinary things may occur anywhere, and possess little
national flavor. In another chapter I will attempt some portrayal of
this English life of fifty years since.