Milton, Bunyan, and Hawthorne together in a simultaneous view. Wide
apart as the first two stand, they seem to effect a kind of union in
this modern genius; or, rather, their influence here conjoins, as the
rays from two far-separated stars meet in the eye of him who watches the
heavens for inspiration. Something of the peculiar virtue of each of
these Puritan writers seems to have given tone to Hawthorne's no less
individual nature. In Bunyan, who very early laid his hand on
Hawthorne's intellectual history, we find a very fountain-head of
allegory. His impulse, of course, was supremely didactic, only so much
of mere narrative interest mixing itself with his work as was
inseparable from his native relish for the matter of fact; while in
Milton's poetry the clear aesthetic pleasure held at least an exact
balance with the moral inspiration, and, as we have just seen, perhaps
outweighed it at times. The same powerful, unrelaxing grasp of allegory
is found in the American genius as in Bunyan, and there likewise comes
to light in his mind the same delight in art for art's sake that added
such a grace to Milton's sinewy and large-limbed port. In special cases
the allegorical motive has distinctly got the upper hand, in Hawthorne's
work; yet even in those the artistic integument, that marvellous verbal
style, those exquisite fancies, are not absent: on the contrary, in the
very instances where Hawthorne has most constantly and clearly held to
the illustration of a single idea, and made his fiction fit itself most
absolutely to the jewelled truth it holds,--in these very causes, I say,
the command of his genius over literary resources is generally shown by
an unusual splendor of means applied to the ideal end in view. It is
here that, while resembling Bunyan, he is so unlike him. But more
commonly we find in Hawthorne the two moods, the ethical and the
aesthetic, exerted in full force simultaneously; and the result seems to
be a perfection of unity. The opposing forces, like centripetal and
centrifugal attractions, produce a finished sphere. And in this, again,
though recalling Milton, he differs from him also. In Milton's epic the
tendency is to alternate these moods; and one works against the other.
In short, the two elder writers undergo a good deal of refinement and
proportioning, before mixing their qualities in Hawthorne's veins.
However great a controversialist Milton may be held, too, the very fact
of his engaging in the particular discussions and in the manner he
chose, while never to be deplored, may have something to do with the
want of fusion of the different qualities present in his poetry. We may
say, and doubtless it is so, that Hawthorne could never have written
such magnificent pamphlets as the "Eikonoklastes," the "Apology," the
"Tetrachordon": I grant that his refinement, though bringing him
something which Milton did not have, has cost him something else which
Milton possessed. But, for all that, the more deep-lying and inclusive
truths which he constantly entertained, and which barred him from the
temporary exertion of controversy, formed the sources of his completer
harmony. There is a kind of analogy, too, between the omnipresence of
Milton in his work, and that of Hawthorne in his. The great Puritan
singer cannot create persons: his Satan is Milton himself in
singing-robes, assuming for mere argument's and epic's sake that side of
a debate which he does not believe, yet carrying it out in the most
masterly way; his angels and archangels are discriminated, but still
they are not divested of his informing quality; and "Comus" and "Samson
Agonistes," howsoever diverse, are illustrations of the athletic prime
and the autumnal strength of the poet himself, rather than anywise
dramatic evolutions of his themes. Bunyan, with much less faculty for
any subtle discrimination of characters, also fails to give his persons
individuality, though they stand very distinctly for a variety of
traits: it is with Bunyan as if he had taken an average human being,
and, separating his impulses, good and evil, had tried to make a new man
or woman out of each; so that there is hardly life-blood enough to go
round among them. Milton's creatures are in a certain way more vital,
though less real. Bunyan's characters being traits, the other's are
moods. Yet both groups seem to have been cast in a large, elemental
mould. Now, Hawthorne is vastly more an adept than either Milton or
Bunyan in keeping the creatures of his spirit separate, while
maintaining amongst them the bond of a common nature; but besides this
bond they are joined by another, by something which continually brings
us back to the author himself. It is like a family resemblance between
widely separated relatives, which suggests in the most opposite quarters
the original type of feature of some strong, far-back progenitor. These
characters, with far more vivid presence and clear definition than those
of the other two writers, are at the same time based on large and
elementary forces, like theirs. They are for the most part embodied
moods, or emotions expanded to the stature of an entire human being, and
made to endure unchanged for years together. Thus, while Hawthorne, as
we shall see more fully further on, is essentially a dramatic genius,
Bunyan a simple allegorist, and Milton an odic poet of unparalleled
strength,--who, taking dramatic and epic subjects and failing to fill
them, makes us blame not _his_ size and shape, but the too minute
intricacies of the theme,--there is still a sort of underground
connection between all three. It is curious to note, further, the
relation of Milton's majestic and multitudinous speech, the
chancellor-like stateliness of his wit, in prose, to Hawthorne's
resonant periods, and dignity that is never weakened though admirably
modified by humor. Altogether, if one could compound Bunyan and Milton,
combine the realistic imagination of the one with the other's passion
for ideas, pour the ebullient undulating prose style of the poet into
the veins of the allegorist's firm, leather-jerkined English, and make a
modern man and author of the whole, the result would not be alien to
Hawthorne.
Yet that native love of historic murkiness and mossy tradition which we
have been learning to associate with Salem would have to be present in
this compound being, to make the likeness complete. And this, with the
trains of revery and the cast of imagination which it must naturally
breed, would be the one thing not easily supplied, for it is the
predisposition which gives to all encircling qualities in Hawthorne
their peculiar coloring and charm. That predisposition did not find its
sustenance only in the atmosphere of sadness and mystery that hangs over
the story of Salem; bygone generations have left in the town a whole
legacy of legend and shudder-rousing passages of family tradition, with
many well-supported tales of supernatural hauntings; and it is worth
while to notice how frequent and forcible a use Hawthorne makes of this
enginery of local gossip and traditional horror, in preparing the way
for some catastrophe that is to come, or in overshooting the mark with
some exaggerated rumor which, by pretending to disbelieve it, he causes
to have just the right effect upon the reader's mind. Some of the old
houses that stand endwise to the street, looking askant at the
passer,--especially if he is a stranger in town,--might be veritable
treasuries of this sort of material. Gray, close-shuttered, and
retiring, they have not so much the look of death; it is more that they
are poor, widowed homes that have mournfully long outlived their lords.
One would not have them perish; and yet there is something drearily sad
about them. One almost feels that the present tenants must be in danger
of being crowded out by ghosts, or at least that they must encounter
strange obstacles to living there. Are not their windows darkened by the
light of other days? An old mansion of brick or stone has more character
of its own, and is less easily overshadowed by its own antiquity; but
these impressible wooden abiding-places, that have managed to cling to
the soil through so many generations, seem rife with the inspirations of
mortality. They have a depressing influence, and must often mould the
occupants and leave a peculiar impress on them. We are all odd enough in
our way, whatever our origin or habitation; but is it not possible that
in a town of given size, placed under specified conditions, there should
be a greater proportion of oddities produced than in another differently
circumstanced? Certainly, if this be so, it has its advantages as well
as its drawbacks; a stability of surrounding and of association, which
perhaps affects individuals in the extreme, is still a source of
continuity in town character. And Salem is certainly remarkable for
strong, persistent, and yet unexhausted individuality, as a town, no
less than for a peculiar dignity of character which has become a
pronounced trait in many of its children. But, on the other hand, it is
fecund of eccentricities. Though many absorb the atmosphere of age to
their great advantage, there must be other temperaments among the
descendants of so unique and so impressionable a body of men as the
early settlers of this region, which would succumb to the awesome and
depressing influences that also lurk in the air; and these may easily
pass from piquant personality into mere errant grotesqueness. Whether
from instinctive recognition of this or not, it has never seemed to me
remarkable that people here should see apparitions of themselves, and
die within the year; it did not strike me as strange when I was told of
persons who had gone mad with no other cause than that of inherited
insanity,--as if, having tried every species of sane activity for two or
three hundred years, a family should take to madness from sheer disgust
with the monotony of being healthy; nor could any case of warped
idiosyncrasy, or any account of half-maniacal genius be instanced that
seemed at all out of keeping. One day I passed a house where a crazy
man, of harmless temper, habitually amused himself with sitting at a
window near the ground, and entering into talk, from between the
half-closed shutters, with any one on the sidewalk who would listen to
him. Such a thing, to be sure, might easily be met with in twenty other
places; but here it seemed natural and fitting. It was not a
preposterous thought, that any number of other men in the neighborhood
might quietly drop into a similar vein of decrepitude, and also attempt
to palm off their disjointed fancies upon the orderly foot-passengers. I
do not by this mean to insinuate any excessive leaning toward mental
derangement on the part of the inhabitants; but it is as if the town,
having lived long enough according to ordinary rules to be justified in
sinking into superannuation, and yet not availing itself of the
privilege, but on the contrary maintaining a life of great activity, had
compensated itself in the persons of a few individuals. But when one has
reached this mood, one remembers that it is all embodied in "The House
of the Seven Gables." Though Hawthorne, in the Preface to that romance,
takes precautions against injuring local sentiment, by the assurance
that he has not meant "to describe local manners, nor in any way to
meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a
proper respect and a natural regard," the book is not the less a genuine
outgrowth of Salem. Perhaps the aspect under which Salem presents itself
to me is tinged with fancy, though Hawthorne in the same story has
called it "a town noted for its frugal, discreet, well-ordered, and
home-loving inhabitants, ... but in which, be it said, there are odder
individuals, and now and then stranger occurrences, than one meets with
almost anywhere else." But it is certain that poor Hepzibah Pyncheon,
and the pathetic Clifford, and quaint Uncle Venner, are types which
inevitably present themselves as belonging pre-eminently to this place.
Not less subtle is the connection with it of the old wizard Maule, and
the manner of his death at the witchcraft epoch; for it is hinted in the
romance that old Colonel Pyncheon joined in denouncing the poor man,
urged by designs on a piece of land owned by Maule; and Mr. Upham's
careful research has shown that various private piques were undoubtedly
mixed up in the witchcraft excitement, and swelled the list of
accusations. Young Holgrave, the photographer, also, represents in a
characteristic way the young life of the place, the germ that keeps it
fresh, and even dreams at times of throwing off entirely the visible
remains of the past.
It may be mentioned, at this point, as a coincidence, even if not
showing how Hawthorne insensibly drew together from a hundred nooks and
crannies, and formulated and embodied his impressions of this his native
place in "The House of the Seven Gables," that the name of Thomas Maule
(the builder of the house, and son of the Matthew brought to his death
by Colonel Pyncheon) appears in Felt's "Annals of Salem" as that of a
sympathizer with the Quakers. He was also author of a book called "Truth
Held Forth," published in 1695; and of a later one, the title of which,
"The Mauler Mauled," shows that he had humor in him as well as pluck. He
seems to have led a long career of independent opinion, not altogether
in comfort, however, for in 1669 he was ordered to be whipped for saying
that Mr. Higginson preached lies, and that his instruction was "the
doctrine of devils"; and his book of "Truth Held Forth," which contained
severe reflections on the government for its treatment of the Quakers,
was seized and suppressed. It is not improbable that at some time
Hawthorne may have read of this person. At all events, he serves as a
plausible suggestion of the Maule who so early in the romance utters his
prophecy of ill against Colonel Pyncheon, that he "shall have blood to
drink."
Another minor coincidence, and yet proper to be noted, is that of the
laboring-man Dixey, who appears in the opening of the story with some
comments upon Aunt Hepzibah's scheme of the cent-shop, and only comes in
once afterward, at the close, to touch upon the subject in a different
strain. At first, unseen, but overheard by Miss Pyncheon, he prophesies
to a companion, "in a tone as if he were shaking his head," that the
cent-shop will fail; and when Clifford and Hepzibah drive off in their
carriage, at the end, he remarks sagaciously, "Good business,--good
business." It certainly is odd that this subordinate in the romance
should find a counterpart in one William Dixy, appointed ensign of the
Salem military company which John Hawthorne commanded, in 1645.
The name Pyncheon, also, on which the imaginary Colonel and Judge cast
such a doubtful light, was a well-known name in old New England, and
became the source of some annoyance to Hawthorne, after he had written
the "Seven Gables"; but of this we shall hear more, further on. It is
enough, now, to recall these coincidences. I do not suppose that he
searched the names out and founded his use of them upon some suggestion
already connected with them; indeed, he expressly declared, when
remonstrated with on his use of the Pyncheons, that he did not know of
any person of that title connected with Salem history of that time; but
the circumstance of his using the other names is interesting as showing
that many minute facts must have gone to make up the atmosphere of that
half-historic and half-imaginative area whereon so many of his short
tales and two of the romances were enacted. Maule and Dixey were very
likely absorbed into his mind and forgotten; but suddenly when he
chanced to need these characters for the "Seven Gables," they revived
and took shape with something of the historic impress still upon them.
That their very names should have been reproduced finds explanation in
the statement once made by Hawthorne to a friend, that the most
vexatious detail of romance-writing, to him, was the finding of suitable
names for the _dramatis personae._ Balzac used to look long among
the shop-signs of Paris for the precise name needed by a preconceived
character, and the absolute invention of such titles is doubtless very
rare; few fictionists are gifted with Dickens's fertility in the
discovering of names bearing the most forcible and occult relations to
the fleshless owners of them. And it is interesting to find that
Hawthorne--somewhat as Scott drew from the local repertory of his
countrymen's nomenclature--found many of his surnames among those of the
settlers of New England. Hooper, Prynne, Felton, Dolliver, Hunnewell,
and others belong specially to these and to their descendants. Roger
Chillingworth, by the by, recalls the celebrated English divine and
controversialist, William; and Bishop Miles Coverdale's name has been
transferred, in "Blithedale," from the reign of Edward VI. to the
experimental era of Brook Farm.
It has been urged as a singular deficiency of Hawthorne's, that he could
not glorify the moral strength and the sweeter qualities of the Puritans
and of their lives. But there was nothing in the direction of his genius
that called him to this. As well urge against him that he did not write
philanthropic pamphlets, or give himself to the inditing of biographies
of benevolent men, or compose fictions on the plan of Sir Charles
Grandison, devoted to the illumination of praiseworthy characters. It is
the same criticism which condemns Dickens for ridiculing certain
preachers, and neglecting to provide the antidote in form of a model
apostle, contrasted in the same book. This is the criticism which would
reduce all fiction to the pattern of the religious tract. Certain men
have certain things before them to do; they cannot devote a lifetime to
proving in their published works that they appreciate the excellence of
other things which they have no time and no supreme command to do.
Nothing, then, is more unsafe, than to imply from their silence that
they are deficient in particular phases of sympathy. The exposition of
the merits of the New England founders has been steadily in progress
from their own time to the present; and they have found a worthy
monument in the profound and detailed history of Palfrey. All the more
reason, why the only man yet born who could fill the darker spaces of
our early history with palpitating light of that wide-eyed truth and
eternal human consciousness which cast their deep blaze through
Hawthorne's books, should not forego his immortal privilege! The eulogy
is the least many-sided and perpetual of literary forms, and unless
Hawthorne had made himself the eulogist of the Puritans, he would still
have had to turn to our gaze the wrongs that, for good or ill, were
worked into the tissue of their infant state. But as it is, he has been
able to suggest a profounder view than is permitted either to the race
of historians or that of philosophers. It does not profess to be a
satisfactory statement of the whole, nor is there the least ground for
assuming that it does so. Its very absorption in certain phases
constitutes its value,--a value unspeakably greater than that of any
other presentation of the Puritan life, because it rests upon the
insight of a poet who has sounded the darkest depths of human nature.
Had Hawthorne passed mutely through life, these gloomy-grounded pictures
of Puritanism might have faded from the air like the spectres of things
seen in dazzling light, which flit vividly before the eye for a time,
then vanish forever.
But in order to his distinctive coloring, no distortion had to be
practised; and I do not see why Hawthorne should be reckoned to have had
no sight for that which he did not record. With his unique and
penetrating touch he marked certain salient and solemn features which
had sunk deep into his sensitive imagination, and then filled in the
surface with his own profound dramatic emanations. But in his subtle and
strong moral insight, his insatiable passion for truth, he surely
represented his Puritan ancestry in the most worthy and obviously
sympathetic way. No New-Englander, moreover, with any depth of feeling
in him, can be entirely wanting in reverence for the nobler traits of
his stern forefathers, or in some sort of love for the whole body of
which his own progenitors formed a group. Partly for his romantic
purposes, and merely as an expedient of art, Hawthorne chose to treat
this life at its most picturesque points; and to heighten the elements
of terror which he found there was an aesthetic obligation with him. But
there is even a subtler cause at work toward this end. The touches of
assumed repugnance toward his Puritan forefathers, which appear here and
there in his writings, are not only related to his ingrained shyness,
which would be cautious of betraying his deeper and truer sentiment
about them, but are the ensigns of a proper modesty in discoursing of
his own race, his own family, as it were. He shields an actual
veneration and a sort of personal attachment for those brave earlier
generations under a harmless pretence that he does not think at all too
tenderly of them. It is a device frequently and freely practised, and so
characteristically American, and especially Hawthornesque, that it
should not have been overlooked for even a moment. By these means, too,
he takes the attitude of admitting the ancestral errors, and throws
himself into an understanding with those who look at New England and the
Puritans merely from the outside. Here is a profound resort of art, to
prepare a better reception for what he is about to present, by not
seeming to insist on an open recognition from his readers of the
reigning dignity and the noble qualities in the Puritan colony, which he
himself, nevertheless, is always quietly conscious of. And in this way
he really secures a broader truth, while reserving the pride of locality
and race intact; a broader truth, because to the world at large the most
pronounced feature of the Puritans is their austerity.
But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the
shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in
his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own
genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still
and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles
peopled.