George Crowninshield fitted out a flag of truce, sailed for Halifax with
ten shipmasters on board, and obtained the bodies of Lawrence and his
lieutenant, Ludlow. Late in August they returned, and the city gave
itself to solemnities in honor of the lost heroes, with the martial
dignity of processions and the sorrowing sound of dirges. Cannon
reverberated around them, and flags drooped above them at half-mast,
shorn of their splendor. Joseph Story delivered an eloquent oration over
them, and there was mourning in the hearts of every one, mixed with that
spiritualized sense of national grandeur and human worth that comes at
hours like this. Among the throngs upon the streets that day must have
stood the boy Nathaniel Hawthorne; not too young to understand, and
imbibing from this spectacle, as from many other sources, that profound
love of country, that ingrained, ineradicable American quality, which
marked his whole maturity.
I have not found any distinct corroboration of the report that Nathaniel
again lost the use of his limbs, before going to Maine to live. In
another brief, boyish letter dated "Salem, Monday, July 21, 1818" (all
these documents are short, and allude to the writer's inability to find
anything more to say), he speaks of wanting to "go to dancing-school a
little longer" before removing with his mother to the house which his
uncle is building at Raymond. He has also, he says, been to Nahant,
which he likes, because "fish are very thick there"; both items seeming
to show a proper degree of activity. There has been a tendency among
persons who have found nothing to obstruct the play of their fancies, to
establish a notion of almost ill-balanced mental precocity in this
powerful young genius, who seems to have advanced as well in muscular as
in intellectual development.
It was in October, 1818, that Mrs. Hathorne carried her family to
Raymond, to occupy the new house, a dwelling so ambitious, gauged by the
primitive community thereabouts, that it gained the title of "Manning's
Folly." Raymond is in Cumberland County, a little east of Sebago Lake,
and the house, which is still standing, mossy and dismantled, is near
what has since been called Radoux's Mills. Though built by Robert
Manning, it was purchased afterward by his brother Richard, whose widow
married Mr. Radoux, the owner of these mills. Richard Manning's will
provided for the establishing of a meeting-house in the neighborhood,
and his widow transformed the Folly into a Tabernacle; but, the
community ceasing to use it after a few years, it has remained
untenanted and decaying ever since, enjoying now the fame of being
haunted. Lonely as was the region then, it perhaps had a more lively
aspect than at present: A clearing probably gave the inmates of the
Folly a clear sweep of vision to the lake; and to the northwest, beyond
the open fields that still lie there, frown dark pine slopes, ranging
and rising away into "forest-crowned hills; while in the far distance
every hue of rock and tree, of field and grove, melts into the soft blue
of Mount Washington." This weird and woodsy ground of Cumberland became
the nurturing soil of Hawthorne for some years. He stayed only one
twelvemonth at Sebago Lake, returning to Salem after that for college
preparation. But Brunswick, where his academic years were passed, lies
less than thirty miles from the home in the woods, and within the same
county: doubtless, also, he spent some of his summer vacations at
Raymond. The brooding spell of his mother's sorrow was perhaps even
deepened in this favorable solitude. I know not whether the faith of
women's hearts really finds an easier avenue to such consecration as
this of Mrs. Hathorne's, in Salem, than elsewhere. I happen lately to
have heard of a widow in that same neighborhood who has remained
bereaved and uncomforted for more than seventeen years. With pathetic
energy she spends the long days of summer, in long, incessant walks,
sorrow-pursued, away from the dwellings of men. But, however this be, I
think this divine and pure devotion to a first love, though it may have
impregnated Hawthorne's mind too keenly with the mournfulness of
mortality, was yet one of the most cogent means of entirely clarifying
the fine spirit which he inherited, and that he in part owes to this
exquisite example his marvellous, unsurpassed spirituality. A woman thus
true to her highest experience and her purest memories, by living in a
sacred communion with the dead, annihilates time and is already set in
an atmosphere of eternity. Ah, strong and simple soul that knew not how
to hide your grief under specious self-comfortings and maxims of
convenience, and so bowed in lifelong prostration before the knowledge
of your first, unsullied love, be sure the world will sooner or later
know how much it owes to such as you!
More than once has Nathaniel Hawthorne touched the delicate fibres of
the heart that thrill again in this memorial grief of his mother's; and,
incongruous as is the connection of the following passage out of one of
the Twice-Told Tales, it is not hard to trace the origin of the
sensibility and insight which prompted it: "It is more probably the
fact," so it runs, "that while men are able to reflect upon their lost
companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other
hand, are _conscious that a portion of their being has gone with the
departed, whithersoever he has gone_" [Footnote: "drippings with a
Chisel," in Vol. II. of the Twice-Told Tales.] But the most perfect
example of his sympathy with this sorrow of widowhood is that brief,
concentrated, and seemingly slight tale, "The Wives of the Dead,"
[Footnote: See The Snow Image, and other Twice-Told Tales.] than which
I know of nothing more touching and true, more exquisitely proportioned
and dramatically wrought out among all English tales of the same scope
and length. It pictures the emotions of "two young and comely women,"
the "recent brides of two brothers, a sailor and a landsman; and two
successive days had brought tidings of the death of each, by the chances
of Canadian warfare and the tempestuous Atlantic." The action occupies
the night after the news, and turns upon the fact that each sister is
roused, unknown to the other, at different hours, to be told that the
report about her husband is false. One cannot give its beauty without
the whole, more than one can separate the dewdrop from the morning-glory
without losing the effect they make together. It is a complete
presentment, in little, of all that dwells in widowhood. One sentence I
may remind the reader of, nevertheless: "Her face was turned partly inward
to the pillow, and had been hidden there to weep; but a look of motionless
contentment was now visible upon it, as if her heart, like a deep lake,
had grown calm because its dead had sunk down so far within it." Even as
his widowed mother's face looked, to the true-souled boy, when they dwelt
there together in the forest of pines, beside the placid lake!
Yet clear and searching as must then have been his perceptions, he had
not always formulated them or made them his chief concern. On May 16,
1819 (the first spring after coming to the new abode), he writes to his
uncle Robert that "we are all very well"; and "the grass and some of the
trees look very green, the roads are very good, there is no snow on
Lymington mountains. The fences are all finished, and the garden is laid
out and planted.... I have shot a partridge and a henhawk, and caught
eighteen large trout out of our brooke. I am sorry you intend to send me
to school again." Happy boy! he thinks he has found his vocation: it is,
to shoot henhawks and catch trout. But his uncle, fortunately, is
otherwise minded, though Nathaniel writes, in the same note: "Mother
says she can hardly spare me." The sway of outdoor life must have been
very strong over this stalwart boy's temperament. One who saw a great
deal of him has related how in the very last year of his life Hawthorne
reverted with fondness, perhaps with something of a sick and sinking
man's longing for youthful scenes, to these early days at Sebago Lake;
"Though it was there," he confessed, "I first got my cursed habits of
solitude." "I lived in Maine," he said, "like a bird of the air, so
perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." During the moonlight nights of
winter he would skate until midnight all alone upon Sebago Lake, with
the deep shadows of the icy hills on either hand. When he found himself
far away from his home and weary with the exercise of skating, he would
sometimes take refuge in a log-cabin, where half a tree would be burning
on the broad hearth. He would sit in the ample chimney, and look at the
stars through the great aperture through which the flames went roaring
up. "Ah," he said, "how well I recall the summer days, also, when with
my gun I roamed at will through the woods of Maine!... Everything is
beautiful in youth, for all things are allowed to it then!" The same
writer mentions the author's passion for the sea, telling how, on the
return from England in 1860, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his
quiet, earnest way: "I should like to sail on and on forever, and never
touch the shore again." I have it from his sister that he used to
declare that, had he not been sent to college, he should have become a
mariner, like his predecessors. Indeed, he had the fresh air and the
salt spray in his blood.
Still it is difficult to believe that by any chance he could have missed
carrying out his inborn disposition toward literature. After we have
explained all the fostering influences and formative forces that
surround and stamp a genius of this sort, we come at last to the
inexplicable mystery of that interior impulse which, if it does not find
the right influences at first, presses forth, breaks out to right and
left and keeps on pushing, until it feels itself at ease. It cannot
wholly _make_ its own influences, but it fights to the death before
it will give up the effort to lay itself open to these; that is, to get
into a proper surrounding. The surrounding may be as far as possible
from what we should prescribe as the fit one; but the being in whom
perception and receptivity exist in that active state which we call
genius will adapt itself, and will instinctively discern whether the
conditions of life around it can yield a bare nourishment, or whether it
must seek other and more fertile conditions. Hawthorne had an ancestry
behind him connected with a singular and impressive history, had
remarkable parents, and especially a mother pure and lofty in spirit;
lived in a suggestive atmosphere of private sorrow and amid a community
of much quaintness; he was also enabled to know books at an early age;
yet these things only helped, and not produced, his genius. Sometimes
they helped by repression, for there was much that was uncongenial in
his early life; yet the clairvoyance, the unconscious wisdom, of that
interior quality, _genius_, made him feel that the adjustment of
his outer and his inner life was such as to give him a chance of
unfolding. Had he gone to sea, his awaking power would have come
violently into contact with the hostile conditions of sailor-life: he
would have revolted against them, and have made his way into literature
against head-wind or reluctant tiller-rope alike. It may, of course, be
said that this prediction is too easy. But there are evidences of the
mastering bent of Hawthorne's mind, which show that it would have ruled
in any case.
As we have seen, he returned to Salem in 1819, to school; and on March
7, 1820, he wrote thus to his mother:--
"I have left school, and have begun to fit for College under Benjm. L.
Oliver, Lawyer. So you are in great danger of having one learned man in
your family. Mr. Oliver thought I could enter College next commencement,
but Uncle Robert is afraid I should have to study too hard. I get my
lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the
morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A
minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a
career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution.
"I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at
the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was
again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest
days of my life are gone.... After I have got through college, I will
come down to learn E---- Latin and Greek." (Is it too fanciful to note
that at this stage of the epistle "college" is no longer spelt with a
large C?) The signature to this letter shows the boy so amiably that I
append it.
"I remain," he says,
"Your
Affectionate
and
Dutiful
son,
and
Most
Obedient
and
Most
Humble
Servant,
and
Most
Respectful
and
Most
Hearty
Well-wisher,
NATHANIEL HATHORNE."
A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would
perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall
with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this
harmless little play, to throw an unexpected ray of humor and gladness
into the lonely heart of his mother, far away in the Maine woods? And
with this pleasure, let there be something of honor and reverence for
his pure young heart.
In another letter of this period [Footnote: This letter, long in the
possession of Miss E. P. Peabody, Mr. Hawthorne's sister-in-law,
unfortunately does not exist any longer. The date has thus been
forgotten, but the passage is clear in Miss Peabody's recollection.] he
had made a long stride towards the final choice, as witness this
extract:--
"I do not want to be a doctor and live by men's diseases, nor a minister
to live by their sins, nor a lawyer and live by their quarrels. So, I
don't see that there is anything left for me but to be an author. How
would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books, written by
your son, with 'Hawthorne's Works' printed on their backs?"
But, before going further, it will be well to look at certain "Early
Notes," purporting to be Hawthorne's, and published in the Portland
"Transcript" at different times in 1871 and 1873. A mystery overhangs
them; [Footnote: See Appendix I.] and it has been impossible, up to this
time, to procure proof of their genuineness. Most of the persons named
in them have, nevertheless, been identified by residents of Cumberland
County, who knew them in boyhood, and the internal evidence of
authorship seems to make at least some of them Hawthorne's. On the first
leaf of the manuscript book, said to contain them, was written (as
reported by the discoverer) an inscription, to the effect that the book
had been given to Nathaniel Hawthorne by his uncle Richard Manning,
"with the advice that he write out his thoughts, some every day, in as
good words as he can, upon any and all subjects, as it is one of the
best means of his securing for mature years command of thought and
language"; and this was dated at Raymond, June 1, 1816. This account, if
true, puts the book into the boy's hands at the age of twelve. He did
not go to Raymond to live until two years later, but had certainly been
there, before, and his Uncle Richard was already living there in 1816.
So that the entries may have begun soon after June, of that year, though
their mature character makes this improbable. In this case, they must
cover more than a year's time. The dates were not given by the furnisher
of the extracts, and only one item can be definitely provided with a
date. This must have been penned in or after 1819; and yet it seems also
probable that the whole series was written before the author's college
days. If genuine, then, they hint the scope and quality of Hawthorne's
perceptions during a few years antecedent to his college-course,
and--whether his own work or not--they picture the sort of life which he
must have seen at Raymond.
"Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house and the
mill-pond. The male is more courageous than any creature that I know
about. He seems to have taken possession of the territory from the great
pond to the small one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that
flies from one to the other, over his dominion. The fish-hawks must be
miserable cowards, to be driven by such a speck of a bird. I have not
yet seen one turn to defend himself.
"Swapped pocket knives with Robinson Cook yesterday. Jacob Dingley says
that he cheated me, but I think not, for I cut a fishing pole this
morning, and did it well; besides, he is a Quaker, and they never
cheat."
Richard Manning had married Susan Dingley; this Jacob was probably her
nephew. In this allusion to Quakers one might fancy a germ of tolerance
which ripened into "The Gentle Boy."
"Captain Britton from Otisfield was at Uncle Richard's today. Not long
ago, uncle brought here from Salem a new kind of potatoes called 'Long
Reds.' Captain Britton had some for seed, and uncle asked how he liked
them. He answered, 'They yield well, grow very long,--one end is very
poor, and the other good for nothing.' I laughed about it after he was
gone, but uncle looked sour and said there was no wit in his answer, and
that the saying was 'stale.' It was new to me, and his way of saying it
very funny. Perhaps uncle did not like to hear his favorite potato
spoken of in that way, and that if the captain had praised it he would
have been called witty."
"Captain Britton promised to bring 'Gulliver's Travels' for me to read,
the next time he comes this way, which is every time he goes to
Portland. Uncle Richard has not the book in his library.
"This morning the bucket got off the chain, and dropped back into the
well. I wanted to go down on the stones and get it. Mother would not
consent, for fear the wall might cave in, but hired Samuel Shane to go
down. In the goodness of her heart, she thought the son of old Mrs.
Shane not quite so valuable as the son of the Widow Hawthorne. God bless
her for all her love for me, though it may be some selfish. We are to
have a pump in the well, after this mishap.
"Washington Longley has been taking lessons of a drumming master. He was
in the grist-mill to day, and practised with two sticks on the
half-bushel. I was astonished at the great number of strokes in a
second, and if I had not seen that he had but two sticks, should have
supposed that he was drumming with twenty."
"Major Berry went past our house with a large drove of sheep yesterday.
One, a last spring's lamb, gave out; could go no farther. I saw him down
near the bridge. The poor dumb creature looked into my eyes, and I
thought I knew just what he would say if he could speak, and so asked
Mr. Berry what he would sell him for. 'Just the price of his pelt, and
that will bring sixty-five cents,' was the answer. I ran and petitioned
mother for the money, which she soon gave me, saying with a smile that
she tried to make severe, but could not, that I was 'a great
spendthrift.' The lamb is in our orchard now, and he made a bow (without
taking off his hat) and thanked me this morning for saving him from the
butcher.
"Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond, with Mr. Peter White
of Windham. He sailed up here from White's Bridge to see Captain
Dingley, and invited Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out
to the Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also kind enough to say
that I might go (with my mother's consent), which she gave after much
coaxing. Since the loss of my father she dreads to have any one
belonging to her go upon the water. It is strange that this beautiful
body of water is called a 'Pond.' The geography tells of many in
Scotland and Ireland not near so large that are called 'Lakes.' It is
not respectful to speak of so noble, deep, and broad a collection of
clear water as a 'Pond'; it makes a stranger think of geese, and then of
goose-pond. Mr. White, who knows all this region, told us that the
streams from thirty-five ponds, large and small, flow into this, and he
calls it Great Basin. We landed on one of the small islands that Captain
Dingley cleared for a sheep pasture when he first came to Raymond. Mr.
Ring said that he had to do it to keep his sheep from the bears and
wolves. A growth of trees has started on the island, and makes a grove
so fine and pleasant, that I wish almost that our house was there. On
the way from the island to the Images Mr. Ring caught a black spotted
trout that was almost a whale, and weighed before it was cut open, after
we got back to Uncle Richard's store, eighteen and a half pounds. The
men said that if it had been weighed as soon as it came out of the water
it would have been nineteen pounds. This trout had a droll-looking
hooked nose, and they tried to make me believe, that if the line had
been in my hands, that I should have been obliged to let go, or have
been pulled out of the boat. They were men, and had a right to say so. I
am a boy, and have a right to think differently. We landed at the
Images, when I crept into the cave and got a drink of cool water. In
coming home we sailed over a place, not far from the Images, where Mr.
White has, at some time, let down a line four hundred feet without
finding bottom. This seems strange, for he told us, too, that his boat,
as it floated, was only two hundred and fifty feet higher than the boats
in Portland Harbor, and that if the Great Pond was pumped dry, a man
standing on its bottom, just under where we then were, would be more
than one hundred and fifty feet lower than the surface of the water at
the Portland wharves. Coming up the Dingley Bay, had a good view of
Rattlesnake Mountain, and it seemed to me wonderfully beautiful as the
almost setting sun threw over its western crags streams of fiery light.
If the Indians were very fond of this part of the country, it is easy to
see why; beavers, otters, and the finest fish were abundant, and the
hills and streams furnished constant variety. I should have made a good
Indian, if I had been born in a wigwam. To talk like sailors, we made
the old hemlock-stub at the mouth of the Dingley Mill Brook just before
sunset, and sent a _boy_ ashore with a hawser, and was soon safely
moored to a bunch of alders. After we got ashore Mr. White allowed me to
fire his long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure
that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe, rather, that I
was watching for the noise that I was about to make. Mr. Ring said that
with practice I could be a gunner, and that now, with a very heavy
charge, he thought I could kill a horse at eight paces. Mr. White went
to Uncle Richard's for the night, and I went home and amused my mother
with telling how pleasantly the day had passed. When I told her what Mr.
Ring said about my killing a horse, she said he was making fun of me. I
had found that out before.
"Mr. March Gay killed a rattlesnake yesterday not far from his house,
that was more than six feet long and had twelve rattles. This morning
Mr. Jacob Mitchell killed another near the same place, almost as long.
It is supposed that they were a pair, and that the second one was on the
track of its mate. If every rattle counts a year, the first one was
twelve years old. Eliak Maxfield came down to mill to-day and told me
about the snakes.
"Mr. Henry Turner of Otisfield took his axe and went out between
Saturday and Moose ponds to look at some pine-trees. A rain had just
taken off enough of the snow to lay bare the roots of a part of the
trees. Under a large root there seemed to be a cavity, and on examining
closely something was exposed very much like long black hair. He cut off
the root, saw the nose of a bear, and killed him, pulled out the body;
saw another, killed that, and dragged out its carcass, when he found
that there was a third one in the den, and that he was thoroughly awake,
too; but as soon as the head came in sight it was split open with the
axe, so that Mr. Turner, alone with only an axe, killed three bears in
less than half an hour, the youngest being a good-sized one, and what
hunters call a yearling. This is a pretty great bear story, but probably
true, and happened only a few weeks ago; for John Patch, who was here
with his father Captain Levi Patch, who lives within two miles of the
Saturday Pond, told me so yesterday.
"A young man named Henry Jackson, Jr., was drowned two days ago, up in
Crooked River. He and one of his friends were trying which could swim
the faster. Jackson was behind but gaining; his friend kicked at him in
fun, thinking to hit his shoulder and push him back, but missed, and hit
his chin, which caused him to take in water and strangle, and before his
friend could help or get help, poor Jackson was (Elder Leach says)
beyond the reach of mercy. I read one of the Psalms to my mother this
morning, and it plainly declares twenty-six times that 'God's mercy
endureth forever.' I never saw Henry Jackson; he was a young man just
married. Mother is sad, says that she shall not consent to my swimming
any more in the mill-pond with the boys, fearing that in sport my mouth
might get kicked open, and then sorrow for a dead son be added to that
for a dead father, which she says would break her heart. I love to swim,
but I shall not disobey my mother.
* * * * *