THE SCARLET LETTER.
BY
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
Illustrated.
[Illustration]
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.
1878.
COPYRIGHT, 1850 AND 1877.
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
_All rights reserved._
October 22, 1874.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Much to the author’s surprise, and (if he may say so without
additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his
sketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has
created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community
immediately around him. It could hardly have been more violent,
indeed, had he burned down the Custom-House, and quenched its last
smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against
whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence. As the public
disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of
deserving it, the author begs leave to say, that he has carefully read
over the introductory pages, with a purpose to alter or expunge
whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in his
power for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty. But it
appears to him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch are
its frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with which
he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters therein
described. As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or
political, he utterly disclaims such motives. The sketch might,
perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, or
detriment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he
conceives that it could not have been done in a better or a kindlier
spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier effect
of truth.
The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his introductory
sketch without the change of a word.
SALEM, March 30, 1850.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE CUSTOM HOUSE.—INTRODUCTORY 1
THE SCARLET LETTER.
I. THE PRISON-DOOR 51
II. THE MARKET-PLACE 54
III. THE RECOGNITION 68
IV. THE INTERVIEW 80
V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE 90
VI. PEARL 104
VII. THE GOVERNOR’S HALL 118
VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 129
IX. THE LEECH 142
X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 155
XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART 168
XII. THE MINISTER’S VIGIL 177
XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 193
XIV. HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN 204
XV. HESTER AND PEARL 212
XVI. A FOREST WALK 223
XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER 231
XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE 245
XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 253
XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE 264
XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 277
XXII. THE PROCESSION 288
XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER 302
XXIV. CONCLUSION 315
[Illustration]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_Drawn by_ MARY HALLOCK FOOTE _and Engraved by_ A. V. S. ANTHONY. _The
ornamental head-pieces are by_ L. S. IPSEN.
PAGE
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE 1
THE PRISON DOOR 49
VIGNETTE,—WILD ROSE 51
THE GOSSIPS 57
“STANDING ON THE MISERABLE EMINENCE” 65
“SHE WAS LED BACK TO PRISON” 78
“THE EYES OF THE WRINKLED SCHOLAR GLOWED” 87
THE LONESOME DWELLING 93
LONELY FOOTSTEPS 99
VIGNETTE 104
A TOUCH OF PEARL’S BABY-HAND 113
VIGNETTE 118
THE GOVERNOR’S BREASTPLATE 125
“LOOK THOU TO IT! I WILL NOT LOSE THE CHILD!” 135
THE MINISTER AND LEECH 148
THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT 165
THE VIRGINS OF THE CHURCH 172
“THEY STOOD IN THE NOON OF THAT STRANGE SPLENDOR” 185
HESTER IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING 195
MANDRAKE 211
“HE GATHERED HERBS HERE AND THERE” 213
PEARL ON THE SEA-SHORE 217
“WILT THOU YET FORGIVE ME?” 237
A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE 249
THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE 257
CHILLINGWORTH,—“SMILE WITH A SINISTER MEANING” 287
NEW ENGLAND WORTHIES 289
“SHALL WE NOT MEET AGAIN?” 311
HESTER’S RETURN 320
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.
[Illustration: The Custom-House]
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE.
INTRODUCTORY TO “THE SCARLET LETTER.”
It is a little remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk overmuch
of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal
friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have
taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was
three or four years since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, and
for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the
intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life
in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now—because, beyond my
deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former
occasion—I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three
years’ experience in a Custom-House. The example of the famous
“P. P., Clerk of this Parish,” was never more faithfully followed. The
truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon
the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his
volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him,
better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors,
indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such
confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed,
only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy;
as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were
certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own nature,
and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion
with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we
speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance
benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his
audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and
apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk;
and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness,
we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of
ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent,
and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical,
without violating either the reader’s rights or his own.
It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom-House sketch has a certain
propriety, of a kind always recognized in literature, as explaining
how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession,
and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein
contained. This, in fact,—a desire to put myself in my true position
as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales
that make up my volume,—this, and no other, is my true reason for
assuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing the
main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to
give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore
described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among
whom the author happened to make one.
* * * * *
In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago,
in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharf,—but which is now
burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no
symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way
down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a
Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood,—at the
head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often
overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of
buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of
unthrifty grass,—here, with a view from its front windows adown this
not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbor, stands a
spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during
precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops,
in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen
stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus
indicating that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam’s
government is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico
of half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a
flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the
entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with
outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect
aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each
claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this
unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and
the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the
inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of
their safety, against intruding on the premises which she overshadows
with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are
seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of
the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the
softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great
tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,—oftener
soon than late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of
her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed
arrows.
The pavement round about the above-described edifice—which we may as
well name at once as the Custom-House of the port—has grass enough
growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn
by any multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the year,
however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward with
a livelier tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of
that period before the last war with England, when Salem was a port by
itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and
ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their
ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood
of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or
four vessels happen to have arrived at once,—usually from Africa or
South America,—or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward,
there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up and down the
granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you may
greet the sea-flushed shipmaster, just in port, with his vessel’s
papers under his arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his
owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as
his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized in
merchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him
under a bulk of incommodities, such as nobody will care to rid him of.
Here, likewise,—the germ of the wrinkle-browed, grizzly-bearded,
care-worn merchant,—we have the smart young clerk, who gets the taste
of traffic as a wolf-cub does of blood, and already sends adventures
in his master’s ships, when he had better be sailing mimic-boats upon
a mill-pond. Another figure in the scene is the outward-bound sailor
in quest of a protection; or the recently arrived one, pale and
feeble, seeking a passport to the hospital. Nor must we forget the
captains of the rusty little schooners that bring firewood from the
British provinces; a rough-looking set of tarpaulins, without the
alertness of the Yankee aspect, but contributing an item of no slight
importance to our decaying trade.
Cluster all these individuals together, as they sometimes were, with
other miscellaneous ones to diversify the group, and, for the time
being, it made the Custom-House a stirring scene. More frequently,
however, on ascending the steps, you would discern—in the entry, if
it were summer time, or in their appropriate rooms, if wintry or
inclement weather—a row of venerable figures, sitting in
old-fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back
against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might
be heard talking together, in voices between speech and a snore, and
with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of
almshouses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on
charity, on monopolized labor, or anything else, but their own
independent exertions. These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew, at
the receipt of customs, but not very liable to be summoned thence,
like him, for apostolic errands—were Custom-House officers.
Furthermore, on the left hand as you enter the front door, is a
certain room or office, about fifteen feet square, and of a lofty
height; with two of its arched windows commanding a view of the
aforesaid dilapidated wharf, and the third looking across a narrow
lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses of
the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers;
around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and
gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt
the Wapping of a seaport. The room itself is cobwebbed, and dingy with
old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has
elsewhere fallen into long disuse; and it is easy to conclude, from
the general slovenliness of the place, that this is a sanctuary into
which womankind, with her tools of magic, the broom and mop, has very
infrequent access. In the way of furniture, there is a stove with a
voluminous funnel; an old pine desk, with a three-legged stool beside
it; two or three wooden-bottom chairs, exceedingly decrepit and
infirm; and—not to forget the library—on some shelves, a score or
two of volumes of the Acts of Congress, and a bulky Digest of the
Revenue Laws. A tin pipe ascends through the ceiling, and forms a
medium of vocal communication with other parts of the edifice. And
here, some six months ago,—pacing from corner to corner, or lounging
on the long-legged stool, with his elbow on the desk, and his eyes
wandering up and down the columns of the morning newspaper,—you might
have recognized, honored reader, the same individual who welcomed you
into his cheery little study, where the sunshine glimmered so
pleasantly through the willow branches, on the western side of the Old
Manse. But now, should you go thither to seek him, you would inquire
in vain for the Locofoco Surveyor. The besom of reform has swept him
out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, and pockets
his emoluments.
This old town of Salem—my native place, though I have dwelt much away
from it, both in boyhood and maturer years—possesses, or did possess,
a hold on my affections, the force of which I have never realized
during my seasons of actual residence here. Indeed, so far as its
physical aspect is concerned, with its flat, unvaried surface, covered
chiefly with wooden houses, few or none of which pretend to
architectural beauty,—its irregularity, which is neither picturesque
nor quaint, but only tame,—its long and lazy street, lounging
wearisomely through the whole extent of the peninsula, with Gallows
Hill and New Guinea at one end, and a view of the almshouse at the
other,—such being the features of my native town, it would be quite
as reasonable to form a sentimental attachment to a disarranged
checker-board. And yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is
within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase,
I must be content to call affection. The sentiment is probably
assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has struck into
the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the
original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance
in the wild and forest-bordered settlement, which has since become a
city. And here his descendants have been born and died, and have
mingled their earthy substance with the soil; until no small portion
of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a
little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment
which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. Few
of my countrymen can know what it is; nor, as frequent transplantation
is perhaps better for the stock, need they consider it desirable to
know.
But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of that
first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky
grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can
remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with
the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of
the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on
account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned
progenitor,—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and
trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a
figure, as a man of war and peace,—a stronger claim than for myself,
whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier,
legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the
Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter
persecutor, as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their
histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman
of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any
record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too,
inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in
the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to
have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry
bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if
they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these
ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of
Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the
heavy consequences of them, in another state of being. At all events,
I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon
myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them—as I
have heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race,
for many a long year back, would argue to exist—may be now and
henceforth removed.
Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans
would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins,
that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family
tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its
topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim, that I have ever
cherished, would they recognize as laudable; no success of mine—if my
life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by
success—would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively
disgraceful. “What is he?” murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers
to the other. “A writer of story-books! What kind of a business in
life—what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in
his day and generation—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might
as well have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied between
my great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let
them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have
intertwined themselves with mine.
Planted deep, in the town’s earliest infancy and childhood, by these
two earnest and energetic men, the race has ever since subsisted here;
always, too, in respectability; never, so far as I have known,
disgraced by a single unworthy member; but seldom or never, on the
other hand, after the first two generations, performing any memorable
deed, or so much as putting forward a claim to public notice.
Gradually, they have sunk almost out of sight; as old houses, here and
there about the streets, get covered half-way to the eaves by the
accumulation of new soil. From father to son, for above a hundred
years, they followed the sea; a gray-headed shipmaster, in each
generation, retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a
boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast, confronting
the salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against his sire and
grandsire. The boy, also, in due time, passed from the forecastle to
the cabin, spent a tempestuous manhood, and returned from his
world-wanderings, to grow old, and die, and mingle his dust with the
natal earth. This long connection of a family with one spot, as its
place of birth and burial, creates a kindred between the human being
and the locality, quite independent of any charm in the scenery or
moral circumstances that surround him. It is not love, but instinct.
The new inhabitant—who came himself from a foreign land, or whose
father or grandfather came—has little claim to be called a Salemite;
he has no conception of the oyster-like tenacity with which an old
settler, over whom his third century is creeping, clings to the spot
where his successive generations have been imbedded. It is no matter
that the place is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old wooden
houses, the mud and dust, the dead level of site and sentiment, the
chill east wind, and the chillest of social atmospheres;—all these,
and whatever faults besides he may see or imagine, are nothing to the
purpose. The spell survives, and just as powerfully as if the natal
spot were an earthly paradise. So has it been in my case. I felt it
almost as a destiny to make Salem my home; so that the mould of
features and cast of character which had all along been familiar
here,—ever, as one representative of the race lay down in his grave,
another assuming, as it were, his sentry-march along the main
street,—might still in my little day be seen and recognized in the
old town. Nevertheless, this very sentiment is an evidence that the
connection, which has become an unhealthy one, should at last be
severed. Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it
be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the
same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so
far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their
roots into unaccustomed earth.
On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent,
unjoyous attachment for my native town, that brought me to fill a
place in Uncle Sam’s brick edifice, when I might as well, or better,
have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me. It was not the first
time, nor the second, that I had gone away,—as it seemed,
permanently,—but yet returned, like the bad half-penny; or as if
Salem were for me the inevitable centre of the universe. So, one fine
morning, I ascended the flight of granite steps, with the President’s
commission in my pocket, and was introduced to the corps of gentlemen
who were to aid me in my weighty responsibility, as chief executive
officer of the Custom-House.
I doubt greatly—or, rather, I do not doubt at all—whether any public
functionary of the United States, either in the civil or military
line, has ever had such a patriarchal body of veterans under his
orders as myself. The whereabouts of the Oldest Inhabitant was at once
settled, when I looked at them. For upwards of twenty years before
this epoch, the independent position of the Collector had kept the
Salem Custom-House out of the whirlpool of political vicissitude,
which makes the tenure of office generally so fragile. A soldier,—New
England’s most distinguished soldier,—he stood firmly on the pedestal
of his gallant services; and, himself secure in the wise liberality of
the successive administrations through which he had held office, he
had been the safety of his subordinates in many an hour of danger and
heart-quake. General Miller was radically conservative; a man over
whose kindly nature habit had no slight influence; attaching himself
strongly to familiar faces, and with difficulty moved to change, even
when change might have brought unquestionable improvement. Thus, on
taking charge of my department, I found few but aged men. They were
ancient sea-captains, for the most part, who, after being tost on
every sea, and standing up sturdily against life’s tempestuous blasts,
had finally drifted into this quiet nook; where, with little to
disturb them, except the periodical terrors of a Presidential
election, they one and all acquired a new lease of existence. Though
by no means less liable than their fellow-men to age and infirmity,
they had evidently some talisman or other that kept death at bay. Two
or three of their number, as I was assured, being gouty and rheumatic,
or perhaps bedridden, never dreamed of making their appearance at the
Custom-House, during a large part of the year; but, after a torpid
winter, would creep out into the warm sunshine of May or June, go
lazily about what they termed duty, and, at their own leisure and
convenience, betake themselves to bed again. I must plead guilty to
the charge of abbreviating the official breath of more than one of
these venerable servants of the republic. They were allowed, on my
representation, to rest from their arduous labors, and soon
afterwards—as if their sole principle of life had been zeal for their
country’s service, as I verily believe it was—withdrew to a better
world. It is a pious consolation to me, that, through my interference,
a sufficient space was allowed them for repentance of the evil and
corrupt practices into which, as a matter of course, every
Custom-House officer must be supposed to fall. Neither the front nor
the back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.
The greater part of my officers were Whigs. It was well for their
venerable brotherhood that the new Surveyor was not a politician, and
though a faithful Democrat in principle, neither received nor held his
office with any reference to political services. Had it been
otherwise,—had an active politician been put into this influential
post, to assume the easy task of making head against a Whig Collector,
whose infirmities withheld him from the personal administration of his
office,—hardly a man of the old corps would have drawn the breath of
official life, within a month after the exterminating angel had come
up the Custom-House steps. According to the received code in such
matters, it would have been nothing short of duty, in a politician, to
bring every one of those white heads under the axe of the guillotine.
It was plain enough to discern, that the old fellows dreaded some such
discourtesy at my hands. It pained, and at the same time amused me, to
behold the terrors that attended my advent; to see a furrowed cheek,
weather-beaten by half a century of storm, turn ashy pale at the
glance of so harmless an individual as myself; to detect, as one or
another addressed me, the tremor of a voice, which, in long-past days,
had been wont to bellow through a speaking-trumpet, hoarsely enough to
frighten Boreas himself to silence. They knew, these excellent old
persons, that, by all established rule,—and, as regarded some of
them, weighed by their own lack of efficiency for business,—they
ought to have given place to younger men, more orthodox in politics,
and altogether fitter than themselves to serve our common Uncle. I
knew it too, but could never quite find in my heart to act upon the
knowledge. Much and deservedly to my own discredit, therefore, and
considerably to the detriment of my official conscience, they
continued, during my incumbency, to creep about the wharves, and
loiter up and down the Custom-House steps. They spent a good deal of
time, also, asleep in their accustomed corners, with their chairs
tilted back against the wall; awaking, however, once or twice in a
forenoon, to bore one another with the several thousandth repetition
of old sea-stories, and mouldy jokes, that had grown to be passwords
and countersigns among them.
The discovery was soon made, I imagine, that the new Surveyor had no
great harm in him. So, with lightsome hearts, and the happy
consciousness of being usefully employed,—in their own behalf, at
least, if not for our beloved country,—these good old gentlemen went
through the various formalities of office. Sagaciously, under their
spectacles, did they peep into the holds of vessels! Mighty was their
fuss about little matters, and marvellous, sometimes, the obtuseness
that allowed greater ones to slip between their fingers! Whenever such
a mischance occurred,—when a wagon-load of valuable merchandise had
been smuggled ashore, at noonday, perhaps, and directly beneath their
unsuspicious noses,—nothing could exceed the vigilance and alacrity
with which they proceeded to lock, and double-lock, and secure with
tape and sealing-wax, all the avenues of the delinquent vessel.
Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed
rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution, after the
mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of
their zeal, the moment that there was no longer any remedy.
Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish
habit to contract a kindness for them. The better part of my
companion’s character, if it have a better part, is that which usually
comes uppermost in my regard, and forms the type whereby I recognize
the man. As most of these old Custom-House officers had good traits,
and as my position in reference to them, being paternal and
protective, was favorable to the growth of friendly sentiments, I soon
grew to like them all. It was pleasant, in the summer forenoons,—when
the fervent heat, that almost liquefied the rest of the human family,
merely communicated a genial warmth to their half-torpid systems,—it
was pleasant to hear them chatting in the back entry, a row of them
all tipped against the wall, as usual; while the frozen witticisms of
past generations were thawed out, and came bubbling with laughter from
their lips. Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common
with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense
of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam
that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect
alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. In one case,
however, it is real sunshine; in the other, it more resembles the
phosphorescent glow of decaying wood.
It would be sad injustice, the reader must understand, to represent
all my excellent old friends as in their dotage. In the first place,
my coadjutors were not invariably old; there were men among them in
their strength and prime, of marked ability and energy, and altogether
superior to the sluggish and dependent mode of life on which their
evil stars had cast them. Then, moreover, the white locks of age were
sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good
repair. But, as respects the majority of my corps of veterans, there
will be no wrong done, if I characterize them generally as a set of
wearisome old souls, who had gathered nothing worth preservation from
their varied experience of life. They seemed to have flung away all
the golden grain of practical wisdom, which they had enjoyed so many
opportunities of harvesting, and most carefully to have stored their
memories with the husks. They spoke with far more interest and unction
of their morning’s breakfast, or yesterday’s, to-day’s, or to-morrow’s
dinner, than of the shipwreck of forty or fifty years ago, and all the
world’s wonders which they had witnessed with their youthful eyes.
The father of the Custom-House—the patriarch, not only of this little
squad of officials, but, I am bold to say, of the respectable body of
tide-waiters all over the United States—was a certain permanent
Inspector. He might truly be termed a legitimate son of the revenue
system, dyed in the wool, or, rather, born in the purple; since his
sire, a Revolutionary colonel, and formerly collector of the port, had
created an office for him, and appointed him to fill it, at a period
of the early ages which few living men can now remember. This
Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or
thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of
winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime’s
search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in
a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale
and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind
of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and
infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which
perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the
tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man’s utterance; they came
strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a
clarion. Looking at him merely as an animal,—and there was very
little else to look at,—he was a most satisfactory object, from the
thorough healthfulness and wholesomeness of his system, and his
capacity, at that extreme age, to enjoy all, or nearly all, the
delights which he had ever aimed at, or conceived of. The careless
security of his life in the Custom-House, on a regular income, and
with but slight and infrequent apprehensions of removal, had no doubt
contributed to make time pass lightly over him. The original and more
potent causes, however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal
nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling
admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities,
indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from
walking on all-fours. He possessed no power of thought, no depth of
feeling, no troublesome sensibilities; nothing, in short, but a few
commonplace instincts, which, aided by the cheerful temper that grew
inevitably out of his physical well-being, did duty very respectably,
and to general acceptance, in lieu of a heart. He had been the husband
of three wives, all long since dead; the father of twenty children,
most of whom, at every age of childhood or maturity, had likewise
returned to dust. Here, one would suppose, might have been sorrow
enough to imbue the sunniest disposition, through and through, with a
sable tinge. Not so with our old Inspector! One brief sigh sufficed to
carry off the entire burden of these dismal reminiscences. The next
moment, he was as ready for sport as any unbreeched infant; far
readier than the Collector’s junior clerk, who, at nineteen years, was
much the elder and graver man of the two.
I used to watch and study this patriarchal personage with, I think,
livelier curiosity, than any other form of humanity there presented to
my notice. He was, in truth, a rare phenomenon; so perfect, in one
point of view; so shallow, so delusive, so impalpable, such an
absolute nonentity, in every other. My conclusion was that he had no
soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but
instincts: and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his
character been put together, that there was no painful perception of
deficiency, but, on my part, an entire contentment with what I found
in him. It might be difficult—and it was so—to conceive how he
should exist hereafter, so earthly and sensuous did he seem; but
surely his existence here, admitting that it was to terminate with his
last breath, had been not unkindly given; with no higher moral
responsibilities than the beasts of the field, but with a larger scope
of enjoyment than theirs, and with all their blessed immunity from the
dreariness and duskiness of age.
One point, in which he had vastly the advantage over his four-footed
brethren, was his ability to recollect the good dinners which it had
made no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat. His
gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait; and to hear him talk of
roast-meat was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster. As he
possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrificed nor vitiated any
spiritual endowment by devoting all his energies and ingenuities to
subserve the delight and profit of his maw, it always pleased and
satisfied me to hear him expatiate on fish, poultry, and butcher’s
meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing them for the table.
His reminiscences of good cheer, however ancient the date of the
actual banquet, seemed to bring the savor of pig or turkey under one’s
very nostrils. There were flavors on his palate that had lingered
there not less than sixty or seventy years, and were still apparently
as fresh as that of the mutton-chop which he had just devoured for his
breakfast. I have heard him smack his lips over dinners, every guest
at which, except himself, had long been food for worms. It was
marvellous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals were continually
rising up before him; not in anger or retribution, but as if grateful
for his former appreciation and seeking to resuscitate an endless
series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and sensual. A tender-loin of
beef, a hind-quarter of veal, a spare-rib of pork, a particular
chicken, or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey, which had perhaps
adorned his board in the days of the elder Adams, would be remembered;
while all the subsequent experience of our race, and all the events
that brightened or darkened his individual career, had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as the passing breeze. The chief
tragic event of the old man’s life, so far as I could judge, was his
mishap with a certain goose which lived and died some twenty or forty
years ago; a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table,
proved so inveterately tough that the carving-knife would make no
impression on its carcass, and it could only be divided with an axe
and handsaw.
But it is time to quit this sketch; on which, however, I should be
glad to dwell at considerably more length because, of all men whom I
have ever known, this individual was fittest to be a Custom-House
officer. Most persons, owing to causes which I may not have space to
hint at, suffer moral detriment from this peculiar mode of life. The
old Inspector was incapable of it, and, were he to continue in office
to the end of time, would be just as good as he was then, and sit down
to dinner with just as good an appetite.
There is one likeness, without which my gallery of Custom-House
portraits would be strangely incomplete; but which my comparatively
few opportunities for observation enable me to sketch only in the
merest outline. It is that of the Collector, our gallant old General,
who, after his brilliant military service, subsequently to which he
had ruled over a wild Western territory, had come hither, twenty years
before, to spend the decline of his varied and honorable life. The
brave soldier had already numbered, nearly or quite, his threescore
years and ten, and was pursuing the remainder of his earthly march,
burdened with infirmities which even the martial music of his own
spirit-stirring recollections could do little towards lightening. The
step was palsied now that had been foremost in the charge. It was only
with the assistance of a servant, and by leaning his hand heavily on
the iron balustrade, that he could slowly and painfully ascend the
Custom-House steps, and, with a toilsome progress across the floor,
attain his customary chair beside the fireplace. There he used to sit,
gazing with a somewhat dim serenity of aspect at the figures that came
and went; amid the rustle of papers, the administering of oaths, the
discussion of business, and the casual talk of the office; all which
sounds and circumstances seemed but indistinctly to impress his
senses, and hardly to make their way into his inner sphere of
contemplation. His countenance, in this repose, was mild and kindly.
If his notice was sought, an expression of courtesy and interest
gleamed out upon his features; proving that there was light within
him, and that it was only the outward medium of the intellectual lamp
that obstructed the rays in their passage. The closer you penetrated
to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared. When no longer
called upon to speak, or listen, either of which operations cost him
an evident effort, his face would briefly subside into its former not
uncheerful quietude. It was not painful to behold this look; for,
though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age. The framework
of his nature, originally strong and massive, was not yet crumbled
into ruin.
To observe and define his character, however, under such
disadvantages, was as difficult a task as to trace out and build up
anew, in imagination, an old fortress, like Ticonderoga, from a view
of its gray and broken ruins. Here and there, perchance, the walls may
remain almost complete, but elsewhere may be only a shapeless mound,
cumbrous with its very strength, and overgrown, through long years of
peace and neglect, with grass and alien weeds.
Nevertheless, looking at the old warrior with affection,—for, slight
as was the communication between us, my feeling towards him, like that
of all bipeds and quadrupeds who knew him, might not improperly be
termed so,—I could discern the main points of his portrait. It was
marked with the noble and heroic qualities which showed it to be not
by a mere accident, but of good right, that he had won a distinguished
name. His spirit could never, I conceive, have been characterized by
an uneasy activity; it must, at any period of his life, have required
an impulse to set him in motion; but, once stirred up, with obstacles
to overcome, and an adequate object to be attained, it was not in the
man to give out or fail. The heat that had formerly pervaded his
nature, and which was not yet extinct, was never of the kind that
flashes and flickers in a blaze; but, rather, a deep, red glow, as of
iron in a furnace. Weight, solidity, firmness; this was the expression
of his repose, even in such decay as had crept untimely over him, at
the period of which I speak. But I could imagine, even then, that, under
some excitement which should go deeply into his consciousness,—roused
by a trumpet-peal, loud enough to awaken all his energies that were
not dead, but only slumbering,—he was yet capable of flinging off his
infirmities like a sick man’s gown, dropping the staff of age to seize
a battle-sword, and starting up once more a warrior. And, in so
intense a moment, his demeanor would have still been calm. Such an
exhibition, however, was but to be pictured in fancy; not to be
anticipated, nor desired. What I saw in him—as evidently as the
indestructible ramparts of Old Ticonderoga already cited as the most
appropriate simile—were the features of stubborn and ponderous
endurance, which might well have amounted to obstinacy in his earlier
days; of integrity, that, like most of his other endowments, lay in a
somewhat heavy mass, and was just as unmalleable and unmanageable as a
ton of iron ore; and of benevolence, which, fiercely as he led the
bayonets on at Chippewa or Fort Erie, I take to be of quite as genuine
a stamp as what actuates any or all the polemical philanthropists of
the age. He had slain men with his own hand, for aught I
know,—certainly, they had fallen, like blades of grass at the sweep
of the scythe, before the charge to which his spirit imparted its
triumphant energy;—but, be that as it might, there was never in his
heart so much cruelty as would have brushed the down off a butterfly’s
wing. I have not known the man to whose innate kindliness I would more
confidently make an appeal.
Many characteristics—and those, too, which contribute not the least
forcibly to impart resemblance in a sketch—must have vanished, or
been obscured, before I met the General. All merely graceful
attributes are usually the most evanescent; nor does Nature adorn the
human ruin with blossoms of new beauty, that have their roots and
proper nutriment only in the chinks and crevices of decay, as she sows
wall-flowers over the ruined fortress of Ticonderoga. Still, even in
respect of grace and beauty, there were points well worth noting. A
ray of humor, now and then, would make its way through the veil of dim
obstruction, and glimmer pleasantly upon our faces. A trait of native
elegance, seldom seen in the masculine character after childhood or
early youth, was shown in the General’s fondness for the sight and
fragrance of flowers. An old soldier might be supposed to prize only
the bloody laurel on his brow; but here was one who seemed to have a
young girl’s appreciation of the floral tribe.
There, beside the fireplace, the brave old General used to sit; while
the Surveyor—though seldom, when it could be avoided, taking upon
himself the difficult task of engaging him in conversation—was fond
of standing at a distance, and watching his quiet and almost
slumberous countenance. He seemed away from us, although we saw him
but a few yards off; remote, though we passed close beside his chair;
unattainable, though we might have stretched forth our hands and
touched his own. It might be that he lived a more real life within
his thoughts, than amid the unappropriate environment of the
Collector’s office. The evolutions of the parade; the tumult of the
battle; the flourish of old, heroic music, heard thirty years
before;—such scenes and sounds, perhaps, were all alive before his
intellectual sense. Meanwhile, the merchants and shipmasters, the
spruce clerks and uncouth sailors, entered and departed; the bustle of
this commercial and custom-house life kept up its little murmur round
about him; and neither with the men nor their affairs did the General
appear to sustain the most distant relation. He was as much out of
place as an old sword—now rusty, but which had flashed once in the
battle’s front, and showed still a bright gleam along its blade—would
have been, among the inkstands, paper-folders, and mahogany rulers, on
the Deputy Collector’s desk.
There was one thing that much aided me in renewing and re-creating the
stalwart soldier of the Niagara frontier,—the man of true and simple
energy. It was the recollection of those memorable words of
his,—“I’ll try, Sir!”—spoken on the very verge of a desperate and
heroic enterprise, and breathing the soul and spirit of New England
hardihood, comprehending all perils, and encountering all. If, in our
country, valor were rewarded by heraldic honor, this phrase—which it
seems so easy to speak, but which only he, with such a task of danger
and glory before him, has ever spoken—would be the best and fittest
of all mottoes for the General’s shield of arms.