if he had been born and brought up in the planet Saturn. Wherever he
went he seemed to carry twilight with him. He walked in perfect silence
looking furtively about for fear he might meet some one that he knew.
His large frame and strong physique ought to have lasted him till the
year 1900. There would seem to be something strange and mysterious about
his death, as there was in his life. His head was massive, and his face
handsome without being attractive. [Footnote: This, however, was near
the close of his life.] The brow was finely chiseled, and the eyes
beneath it were dark, luminous and fathomless. I never saw him smile,
except slightly with his eyes.
If his son invited a friend to dinner it was always when his father was
away from home. Neither do I remember seeing him at his daughter's
out-coming party,--an occasion when the town musician declined to appear
because the sister of his particular friend had not been invited.
Emerson has given an account of this trait in Hawthorne's character, but
he has failed to discover the mainspring of it. Who indeed can explain
it? It was part of the man, and without it we could not have had
Hawthorne. Perhaps the easiest solution is that of Thoreau's wild
apple-tree. When the sprout from an apple-seed comes up in the grass a
cow pretty soon bites it off. The next year it puts out two more shoots,
and the ends of these are again nipped off. Thus it continues to grow
under severe restrictions and forms at length a large thorn-bush, from
which finally the tree is able to shoot up beyond the cow's reach and
bears its proper fruit. So no doubt Hawthorne in his youth, being a
tender plant, was greatly annoyed by brutal and inconsiderate people. A
sensitive, proud and refined nature inevitably becomes a target for all
the cheap wits and mischievous idlers in the neighborhood. To escape
from this we may suppose that Hawthorne surrounded himself with an
invisible network of reserve, behind which his pure and lofty spirit
could develop itself in a harmonious manner.
This he certainly succeeded in doing. In purity of expression and a
graceful diction Hawthorne takes the lead of his century. He was the
romance writer of the Anglo-Saxon race; in that line only Goethe has
surpassed him. Nor is it possible for pure and beautiful work to emanate
from a mind which is not equally pure and beautiful. Wells of English
undefiled cannot flow from a turbid spring.
In purity Emerson probably equaled him, but not in his sense of beauty.
Where he surpassed Hawthorne was in manliness, and in his broad
humanitarian interests. Otherwise no two men could be more unlike than
these, and it would seem to be part of the irony of fate that they
should have lived on the same street, and been obliged to meet and speak
with each other. One was like sunshine, the other shadow. Emerson was
transparent, and wished to be so, he had nothing to conceal from friend
or enemy. Hawthorne was simply impenetrable. Emerson was cordial and
moderately sympathetic. Hawthorne was reserved, but his sympathies were
as profound as the human soul itself. To study human nature as Hawthorne
and Shakespeare did, and to make models of their acquaintances for works
of fiction, Emerson would have considered a sin; while the evolution of
sin and its effect on character was the principal study of Hawthorne's
life. One was an optimist, and the other what is sometimes unjustly
called a pessimist: that is, one who looks facts in the face and sees
people as they are. Hawthorne could not have felt quite comfortable in
the presence of a man who asked such searching questions as Emerson
frequently did, and Emerson could scarcely have found satisfaction in
conversing with one who never had any opinion to express.
A good many people claimed to have been Hawthorne's friends after his
death who were sufficiently afraid of him while he was alive. He does
not appear to have ever had but two very intimate friends, Franklin
Pierce and George S. Hillard, both remarkably amiable and sympathetic
men,--qualities to which they owed equally their successes and failures
in life. Ex-president Pierce used to come to Concord and carry Hawthorne
off to the White Mountains, the Isles of Shoals or Philadelphia, just as
two college-students will drop their books and go off somewhere to have
a good time. Once while Hawthorne was in Boston, Mr. Hillard tried to
persuade him to go to Cambridge and dine with Longfellow; but he would
not, and went home by the next train.
He was pro-slavery in politics, partly because his two friends were so,
and partly because he disliked the abolitionists. It is not necessary to
suppose that the pro-slavery people of the North in those days believed
that human slavery was morally right. It is doubtful if any one believed
that. A great many considered it, as Webster did, a serious evil but a
dangerous matter to interfere with (and so it proved); some were
influenced by mercenary motives; and the northern Democrats, misled by
the illogical doctrine of State Sovereignty, believed they had no right
to interfere with it. Mr. Hillard held the first of these positions, and
General Pierce the last. Very likely Hawthorne shared in both of them;
but he never explained himself, and what he thought on the subject will
always remain a mystery. The political element seems almost to have been
left out of his composition; and in one of his books he speaks of the
Concord fight with a certain kind of indifference.
Alcott was almost the only man in Concord who had the courage to call on
Hawthorne. Sometimes they even went to walk together. How much
satisfaction Hawthorne found in these visits it would be difficult to
say, for the very philosophic breadth and extension of Alcott's interest
were enough to make Hawthorne feel rather shy of him. Alcott's
conversation about books and literature was often very fine, but even
this could not have given Hawthorne much entertainment. His own library,
as he states himself somewhere, was of a miscellaneous character, and
contained the works of scarcely any author of repute except Shakespeare.
Alcott's sense of humor and keen knowledge of human nature may have been
a sort of common ground between them.
Meanwhile Hawthorne, as afterwards appeared, was making a study of
Alcott to see whether he would serve his purpose as the mainspring for a
new work of fiction. The manuscript plot of a romance was found among
Hawthorne's papers in which he describes a personage in general outline
like his neighbor Alcott, but without his ideality and good-humor. This
imaginary character was supposed to live in a retired manner, together
with an old housekeeper, a boy of whom he is the legal guardian, and a
huge spider in which his interest and solicitude are more especially
centred. What the catastrophe of this strange story was to have been, we
are not informed, but it naturally would have arisen from the unhealthy
and oppressive social position in which the boy must have found himself
as he advanced towards manhood. At the close of his memoranda Hawthorne
says, "In person and figure Mr. Alcott--". To be selected as the
mainspring of a romance is properly a compliment.
[Illustration: THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY.]
There was a certain Dutch artist who made a specialty of sheep, and
painted them so well that Goethe said of him, "This painter so entered
into the life of his subject that I think he must have been a sheep, and
I shall become one if I continue to look at his pictures." In the same
way Hawthorne had such penetrating sympathy for all living things, that
he unconsciously absorbed certain qualities from those with which he was
most familiar. He would sometimes write a letter to his publisher, Mr.
Fields, which was almost like what Mr. Fields would have written to him.
Venomous creatures appeared to have been especially interesting to him,
and he even fancied a poisonous influence in the Roman sunshine. Perhaps
his liking for spiders may account for a certain cobwebby feeling which
comes over one at times while reading his books. There can be no doubt
of this, for when I once spoke of it, a lawyer who was present replied,
"I have said the same myself; and when I was in Paris reading a French
newspaper, I had a feeling as if cobwebs were being drawn across my
face, and looking down to the end of the column, I saw that it was a
translation from Hawthorne." But these peculiarities are like the soil
which gives flavor to the grape, and the wine that comes from the grape.
If the reader thinks that in these few paragraphs Hawthorne has hardly
received proper justice, he may not be far wrong. Yet how can any
personal account of such a man do him justice. It may be said of him
that he was a model husband, a kind father, and an exemplary citizen,
and that is all. During his lifetime there were people who did him great
injustice. His reserved life was looked upon as a morbid selfishness.
The rare publication of his writings was supposed to arise from
indolence. It was thought that he wrote the life of Franklin Pierce for
the sake of a government office, and when he was actually appointed
consul at Liverpool, the case was proved beyond a doubt. The
anti-slavery people looked upon him as a lamentable exception to the
other literary men of America, who were all on their side: they doubted
if he had been born with any sense of right and wrong. What answer can
be made to such accusations? When it is a question of motive, of moral
consciousness, how are such charges to be refuted?
So President Garfield has often been accused of appointing an efficient
and honest collector for the port of New York, in the interest of
mercenary politics. Charles Sumner for preventing the annexation of San
Domingo, was called a traitor to the negro race, and it was said that
his speech on the subject was delivered under the influence of brandy. A
college-professor informed his class that Sumner was a man of small
erudition, and Garrison spoke of him as one who had evidently joined the
anti-slavery cause from interested motives. A Boston merchant whose word
had been as good as his note for thirty years was gibbetted soon after
his death by a high-minded journalist, as the type of mendacious
duplicity.
But why multiply these unpleasant examples of misrepresentation? Hardly
a great and good man has ever lived without suffering from it at one
time or another. They originate in bad temper, in partisan malice, and
those believe them who have no just criterion to distinguish truth from
falsehood.
After all, what other American has accomplished a literary work equal to
Hawthorne's. He was an artist, purely an artist, and of the finest
quality. The raw material may be in us, but to develop it requires pains
and labor. The greater the talent the more difficult is its fruition.
Hawthorne's life was absorbed in this. His habitual mood was a dreamy,
brooding observation. When Englishmen say that no great work of art has
been produced in America; that Allston's magnificent pictures remain
half-finished; that neither Emerson or Lowell has been able to write a
book, but only essays; that we have no historian as good as Macaulay,
and that the best of our poetry consists of ballads and other short
pieces; my reply is, "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Marble Faun." These
are great works of art. The most unique and original, perhaps, of the
present century; and if they have not the lyrical form they are
exquisitely written, and none the less poetic.
There is a difference in kind between a great work and a small one. A
good sonnet may be finished in an hour, and is a pleasant recreation;
but the composition of a tragedy requires a severe, protracted and
laborious effort. Goethe's finest songs were written in a moment, a
flash of inspiration; but Faust may be called the work of his lifetime.
He himself describes the difficulties which attend the composition of a
tragedy, in such a manner as may well deter others from attempting it.
How few, indeed, are the dramatic poets in all times and countries! Even
Byron did not succeed in this. Mrs. Hawthorne said that during the
period while her husband was occupied with the "Scarlet Letter," there
were a contraction of his brow, and a look of care and anxiety in his
face, which were reflected in her own nerves and made her unhappy,
although she knew little of what he was writing. Both these romances are
tragedies; and there is something in tragedy that places it at the top
of all literature. Their subjects also indicate that he was in full
sympathy with his own time, and perhaps understood the nineteenth
century better than it does itself.
Emerson has been called a Greek, but Hawthorne was more Hellenic than
he. This may be perceived in his version of the Greek legends in
"Tanglewood Tales." His style is much like that of Isocrates. Where
Webster or Emerson would use Saxon words, Hawthorne would use Greek or
Latin ones, and gain in grace and flexibility what he lost in force and
vigor. He would seem to have been a southerner by nature, fond of warm
weather and an inactive life.
His short stories are of equal value comparatively with those that are
longer and more complete. I remember in my youth being attracted by the
title of one of them. It was called "The Unpardonable Sin," and
described a man, who, having spent many years in search of this
iniquity, finds it too heavy a burden for his soul to carry, and
destroys himself one night in a limekiln. Next morning the lime-burner
discovered a marble heart floating on the surface of the seething lime.
This was the unpardonable sin,--to have a cold, unfeeling heart. Such
allegories make a more lasting impression than many sermons. His
note-books also are of great value, especially the American ones. He
makes dramatic situations out of the simplest incidents, and we read
between the lines sentences he never wrote. We remember them without in
the least intending to do so, and find ourselves reflecting upon them as
if they were important events. No writer since Fielding has given so
faithful a picture of the time in which he lived.
One can envy such a man the three years he spent in Italy. During that
time he resided chiefly in a villa on the height called Bellosguardo,
near Florence, a villa which he has described with some changes, in the
"Marble Faun," as the mountain residence of Donatello. A more delightful
summer abode cannot be conceived, for it has the advantage of mountain
air, and the view from it is unsurpassable. Picturesque Florence, with
its towers and battlements, lies almost beneath it, while the green and
sylvan valley of the Arno stands before it, with the far-off purple
mists of the Mediterranean. Behind it the Apennines stretch from Livorno
to Rome. The interior of this chateau, finished in ancient marble, he
has described himself.
Hawthorne's life was not a very easy one, as judged by ordinary
standards; and until he went to England it was a weary and uncomfortable
struggle. Let us be thankful that for once he had a full measure of rest
and enjoyment, and let us be grateful to the man who made this possible
for him.
More than ten years after his death on a summer afternoon Mr. Alcott was
entertaining some friends, and as they looked towards the Hawthorne
house one of them said, "Would you be surprised, Mr. Alcott, to see
Nathaniel Hawthorne some day gliding past your rustic fence as he used
to do?" "No, sir, I should not," replied the old philosopher, "for while
he lived he always seemed to me like an apparition from some other
world. I used to see him coming down from the woods between five and six
o'clock, and if he caught sight of any one in the road he would go under
cover like a partridge. Then those strange suspicious side-glances of
his! They are not anywhere in his writings. I believe they were
inherited from some ancestor who was a smuggler, or perhaps even an old
pirate. In his investigation of sin he was expiating the sins of his
progenitors." There is reason for believing that Alcott was not far
wrong in this conjecture.
Julian Hawthorne, in the biography of his father, says of their
ancestors: "His forefathers, whatever their less obvious qualities may
have been, were at all events enterprising, active, practical men, stern
and courageous, accustomed to deal with and control lawless and rugged
characters; they were sea-captains, farmers, soldiers, magistrates; and,
in whatever capacity, they were used to see their iron will prevail, and
to be answerable to no man."
A man who does not subordinate his will to the common law and the common
good must eventually become a lawless man; unless restrained by such
natural refinement and rare sense of propriety as we meet with in
Hawthorne himself. It is not necessary to suppose that any of them were
pirates, which was probably a mere flourish of Alcott's rhetoric.
* * * * *
There is another legend that Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate and Nathaniel
Hawthorne were all distantly related through the Batchelder family.
There are said to be red and black Batchelders, like the Douglas family
in Scotland; and the black Batchelders have a rare gift of intellect
which only comes to the surface when united with some other stock. One
would like to know how much truth there is in this. There are indeed
certain striking points of resemblance between these three; each in his
own line surpassing all others of the same period. Their complexion, and
their great physical strength, their deeply arched eye-brows, their
genius for language, their reticent and contemplative habits, and
especially a certain pregnant gloominess of expression, would seem to
indicate a nearer unity than the general one of the Aryan races. Yet the
case remains to be proven by documentary evidence.
LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
Mr. Alcott's house in Concord was situated on the Lexington road about
three-quarters of a mile from the village centre. It was the
best-looking house almost in the town, being of simple but faultless
architecture, while the others were mostly either too thin or too thick,
or out of proportion in some way. It lacked a coat of fresh paint
sometimes, but this was to its advantage from an artistic point of view.
Fine old elm-trees shaded the path in front of it, and across the road a
broad level meadow stretched away to Walden woods. In the rear it was
half surrounded by low pine-wooded hills, which protected it from the
north-easterly storms and the cold draughts of winter. Mr. Alcott had
quite a genius for rustic architecture, as is proved by the summer-house
which he and Thoreau built for Emerson, and the fences, seats and arbors
with which he adorned his little place added a final charm to the rural
picture. In summer nights the droning of the bittern could be heard
across the meadows, and woodcock came down familiarly from the hills to
look for worms in the vegetable-garden. The snow melted here in Spring
and the grass grew green earlier than in other places. It was the
fitting abode and haven of rest for a family that had found the conflict
of life too hard for them.
Within the house was as pleasant as without. There is no better
decoration for a room than a good library, and though Mr. Alcott's books
were not handsomely bound one could see at a glance they were not of a
common sort. They gave his study an air of distinction, which was well
carried out by the refined look and calm demeanor of its occupant. The
room opposite, which was both parlor and living-room, always had a
cheerful homelike appearance; and after the youngest daughter May
entered on her profession as a painter, it soon became an interesting
museum of sketches, water-colors and photographs. I remember an
engraving of Murillo's Virgin, with the moon under her feet, hanging on
the wall, and some excellent copies of Turner's water-color studies. The
Alcotts were a hospitable family, not easily disturbed by callers, and
ready to share what they had with others. The house had a style of its
own.
How Emerson accomplished what he did, with his slight physique and
slender strength, will always be one of the marvels of biography. His is
the only instance, I believe, on record of a man who was able to support
a family by writing and talking on abstract subjects. It is true he
inherited a small property, enough to support a single man in a modest
way, and without this his career would not have been possible; but the
main source of his income was winter lecturing--a practice which
evidently killed Theodore Parker, naturally a strong and powerful man.
Yet he was not satisfied with this, but wished also to provide for
others who had no claims of relationship upon him. His generous efforts
in behalf of Carlyle have long since been made public; but the help he
gave Mr. Alcott will probably never be known. Least of all would Emerson
have wished it to be known. One can imagine that he said to himself:
"Here is a man of rare spiritual quality, with whom I am in the closest
sympathy: I cannot permit him to suffer any longer." So after the
philosophic school in the Masonic Temple had come to an end, he invited
him to Concord and cared for him like a brother. Mr. Alcott deserved
this, for though he was not more a philosopher than Thoreau was a
naturalist, and equally with Thoreau he was a character. The primal
tenet in his creed was like the ancient mariner's, to harm neither man
nor bird nor beast; and he exemplified this doctrine with incredible
consistency for full fifty years. He lived a blameless life. Many
laughed at him for his unpractical theories; but the example of one such
man, even in a reactionary way, is worth more to the community than the
practical efforts of ten ordinary men. He has besides the distinction of
being the person, whom, during the middle portion of his life, Emerson
most liked to converse with.
Froude the historian calls Charles the Fifth one of nature's gentlemen:
so was Mr. Alcott. It is easy to distinguish the man whose behavior is
an emanation of himself from people of well-bred manners or of
cultivated manners. Well-bred manners come from habit and association,
and though always pleasant may be nothing more than a superficial
varnish; while cultivated manners imply a certain amount of
self-restraint. No man was ever more free from formality or affectation.
He was neither condescending to inferiors nor would he yield ground to
those who considered themselves above him, but met all people on the
broad equality of self-respect. He was always most respected where
society was most polite and refined. Neither was he lacking in personal
courage. During the Anthony Burns excitement in Boston in 1852, he took
a prominent position among the rescuers, and if a collision of the
guards had taken place he would likely have been killed.
He had a fine philosophical mind, and if it had only been trained
properly in early life he might have won a distinguished place among
metaphysicians. That however was hardly possible in the America of that
time. He was not a philosopher in the modern sense, but he was in the
ancient sense--a disciple of Pythagoras, dropped down from the pure
Grecian sky into the restless turmoil of the nineteenth century. He
wished to discover everything anew for himself, instead of building upon
the discoveries of others. His conversations, usually in the parlors of
some philanthropic gentlemen, were made up partly of Pythagorean
speculation and partly of fine ethical rhapsody which sometimes rose to
genuine eloquence. They served to interest neophytes in the operations
of their own minds, and the more experienced found much the same
satisfaction in it as in Emerson's discourses. He was an excellent
speaker; confident, quick-witted and conciliatory. I remember a very
eloquent address that he delivered at an anniversary meeting in 1868,
and at an anti-slavery convention, where Garrison and Phillips fell out,
Mr. Alcott made the best speech of the occasion, discriminating between
the two leaders in a just and sensible manner.