The twofold character of Hawthorne's mind is strongly manifested in the
diverse nature of the interests which occupied him in Europe, and the
tone with which he discussed them, alike in his journals, in his
letters, in "Our Old Home," and "The Marble Faun." On the one side, we
find the business-like official, attending methodically to the duties of
his place, the careful father of a family looking out for his personal
interests and the material welfare of his children in the future, the
keen and cool-headed observer who is determined to contemplate all the
novelties of strange scenes through no one's eyes but his own. On the
other side, he presents himself to us as the man of reverie, whose
observation of the actual constantly stimulates and brings into play a
faculty that perceives more than the actual; the delicate artist, whose
sympathies are ready and true in the appreciation of whatever is
picturesque or suggestive, or beautiful, whether in nature or in art.
Some of the letters which he wrote from Liverpool to his classmate,
Horatio Bridge, throw light upon his own affairs and the deliberate way
in which he considered them. For instance, under date of March 30, 1854,
he wrote:--
"I like my office well enough, but my official duties and obligations
are irksome to me beyond expression. Nevertheless, the emoluments will
be a sufficient inducement to keep me here for four years, though they
are not a quarter part what people suppose them. The value of the office
varied between ten and fifteen thousand dollars during my predecessor's
term, and it promises about the same now. Secretary Guthrie, however,
has just cut off a large slice, by a circular.... Ask ---- to show you a
letter of mine, which I send by this steamer, for possible publication
in the newspapers. It contains a statement of my doings in reference to
the San Francisco [steamship] sufferers. The "Portsmouth Journal," it
appears, published an attack on me, accusing me of refusing all
assistance until compelled to act by Mr. Buchanan's orders; whereas I
acted extra-officially on my own responsibility, throughout the whole
affair. Buchanan refused to have anything to do with it. Alas! How we
public men are calumniated. But I trust there will be no necessity for
publishing my letter; for I desire only to glide noiselessly through my
present phase of life.
"It sickens me to look back to America. I am sick to death of the
continual fuss and tumult, and excitement and bad blood, which we keep
up about political topics. If it were not for my children, I should
probably never return, but, after quitting office, should go to Italy,
to live and die there. If you and Mrs. Bridge would go, too, we might
form a little colony amongst ourselves, and see our children grow up
together. But it will never do to deprive them of their native land,
which, I hope, will be a more comfortable and happy residence in their
day than it has been in ours. In my opinion we are the most miserable
people on earth." It appears, further, that the appointment of a consul
for Manchester was contemplated, which, Hawthorne says, by withdrawing
some of the Liverpool perquisites, "would go far towards knocking this
consulate in the head."
On April 17th, hearing that a bill had been introduced in Congress to
put consuls upon salary, instead of granting them fees, he wrote:--
"I trust to Heaven no change whatever will be made in regard to the
emoluments of the Liverpool consulate, unless indeed a salary is to be
given in addition to the fees, in which case I should receive it very
thankfully. This, however, is not to be expected.... A fixed salary
(even if it should be larger than any salary now paid by government,
with the exception of the President's own) will render the office not
worth any man's holding. It is impossible (especially for a man with a
family and keeping any kind of an establishment) not to spend a vast
deal of money here. The office, unfortunately, is regarded as one of
great dignity, and puts the holder on a level with the highest society,
and compels him to associate on equal terms with men who spend more than
my whole income on the mere entertainments and other trimmings and
embroideries of their lives. Then I am bound to exercise some
hospitality toward my own countrymen. I keep out of society as much as I
decently can, and really practise as stern an economy as ever I did in
my life; but nevertheless I have spent many thousands of dollars in the
few months of my residence here, and cannot reasonably hope to spend
less than $6,000 per annum, even after the expense of setting up an
establishment is defrayed. All this is for the merely indispensable part
of my living; and unless I make a hermit of myself and deprive my wife
and children of all the pleasures and advantages of an English
residence, I must inevitably exceed the sum named above.... It would be
the easiest thing in the world for me to run in debt, even taking my
income at $15,000" (out of which all the clerks and certain other office
expenses had to be paid), ... "the largest sum that it ever reached in
Crittenden's time. He had no family but a wife, and lived constantly at
a boarding-house, and, nevertheless, went away (as he assured me) with
an aggregate of only $25,000 derived from his savings.
"Now the American public can never be made to understand such a
statement as the above; and they would grumble awfully if more than
$6,000 per annum were allowed for a consul's salary." But Hawthorne
concludes that it would not compensate him to retain the place with a
salary even of $10,000; and that if the emoluments should be reduced
from their then proportions, "the incumbent must be compelled to turn
his official position to account by engaging in commerce--a course which
ought not to be permitted, and which no Liverpool consul has ever
adopted."
There are some references to President Pierce, in the Bridge
correspondence, which possess exceptional interest; but I cite only one
of them. The great honor of the immense publicity into which Pierce had
come as the executive head of the nation, and the centre upon which many
conflicting movements and machinations turned, created a danger of
misunderstandings with some of his early and intimate friends. In
discussing one such case Hawthorne writes (May 1, 1854), with regard to
maintaining a friendship for the President:--
"You will say that it is easy for me to feel thus towards him, since he
has done his very best on my behalf; but the truth is (alas for poor
human nature!) I should probably have loved him better if I had never
received any favor at his hands. But all this will come right again,
after both he and I shall have returned into private life. It is some
satisfaction, at any rate, that no one of his appointments was so
favorably criticized as my own; and he should have my resignation by the
very next mail, if it would really do him any good."
Mr. Pike, who still held a post in the Salem Custom House, had written
to Hawthorne not long after his arrival in England, inquiring about the
prospect of obtaining some employment in the consular service there; and
Hawthorne replied, in a manner that leaves no doubt of his sagacity in
perceiving the exact situation of affairs, with its bearings for both
Pike and himself, nor of his determination neither to deceive himself
nor to give his friend any but the real reasons why he discouraged the
inquiry.
"LIVERPOOL, _September_ 15, 1853.
DEAR PIKE,--I have been intending to write to you this some time,
but wished to get some tolerably clear idea of the state of things
here before communicating with you. I find that I have three
persons in my office: the head-clerk, or vice-consul, at £200, the
second clerk at £150, and the messenger, who does some writing, at
£80. They are all honest and capable men, and do their duty to
perfection. No American would take either of these places for twice
the sums which they receive; and no American, without some months'
practice, would undertake the duty. Of the two I would rather
displace the vice-consul than the second clerk, who does a great
amount of labor, and has a remarkable variety of talent,--whereas
the old gentleman, though perfect in his own track, is nothing
outside of it. I will not part with either of these men unless
compelled to do so; and I don't think Secretary Marcy can compel
me.
Now as to the Manchester branch, it brings me in only about £200.
There is a consular agent there, all the business being transacted
here in Liverpool. The only reason for appointing an agent would be
that it might shut off all attempts to get a separate consulate
there. There is no danger, I presume, of such an attempt for some
time to come; for Pierce made a direct promise that the place
should be kept open for my benefit. Nevertheless efforts will be
made to fill it, and very possibly representations may be made from
the business men of Manchester that there is necessity for a consul
there. In a pecuniary point of view, it would make very little
difference to me whether the place were filled by an independent
consul or by a vice-consul of my own appointment, for the latter
would of course not be satisfied with less than the whole £200.
What I should like would be to keep the place vacant and receive
the proceeds as long as possible, and at last, when I could do no
better, to give the office to you. No great generosity in that to
be sure. Thus I have put the matter fairly before you. Do you tell
me as frankly how your own affairs stand, and whether you can live
any longer in that cursed old Custom House without hanging
yourself. Rather than that you should do so I would let you have
the place to-morrow, although it would pay you about £100 less than
your present office. I suppose as a single man you might live
within your income in Manchester; but judging from my own
experience as a married man, it would be a very tight fit. With all
the economy I could use I have already got rid of $2,000 since
landing in England. Hereafter I hope to spend less and save more.
In point of emolument, my office will turn out about what I
expected. If I have ordinary luck I shall bag from $5,000 to $7,000
clear per annum: but to effect this I shall have to deny myself
many things which I would gladly have. Colonel Crittenden told me
that it cost him $4,000 to live with only his wife at a
boarding-house, including a journey to London now and then. I am
determined not to spend more than this, keeping house with my wife
and children. I have hired a good house furnished at £160, on the
other side of the River Mersey, at Rock Park, where there is good
air and play-ground for the children; and I can come over to the
city by steamboat every morning. I like the situation all the
better because it will render it impossible for me to go to
parties, or to give parties myself, and will keep me out of a good
deal of nonsense.
Liverpool is the most detestable place as a residence that ever my
lot was cast in,--smoky, noisy, dirty, pestilential; and the
consulate is situated in the most detestable part of the city. The
streets swarm with beggars by day and by night. You never saw the
like; and I pray that you may never see it in America. It is worth
while coming across the sea in order to feel one's heart warm
towards his own country; and I feel it all the more because it is
plain to be seen that a great many of the Englishmen whom I meet
here dislike us, whatever they may pretend to the contrary.
My family and myself have suffered very much from the elements;
there has not been what we should call a fair day since our
arrival, nor a single day when a fire would not be agreeable. I
long for one of our sunny days, and one of our good hearty rains.
It always threatens to rain, but seldom rains in good earnest. It
never _does_ rain, and it never _don't_ rain; but you are pretty
sure to get a sprinkling if you go out without an umbrella. Except
by the fireside, I have not once been as warm as I should like to
be: but the Englishmen call it a sultry day whenever the
thermometer rises above 60°. There has not been heat enough in
England this season to ripen an apple.
My wife and children often talk of you. Even the baby has not
forgotten you. Write often, and say as much as you can about
yourself, and as little as you please about A----, N----, and
B----, and all the rest of those wretches of whom my soul was weary
to death before I made my escape.
Your friend ever,
NATH. HAWTHORNE."
Writing to Bridge again, November 28, 1854, he continues, with regard to
his consular prospects, by a comparison between the pay received by
English consuls and that allowed by the new bill to Americans. Only
$7,500 were to be paid the consul at Liverpool. "Now I employ three
clerks constantly," says Hawthorne "and sometimes more. The bill
provides that these clerks should be Americans; and the whole sum
allowed would not do much more than pay competent Americans, whose
salaries must be much higher than would content Englishmen of equal
qualifications. No consul can keep the office at this rate, without
engaging in business--which the bill forbids." He adds that the notion
that, by the proposed measure, a fund would be gained from the larger
consulates towards paying the salaries of the smaller ones, was
mistaken, since "a large part of the income of this consulate arises
from business which might just as well be transacted by a notary public
as by a consul, and which a consul is therefore not officially bound to
do. All such business as this the consul will cease to transact, the
moment the avails of it go into the public treasury, instead of his own
purse; and thus there will be an immediate falling off of the office to
a very considerable extent."
Later on, he says: "I should really be ashamed to tell you how much my
income is taxed by the assistance which I find it absolutely necessary
to render to American citizens, who come to me in difficulty or
distress. Every day there is some new claimant, for whom the government
makes no provision, and whom the consul must assist, if at all, out of
his own pocket. It is impossible (or at any rate very disagreeable) to
leave a countryman to starve in the streets, or to hand him over to the
charities of an English work-house; so I do my best for these poor
devils. But I doubt whether they will meet with quite so good treatment
after the passage of the consular bill. If the government chooses to
starve the consul, a good many will starve with him."
The bill, nevertheless, was passed. Lieutenant Bridge, who was then
stationed at Washington, had done all that he could to rouse an
effectual opposition to its enactment; and his friend wrote to him from
Liverpool (March 23, 1855) thus:--
"I thank you for your efforts against this bill; but Providence is wiser
than we are, and doubtless it will all turn out for the best. All
through my life, I have had occasion to observe that what seemed to be
misfortunes have proved, in the end, to be the best things that could
possibly have happened to me; and so it will be with this--even though
the mode in which it benefits me may never be made clear to my
apprehension. It would seem to be a desirable thing enough that I should
have had a sufficient income to live comfortably upon for the rest of my
life, without the necessity of labor; but, on the other hand, I might
have sunk prematurely into intellectual sluggishness--which now there
will be no danger of my doing; though with a house and land of my own,
and a good little sum at interest besides, I need not be under any very
great anxiety about the future. When I contrast my present situation
with what it was five years ago, I see a vast deal to be thankful for;
and I still hope to thrive by my legitimate instrument--the pen. One
consideration which goes very far towards reconciling me to quitting the
office is my wife's health, with which the climate of England does not
agree.... In short, we have wholly ceased to regret the action of
Congress (which, nevertheless, was most unjust and absurd), and are
looking at matters on the bright side. However, I shall be glad to get
what advantage I can out of the office, and therefore I hope Pierce will
give me as long a line as his conscience will let him."
Believing that the office of consul with a salary reduced to $7,500,
which was only half the sum it had previously yielded in good years,
would not be worth the sacrifice involved in giving himself up to its
duties, he purposed resigning within a few months, taking a trip to
Italy, and then going home. But, fortunately for his pecuniary welfare,
the act of Congress had been so loosely framed (in harmony with the
general ignorance on which it was based), that it was left to the
President to reappoint old incumbents under the new system or not, as
he pleased. Pierce accordingly let Hawthorne's commission run on without
interruption, and the consul stayed through the rest of the
administration's term.
While the matter was still in abeyance, however, the suggestion came
from Bridge that he allow himself to be transferred to Lisbon as
minister. The prospect was, in one way, seductive. Hawthorne was growing
anxious about his wife's health, and felt that nothing could be more
delightful than to take her to a warmer climate, which she needed, and
thus avoid the temporary separation which might have to be undergone if
he remained at Liverpool. The objections were, that he had no
acquaintance with diplomacy, did not know Portuguese, and disliked forms
and ceremonies. "You will observe," he wrote, "that the higher rank and
position of a minister, as compared with a consul, have no weight with
me. This is not the kind of honor of which I am ambitious." With a good
deal of hesitation he came to the belief that it would be wise for him
not to make the change. "But," he remarked, "it was a most kind and
generous thing on the part of the President to entertain the idea." His
friend, Mr. John O'Sullivan, who had been the founder and editor of the
"Democratic Review," to which Hawthorne had contributed copiously during
his residence at the Manse, was at this time accredited to the Court of
Lisbon, and would doubtless have been provided for in some other way had
Hawthorne been promoted to the place. The latter decided to stay at
Liverpool, but to send Mrs. Hawthorne to Lisbon, where she would find
not only milder air, but also friends in the minister and his wife. She
sailed with her daughters in October, 1855, and returned in the
following June.
Wearisome as the details of his office duty were to him, Hawthorne gave
them more than a perfunctory attention. He became greatly aroused by the
wrongs and cruelties endured by sailors on the high seas, and sent a
long despatch on that subject to the Secretary of State, suggesting
action for their relief. He even investigated such minutiæ as the
candles used in the British navy, and sent samples of them to Bridge,
thinking that it might be desirable to compare them with those in use on
American war-ships. Opportunities, however, had occurred for several
trips in various directions, to Wales, Furness Abbey, and the Lakes.
London was visited just before Mrs. Hawthorne sailed; and during her
absence he again went to the capital, and made a tour which included
Glasgow, Edinburgh, York, Newcastle, and Salisbury. A few days before
her expected return, he said in a letter to Bridge that unless she
should prove to be perfectly free from the cough which had troubled her,
"I shall make arrangements to give up the consulate in the latter part
of autumn, and we will be off for Italy. I wish I were a little richer;
but when I compare my situation with what it was before I wrote 'The
Scarlet Letter,' I have reason to be satisfied with my run of luck. And,
to say the truth, I had rather not be _too_ prosperous: it may be a
superstition, but it seems to me that the bitter is very apt to come
with the sweet, and bright sunshine casts a dark shadow; so I content
myself with a moderate portion of sugar, and about as much sunshine as
that of an English summer's day. In this view of the matter, I am
disposed to thank God for the gloom and chill of my early life, in the
hope that my share of adversity came then, when I bore it alone; and
that therefore it need not come now, when the cloud would involve those
whom I love.
"I make my plans to return to America in about two years from this time.
For my own part, I should be willing to stay abroad much longer, and
perhaps even to settle in Italy; but the children must not be kept away
so long as to lose their American characteristics; otherwise they will
be exiles and outcasts through life."
The presidential convention of the democratic party was held early in
the summer of 1856, and Buchanan, then minister at the Court of St.
James, became the candidate. Pierce had also been in the field, but was
defeated, and concerning this circumstance Hawthorne wrote,
characteristically: "I am sorry Frank has not the nomination, if he
wished it. Otherwise, I am glad he is out of the scrape."
During the earlier part of his consulship, Hawthorne leased a pleasant
dwelling at Rock Ferry, on the opposite side of the Mersey from
Liverpool, where he was able to live without going much into society;
and while Mrs. Hawthorne was in Portugal, he occupied simple quarters at
a boarding-house. Afterwards he settled at Southport for a number of
months, in a furnished house. He formed but one intimate friendship,
that which attached him to Mr. Henry Bright, a gentleman engaged in
business, but gifted with a quick and sympathetic mind and a taste for
literature. In London his chief friend was Mr. Francis Bennoch, also a
merchant, who consorted much with people of creative genius, and
delighted to gather them at his table, where they were entertained with
a cordial and charming hospitality. Mr. Bright and Mr. Bennoch have each
published a book since then; but although Hawthorne met many persons
eminent in literature, and enjoyed meeting them, it was not with any of
their number that he formed the closest ties.
With relief he heard in April, 1857, that his resignation had been
accepted. "Dear Bridge," he wrote, "I have received your letter, and the
not unwelcome intelligence that there is another Liverpool consul now in
existence.... I am going to Paris in a day or two, with my wife and
children, and shall leave them there while I return here to await my
successor." He then thanked Bridge for a newspaper paragraph which the
latter had caused to be printed, explaining Hawthorne's position in
resigning. "I was somewhat apprehensive that my resignation would have
been misunderstood," he proceeded, "in consequence of a letter of
General Cass to Lord Napier, in which he intimated that any consul found
delinquent in certain matters should be compelled to retire.... But for
your paragraph, I should have thought it necessary to enlighten the
public on the true state of the case as regards the treatment of seamen
on our merchant vessels, and I do not know but I may do it yet; in which
case I shall prove that General Cass made a most deplorable mistake in
the above-mentioned letter to Lord Napier. I shall send the despatch to
Ticknor, at any rate, for publication if necessary. I expect great
pleasure during my stay on the Continent, and shall come home at last
somewhat reluctantly. Your pledge on my behalf of a book shall be
honored in good time, if God pleases."
The intention of taking his family at once to Paris was given up, and
instead Hawthorne went with them to Manchester, the Lakes, and Scotland,
and made a pilgrimage to Warwick and Coventry, besides visiting many
other places. The new consul, however, postponed his coming until near
the end of 1857. Not before January, 1858, did Hawthorne break away from
the fascinations of England and cross to the Continent. When, after
spending more than a year and a half in Italy, he again set foot in
England, it was to establish himself at Redcar, a sea-side town in
Yorkshire, where he finished "The Marble Faun" in October, 1859; and
thence he betook himself to Leamington, which had greatly pleased him on
a previous visit. Here his old friend, Mr. Hillard, called upon him; and
in an article printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," in 1870, he says: "The
writer of this notice, who confesses to an insatiable passion for the
possession of books, and an omnivorous appetite for their contents, was
invited by him into his study, the invitation being accompanied with one
of his peculiar and indescribable smiles, in which there lurked a
consciousness of his (the writer's) weakness. The study was a small
square room, with a table and chair, but absolutely not a single book.
He liked writing better than reading." Mr. Hillard's implication,
however, is a misleading one. "Hawthorne," says Mr. Fields, "was a
hearty devourer of books, and in certain moods of mind it made very
little difference what the volume before him happened to be.... He once
told me that he found such delight in old advertisements in the
newspaper files at the Boston Athenæum, that he had passed delicious
hours among them. At other times he was very fastidious, and threw aside
book after book, until he found the right one. De Quincey was a favorite
with him, and the sermons of Laurence Sterne he once commended to me as
the best sermons ever written." His correspondence was not "literary,"
to be sure; but in his letters to Mr. Fields, who had to do so
especially with books, occasional references to literature escape him,
which did not ordinarily find their way into his letters to other
people. From England, in 1854, he wrote to that gentleman: "I thank you
for the books you sent me, and more especially for Mrs. Mowatt's
'Autobiography,' which seems to me an admirable book. Of all things I
delight in autobiographies; and I hardly ever read one that interested
me so much." He did not read for erudition or for criticism, but he
certainly read much, and books were companions to him. I have seen
several catalogues of libraries which Hawthorne had marked carefully,
proving that, although he made no annotations, he had studied the titles
with a natural reader's loving fondness. His stay at Leamington was but
a brief one, and for that reason he may well have been without books in
his study at the moment; he never crowded them about himself, in the
rooms where he worked, but his tower-study at The Wayside always
contained a few volumes, and a few small pictures and ornaments--enough
to relieve his eye or suggest a refreshment to his mind, without
distracting him from composition or weakening the absorbed intensity of
his thought.
The only approach to literary exertion made at Liverpool seems to have
been the revision of the "Mosses from an Old Manse," for a reissue at
the hands of Ticknor & Fields; employment which led to some reflections
upon his own earlier works.
"I am very glad that the 'Mosses' have come into the hands of our firm;
and I return the copy sent me, after a careful revision. When I wrote
those dreamy sketches, I little thought I should ever preface an edition
for the press amid the bustling life of a Liverpool consulate. Upon my
honor, I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning,
in some of those blasted allegories; but I remember that I always had a
meaning, or at least thought I had. I am a good deal changed since those
times; and, to tell you the truth, my past self is not very much to my
taste, as I see myself in this book. Yet certainly there is more in it
than the public generally gave me credit for at the time it was written.
"But I don't think myself worthy of very much more credit than I got. It
has been a very disagreeable task to read the book."
He was inveigled, however, into giving encouragement to that unfortunate
woman, Miss Delia Bacon, who was engaged in the task of proving that
Lord Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays. He corresponded with her on the
subject, and finally agreed, although not assenting to her theory, to
write a preface for her book, which he did. She was dissatisfied because
he did not accept her views entirely, grew very angry, and even broke
off all relations with him, notwithstanding that he had paid the
expenses of publication for her.
Arriving at Rome in February, 1858, Hawthorne lingered there until late
in May, when he retired to Florence, and hired there the Villa Montauto,
in the suburb of Bellosguardo. October found him again in Rome, where he
spent the winter; leaving the Continent, finally, in June, 1859, for
England and Redcar.
"I am afraid I have stayed away too long," he wrote from Bellosguardo,
to Mr. Fields, in September, 1858, "and am forgotten by everybody. You
have piled up the dusty remnants of my editions, I suppose, in that
chamber over the shop, where you once took me to smoke a cigar, and have
crossed my name out of your list of authors, without so much as asking
whether I am dead or alive. But I like it well enough, nevertheless. It
is pleasant to feel that at last I am away from America,--a satisfaction
that I never enjoyed as long as I stayed in Liverpool, where it seemed
to me that the quintessence of nasal and hand-shaking Yankeedom was
continually filtered and sublimated through my consulate, on the way
outward and homeward. I first got acquainted with my own countrymen
there. At Rome, too, it was not much better. But here in Florence, and
in the summer-time, and in this secluded villa, I have escaped from all
my old tracks and am really remote.
"I like my present residence immensely. The house stands on a hill,
overlooking Florence, and is big enough to quarter a regiment; insomuch
that each member of the family, including servants, has a separate suite
of apartments, and there are vast wildernesses of upper rooms, into
which we have never yet sent exploring expeditions.
"At one end of the house there is a moss-grown tower haunted by the
ghost of a monk, who was confined there in the thirteenth century,
previous to being burned at the stake in the principal square of
Florence. I hire this villa, tower and all, at twenty-eight dollars a
month; but I mean to take it away bodily and clap it into a romance
which I have in my head ready to be written out." Turning to the topic
of home, he went on: "After so long an absence (more than five years
already, which will be six before you see me at the Old Corner), it is
not altogether delightful to think of returning. Everybody will be
changed, and I, myself, no doubt, as much as anybody.... It won't do. I
shall be forced to come back again and take refuge in a London lodging.
London is like the grave in one respect,--any man can make himself at
home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had
better either die or go to London.
"Speaking of the grave reminds me of old age and other disagreeable
matters, and I would remark that one grows old in Italy twice or three
times as fast as in other countries. I have three gray hairs now for one
that I brought from England, and I shall look venerable indeed by the
time I return next summer."
The "French and Italian Note-Books" are more prolific in literary hints
than the English. At Rome and Florence the practical self, which was
necessarily brought forward in the daily round at the consulate and left
its impress on the letters to Lieutenant Bridge, retired into the
background under the influence of scenes more purely picturesque and
poetic than those of England; and the idealizing, imaginative faculty of
Hawthorne, being freed from the restraint which had so long cramped it,
gained in elasticity from day to day. Four years of confinement to
business, broken only at intervals by short episodes of travel, had done
no more than impede the current of fancy; had not dried it, nor choked
the source. Mr. Fields assures us that, in England, Hawthorne told him
he had no less than five romances in his mind, so well planned that he
could write any one of them at short notice. But it is significant that,
however favorable Italy might be for drawing out and giving free course
to this current, he could do little there in the way of embodying his
conceptions. He wrote out an extensive first draft of "The Marble Faun"
while moving from place to place on the actual ground where the story is
laid; but the work itself was written at Redcar, and in the
communication last quoted from he had said: "I find this Italian
atmosphere not favorable to the close toil of composition, although it
is a very good air to dream in. I must breathe the fogs of old England,
or the east-winds of Massachusetts, in order to put me into
working-trim." Conditions other than physical were most probably
responsible, in part, for this state of things. Strong as Hawthorne's
nature was on the side of the real, the ideal force within him was so
much more puissant, that when circumstances were all propitious--as they
were in Italy--it obtained too commanding a sway over him. His dreams,
in such case, would be apt to overcome him, to exist simply for their
own sake instead of being subordinated to his will; and, in fine, to
expend their witchery upon the air, instead of being imprisoned in the
enduring form of a book. Being compounded in such singular wise of
opposing qualities: the customary, prudential, common sensible ones, and
the wise and visionary ones--the outward reticence, and (if we may say
so) the inward eloquence--of which we now have a clearer view; being so
compounded, he positively needed something stern and adverse in his
surroundings, it should seem, both as a satisfaction to the sturdier
part of him, and as a healthful check which, by exciting reaction, would
stimulate his imaginative mood. He must have precisely the right
proportion between these counter influences, or else creation could not
proceed. In the Salem Custom House and at the Liverpool consulate there
had been too much of the hard commonplace: instead of serving as a
convenient foil to the more expansive and lightsome tendencies of his
genius, it had weighed them down. But in Italy there was too much
freedom, not enough framework of the severe, the roughly real and
unpicturesque. Hawthorne's intellectual and poetic nature presents a
spectacle somewhat like that of a granite rock upon which delicate vines
flourish at their best; but he was himself both rock and vine. The
delicate, aspiring tendrils and the rich leafage of the plant, however,
required a particular combination of soil and climate, in order to grow
well. When he was not hemmed in by the round of official details,
England afforded him that combination in bounteous measure.
On the publication of "The Marble Faun," the author's friend, John
Lothrop Motley, with whom he had talked, of the contemplated romance, in
Rome, wrote to him from Walton-on-Thames (March 29, 1860):--
"Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I have read many
times, and I am particularly vain of having admired 'Sights from a
Steeple,' when I first read it in the Boston 'Token,' several hundred
years ago, when we were both younger than we are now; of having detected
and cherished, at a later day, an old Apple-Dealer, whom I believe you
have unhandsomely thrust out of your presence now that you are grown so
great. But the 'Romance of Monte Beni' has the additional charm for me,
that it is the first book of yours that I have read since I had the
privilege of making your personal acquaintance. My memory goes back at
once to those walks (alas, not too frequent) we used to take along the
Tiber, or in the Campagna ... and it is delightful to get hold of the
book now, and know that it is impossible for you any longer, after
waving your wand as you occasionally did then, indicating where the
treasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond plummet's sound.
"I admire the book exceedingly.... It is one which, for the first
reading at least, I didn't like to hear aloud.... If I were composing an
article for a review, of course I should feel obliged to show cause for
my admiration; but I am only obeying an impulse. Permit me to say,
however, that your style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever....
Believe me, I don't say to you half what I say behind your back; and I
have said a dozen times that nobody can write English but you. With
regard to the story, which has been somewhat criticized, I can only say
that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird,
fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom, which
is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which the story
is indicated rather than revealed; the outlines are quite definite
enough from the beginning to the end, to those who have imagination
enough to follow you in your airy flights.... The way in which the two
victims dance through the Carnival on the last day is very striking. It
is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without being in the least
Greek."
In this last sentence Mr. Motley struck out an apt distinction; for it
is perhaps the foremost characteristic of Hawthorne as a writer that his
fictions possessed a plastic repose, a perfection of form, which made
them akin to classic models, at the same time that the spirit was
throughout eminently that belonging to the mystic, capricious, irregular
fantasy of the North.