This narrative of his career, in one sense so simple, so uneventful, has
brought chiefly to the front, as we have followed it, a phase under
which Hawthorne appears the most like other men; with motives easily
understood, wishing to take his full share in human existence and its
responsibilities; devoted in his domestic relations. Moderately
ambitious of worldly welfare, but in poverty uncomplaining, he is so
coolly practical in his view that he scarcely alludes to the products of
his genius except as they may bear upon his material progress. Even this
much of the character is uncommon, because of its sterling tone, the
large, sustained manliness, and the success with which in the main it
keeps itself firmly balanced; but it is a character not difficult to
grasp, and one that appeals to every observer. It leaves out a great
deal, however. The artist is absent from it. Neither is that essential
mystery of organization included which held these elements together,
united them with something of import far different, and converted the
whole nature into a most extraordinary one, lifting it to a plane high
above that on which it might, at first, seem to rest.
We know, from brief allusions in his "Note-Books," that Hawthorne was
perfectly well aware of his high quality as an artist. He speaks of
having won fame in his dismal room in Herbert Street; and at Arezzo, in
1858, the well "opposite Petrarch's birth-house" which Boccaccio
introduced into one of his stories, recalls to the American writer one
of his own performances. "As I lingered round it I thought of my own
town-pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my towns-people would ever
point it out to strangers, and whether the stranger would gaze at it
with any degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. Oh,
certainly not; but I made that humble town-pump the most celebrated
structure in the good town. A thousand and a thousand people had pumped
there, merely to water oxen or fill their tea-kettles; but when once I
grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth that meandered as far as
England, as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every town and
village of our own country. I like to think of this, so long after I did
it, and so far from home, and am not without hopes of some kindly local
remembrance on this score."[10] Such indications of the artistic
consciousness are the merest ripples on the surface; the deeper
substance of it, with Hawthorne, always remained out of sight. Letters,
which are assumed to reveal so much of those who indite them, are, when
we come to the fact, very insufficient exponents of character; as, for
instance, we may observe in the letters of Michael Angelo, whose mood
and manner vary according to the person addressed. Correspondence, it is
true, is appetizing to readers, and should be prized for the help it
gives in defining an individual, but it does not always do full justice
to the larger being included in the whole personality. Hawthorne's
letters are more representative of those faculties by which he came into
association with his fellows, than of those which tended to separate him
from them by making him single and phenomenal, in his function as writer
of romance. But in his actual presence there was a something which did
most noticeably correspond to the hidden sources of his power, and
visibly express them. There was the hale and vigorous port of a man well
fitted by his physical constitution to meet the rudest emergency; but
there was also a temperament of which the reserve, the delicacy, the
tremulous sensitiveness were equal to those of the most finely organized
woman. "He was tall and strongly built," wrote his friend Hillard, "with
broad shoulders, deep chest, a massive head.... He looked like a man who
might have held the stroke oar in a University boat.... But, on the
other hand, no man had more of the feminine element than he. He was
feminine in his quick perceptions, his fine insight, his sensibility to
beauty.... No man comprehended woman better than he. And his face was as
mobile and rapid in its changes of expression as that of a young
girl.... His eyes would darken visibly under the touch of a passing
emotion, like the waters of a fountain ruffled by the breeze of summer.
So, too, he was the shyest of men."[11]
The same writer adds: "There was nothing morbid in his character or
temperament. He was, indeed, much the reverse of morbid. No man of
genius ever had less the infirmities of genius than he.... Hawthorne was
physically one of the healthiest of men. His pulse always kept even
music. He cared nothing for wine or tobacco, or strong coffee or strong
tea. He was a sound sleeper and an early riser. He was never moody or
fitful or irritable. He was never unduly depressed or unreasonably
elated. His spirits were not brilliant, but they were uniform, and, as
Mrs. Hawthorne says, 'The airy splendor of his wit and humor was the
light of his own home.'"
Dr. Loring has supplied another sketch of his appearance in general
intercourse, which does a great deal to fill out our conception:--
"He knew no such thing as fear; was scrupulously honest; was unwavering
in his fidelity; conscientious in the discharge of his duty. There may
have been men of more latent power, but I have known no man more
impressive, none in whom the great reposing strength seemed clad in such
a robe of sweetness as he wore. I saw him on the day General Pierce was
elected to the presidency. It was a bright and delicious day in late
autumn. He was standing under the little shaded and embowered piazza of
'The Wayside,' at Concord, in the full vigor of his manhood, radiant
with joy at the good fortune of his friend, and with that sad, shy smile
playing over his face, which was so touching and charming. I have seen
him fishing from the rocks of the Essex County shore at Swampscott,
enjoying the bliss of absolute repose and the sweet uncertainty which
attends the angler's line. I have sat with him in the dimly lighted room
on autumnal evenings, cheerful and vocal with the cricket's chirp, and
have heard his wise and sensible talk, uttered in that soft, melodious
tone which gave such a peculiar charm to his utterances,--a tone so shy
that an intruder would hush it into silence in an instant. I have
strolled with him in the darkness of a summer night through the lanes of
Concord, assured by his voice, which came up from the grass-grown
roadside in a sort of mysterious murmur, that he was my companion still.
And everywhere and at all times, he bore about him a strong and
commanding presence and impression of unpretending power. I can hardly
tell how Hawthorne succeeded in entertaining his companions and securing
their entire confidence, unless it was that he displayed great good
sense and acuteness and good temper in his intercourse with them, and
never misled them by false promises or low appeals. This, in addition to
his subtile genius, everywhere recognized and never wholly concealed to
even the most commonplace associates, made him a most fascinating
friend, as he was really and truly a man of rare quality among ordinary
men."[12]
The earlier portraits of Hawthorne show the gentleness and the feminine
traits in his disposition much more distinctly than those that are best
known to the world. There is one, now owned by his cousin, Mr. Richard
C. Manning, of Salem, which was painted in 1840 by Charles Osgood, an
artist of Salem, and induced this comment from his sister Louisa: "The
color is a little too high, to be sure, but perhaps it is a modest
blush at the compliments which are paid to your pen." Another, painted
by a Mr. C. G. Thompson, at Boston, in 1850 (now owned by Mr. Julian
Hawthorne), resembles this, and presents, one would say, the ideal
Hawthorne of the "Twice-Told Tales" and "The House of the Seven Gables."
The face is smooth shaven and the cheeks are somewhat slender, making
all the lines and features contribute to an effect of greater length and
of more oval contour than that given by the later representations. The
color is delicate; the large eyes look forth with peculiarly fascinating
power from beneath a forehead of exceptional height and harmonious
prominence. The hair is long, and recedes slightly on both sides of the
forehead; a single lock in the middle curving over and drooping forward.
There is less firmness about the lips than was characteristic of them in
his latter years; they close softly, yet even in their pictured repose
they seem to be mobile and ready to quiver with response to some emotion
still undefined but liable to make itself felt at any instant. In its
surrounding of long hair, and of a collar rising above the jaws, with a
large black tie wound about the throat in the manner of a stock but
terminating in a large bow at the front, the beardless countenance is
stamped with a sort of prevalent aspect of the period when it was
painted, which gives it what we call the old-fashioned look. It is, none
the less, a striking one; one that arrests the glance immediately, and
holds it by a peculiar spell. There is no suggestion of a smile or of
cheeriness about it; the eyes even look a little weary, as with too much
meditation in the brain behind them; there is not a trace discernible of
that sturdy, almost military, resoluteness so marked in the familiar
crayon portrait by Rowse, executed after Hawthorne's return from Italy
and England. Here the face is pensive, timid, fresh and impressionable
as that of some studious undergraduate unusually receptive of ideas,
sentiments, and observations: it is, indeed, quiet and thoughtful to the
verge of sadness. Longfellow kept always in his study a black-and-white
copy from this portrait, and in speaking of it and of the subject's
extreme shyness, said that to converse with Hawthorne was like talking
to a woman. The Thompson picture was reproduced in 1851, in a steel
engraving of considerable merit, and Hawthorne, thanking Mr. Fields for
some of the prints, wrote from Lenox: "The children recognized their
venerable sire with great delight. My wife complains somewhat of a want
of cheerfulness in the face; and, to say the truth, it does appear to be
afflicted with a bedevilled melancholy; but it will do all the better
for the author of 'The Scarlet Letter.' In the expression there is a
singular resemblance (which I do not remember in Thompson's picture) to
a miniature of my father."
In Rome, Miss Landor modelled a bust, the marble copy of which is now in
the Concord Public Library. It is of life-size, and presents the head in
a position which raises the chin and inclines the plane of the face
slightly backward, so that the effigy might be taken for that of an
orator addressing a great audience. This pose was selected by the
sculptress because, after due study, she was persuaded that when
Hawthorne became interested in conversation and kindled with the desire
to set forth his own view, he always raised his head and spoke from a
commanding attitude. She chose to perpetuate a momentary action, instead
of rendering his customary aspect of holding the chin somewhat down or
on a firm level; and this may account for the likeness not being
satisfactory to the members of Hawthorne's own family. The bust,
however, renders impressively the magnificent proportions of the neck
and head and the whole physiognomy. The mouth is not concealed, and,
although it exhibits more decision than that of the Thompson picture, it
conveys the same general impression of a quickly responsive sensibility.
Mr. Thompson made his painting when Hawthorne was forty-six, and Miss
Landor had sittings from the author at the age of fifty-four; but the
difference in apparent maturity of power in the face would indicate a
much longer interval. This is perhaps due to the difference in the means
of representation, and to some defect of strength in Mr. Thompson's
drawing; but perhaps also the decided change in Hawthorne's general
look, which began under the greatly altered conditions attending his
European life, proceeded very rapidly. He allowed a thick mustache to
grow, during his last stay in England, and it was then that Kuntze
modelled his profile, which sets Hawthorne's features before us in a
totally different way from any of the other portraits. Unfortunately,
Kuntze's relief is reduced to a size below that of life, and the
features accordingly assume a cramped relation. The lofty forehead is
given its due importance, however, and concentration of impassioned
energy is conveyed by the outline of the face, from this point of view.
The chin, always forcible as well as delicate, impresses one in this
case with a sense of persistent and enduring determination on the part
of the original; and with this sense there is mingled an impression of
something that approaches sternness, caused, it may be, by the hirsute
upper lip. In considering these several representations and the crayon
by Rowse, together with the photographs taken after Hawthorne's
home-return, it is impossible not to observe that the sturdier and more
practical elements in the romancer gained upon him, so far as personal
appearance was concerned, with advancing age and a wider experience of
life in the large world. But such a series of glimpses can do no more
than to suggest disjointedly the union in him of attributes positive and
passive, which always struck those who met him. A photograph which was
secured before he left England depicts him in a mood and with an air
that very happily convey this complete equipment of the man, this
wellnigh perfect combination of traits, which enabled him by sympathy to
run through the entire gamut of human feeling. His friend, John Lothrop
Motley, induced him one day to enter a photographer's establishment, on
the plea that he had business of his own there. Hawthorne was given a
book to read, while waiting; and when the photographer was ready Motley
attracted his friend's attention. Hawthorne looked up with a dawning
smile, a bright, expectant glance,--holding the book on his knee
meanwhile, with a finger in the place,--and instantly a perfect negative
was made. The resulting portraiture showed him absolutely as he was: a
breathing form of human nobility; a strong, masculine, self-contained
nature, stored in a stalwart frame--the face grown somewhat more rotund
than formerly, through material and professional success, and lighted up
with captivating but calm geniality; while over the whole presence
reigned an exquisite temperance of reserve, that held every faculty in
readiness to receive and record each finest fluctuation of joy or
sorrow, of earnest or of sport.
Such as he there appears, we shall do well to imagine him to ourselves.
The tendency at first, among those who judged him from his writings
alone, was to set him down as a misanthrope. We need not go to the other
extreme now. That he inclined to gravity, in his manner and in his habit
of thought, seems to be beyond question; but he was not sombre. Neither
was he hilarious. At home, though he was frequently silent, he never
appeared to be so from depression, except in seasons of distress at the
illness of members of the household; the prevailing effect of his
presence, even when he was least communicative, being that of a cheerful
calm with mellow humor underlying it. One of his children said to Mr. T.
W. Higginson: "There was never such a playmate in all the world." On the
other hand, I remember a letter from Hawthorne (no longer accessible for
exact quotation), in which he frankly speaks of himself as taking
constitutionally a somewhat despondent view of things. But if he did so,
he never permitted the shadow to fall upon his friends. "I should fancy
from your books," Hillard confessed in a letter to him, "that you were
burdened with some secret sorrow, that you had some blue chamber in your
soul, into which you hardly dared to enter yourself; but when I see you,
you give me the impression of a man as healthy as Adam in Paradise." Mr.
Hillard once told the present writer that he had sometimes walked twenty
miles along the highway with Hawthorne, not a word being spoken during
the entire tramp, and had nevertheless felt as if he were in constant
communication with his friend. Mr. Curtis wrote many years ago: "His own
sympathy was so broad and sure, that, although nothing had been said for
hours, his companion knew that not a thing had escaped his eye, nor a
single pulse of beauty in the day or scene or society failed to thrill
his heart. In this way his silence was most social. Everything seemed to
have been said."
His fondness for seclusion, his steady refusal to talk when he did not
feel like talking, and his unobtrusive but immovable independence in
opinion, together with his complete disregard of conventional
requirements in social intercourse, prevented Hawthorne from ever
becoming a popular man. But he was the object of a loving admiration and
the sincerest friendship, on the part of certain few intimates. Those
who knew him best, and had been longest in relations with him,
insensibly--as one observer has well suggested--caught from his fine
reticence a kindred reluctance to speak about him to others. A degree of
reverence was blended with their friendship, which acquired for them a
sacred privacy. Having sound health physically, as well as a healthy
mind, he enjoyed out-door occupations such as garden-work, rowing,
fishing, and walking; but he never rode on horseback. He liked to make
pedestrian trips through the country, stopping at haphazard in country
taverns and farm-houses and listening to the conversation that went on
there. In chance companionship of that sort, he could tolerate much
freedom of speech, in consideration of the mother-wit that prompted it;
but among men of his own class he never encouraged broad allusions. If
anything that savored of the forbidden were introduced, he would not
protest, but he at once turned the conversation towards some worthier
subject. The practical vein in Hawthorne--his ingrained sympathy with
the work-a-day world in which his father and his forefathers had busied
themselves-adapted him to the official drudgery to which he devoted
nine years of his life; although, while he was occupied with that, the
ideal activities of his nature lay dormant. The two sets of faculties
never could be exercised in equal measure at the same time: one or the
other had to predominate. Yet in the conduct of his own affairs, so far
as his pecuniary obligations were concerned, he was very prudent, and to
the last degree scrupulous. One or two exceedingly small debts, which he
was forced to contract, weighed upon him with a heaviness that to the
ordinary commercial mind would be altogether inconceivable; and the
relief he experienced when he was able to cancel them was inexpressible.
His fault, in business, was that he attributed to other people a sense
of honor equal to his own. This entailed upon him sundry losses which he
was not well able to afford, through loans made to supposed friends.
Notwithstanding the carefulness of his expenditure and a few moderately
good receipts from the publication of his books in England, he died
leaving a property of little more than twenty thousand dollars, besides
his house at Concord and the copyright of his works.
In addition to the strong physical frame and tall stature several times
noticed in the present sketch, Hawthorne's personal appearance was
distinguished by his large and lustrous gray-blue eyes, luxuriant dark
brown hair of remarkable fineness, and a delicacy of the skin that gave
unusual softness to his complexion; a complexion subdued, but full of
"healthy, living color," as Mrs. Hawthorne once described it. "After his
Italian journey he altered much, his hair having begun to whiten, and a
thick dark mustache being permitted to grow, so that a wit described him
as looking like a 'boned pirate.' When it became imperative to shake
off his reticence, he seems to have had the power of impressing as much
by speech as he had before done by silence. It was the same abundant,
ardent, but self-contained and perfectly balanced nature that informed
either phase. How commanding was this nature may be judged by the fact
related of him by an acquaintance, that rude people jostling him in a
crowd would give way at once 'at the sound of his low almost irresolute
voice.'... Something even of the eloquent gift of old Colonel Hathorne
seemed to be locked within him, like a precious heirloom rarely shown;
for in England, where his position called for speech-making, he
acquitted himself with brilliant honor. But the effort which this
compelled was no doubt commensurate with the success. He never shrank,
notwithstanding, from effort, when obligation to others put in a plea. A
member of his family has told me that, when talking to any one not
congenial to him, the effect of the contact was so strong as to cause an
almost physical contraction of his whole stalwart frame, though so
slight as to be perceptible only to eyes that knew his informal and
habitual aspects; yet he would have sunk through the floor rather than
betray his sensations to the person causing them. Mr. Curtis, too,
records the amusement with which he watched Hawthorne paddling on the
Concord River, with a friend whose want of skill caused the boat
continually to veer the wrong way, and the silent generosity with which
he put forth his whole strength to neutralize the error, rather than
mortify his companion by explanation. His considerateness was always
delicate and alert."[13] A niece of Horace Mann, who passed a part of
the spring of 1852 with Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne at West Newton, supplies
one little instance of this, which shall be registered here. Mrs. Dean,
the lady in question, was then under engagement to teach in Boston, but
had an interval of time on her hands before the work should begin. She
was invited by the Hawthornes to the West Newton house (at that time
owned by Mr. Mann), where she was to occupy a room which had formerly
been hers. She found that a fire was carefully laid in the stove every
night, to warm the room in the morning, and, thinking that too much
trouble was taken on her account, she begged to be allowed to attend to
this detail herself. It was then she discovered that it was Hawthorne
who made up the fire; and he insisted upon continuing his service. Mrs.
Dean also recalls that he listened attentively to the incidental and
ordinary chat between Mrs. Hawthorne and herself, seldom making any
remark, but, when he did volunteer one, giving it a pungent and
epigrammatic or humorous turn. Entering the room where she was
constructing a raised map for schoolroom use, he watched her with close
interest for a while, and then observed: "I would rather have had the
making of the world itself, in the beginning."
Taking whatever happened in a spirit always very much the same;
reflective, penetrating, quietly sportive--a spirit, likewise, of
patience and impartiality--Hawthorne kept his power of appreciation
fresh to the very last. He could endure the humdrum tasks of government
office, but they did not dull his pleasure in the simplest incidents of
home-life, nor his delight in nature. "Every year the recurrent changes
of season filled him with untold pleasure; and in the spring, Mrs.
Hawthorne has been heard to say, he would walk with her in continuous
silence, his heart full of the awe and delight with which the miracle
of buds and new verdure inspired him." Taking everything in this spirit,
we may repeat, mingling with the rough and the refined, and capable of
extracting the utmost intellectual stimulus from the least of mundane
phenomena, he maintained intact a true sense of relativity and a
knowledge that the attainable best is, in the final analysis,
incomplete. Contemplating a rose one day, he said: "On earth, only a
flower is perfect." He cherished a deep, strong, and simple religious
faith, but never approved of intellectual discussion concerning
religion.
The slightness of the definite fact, or of the reminiscence vouchsafed
by those who knew him, is continually impressed upon us in reviewing
this career. Considered in its main outline, how very plain and
unambitious is the history! A sea-captain's son, born in Salem; living
obscurely; sent up to the rude clearing where a new village was founding
in Maine; induced, against his preference, to go to college; writing
timid stories and essays, which the world had no suspicion that it
needed, and prompted to this by an impulse of which the origin is
inexplicable; next, the author coming into notice, but under eclipse now
and then from disappearance behind a public office; finally, the
acknowledged romancer of indefinitely great endowment--the head of his
order in America--sent abroad to an important post, where he is
recognized and warmly greeted by every one who can discern clearly: such
is the general course of the narrative. Afterwards, the now eminent man
comes back to his native land, labors a little longer in comparative
obscurity, suffers unmerited obloquy for his fidelity to a personal
friend, while perfectly loyal to his government; then dies, and is
mourned not alone by those devoted companions who felt him to be the one
great fact to them in present human nature, but also by famous scholars
and poets, and by a multitude of strangers, who gather around his bier
with a stricken sense of loss ineffable. It is very simple; it is very
democratic--the unnoticed American boy in humble circumstances becoming
the centre of a circle of fame which is still extending its radius. Very
simple it is, and yet inexplicable. But if we cannot tell precisely how
the mind came into being, nor what were the fostering influences that
most cogently aided its growth, we can, at least, pay our reverence to
the overruling Power that brings genius to the flowering-point under
circumstances seemingly the most unpropitious.
In 1863--the last year of his life--Hawthorne wrote to Mr. Stoddard, who
had sent him a copy of his poem, "The King's Bell." "I sincerely thank
you," he said, "for your beautiful poem, which I have read with a great
deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had a right to expect from
what you gave us in years gone by; only I wish the idea had not been so
sad. I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his lifetime, and
again at the moment of death. Yet you may be right. I have been a happy
man, and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspiring
circumstances that I could have rung a joy-bell for it."
Yes, he had been a happy man; one who had every qualification for a rich
and satisfactory life, and was able to make such a life out of whatever
material offered. He might not have been willing to sound the joy-bell
for himself, but the world has rung it because of his birth. As for his
death, it is better not to close our sketch with any glimpse of that,
because, in virtue of his spirit's survival among those who read and
think, he still lives.