1
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 BY FRANK PRESTON STEARNS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE MIDSUMMER OF ITALIAN AKT," "LIFE OF 
 TINTORETTO," " LIFE OF BISMARCK, 1 ' " TRUE REPUBLI- 
 CANISM," "CAMBRIDGE SKETCHES," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON: RICHARD G. BADGER 
 
 TORONTO: THE COPP CLARK Co., LIMITED
 
 COPYRIGHT 1906 BY J. B. LII-HNCOTT COMPANY
 
 I 0P 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
 TO 
 JAMES D'WOLF LOVETT 
 
 Integra vitae sceltrisgue puro
 
 "In the elder days of art 
 
 Builders wrought with greatest care 
 Each minute and unseen part, 
 For the gods see everywhere." 
 
 Longfellow 
 
 'Oh, happy dreams of such a soul have I, 
 And softly to myself of him I sing, 
 Whose seraph pride all pride doth overwing; 
 Who stoops to greatness, matches low with high, 
 And as in grand equalities of sky, 
 
 Stands level with the beggar and the king." 
 
 Watson
 
 Preface 
 
 THE simple events of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 
 life have long been before the public. From 
 1835 onward they may easily be traced in the 
 various Note-books, which have been edited 
 from his diary, and previous to that time we 
 are indebted for them chiefly to the recollections 
 of his two faithful friends, Horatio Bridge and 
 Elizabeth Peabody. These were first system- 
 atised and published by George P. Lathrop in 
 1872, but a more complete and authoritative 
 biography was issued by Julian Hawthorne 
 twelve years later, in which, however, the writer 
 has modestly refrained from expressing an opin- 
 ion as to the quality of his father's genius, or 
 from attempting any critical examination of his 
 father's literary work. It is in order to supply 
 in some measure this deficiency, that the present 
 volume has been written. At the same time, 
 I trust to have given credit where it was due 
 to my predecessors, in the good work of making 
 known the true character of so rare a genius 
 and so exceptional a personality. 
 
 The publication of Horatio Bridge's mem- 
 
 5
 
 PREFACE 
 
 oirs and of Elizabeth Manning's account of the 
 boyhood of Hawthorne have placed before the 
 world much that is new and valuable concern- 
 ing the earlier portion of Hawthorne's life, of 
 which previous biographers could not very- 
 well reap the advantage. I have made thorough 
 researches in regard to Hawthorne's American 
 ancestry, but have been able to find no ground 
 for the statements of Conway and Lathrop, 
 that William Hathorne, their first ancestor 
 on this side of the ocean, was directly con- 
 nected with the Quaker persecution. Some 
 other mistakes, like Hawthorne's supposed con- 
 nection with the duel between Cilley and 
 Graves, have also been corrected. 
 
 P. P. S.
 
 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. SALEM AND THE HATHORNES : 1630-1800 ... n 
 
 II. BOYHOOD OF HAWTHORNE: 1804-1821 35 
 
 III. BOWDOIN COLLEGE: 1821-1825 60 
 
 IV. LITTLE MISERY : 1825-1835 78 
 
 V. Eos AND EROS : 1835-1839 104 
 
 VI. PEGASUS AT THE CART : 1839-1841 125 
 
 VII. HAWTHORNE AS A SOCIALIST: 1841-1842... 139 
 
 VIII. CONCORD AND THE OLD MANSE : 1842-1845. 157 
 
 IX. " MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE": 1845 J 7 8 
 
 X. FROM CONCORD TO LENOX: 1845-1849 202 
 
 XI. PEGASUS is FREE : 1850-1852 229 
 
 XII. THE LIVERPOOL CONSULATE : 1852-1854 . . . 255 
 
 XIII. HAWTHORNE IN ENGLAND : 1854-1858 276 
 
 XIV. ITALY 307 
 
 XV. HAWTHORNE AS ART CRITIC: 1858 328 
 
 XVI. "THE MARBLE FAUN": 1859-1860 348 
 
 XVII. HOMEWARD BOUND : 1860-1862 376
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XVIII. IMMORTALITY 403 
 
 PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE 433 
 
 EDITIONS OF HAWTHORNE'S BOOKS PUB- 
 LISHED UNDER His OWN DIRECTION . 436 
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE .... 438 
 APPENDICES 445
 
 List of Illustrations 
 
 PORTRAIT OF HAWTHORNE, BY FRANCES OSBORNE 
 IN 1893 Frontispiece 
 
 HAWTHORNE'S BIRTHPLACE 36 
 
 HORATIO BRIDGE, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY EASTMAN 
 
 JOHNSON 64 
 
 HAWTHORNE, FROM THE PORTRAIT BY CHARLES OS- 
 GOOD IN 1840 134 
 
 THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY 156 
 
 THE CUSTOM HOUSE, SALEM, MASS 204 
 
 THE WAYSIDE 256 
 
 GUIDO RENI'S PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI 338 
 
 STATUE OF PRAXITELES' RESTING FAUN 364 
 
 TORRE MEDIA VALLE DELLA SCIMMIA (HILDA'S TOWER) 
 
 IN ROME 375
 
 The Life and Genius of 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 SALEM AND THE HATHORNES : 1630-1800 
 
 THE three earliest settlements on the New 
 England coast were Plymouth, Boston, and 
 Salem; but Boston soon proved its superior 
 advantages to the two others, not only from its 
 more capacious harbor, but also from the con- 
 venient waterway which the Charles River 
 afforded to the interior of the Colony. We find 
 that a number of English families, and among 
 them the ancestors of Gen. Joseph Warren and 
 Wendell Phillips, who crossed the ocean in 
 1640 in the "good ship Arbella, " soon after- 
 ward migrated to Watertown on Charles River 
 for the sake of the excellent fanning lands 
 which they found there. Salem, however, 
 maintained its ascendency over Plymouth and 
 other neighboring harbors on the coast, and 
 soon grew to be the second city of importance 
 in the Colony during the eighteenth century, 
 when the only sources of wealth were fishing, 
 shipbuilding, and commerce. Salem flourished 
 remarkably. Its leading citizens became wealthy
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and developed a social aristocracy as culti- 
 vated, as well educated, and, it may also be 
 added, as fastidious as that of Boston itself. 
 In this respect it differed widely from the other 
 small cities of New England, and the exclu- 
 siveness of its first families was more strongly 
 marked on account of the limited size of the 
 place. Thus it continued down to the middle 
 of the last century, when railroads and the 
 tendency to centralization began to draw away 
 its financial prosperity, and left the city to 
 small manufactures and its traditional respect- 
 ability. 
 
 The finest examples of American eighteenth 
 century architecture are supposed to exist in 
 and about the city of Salem, and they have the 
 advantage, which American architecture lacks 
 so painfully at the present time, of possessing a 
 definite style and character edifices which 
 are not of a single type, like most of the houses 
 in Fifth Avenue, but which, while differing in 
 many respects, have a certain general resem- 
 blance, that places them all in the same cate- 
 gory. The small old country churches of Essex 
 County are not distinguished for fine carving or 
 other ornamentation, and still less by the costli- 
 ness of their material, for they are mostly built 
 of white pine, but they have an indefinable 
 air of pleasantness about them, as if they graced 
 the ground they stand on, and their steeples 
 seem to float in the air above us. If we enter 
 them on a Sunday forenoon for on week-days 
 they are like a sheepfold without its occupants
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 we meet with much the same kind of pleasant- 
 ness in the assemblage there. We do not find 
 the deep religious twilight of past ages, or the 
 noonday glare of a fashionable synagogue, but 
 a neatly attired congregation of weather-beaten 
 farmers and mariners, and their sensible looking 
 wives, with something of the original Puritan 
 hardness in their faces, much ameliorated by 
 the liberalism and free thinking of the past 
 fifty years. Among them too you will see some 
 remarkably pretty young women; and young 
 men like those who dug the trenches on 
 Breed's Hill in the afternoon of June 16, 1775. 
 There may be veterans in the audience who 
 helped Grant to go to Richmond. Withal there 
 is much of the spirit of the early Christians 
 among them, and virtue enough to save their 
 country in any emergency. 
 
 These old churches have mostly disappeared 
 from Salem city and have been replaced by more 
 aristocratic edifices, whose square or octagonal 
 towers are typical of their leading parishioners, 
 a dignified class, if somewhat haughty and 
 reserved; but they too will soon belong to the 
 past, drawn off to the great social centres in 
 and about Boston. In the midst of Salem there 
 is a triangular common, " with its never-failing 
 elms," where the boys large and small formerly 
 played cricket married men too as they do 
 still on the village greens of good old England, 
 and around this enclosure the successful mer- 
 chants and navigators of the city built their 
 mansion houses; not half houses like those in 
 
 13
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the larger cities, but with spacious halls and 
 rooms on either side going up three stories. 
 It is in the gracefully ornamented doorways and 
 the delicate interior wood-work, the carving of 
 wainscots, mantels and cornices, the skilful 
 adaptations of classic forms to a soft and delicate 
 material that the charm of this architecture 
 chiefly consists, especially in the staircases, 
 with their carved spiral posts and slender 
 railings, rising upward in the centre of the 
 front hall, and turning right and left on the 
 story above. It is said that after the year 
 eighteen hundred the quality of this decoration 
 sensibly declined ; it was soon replaced by more 
 prosaic forms, and now the tools no longer exist 
 that can make it. Sir Christopher Wren and 
 Inigo Jones would have admired it. America, 
 excepting in New York City, escaped the false 
 rococo taste of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The Salem sea-captains of old times were 
 among the boldest of our early navigators; 
 sailing among the pirates of the Persian Gulf 
 and trading with the cannibals of Polynesia, 
 and the trophies which they brought home from 
 those strange regions, savage implements of 
 war and domestic use, clubs, spears, boomerangs, 
 various cooking utensils, all carved with infinite 
 pains from stone, ebony and iron- wood, cloth 
 from the bark of the tapa tree, are now de- 
 posited in the Peabody Academy, where they 
 form one of the largest collections of the kind 
 extant. Even more interesting is the sword of 
 a sword-fish, pierced through the oak planking
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of a Salem vessel for six inches or more. No 
 human force could do that even with a spear of 
 the sharpest steel. Was the sword-fish roused 
 to anger when the ship came upon him sleeping 
 in the water; or did he mistake it for a strange 
 species of whale ? 
 
 There is a court-house on Federal Street, 
 built in Webster's time, of hard cold granite 
 in the Grecian fashion of the day, not of the 
 white translucent marble with which the Greeks 
 would have built it. Is it the court-house where 
 Webster made his celebrated argument in the 
 White murder case, or was that court-house 
 torn down and a plough run through the ground 
 where it stood, as Webster affirmed that it ought 
 to be? Salem people were curiously reticent 
 in regard to that trial, and fashionable society 
 there did not like Webster the better for having 
 the two Knapps convicted. 
 
 Much more valuable than such associations 
 is William Hunt's full-length portrait of Chief 
 Justice Shaw, which hangs over the judge's 
 bench in the front court-room. "When I look 
 at your honor I see that you are homely, but 
 when I think of you I know that you are great. " 
 It is this combination of an unprepossessing 
 physique with rare dignity of character which 
 Hunt has represented in what many consider 
 the best of American portraits. It is perhaps 
 too much in the sketchy style of Velasquez, 
 but admirable for all that. 
 
 Time has dealt kindly with Salem, in effacing 
 all memorials of the witchcraft persecution, 
 
 15
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 except a picturesque old house at the corner of 
 North and Essex Streets, where there are said 
 to have been preliminary examinations for 
 witchcraft, a matter which concerns us now 
 but slightly. The youthful associations of a 
 genius are valuable to us on account of the 
 influence which they may be supposed to have 
 had on his early life, but associations which 
 have no determining consequences may as well 
 be neglected. The hill where those poor martyrs 
 to superstition were executed may be easily 
 seen on the left of the city, as you roll in on the 
 train from Boston. It is part of a ridge which 
 rises between the Concord and Charles Rivers 
 and extends to Cape Ann, where it dives into 
 the ocean, to reappear again like a school of 
 krakens, or other marine monsters, in the Isles 
 of Shoals. 
 
 New England has not the fertile soil of many 
 sections of the United States, and its racking 
 climate is proverbial, but it is blessed with the 
 two decided advantages of pure water and fine 
 scenery. There is no more beautiful section 
 of its coast than that between Salem Harbor 
 and Salisbury Beach, long stretches of smooth 
 sand alternating with bold rocky promontories. 
 A summer drive from Swampscott to Marble- 
 head reminds one even of the Bay of Naples 
 (without Vesuvius) , and the wilder coast of Cape 
 Ann, with its dark pines, red-roofed cottages, 
 and sparkling surf, is quite as delightful. Wil- 
 liam Hunt went there in the last sad years of 
 his life to paint "sunshine," as he said; and 
 16
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Whittier has given us poetic touches of the 
 inland scenery in elevated verse: 
 
 "Fleecy clouds casting their shadows 
 Over uplands and meadows; 
 And country roads winding as roads will, 
 Here to a ferry, there to a mill." 
 
 Poets arise where there is poetic nourish- 
 ment, internal and external, for them to feed on ; 
 and it is not surprising that a Whittier and a 
 Hawthorne should have been evolved from the 
 environment in which they grew to manhood. 
 
 It is a common saying with old Boston families 
 that their ancestors came to America in the 
 "Arbella" with Governor Winthrop, but as a 
 matter of fact there were at least fifteen vessels 
 that brought colonists to Massachusetts in 1630, 
 and I cannot discover that any lists of their 
 passengers have been preserved. The statement 
 that certain persons came over at the same time 
 with Governor Winthrop might soon become a 
 tradition that they came in the same ship with 
 him; but all that we know certainly is that 
 Governor Winthrop landed about the middle 
 of June, 1630, and that his son arrived two 
 weeks later in the "Talbot, " and was drowned 
 July 2, while attempting to cross one of the 
 tide rivers at Salem. Who arrived in the thirteen 
 other vessels that year we know not. Ten years 
 later Sir Richard Saltonstall emigrated to Bos- 
 ton with the Phillips and Warren families in 
 the " Arbella" (or "Arabella"), and there is no 
 telling how much longer she sailed the ocean. 
 
 Hawthorne himself states that his ancestors 
 ? 17
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 came from Wig Castle in Wigton in Warwick- 
 shire,* but no such castle has been discovered, 
 and the only Wigton in England appears to be 
 located in Cumberland, f He does not tell us 
 where he obtained this information, and it 
 certainly could not have been from authentic 
 documents, more likely from conversation with 
 an English traveller. Hawthorne never troubled 
 himself much concerning his ancestry, English 
 or American ; while he was consul at Liverpool, 
 he had exceptional advantages for investigating 
 the subject, but whatever attempt he made 
 there resulted in nothing. It is only recently 
 that Mr. Henry F. Waters, who spent fifteen 
 years in England searching out the records of 
 old New England families, succeeded in dis- 
 covering the connecting link between the first 
 American Hawthornes and their relatives in 
 the old country. It was a bill of exchange for 
 one hundred pounds drawn by William Ha- 
 thorne, of Salem, payable to Robert Hathorne 
 in London, and dated October 19, 1651, which 
 first gave Mr. Waters the clue to his discovery. 
 Robert not only accepted his brother's draft, 
 but wrote him this simple and business-like but 
 truly affectionate epistle in return: 
 
 "GooD BROTHER: Remember my love to my sister, 
 my brother John and sister, my brother Davenport and 
 sister and the rest of our friends. 
 "In haste I rest 
 
 ' ' Your loving brother, 
 "From Bray this i April, 1653. ROBERT HATHORNE." 
 
 * Diary, August 22, 1837. 
 t Lathrop's " Study of Hawthorne," 46. 
 18
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 From this it appears that Major William 
 Hathorne not only had a brother John, who 
 established himself in Lynn, but a sister Eliza- 
 beth, who married Richard Davenport, of 
 Salem. Concerning Robert Hathorne we only 
 know further that he died in 1689; but in the 
 probate records of Berkshire, England, there 
 is a will proved May 2, 1651, of William Ha- 
 thorne, of Binfield, who left all his lands, build- 
 ings and tenements in that county to his son 
 Robert, on condition that Robert should pay 
 to his father's eldest son, William, one hundred 
 pounds, and to his son John twenty pounds 
 sterling. He also left to another son, Edmund, 
 thirty acres of land in Bray, and there are other 
 legacies; but it cannot be doubted that the 
 hundred pounds mentioned in this will is the 
 same that Major William Hathorne drew for 
 five months later, and that we have identi- 
 fied here the last English ancestor of Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne. His wife's given name was Sarah, 
 but her maiden name still remains unknown. 
 The family resided chiefly at Binfield, on the 
 borders of Windsor Park, and evidently were 
 in comfortable circumstances at that time. 
 From William Hathorne, senior, their gene- 
 alogy has been traced back to John Hathorne 
 (spelled at that time Hothorne), who died in 
 1520, but little is known of their affairs, or 
 how they sustained themselves during the 
 strenuous vicissitudes of the Reformation.* 
 
 " Hawthorne Centenary at Salem," 81. 
 19
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Emmerton and Waters* state that William 
 Hathorne came to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, 
 and this is probable enough, though by no 
 means certain, for they give no authority for 
 it. We first hear of him definitely as a free- 
 holder in the settlement of Dorchester in 1634, 
 but his name is not on the list of the first twenty- 
 four Dorchester citizens, dated October 19, 
 1630. All accounts agree that he moved to 
 Salem in 1636, or the year following, and Na- 
 thaniel Hawthorne believed that he came to 
 America at that time. Upham, the historian of 
 Salem witchcraft, who has made the most 
 thorough researches in the archives of old Salem 
 families, says of William Hathorne: 
 
 "William Hathorne appears on the church 
 records as early as 1636. He died in June, 1681, 
 seventy-four years of age. No one in our annals 
 fills a larger space. As soldier, commanding 
 important and difficult expeditions, as counsel 
 in cases before the courts, as judge on the bench, 
 and innumerable other positions requiring talent 
 and intelligence, he was constantly called to 
 serve the public. He was distinguished as a 
 public speaker, and is the only person, I believe, 
 of that period, whose reputation as an orator 
 has come down to us. He was an Assistant, 
 that is, in the upper branch of the Legislature, 
 seventeen years. He was a deputy twenty 
 years. When the deputies, who before sat 
 with the assistants, were separated into a distinct 
 body, and the House of Representatives thus 
 
 * "English Records about New England Families." 
 20
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 came into existence, in 1644, Hathorne was 
 their first Speaker. He occupied the chair, 
 with intermediate services on the floor from 
 time to time, until raised to the other House. 
 He was an inhabitant of Salem Village, having 
 his farm there, and a dwelling-house, in which 
 he resided when his legislative, military, and 
 other official duties permitted. His son John, 
 who succeeded him in all his public honors, 
 also lived on his own farm in the village a great 
 part of the time. "* 
 
 Evidently he was the most important person 
 in the colony, next to Governor Winthrop, and 
 unequalled by any of his descendants, except 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, and by him in a wholly 
 different manner; for it is in vain that we seek 
 for traits similar to those of the great romance 
 writer among his ancestors. We can only say 
 that they both possessed exceptional mental 
 ability, and there the comparison ends. 
 
 The attempt has been made to connect Wil- 
 liam Hathorne with the persecution of the 
 Quakers, f and it is true that he was a member 
 of the Colonial Assembly during the period 
 of the persecution; it is likely that his vote 
 supported the measures in favor of it, but this 
 is not absolutely certain. We do not learn that 
 he acted at any time in the capacity of sheriff; 
 the most diligent researches in the archives of 
 the State House at Boston have failed to dis- 
 cover any direct connection on the part of 
 
 * "Salem Witchcraft," i. 99. 
 f Conway's " Life of Hawthorne," 15. 
 21
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 William Hathorne with that movement; and 
 the best authorities in regard to the events of 
 that time make no mention of him.* It was the 
 clergy who aroused public opinion and instigated 
 the prosecutions against both the Quakers 
 and the supposed witches of Salem, and the 
 civil authorities were little more than passive 
 instruments in their hands. Hathorne's work 
 was essentially a legislative one, a highly im- 
 portant work in that wild, unsettled country, 
 to adapt English statutes and legal procedures 
 to new and strange conditions. He was twice 
 Speaker of the House between 1660 and 1671, 
 and as presiding officer he could exert less in- 
 fluence on measures of expediency than any 
 other person present, as he could not argue 
 either for or against them. And yet, after 
 Charles II. had interfered in behalf of the 
 Quakers, William Hathorne wrote an elaborate 
 and rather circuitous letter to the British Min- 
 istry, arguing for non-intervention in the affairs 
 of the colony, which might have possessed 
 greater efficacy if he had not signed it with an 
 assumed name.f However strong a Puritan 
 he may have been, William Hathorne evidently 
 had no intention of becoming a martyr to the 
 cause of colonial independence. Yet it may be 
 stated in his favor, and in that of the colonists 
 generally, that the fault was not wholly on one 
 side, for the Quakers evidently sought perse- 
 cution, and would have it, cost what it might. J 
 
 * Sewel, Hallowell, Ellis. 
 
 t J. Hawthorne's " Nathaniel Hawthorne," i. 24. 
 J Hallowell's "Quaker Invasion of New England." 
 22
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Much the same may be affirmed of his son 
 John, who had the singular misfortune to be 
 judge in Salem at the time of the witchraft 
 epidemic. The belief in witchcraft has always 
 had its stronghold among the fogs and gloomy 
 fiords of the North. James I. brought it with 
 him from Scotland to England, and in due 
 course it was transplanted to America. Judge 
 Hathorne appears to have been at the top of 
 affairs at Salem in his time, and it is more than 
 probable that another in his place would have 
 found himself obliged to act as he did. Law 
 is, after all, in exceptional cases little more than 
 a reflex of public opinion. " The common law, " 
 said Webster, "is common-sense," which 
 simply means the common opinion of the most 
 influential people. Much more to blame than 
 John Hathorne were those infatuated persons 
 who deceived themselves into thinking that 
 the pains of rheumatism, neuralgia, or some 
 similar malady were caused by the malevolent 
 influence of a neighbor against whom they had 
 perhaps long harbored a grudge. They were 
 the true witches and goblins of that epoch, and 
 the only ones, if any, who ought to have been 
 hanged for it. 
 
 What never has been reasoned up cannot be 
 reasoned down. It seems incredible in this 
 enlightened era, as the newspapers call it, that 
 any woman should be at once so inhuman and 
 so frivolous as to swear away the life of a fellow- 
 creature upon an idle fancy; and yet, even in 
 regard to this, there were slightly mitigating 
 23
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 conditions. Consider only the position of that 
 handful of Europeans in this vast wilderness, 
 as it then was. The forests came down to the 
 sea-shore, and brought with them all the weird 
 fancies, terrors and awful forebodings which 
 the human mind could conjure up. They feared 
 the Indians, the wild beasts, and most of all 
 one another, for society was not yet sufficiently 
 organized to afford that repose and content- 
 ment of spirit which they had left behind in 
 the Old World. They had come to America to 
 escape despotism, but they had brought des- 
 potism in their own hearts. They could escape 
 from the Stuarts, but there was no escape from 
 human nature. 
 
 It is likely that their immediate progenitors 
 would not have carried the witchcraft craze to 
 such an extreme. The emigrating Puritans 
 were a fairly well-educated class of men and 
 women, but their children did not enjoy equal 
 opportunities. The new continent had to be 
 subdued physically and reorganized before 
 any mental growth could be raised there. Lev- 
 elling the forest was a small matter beside clear- 
 ing the land of stumps and stones. All hands 
 were obliged to work hard, and there was little 
 opportunity for intellectual development or 
 social culture. As a logical consequence, an 
 era ensued not unlike the dark ages of Europe. 
 But this was essential to the evolution of a 
 new type of man, and for the foundation of 
 American nationality; and it was thus that 
 the various nationalities of Europe arose out 
 of the ruins of the Roman Empire. 
 24
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 The scenes that took place in Judge Hathorne's 
 court-room have never been equalled since 
 in American jurisprudence. Powerful forces 
 came into play there, and the reports that 
 have been preserved read like scenes from 
 Shakespeare. In the case of Rebecca Nurse, 
 the Judge said to the defendant: 
 
 " ' You do know whether you are guilty, and have 
 familiarity with the Devil; and now when you are here 
 present to see such a thing as these testify, and a black 
 man whispering in your ear, and devils about you, what 
 do you say to it? ' " 
 
 To which she replied: 
 
 " ' It is all false. I am clear.' Whereupon Mrs. Pope, 
 one of the witnesses, fell into a grievous fit."* 
 
 Alas, poor beleaguered soul! And one may 
 well say, " What imaginations those women had!" 
 Tituba, the West Indian Aztec who appears in 
 this social-religious explosion as the chief and 
 original incendiary, verily the root of all 
 evil, gave the following testimony: 
 
 "Q. 'Did you not pinch Elizabeth Hubbard this 
 morning?' 
 
 "A. 'The man brought her to me, and made me pinch 
 her.' 
 
 "Q. 'Why did you go to Thomas Putnam's last night 
 and hurt his child?' 
 
 "A. 'They pull and haul me, and make me go. ' 
 
 "Q. 'And what would they have you do?' 
 
 "A. ' Kill her with a knife. ' 
 
 ' ' (Lieutenant Fuller and others said at this time, when the 
 child saw these persons, and was tormented by them, that 
 she did complain of a knife, that they would have her cut 
 her head off with a knife.) 
 
 * Upham's " Salem Witchcraft," ii. 64. 
 25
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 " Q. ' How did you go ? ' 
 
 "A. 'We ride upon sticks, and are there presently.' 
 
 " Q. ' Do you go through the trees or over them ?' 
 
 "A. 'We see nothing, but are there presently.'. 
 
 "Q. 'Why did you not tell your master?' 
 
 "A. 'I was afraid. They said they would cut off my head 
 
 if I told. ' 
 
 "Q. 'Would you not have hurt others, if you could?' 
 
 "A. 'They said they would hurt others, but they 
 
 could not. ' 
 
 "Q. 'What attendants hath Sarah Good?' 
 
 "A. 'A yellow-bird, and she would have given me one.' 
 
 "Q. 'What meat did she give it?' 
 
 "A. 'It did suck her between her fingers.' " 
 
 This might serve as an epilogue to " Macbeth," 
 and the wonder is that an unlettered Indian 
 should have had the wit to make such apt and 
 subtle replies. It is also noteworthy that these 
 strange proceedings took place after the ex- 
 pulsion of the royal governor, and previous to 
 the provincial government of William III. 
 If Sir Edmund Andros had remained, the tragedy 
 might have been changed into a farce. 
 
 After all, it appears that John Hathorne was 
 not a lawyer, for he describes himself in his 
 last will, dated June 27, 1717, as a merchant, 
 and it is quite possible that his legal education 
 was no better than that of the average English 
 squire in Fielding's time. It is evident, how- 
 ever, from the testimony given above, that he 
 was a strong believer in the supernatural, and 
 here if anywhere we find a relationship between 
 him and his more celebrated descendant. Na- 
 thaniel Hawthorne was too clear-sighted to 
 place confidence in the pretended revelations 
 26
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of trance mediums, and he was not in the least 
 superstitious; but he was remarkably fond of 
 reading ghost stories, and would have liked to 
 believe them, if he could have done so in all 
 sincerity. He sometimes felt as if he were a 
 ghost himself, gliding noiselessly in the walks of 
 men, and wondered that the sun should cast a 
 shadow from him. However, we cannot imagine 
 him as seated in jurisdiction at a criminal 
 tribunal. His gentle nature would have re- 
 coiled from that, as it might from a serpent. 
 
 In the Charter Street burial-ground there is a 
 slate gravestone, artistically carved about its 
 edges, with the name, " Col. John Hathorne 
 Esq., " upon it. It is somewhat sunken into the 
 earth, and leans forward as if wishing to hide 
 the inscription upon it from the gaze of man- 
 kind. The grass about it and the moss upon 
 the stone assist in doing this, although repeat- 
 edly cut and cleaned away. It seems as if 
 Nature wished to draw a kind of veil over the 
 memory of the witch's judge, himself the sor- 
 rowful victim of a theocratic oligarchy. The 
 lesson we learn from his errors is, to trust our 
 own hearts and not to believe too fixedly in 
 the doctrines of Church and State. It must be 
 a dull sensibility that can look on this old slate- 
 stone without a feeling of pathos and a larger 
 charity for the errors of human nature. 
 
 It is said that one of the convicted witches 
 cursed Judge Hathorne, himself and his de- 
 scendants forever; but it is more than likely 
 that they all cursed him bitterly enough, and
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 this curse took effect in a very natural and 
 direct manner. Every extravagant political 
 or social movement is followed by a correspond- 
 ing reaction, even if the movement be on the 
 whole a salutary one, and retribution is sure 
 to fall in one shape or another on the leaders of 
 it. After this time the Hathornes ceased to be 
 conspicuous in Salem affairs. The family was 
 not in favor, and the avenues of prosperity 
 were closed to them, as commonly happens in 
 such cases. Neither does the family appear to 
 have multiplied and extended itself like most of 
 the old New England families, who can now 
 count from a dozen to twenty branches in 
 various places. Of John Hathorne's three sons 
 only one appears to have left children. The 
 name has wholly disappeared from among 
 Salem families, and thus in a manner has the 
 witch's curse been fulfilled. 
 
 Joseph Hathorne, the son of the Judge, was 
 mostly a farmer, and that is all that we now 
 know of him. His son Daniel, however, showed 
 a more adventurous spirit, becoming a ship- 
 master quite early in life. It has also been in- 
 timated that he was something of a smuggler, 
 which was no great discredit to him in a time 
 when the unfair and even prohibitory measures 
 of the British Parliament in regard to American 
 commerce made smuggling a practical necessity. 
 Even as the captain of a trading vessel, how- 
 ever, Daniel Hathorne was not likely to advance 
 the social interests of his family. It is signifi- 
 cant that he should have left the central portion
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of Salem, where his ancestors had lived, and 
 have built a house for himself close to the city 
 wharves, a house well built and commodious 
 enough, but not in a fashionable location. 
 
 But Daniel Hathorne had the advantage 
 over fashionable society in Salem, in being a 
 thorough patriot. Boston and Salem were the 
 two strongholds of Toryism during the war for 
 Independence, which was natural enough, as 
 their wealthy citizens were in close mercantile 
 relations with English houses, and sent their 
 children to England to be educated. Daniel 
 Hathorne, however, as soon as hostilities had 
 begun, fitted out his bark as a privateer, and 
 spent the following six years in preying upon 
 British merchantmen. How successful he was 
 in this line of business we have not been in- 
 formed, but he certainly did not grow rich by it ; 
 although he is credited with one engagement 
 with the enemy, in which his ship came off with 
 honor, though perhaps not with a decisive victory. 
 This exploit was celebrated in a rude ballad of the 
 time, which has been preserved in "Griswold's 
 Curiosities of American Literature," and has 
 at least the merit of plain unvarnished language.* 
 
 There is a miniature portrait of Daniel Ha- 
 thorne, such as was common in Copley's time, 
 still in the possession of the Hawthorne family, 
 and it represents him as rather a bullet-headed 
 man, with a bright, open, cheery face, a broad 
 English chin and strongly marked brows, an 
 excellent physiognomy for a sea-captain. He 
 
 * Also in Lathrop's "Hawthorne. '.'. 
 29
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 appears besides to have had light brown or 
 sandy hair, a ruddy complexion and bright blue 
 eyes; but we cannot determine how truthful 
 the miniature may be in respect to coloring. 
 At all events, he was of a very different appear- 
 ance from Nathaniel Hawthorne, and if he 
 resembled his grandson in any external respect, 
 it was in his large eyes and their overshadowing 
 brows. He has not the look of a dare-devil. One 
 might suppose that he was a person of rather 
 an obstinate disposition, but it is always diffi- 
 cult to draw the line between obstinacy and 
 determination. 
 
 A similar miniature of his son Nathaniel, 
 born in 1775, and who died at Surinam in his 
 thirty-fourth year, gives us the impression of a 
 person somewhat like his father, and also some- 
 what like his son Nathaniel. He has a long face 
 instead of a round one, and his features are 
 more delicate and refined than those of the bold 
 Daniel. The expression is gentle, dreamy and 
 pensive, and unless the portrait belies him, he 
 could not have been the stern, domineering 
 captain that he has been represented. He had 
 rather a slender figure, and was probably much 
 more like his mother, who was a Miss Phelps, 
 than the race of Judge Hathorne. He may have 
 been a reticent man, but never a bold one, and 
 we find in him a new departure. His face is 
 more amiable and attractive than his father's, 
 but not so strong. In 1799 he was married to 
 Miss Elizabeth Clarke Manning, the daughter 
 of Richard Manning, and then only nineteen 
 30
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 years of age. She appears to have been an ex- 
 ceptionally sensitive and rather shy young 
 woman such as would be likely to attract the 
 attention of a chivalrous young mariner but 
 with fine traits of intellect and character. 
 
 The maternal ancestry of a distinguished man 
 is quite as important as the paternal, but in 
 the present instance it is much more difficult to 
 obtain information concerning it. The increas- 
 ing fame of Hawthorne has been like a calcium- 
 light, illuminating for the past fifty years every- 
 thing to which that name attaches, and leaving 
 the Manning family in a shadow so much the 
 deeper. All we can learn of them now is, that 
 they were descended from Richard Manning, of 
 Dartmouth in Devonshire, England, whose son 
 Thomas emigrated to Salem with his widowed 
 mother in 1679, but afterwards removed to 
 Ipswich, ten miles to the north, whence the 
 family has since extended itself far and wide, 
 the Reverend Jacob M. Manning, of the Old 
 South Church, the fearless champion of practical 
 anti-slaveryism, having been among them. It 
 appears that Thomas's grandson Richard started 
 in life as a blacksmith, which was no strange 
 thing in those primitive times; but, being a 
 thrifty and enterprising man, he lived to estab- 
 lish a line of stage-coaches between Salem and 
 Boston, and this continued in the possession of 
 his family until it was superseded by the Eastern 
 Railway. After this catastrophe, Robert Man- 
 ning, the son of Richard and brother of Mrs. 
 Nathaniel Hathorne, became noted as a fruit- 
 
 31
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 grower (a business in which Essex County people 
 have always taken an active interest), and was 
 one of the founders of the Massachusetts Horti- 
 cultural Society. The Mannings were always 
 respected in Salem, although they never came 
 to affluent circumstances, nor did they own a 
 house about the city common. Robert Manning, 
 Jr., was Secretary of the Horticultural Society 
 in Boston for a long term of years, a pleasant, 
 kindly man, with an aspect of general culture. 
 Hawthorne's maternal grandmother was Miriam 
 Lord, of Ipswich, and his paternal grandmother 
 was Rachel Phelps, of Salem. His father was 
 only thirty-three when he died at Surinam. 
 
 In regard to the family name, there are at 
 present Hawthornes and Hathornes in England, 
 and although the two names may have been 
 identical originally, they have long since become 
 as distinct as Smith and Smythe. I have dis- 
 covered only two instances in which the first 
 William Hathorne wrote his own name, and in the 
 various documents at the State House in which 
 it appears written by others, it is variously 
 spelled Hathorn, Hathorne, Hawthorn, Hay- 
 thorne, and Harthorne, from which we can only 
 conclude that the a was pronounced broadly. 
 It was not until the reign of Queen Anne, 
 when books first became cheap and popular, 
 that there was any decided spelling of either 
 proper or common names. Then the printers 
 took the matter into their own hands and made 
 witch -work enough of it. The word " sovereign, " 
 for instance, which is derived from the old 
 32
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 French souvrain, and which Milton spelled 
 "sovran, " they tortured into its present form, 
 much as the clerks of Massachusetts Colony 
 tortured the name of William Hathorne. This, 
 however, was spelled Hathorne oftener than in 
 other ways, and it was so spelled in the two 
 signatures above referred to, one of which was 
 attached as witness to a deed for the settlement 
 of the boundary between Lynn and Salem,* 
 and the other to a report of the commissioners 
 for the investigation of the French vessels 
 coming to Salem and Boston in 1651, the two 
 other commissioners being Samuel Bradstreet 
 and David Denison.f The name was undoubt- 
 edly Hathorne, and so it continued with one 
 or two slight variations during the eighteenth 
 century down to the time of Nathaniel Ha- 
 thorne, Jr., who entered and graduated at 
 Bowdoin College under that name, but who 
 soon afterward changed it to Hawthorne, for 
 reasons that have never been explained. 
 
 All cognomens would seem to have been 
 derived originally from some personal peculiarity, 
 although it is no longer possible to trace this 
 back to its source, which probably lies far away 
 in the Dark Ages, the formative period of 
 languages and of families. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, we meet with individuals whose peculiari- 
 ties suggest the origin of their names: a tall, 
 slender, long-necked man named Crane; or a 
 timid, retiring student named Leverett; or an 
 
 * Towne Genealogy, i. 40. 
 t Massachusetts Archives, x. 171. 
 3 33
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 over-confident, supercilious person called God- 
 kin. In the name of Hawthorne also we may 
 imagine a curious significance: "When the may 
 is on the thorn," says Tennyson. The English 
 country people call the flowering of the haw- 
 thorn "the may." It is a beautiful tree when 
 in full bloom. How sweet-scented and delicately 
 colored are its blossoms! But it seems to say 
 to us, " Do not come too close to me. " 
 
 34
 
 CHAPTER II 
 BOYHOOD OF HAWTHORNE : 1804-1821 
 
 SALEM treasures the memory of Hawthorne, 
 and preserves everything tangible relating to 
 him. The house in which he was born, No. 27 
 Union Street, is in much the same style and 
 probably of the same age as the Old Manse at 
 Concord, but somewhat smaller, with only a 
 single window on either side of the doorway five 
 windows in all on the front, one large chimney in 
 the centre, and the roof not exactly a gambrel, for 
 the true gambrel has a curve first inward and 
 then outward, but something like it. A modest, 
 cosy and rather picturesque dwelling, which if 
 placed on a green knoll with a few trees about it 
 might become a subject for a sketching class. 
 It did not belong to Hawthorne's father, after 
 all, but to the widow of the bold Daniel. It 
 was the cradle of genius, and is now a shrine 
 for many pilgrims. Long may it survive, so 
 that our grandchildren may gaze upon it. 
 
 Here Nathaniel Hawthorne first saw daylight 
 one hundred years ago * on the Fourth of July, as 
 if to make a protest against Chauvinistic patri- 
 otism ; here his mother sat at the window to 
 see her husband's bark sail out of the harbor 
 on his last voyage ; and here she watched day 
 after day for its return, only to bring a life-long 
 
 * 1804. 
 
 35
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 sorrow with it. The life of a sea-captain's wife 
 is always a half -widowhood, but Mrs. Hathorne 
 was left at twenty-eight with three small children, 
 including a daughter, Elizabeth, older than 
 Nathaniel, and another, Louisa, the youngest. 
 The shadow of a heavy misfortune had come 
 upon them, and from this shadow they never 
 wholly escaped. 
 
 Lowell criticised a letter which John Brown 
 wrote concerning his boyhood to Henry L. 
 Stearns, as the finest bit of autobiography of 
 the nineteenth century.* It is in fact almost 
 the only literature of the kind that we possess. 
 A frequent difficulty that parents find in dealing 
 with their children is, that they have wholly 
 forgotten the sensations and impressions of 
 their own childhood. The instructor cannot 
 place himself in the position of the pupil. A 
 naturalist will spend years with a microscope 
 studying the development of a plant from the 
 seed, but no one has ever applied a similar proc- 
 ess to the budding of genius or even of ordinary 
 intellect. We have the autobiography of one of 
 the greatest geniuses, written in the calm and 
 stillness of old age, when youthful memories come 
 back to us involuntarily; yet he barely lifts 
 the veil from his own childhood, and has much 
 more to say of external events and older people 
 than of himself and his young companions. 
 How valuable is the story of George Washington 
 and his hatchet, hackneyed as it has become! 
 What do we know of the boyhood of Franklin, 
 
 * North American Review, April, 1860. 
 36
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Webster, Seward and Longfellow? Nothing, 
 or next to nothing. 
 
 Goethe says that the admirable woman is she 
 who, when her husband dies, becomes a father 
 to his children; but in the case of Hawthorne's 
 mother, this did not happen to be necessary. 
 Her brother, Robert Manning, a thrifty and 
 fairly prosperous young man, immediately took 
 Mrs. Hathorne and her three children into his 
 house on Herbert Street, and made it essentially 
 a home for them afterward. To the fatherless boy 
 he was more than his own father, away from 
 home ten months of the year, ever could have 
 been; and though young Nathaniel must have 
 missed that tenderness of feeling which a man 
 can only entertain toward his own child, there 
 was no lack of kindness or consideration on 
 Robert Manning's part, to either the boy or 
 his sisters. 
 
 It was Mrs. Hathorne who chiefly suffered 
 from this change of domicile. She would seem 
 to have been always on good terms with her 
 brother's wife, and on the whole they formed a 
 remarkably harmonious family, at least we 
 hear nothing to the contrary, but she was no 
 longer mistress of her own household. She had 
 her daughters to instruct, and to train up in 
 domestic ways, and she could be helpful in 
 various matters, large and small ; but the mental 
 occupation which comes from the oversight 
 and direction of household affairs, and which 
 might have served to divert her mind from 
 sorrowful memories, was now gone from her. 
 37
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Her widowhood separated her from the outside 
 world and from all society, excepting a few de- 
 voted friends,* so that under these conditions it 
 is not surprising that her life became continually 
 more secluded and reserved. It is probable 
 that her temperament was very similar to her 
 son's; but the impression which has gone forth, 
 that she indulged her melancholy to an excess, 
 is by no means a just one. The circumstances 
 of her case should be taken into consideration. 
 
 Rebecca Manning says: 
 
 "I remember aunt Hawthorne as busy about 
 the house, attending to various matters. Her 
 cooking was excellent, and she was noted for a 
 certain kind of sauce, which nobody else knew 
 how to make. We always enjoyed going to 
 see her when we were children, for she took 
 great pains to please us and to give us nice 
 things to eat. Her daughter Elizabeth resem- 
 bled her in that respect. In old letters and 
 in the journal of another aunt, which has come 
 into our possession, we read of her going about 
 making visits, taking drives, and sometimes 
 going on a journey. In later years she was 
 not well, and I do not remember that she ever 
 came here, but her friends always received a 
 cordial welcome when they visited her. " 
 
 This refers to a late period of Madam Ha- 
 thorne's life, and if she absented herself from 
 the table, as Elizabeth Peabody states,! there 
 was good reason for it. 
 
 * Wide Awake, xxxiii. 502. 
 
 t Lathrop's "Study of Hawthorne."
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hawthorne himself has left no word concern- 
 ing his mother, of favorable or unfavorable 
 import, but it seems probable that he owed his 
 genius to her, if he can be said to have owed it 
 to any of his ancestors. In after life he affirmed 
 that his sister Elizabeth, who appears to have 
 been her mother over again, could have written 
 as well as he did, and although we have no pal- 
 pable evidence of this and the letter which she 
 wrote Elizabeth Peabody does not indicate it, 
 we are willing to take his word for it. With 
 the shyness and proud reserve which he inherited 
 from his mother, there also came that exquisite 
 refinement and feminine grace of style which 
 forms the chief charm of his writing. The same 
 refinement of feeling is noticeable in the letters 
 of other members of the Manning family. Where 
 his imagination came from, it would be useless 
 to speculate; but there is no good art without 
 delicacy. 
 
 Doctor Nathaniel Peabody lived near the 
 house on Herbert Street, and his daughter 
 Elizabeth (who afterward became a woman of 
 prodigious learning) soon made acquaintance 
 with the Hathorne children. She remembers 
 the boy Nathaniel jumping about his uncle's 
 yard, and this is the first picture that we have 
 of him. When we consider what a beautiful boy 
 he must have been, with his wavy brown hair, 
 large wistful eyes and vigorous figure, without 
 doubt he was a pleasure to look upon. We do not 
 hear of him again until November 10, 1813, 
 when he injured his foot in some unknown 
 39
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 manner while at play, and was made lame by it 
 more or less for the three years succeeding. 
 After being laid up for a month, he wrote this 
 pathetic little letter to his uncle, Robert Man- 
 ning, then in Maine, which I have punctuated 
 properly so that the excellence of its composition 
 may appeal more plainly to the reader. 
 
 "SALEM, Thursday, December, 1813. 
 "DEAR UNCLE: 
 
 " I hope you are well, and I hope Richard is too. My foot 
 is no better. Louisa has got so well that she has begun to 
 go to school, but she did not go this forenoon because it 
 snowed. Mania is going to send for Doctor Kitridge to- 
 day, when William Cross conies home at 12 o'clock, and 
 maybe he will do some good, for Doctor Barstow has not, 
 and I don't know as Doctor Kitridge will. It is about 4 
 weeks yesterday since I have been to school, and I don't 
 know but it will be 4 weeks longer before I go again. I have 
 been out of the office two or three times and have set down 
 on the step of the door, and once I hopped out into the 
 street. Yesterday I went out in the office and had 4 cakes. 
 Hannah carried me out once, but not then. Elizabeth and 
 Louisa send their love to you. I hope you will write to 
 me soon, but I have nothing more to write; so good-bye, 
 dear Uncle. 
 
 "Your affectionate Nephew, 
 
 "NATHANIEL HATHORNE."* 
 
 This is not so precocious as Mozart's musical 
 compositions at the same age, but how could 
 the boy Hawthorne have given a clearer ac- 
 count of himself and his situation at the time, 
 without one word of complaint? It is worth 
 noting also that his prediction in regard to Doctor 
 Kitridge proved to be correct and even more. 
 
 * Elizabeth Manning in Wide Awake, Nov. 1891. 
 40
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 It is evident that neither of his doctors treated 
 him in a physiological manner. Kitridge was 
 a water-cure physician, and his method of treat- 
 ment deserves to be recorded for its novelty. 
 He directed Nathaniel to project his naked foot 
 out of a sitting-room window, while he poured 
 cold water on it from the story above. This, 
 however, does not appear to have helped the 
 case, and the infirmity continued so long that 
 it was generally feared that his lameness would 
 be permanent. 
 
 Horatio Bridge considered this a fortunate 
 accident for Nathaniel, since it prevented him 
 from being spoiled by his female relatives, as 
 there is always danger that an only son with 
 two or more sisters will be spoiled. But it was 
 an advantage to the boy in a different manner 
 from this. He learned from it the lesson of suffer- 
 ing and endurance, which we all have to learn 
 sooner or later ; and it compelled him, perhaps 
 too young, to seek the comfort of life from in- 
 ternal sources. There were excellent books in 
 the house, Shakespeare and Milton, of course, 
 but also Pope's " Iliad," Thomson's "Seasons," 
 the ' ' Spectator, " " Pilgrim ' s Progress , ' ' and 
 the " Faerie Queene, " and the time had now come 
 when these would be serviceable to him. He 
 was not the only boy that has enjoyed Shake- 
 speare at the age of ten, but that he should have 
 found interest in Spenser's "Faerie Queene "is 
 somewhat exceptional. Even among professed 
 litterateurs there are few that read that long 
 allegory, and still fewer who enjoy it; and yet 
 41
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Miss Manning assures us that Hawthorne would 
 muse over it for hours. Its influence may be 
 perceptible in some of his shorter stories, but 
 "Pilgrim's Progress" evidently had an effect 
 upon him; and so had Scott's novels, as we 
 may judge from the first romance that he pub- 
 lished. 
 
 At the age of twelve years and seven months 
 he composed a short poem, so perfect in form 
 and mature in judgment that it is difficult to 
 believe that so young a person could have writ- 
 ten it. Not so poetic as it is philosophical, it 
 is valuable as indicating that the boy had al- 
 ready formed a moral axis for himself, a life 
 principle from which he never afterward deviated ; 
 and it is given herewith:* 
 
 " MODERATE VIEWS. 
 
 "With passions unruffled, untainted by pride, 
 
 By reason my life let me square; 
 The wants of my nature are cheaply supplied, 
 
 And the rest are but folly and care. 
 How vainly through infinite trouble and strife, 
 
 The many their labours employ, 
 Since all, that is truly delightful in life, 
 
 Is what all if they please may enjoy. 
 
 "NATHANIEL HATHORNE. 
 "SALEM, February 13, 1817." 
 
 He wrote this with the greatest nicety, framing 
 it in broad black lines, and ornamenting the 
 capitals in a manner that recalls the decoration 
 of John Hathorne's gravestone. He composed 
 
 * A facsimile of the original can be found in Wide Awake, 
 November, 1891. 
 
 42
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 a number of poems between his thirteenth and 
 seventeenth years, quite as good as those of 
 Longfellow at the same age ; but after he entered 
 Bowdoin College he dropped the practice al- 
 together and never resumed it, although one 
 would suppose that Longfellow's example 
 would have stimulated him to better efforts. 
 Neither does he appear to have tried his hand in 
 writing tales, as boys who have no thought of 
 literary distinction frequently do. During the 
 years of his lameness he sometimes invented 
 extemporaneous stories, which invariably com- 
 menced with a voyage to some foreign country, 
 from which his hero never returned. This shows 
 how continually his father's fate was in his 
 mind, although he said nothing of it. 
 
 Robert Manning's interest in the stage-com- 
 pany afforded the boy fine opportunities for 
 free rides, and he probably also frequented the 
 stables ; although neither as youth nor as man 
 did he take much interest in driving or riding. 
 He was more fond of playing upon the wharves, 
 a good healthy place, and watching the great 
 ships sailing forth to far-off lands, and returning 
 with their strange cargoes, enough to stimu- 
 late any boy's imagination, if he has it in him. 
 It is likely that if Nathaniel's father had lived, 
 he would also have followed a seafaring life, 
 and would never have become useful to the 
 world in the way that he did. 
 
 Somewhere about the close of the eighteenth 
 century, Richard Manning, the father of Mrs. 
 Hathorne, purchased a large tract of land in 
 
 43
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Cumberland County, Maine, between Lake 
 Sebago and the town of Casco; and in 1813 
 Robert Manning built a house near the lake, in 
 the township of Raymond, and his brother 
 Richard, who had become much of an invalid, 
 went to live there, partly for his health and partly 
 to keep an oversight on the property. In 1817 
 Mrs. Hathorne also went there, taking her 
 children with her, and remaining, with some in- 
 termissions, until 1822. Meanwhile the Mannings 
 sold some thousands of acres of land, although 
 not, as we may suppose, at very good prices, and 
 the name of Elizabeth Hathorne was repeatedly 
 attached to the deeds of conveyance. The house 
 that Robert built was the plainest sort of struc- 
 ture, of only two stories, and with no appearance 
 of having been painted; but the farmers in the 
 vicinity criticised it as "Manning's folly," 
 exactly why, does not appear clearly, unless 
 they foresaw what actually happened, that the 
 house could be neither sold nor rented after the 
 Mannings had left it. For many years, it served 
 as a meeting-house, one could not call it a 
 church, and now it has become a Hawthorne 
 museum, the town of Raymond very laudably 
 keeping it in repair. 
 
 Although none of the events in the early life 
 of Hawthorne ought to be considered positive 
 misfortunes, as they all contributed to make 
 him what he was, yet upon general principles it 
 is much to be regretted that he should have 
 passed the best years of his boyhood in this out- 
 of-the-way place. His good uncle supplied him 
 
 44
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 with a boat and a gun, and he enjoyed the small 
 shooting, fishing, sailing and skating that the 
 place afforded; but in later years he wrote to 
 Bridge, "It was at Sebago that I learned my 
 cursed habit of solitude," and this pursued him 
 through life like an evil genius, placing him con- 
 tinually at a disadvantage with his fellow-men. 
 It has been supposed that this mode of life 
 assisted in developing his individuality, but quite 
 as strong individualities have been developed in 
 the midst of large cities. "Speech is more re- 
 freshing than light." 
 
 When will parents learn wisdom in regard to 
 their children? A conscientious, tender-hearted 
 boy will be sent to a rough country school, to be 
 scoffed at and maltreated there, before he is 
 twelve years old; while another of a coarser 
 and harder nature will be kept at home, to be 
 petted and pampered until all the vigor and 
 manliness are sapped out of him. Parents who 
 prefer to live in a modest, humble manner, in 
 order that their children may have better ad- 
 vantages, deserve the highest commendation, 
 but in this respect good instruction is less im- 
 portant than favorable associations. From 
 fourteen to twenty-one is the formative period of 
 character, and the influences which may be 
 brought to bear on the growing mind are of the 
 highest importance. Lake Sebago served as an 
 excellent gymnasium for young Hawthorne, and 
 may have helped to develop his sense of the 
 beautiful, but he found few companions there, 
 and those not of the most suitable kind. He 
 
 45
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 was exceedingly fond of skating so much so 
 that when the ice was smooth he sometimes 
 remained on the lake far into the night. This 
 we can envy him, for skating is the poetry of 
 motion. 
 
 The captain of the "Hawthorne," which 
 plies back and forth across the lake in summer, 
 regularly points out to his passengers the house 
 where the Hathornes lived. It is easily seen 
 from the steamer, a severely plain, unpainted 
 building, in appearance much like the Manning 
 house on Herbert Street. Nearly in line with 
 it a great cliff-like rock juts out from the centre 
 of the lake, on which the Indians centuries ago 
 etched and painted great warlike figures, whose 
 significance is now known to no one. It is said 
 that Hawthorne frequently sailed or rowed to 
 Indian Rock, and to a sort of grotto there which 
 was large enough for his boat to enter. Both 
 the rock and the Manning house are now diffi- 
 cult of access. Longfellow wrote a pretty de- 
 scriptive poem of a voyage on Sebago, and it is 
 remarkable how he has made use of every 
 feature of the landscape, every incident of the 
 excursion, to fill his verses. The lake has much 
 the shape of an hour-glass, the northern and 
 southern portions being connected by a winding 
 strait, so crooked that it requires the constant 
 effort of the pilot to prevent the little steamer 
 from running aground. There used to be fine 
 fishing in it, large perch, bass, and a species 
 of fresh-water salmon often weighing from six 
 to eight pounds. 
 
 46
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Strangely enough, one of Hawthorne's ac- 
 quaintances on the shores of Sebago was a 
 mulatto boy named William Symmes, the son 
 of a Virginia slave, foisted by his father 
 upon a Maine sea-captain named Britton, who 
 lived in the half -wilderness around Raymond. 
 Symmes afterwards became a sailor, and con- 
 tinued in that vocation until the Civil War, 
 when he went to live in Alexandria, Va. In 
 1870 he published in the Portland Transcript 
 what pretended to be a series of extracts from 
 a diary which young Hawthorne had kept while 
 at Raymond, and which was found there, after 
 the departure of the Manning family, by a man 
 named Small, while moving a load of furniture 
 which had been sold to another party. Small 
 preserved it until 1864, and then made a present 
 of it to Symmes. 
 
 Doubts have been cast on the genuineness of 
 this diary, as was natural enough under the 
 circumstances; for the original manuscript was 
 never produced by Symmes, who died the fol- 
 lowing year, and no one knows what has become 
 of it. It may also be asked, why should Small 
 have disposed so readily of this manuscript to 
 Symmes after preserving it sedulously for more 
 than forty years? Why did he not return it to 
 its rightful owner; or, if he felt ashamed of his 
 original abstraction, why did not Symmes 
 restore it to the Hawthorne family after Haw- 
 thorne's death, when every newspaper in the 
 country was celebrating Hawthorne's genius? 
 It also might have occurred to one of them that
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 such property would have a marketable value, 
 and could be disposed of at a high price to some 
 collector of literary curiosities; but Symmes 
 did not even ask to be remunerated for the por- 
 tion that he contributed to the Portland Tran- 
 script. Neither did he harbor the slightest ill 
 feeling toward Hawthorne, whom he claimed 
 to have met several times in the course of his 
 wanderings, once at Salem, and again at 
 Liverpool, and was always treated by him 
 with exceptional kindness and civility. 
 
 The only answer that can be made to these 
 queries is, that men in Symmes 's position in 
 life do not act according to any method that 
 can be previously calculated. In a case like the 
 present, there could be no predicting it; and 
 it is possible that this mulatto valued the diary 
 above all price, as a souvenir of the one white 
 man who had ever been kind and good to him. 
 Who knows what a heart there may have been 
 in William Symmes? 
 
 The internal evidence of this diary is so 
 strongly in its favor as to be almost conclusive. 
 Lathrop, who made a special study of it, 
 says: 
 
 "The fabrication of the journal by a person 
 possessed of some literary skill and familiar 
 with the localities mentioned, at dates so long 
 ago as 1816 to 1819, might not be an impossible 
 feat, but it is an extremely improbable one." 
 
 To which it might be added, that it could be 
 only a Hawthorne that could accomplish such a 
 fabrication. Few things in literature are more
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 difficult than to make a boy talk like a boy, and 
 the tone of this Sebago journal is not only boyish, 
 but sweet and pleasant to the ear, such as we 
 might imagine the talk of the youthful Haw- 
 thorne. Not only this, but there is a gradated 
 improvement of intelligence in the course of it, 
 rather too much so for entire credibility. It 
 is quite possible that there is more of it than 
 Hawthorne ever wrote, but that does not pre- 
 vent us from having faith in the larger portion 
 of it. The purity of its diction, the nice adap- 
 tation of each word to its purpose, and the 
 accuracy of detail are much in its favor; be- 
 sides which, the personal reflections in it are 
 exactly like Hawthorne. The published portion 
 of the diary in Mr. Pickard's book makes about 
 fifty rather small pages, but no dates are given 
 except at the close, and that is August, 1818; 
 and as Hawthorne went to Sebago for the first 
 time the preceding year, we may presume that 
 this note-book represents a winter and summer 
 vacation, during which he would seem to have 
 enjoyed himself in a healthy boyish fashion. 
 We have only space for a few extracts from this 
 publication, which serve both to exemplify 
 Hawthorne's mode of life at Raymond and to 
 illustrate the preceding statement concerning 
 the book. 
 
 The first observation in the diary is quoted 
 by Lathrop, and has a decidedly youthful tone. 
 
 "Two kingbirds have built their nest between our house 
 and the mill-pond. The male is more courageous than 
 any creature that I know about. He seems to have taken 
 
 4 49
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 possession of the territory from the great pond to the small 
 one, and goes out to war with every fish-hawk that flies from 
 one to the other over his dominion. The fish-hawks must 
 be miserable cowards to be driven by such a speck of a 
 bird. I have not yet seen one turn to defend himself." 
 
 Kingbirds are the knights-errant of the 
 feathered tribes. They never attack another 
 bird unless it is three times their own size; but 
 when a few years older, the boy Hawthorne 
 would probably have noticed that the king- 
 birds' powers of flight are so superior that all 
 other birds are practically at their mercy. 
 This fixes the date of the entry in the early 
 summer of 1817, for kingbirds are not bellig- 
 erent except during the nesting season. Some- 
 what later in the year he writes: 
 
 "Went yesterday in a sail-boat on the Great Pond 
 with Mr. Peter White, of Windham. He sailed up here 
 from White's Bridge to see Captain Dingley, and invited 
 Joseph Dingley and Mr. Ring to take a boat-ride out to the 
 Dingley Islands and to the Images. He was also kind 
 enough to say that I might go, with my mother's consent, 
 which she gave after much coaxing. Since the loss of my 
 father, she dreads to have any one belonging to her go upon 
 the water. It is strange that this beautiful body of water is 
 called a ' pond. ' The geography tells of many in Scotland 
 and Ireland, not near so large, that are called 'Lakes.'" 
 
 Notice his objection to bad nomenclature, 
 and his school-boy argument against it. In his 
 account of this excursion he says further : 
 
 "After we got ashore, Mr. White allowed me to fire his 
 long gun at a mark. I did not hit the mark, and am not sure 
 that I saw it at the time the gun went off, but believe rather 
 that I was watching for the noise that I was about to make. 
 
 SO
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Mr. Ring said that with practice I could be a gunner, and 
 that now, with a very heavy charge, he thought I could kill 
 a horse at eight paces!" 
 
 Here or nowhere do we recognize the budding 
 of Hawthorne's genius. This clear introspec- 
 tive analysis is the foundation of all true mental 
 power, and Hawthorne might have become a 
 Platonic philosopher, if he had not preferred to 
 be a story-teller. 
 
 These sports came to an end in the autumn 
 when he was sent to study with the Reverend 
 Caleb Bradley, a somewhat eccentric graduate 
 of Harvard, who resided at Stroudwater, 
 Maine, and with whom he remained during the 
 winter.* He refers to this period of tuition in 
 the short story of " The Vision of the Fountain, " 
 and whether or no any such vision appeared to 
 him, we can fairly believe that the tale was 
 suggested by some pretty school-girl who made 
 an impression on him, only to disappear in a 
 tantalizing manner. It is to be presumed that 
 he returned to his mother at Raymond, for 
 Christmas ; and at that time he heard a story of 
 how an Otisfield man named Henry Turner had 
 killed three hibernating bears which he dis- 
 covered in a cave near Moose Pond, not a difficult 
 feat when one comes upon them in that torpid 
 condition. This would place the killing of the 
 bears at about the first of December, which 
 would be probable enough, and the fact itself 
 has been substantiated by Samuel Pickard. 
 
 * S. T. Pickard's " Hawthorne's First Diary." 
 51
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 The next succeeding entry relates to the 
 drowning of a boy while swimming, which 
 could only have happened the following June. 
 Mrs. Hathorne was greatly alarmed, and ob- 
 jected to Nathaniel's going in bathing with the 
 other boys. He did not like the restriction, 
 but writes that he shall obey his mother. 
 
 There is a ghost story in the diary, quite 
 original, and told with an air of excellent credi- 
 bility; and also a short anthropomorphic 
 romance concerning a badly treated horse, full 
 of genuine pathos and kindly sympathy, 
 more sympathetic, in fact, than Hawthorne's 
 later stories, in which he is sometimes almost 
 too reserved and unemotional: 
 
 " 'Good morning, Mr. Horse, how are you to-day?' 
 'Good morning, youngster,' said he, just as plain as a 
 horse can speak, and then said, 'I am almost dead, and 
 I wish I was quite. I am hungry, have had no breakfast 
 and stand here tied by the head while they are grinding the 
 corn, and until master drinks two or three glasses of rum at 
 the store, and then drag him and the meal up the Ben 
 Ham hill, and home, and am now so weak that I can hardly 
 stand. Oh, dear, I am in a bad way,' and the old creature 
 cried, I almost cried myself. " 
 
 The only difficulty in believing this diary 
 to be genuine is the question: If Hawthorne 
 could write with such perspicuity at fourteen, 
 why are there no evidences of it during his col- 
 lege years ? But it sometimes happens so. 
 
 We cannot refrain from quoting one more 
 extract from the last entry in the Sebago diary, 
 so beautifully tender and considerate as it is 
 52
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of his mother's position toward her only son. 
 He had been invited by a party of their neigh- 
 bors to go on an all-day excursion, and though 
 his mother grants his request to be allowed to join 
 them, he feels the reluctance with which she 
 does so and he writes: 
 
 "She said 'Yes, ' but I was almost sorry, knowing that my 
 day's pleasure would cost her one of anxiety. However, I 
 gathered up my hooks and lines, with some white salted 
 pork for bait, and with a fabulous number of biscuit, split 
 in the middle, the insides well buttered, then skilfully 
 put together again, and all stowed in sister's large work- 
 bag, and slung over my shoulder, I started, making a wager 
 with Enoch White, as we walked down to the boat, as to 
 which could catch the largest number of fish."* 
 
 This is the only entry that is dated (August, 
 1818), and as it was on this same occasion that 
 the black ducks were shot, it must have been on 
 one of the last days of August. We may pre- 
 sume that Nathaniel returned to his studies at 
 Stroudwater the following month, for we do 
 not hear of him again at Raymond or in Salem, 
 either until March 24, when he writes to his 
 uncle, Robert Manning, who has evidently just 
 returned from Raymond to Salem, and speaks of 
 expecting to go to Portland with a Mr. Linch 
 for the day. On May 16, 1819, he writes to his 
 uncle Robert again: 
 
 "The grass and trees are green, the fences finished and the 
 garden planted. Two of the goats are on the island and the 
 other kept for the milk. I have shot a partridge and a hen- 
 hawk and caught eighteen large trout [probably Sebago 
 salmon]. I am sorry that my uncle intends sending me to 
 school again, for my mother can hardly spare me. " 
 
 * Appendix A. 
 S3
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 From which it is easy to infer that he had 
 not attended school very regularly of late, and 
 Uncle Robert would seem to have concluded 
 that it would be better to have his fine nephew 
 where he could personally supervise his goings 
 and comings. Accordingly, on July 26 we find 
 Nathaniel attending school in Salem, a most 
 unusual season for it, and although his mother 
 remained at Raymond two years longer, he 
 was not permitted to return there again, except 
 possibly for short periods. 
 
 Emerson once pointed out to me on Sud- 
 bury Street, Boston, an extremely old man 
 with long white locks and the face of a devoted 
 scholar, advancing toward us with slow and 
 cautious steps. "That," said he, "is Doctor 
 Worcester, the lexicographer." Hawthorne's 
 early education remains much of a mystery. 
 In 1819 he complains in a letter to his mother 
 that he has to go to a cheap school, a good 
 indication that he did not intend to trust to 
 fortune for his future welfare; soon after this 
 we hear that dictionary Worcester is his chief 
 instructor. He could not have found a more 
 amiable or painstaking pedagogue; nor is it 
 likely that the fine qualities of his teacher were 
 ever better appreciated. Hawthorne himself 
 says nothing of this, for it was not his way to 
 express admiration for man or woman, but we 
 can believe that he felt the same affection for 
 the doctor that well-behaved boys commonly 
 do for their old masters. It was from Worcester 
 that he derived his excellent knowledge of 
 
 54
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Latin, the single study of which he was fond; 
 and it is his preference for words derived from 
 the Latin which gives grace and flexibility to 
 Hawthorne's style, as the force and severity 
 of Emerson's style come from his partiality 
 for Saxon words. During his last year at 
 school, Hawthorne took private lessons of a 
 Salem lawyer, Benjamin Oliver, and perhaps 
 studied with him altogether at the finish. 
 
 Hawthorne's life had been so irregular for 
 years that it is creditable to him that he 
 should have succeeded in entering college at 
 all. We hear of him at Sebago in winter and 
 at Salem in July. He writes to his Uncle Robert 
 to look out for the shot-gun which he left in a 
 closet at Sebago, and which has a rather heavy 
 charge of powder in it. He appears to have 
 found as little companionship in Salem as he 
 did in that wilderness, the natural effect of 
 such a life. He may have been acquainted 
 with half the boys in Salem, but he did not make 
 any warm friends among them. His sister 
 Louisa, who was a more vivacious person than 
 Elizabeth, was his chief companion and comfort. 
 Seated at the window with her on summer even- 
 ings, he elaborated the plan of an imaginary 
 society, a club of two, called the "Pin Society," 
 to which all fees, assessments and fines were 
 paid in pins, then made by hand and much 
 more expensive than now. He constituted 
 himself its secretary, and wrote imaginary 
 reports of its proceedings, in which Louisa is 
 frequently fined for absence from meetings. 
 
 55
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 We do not hear of their going to parties or dances 
 with other children. 
 
 In August, 1820, he started an imaginary 
 newspaper called the Spectator, which he wrote 
 himself with some help from Louisa, and of 
 which there was only one copy of each number. 
 He continued this through five successive issues, 
 and we trace in its pages the commencement of 
 Hawthorne's peculiar humor, too quiet and 
 gentle to make us laugh, but with a penetrating 
 tinge of pathos. Take for instance the following: 
 
 "There is no situation in life more irksome than that 
 of an editor who is obliged to find amusement for his 
 Readers, from a head which is too often (as is the present 
 predicament with our own) filled with emptiness. Since 
 commencing this paper, we have received no communica- 
 tion of any kind, so that the whole weight of the business 
 devolves upon our own shoulders, a load far too great for 
 them to bear. We hope the Public will reflect on these 
 grievances. ". 
 
 This is true fiction, and Nathaniel was not 
 the first or the last editor to whom the state- 
 ment has applied. His difficulties are imagi- 
 nary, but he realizes what they might be in 
 reality. 
 
 In another number he says: 
 
 "We know of no news, either domestic or foreign, and we 
 hope our readers will excuse our not inserting any. The 
 law which prohibits paying debts when a person has no 
 money will apply in this case." 
 
 Then he makes this quiet hit against the 
 56
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 people of Maine for having separated themselves 
 and their territory from Massachusetts: 
 
 "By a gentleman in the state of Maine, we learn that a 
 famine is seriously apprehended owing to the want of rain. 
 Potatoes could not be procured in some places. When 
 children break their leading strings, and run away from their 
 Parent, (as Maine has done) they may expect sometimes to 
 suffer hunger."* 
 
 Of his religious instruction we hear nothing; 
 but church-going in New England during the 
 first forty years of the nineteenth century was 
 wellnigh universal, and it makes little difference 
 now to which of the various forms of Calvinistic 
 worship the Manning family subscribed. That 
 young Hawthorne was seriously impressed in 
 this way is evident from the following ode, 
 which he may have composed as early as his 
 fifteenth year: 
 
 "Oh, I have roamed in rapture wild 
 Where the majestic rocks are piled 
 In lonely, stern, magnificence around 
 The troubled ocean's steadfast bound; 
 And I have seen the storms arise 
 And darkness veil from mortal eyes 
 The Heavens that shine so fair and bright, 
 And all was solemn, silent night. 
 Then I have seen the storm disperse, 
 And Mercy hush the whirlwind fierce, 
 And all my soul in transport owned 
 There is a God, in Heaven enthroned." 
 
 There is more of a rhetorical flourish than of 
 serious religious feeling in this; but genuine 
 piety is hardly to be expected, and not greatly 
 
 *Wide Awake, xxxiii. 512. 
 57
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 to be desired, in a boy of that age. It represents 
 the desire to be religious, and to express some- 
 thing, he knows not what. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne had already decided 
 on his vocation in life before he entered Bowdoin 
 College, a decision which he afterwards ad- 
 hered to with inflexible determination, in spite 
 of the most discouraging obstacles. In a mem- 
 orable letter to his mother, written March 13, 
 1821, he says: 
 
 " I am quite reconciled to going to college, 
 since I am to spend my vacations with you. 
 Yet four years of the best part of my life is a 
 great deal to throw away. I have not yet con- 
 cluded what profession I shall have. The being 
 a minister is of course out of the question. I 
 shall not think that even you could desire me 
 to choose so dull a way of life. Oh, no, mother, 
 I was not born to vegetate forever in one place, 
 and to live and die as tranquil as a puddle 
 of water. As to lawyers, there are so many 
 of them already that one-half of them (upon 
 a moderate calculation) are in a state of actual 
 starvation. A physician, then, seems to be 
 1 Hobson's choice ' ; but yet I should not like 
 to live by the diseases and infirmities of my 
 fellow-creatures. And it would weigh very 
 hardly on my conscience, in the course of my 
 practice, if I should chance to send any un- 
 lucky patient 'ad infernum,' which, being 
 interpreted, is 'to the realms below.' Oh 
 that I was rich enough to live without profes- 
 sion! What do you think of my becoming an 
 58
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 author, and relying for support upon my pen? 
 Indeed, I think the illegibility of my hand is 
 very author-like." * 
 
 Such were the Ides of March for Hawthorne. 
 It was no boyish ambition for public distinction, 
 nor a vain grasping at the laurel wreath, but a 
 calmly considered and clear-sighted judgment. 
 
 * Conway, 24.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 BOWDOIN COLLEGE: 1821-1825. 
 
 THE life of man is not like a game of chess, in 
 which the two players start upon equal terms and 
 can deliberate sufficiently over every move; 
 but more like whist, in which the cards we hold 
 represent our fortunes at the beginning, but the 
 result of the game depends also on the skill 
 with which we play it. Life also resembles 
 whist in this, that we are obliged to follow suit 
 in a general way to those who happen to have 
 the lead. 
 
 Why Hawthorne should have entered Bowdoin 
 College instead of Harvard has not been ex- 
 plained, nor is it easily explained. The stand- 
 ard of scholarship maintained at Harvard 
 and Yale has always been higher than that at 
 what Doctor Holmes designated as the "fresh- 
 water colleges," and this may have proved an 
 unfavorable difference to the mind of a young 
 man who was not greatly inclined to his studies ; 
 but Harvard College is only eighteen miles from 
 Salem, and he could have returned to his home 
 once a week if he had chosen to do so, and this 
 is a decided moral and social advantage to a 
 young man in those risky years. If Hawthorne 
 had entered Harvard in the next class to Em- 
 erson, he could not well have escaped the latter's 
 attention, and would have come in contact 
 60
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 with other vigorous and stimulating minds; 
 but it is of little use to speculate on what might 
 have been. 
 
 Boys are encouraged to study for college by 
 accounts of the rare enjoyment of university 
 life, but they commonly find the first term of 
 Freshman year both dismal and discouraging. 
 Their class is a medley of strangers, their studies 
 are a dry routine, and if they are not hazed by 
 the Sophomores, they are at least treated by 
 them with haughtiness and contempt. It is 
 still summer when they arrive, but the leaves 
 soon fall from the trees, and their spirits fall 
 with them. 
 
 Hawthorne may have felt this more acutely 
 than any other member of his class, and in 
 addition to the prevailing sense of discomfort 
 he was seized early in November with that dis- 
 gusting malady, the measles, which boys usually 
 go through with before they are old enough to 
 realize how disagreeable it is. It appears to 
 have been a light attack, however, and in three 
 weeks he was able to attend recitations again. 
 He made no complaint of it, only writing to 
 his uncle for ten dollars with which to pay the 
 doctor. He likes his chum, Mason, of Ports- 
 mouth, and does not find his studies so arduous 
 as at Salem before entering. Neither are the 
 college laws so strict as he anticipated. 
 
 In the following May he received the present 
 of his first watch, presumably from Uncle Robert, 
 and he writes to his mother, who is still at 
 Sebago, that he is mightily pleased with it, and 
 
 61
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 that it enables him "to cut a great dash" at 
 college. His letters to his relative* ate not 
 but they frff***** a healthful and con- 
 
 We win now consider some of the distin- 
 guished personages who were Hawthorne's 
 friends and associates during these four years 
 of his apprenticeship to actual fife; and there 
 were fare characters among them, 
 
 In the same coach in which Hawthorne left 
 Portland for Brunswick, in the summer of 1821, 
 were Ftanldin Pierce and Jonathan Oifley,* 
 Two men seated together in a modem 
 railway-carriage will often become better ac- 
 quainted in three hours than they might as 
 next-door neighbor* in three years; and this 
 was still more likely to happen in the old days 
 of coach journeys, when the very tedium of the 
 occasion served as an inducement to frank and 
 friendly conversation. Pierce was the right 
 man to bring Hawthorne out of his hard shell of 
 Sehago seclusion. He had already been one 
 year at Bowdoin, and at that time there was not 
 the same caste feeling between Sophomores and 
 Freshmen or at least very little of it that 
 has since arisen in American colleges. He was 
 amiable and kindly, and possessed the rare 
 gift of personal magnetism. Nature sometimes 
 endows men and women with this quality in 
 lieu of all otter advantages, and such wouM 
 seem to have been the case with Franldtn Pierce, 
 He was not much above the average in intellect, 
 
 Man* oi Hftwtbonw, t 
 62
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 and* as Hawthorne afterward confessed. 
 
 Senator at tifc age of tfairtyve *nd Presided 
 fifteen years later. Tbe best we caoi say of him 
 is> that he was ahmys Hawthorne s friend. 
 
 y-;- : v ^: :.r. ;;-.-.: : -;-. -- 'v 
 :..." : ' ;"; ? Vvi:~~" .1 : v~/t^c;." s^ 
 ha oaqr have leqonred the fetter. 
 have been some fine qoafity in the mam 
 
 < *;: v\i<;/. ."'<v.\\ /.-.". . '" > /.::" ,v\: 
 
 .1 . .----,. - -. - --;-- -- : -; - ; -- - --^^ 'V .V 
 
 Jonathan CiDey was an abfer man than Pierce^ 
 
 .ir-j. -i :v:.l -'--" ----' --' >~ .-::--:--,- 
 personally. He always remained Hawthocne^s 
 friend, but tie latter awKt^e erf him and na^y 
 heard tram him after tiiey had grarf^ted 
 The one fetter of his whkh has been pdbfefcwi 
 gives hft impression of an impotsive, mi^h- 
 and-tambJe sort ol person* always mrity to 
 take a hand m whatever might turn isqx 
 Oft the same day,. Horatio Budge* who K\"x\i 
 
 ..' .VMC-->"-" '-":'> .\ ",; /,/w * - '. .\> x\\v 
 
 River to Brunswick. Hawthorne did not make 
 his aff|iMiiirt>nni until some weeks later* but 
 he proved to be the best friend of them aH 
 and Hawthorne's most constant companion 
 i'.v' tv"; % .r \\\\rs t.'w
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Pierce, Cilley and Bridge were all born politicians, 
 and it was this class of men with whom it would 
 seem that Hawthorne naturally assimilated. 
 
 On the same day, or the one previous, another 
 boy set out from Portland for Brunswick, only 
 fourteen years old, named Henry W. Long- 
 fellow, a name that is now known to thousands 
 who never heard of Franklin Pierce. Would it 
 have made a difference in the warp and woof 
 of Hawthorne's life, if he had happened to ride 
 that day in the same coach with Longfellow? 
 Who can tell? Was there any one in the breadth 
 of the land with whom he might have felt an 
 equal sympathy, with whom he could have 
 matured a more enduring fellowship? It might 
 have been a friendship like that of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, or, better still, like that of Goethe 
 and Schiller, but it was not written in the 
 book of Fate. Longfellow also had tried his 
 hand on the Sebago region, and was fond of the 
 woods and of a gun; but he was too precocious 
 to adapt himself easily to persons of his own 
 age, or even somewhat older. He had no sooner 
 arrived at Bowdoin than he became the asso- 
 ciate and favorite of the professors. In this 
 way he missed altogether the storm-and-stress 
 period of youthful life, which is a useful ex- 
 perience of its kind; and if we notice in his 
 poetry a certain lack, the absence of a close 
 contact with reality, as if he looked at his 
 subject through a glass casement, this may 
 be assigned as the reason for it. 
 
 During the four years they went back and 
 64
 
 TMAN JOHNSON
 
 4
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 forth to their instruction together, Hawthorne 
 and Longfellow never became cordially ac- 
 quainted. They also belonged to rival so- 
 cieties. There were only two principal 
 societies at Bowdoin, which continued through 
 the college course the Peucinian and the 
 Athenasan, and the difference between them 
 might be described by the words "citified" and 
 "countrified," without taking either of those 
 terms in an objectionable sense. Pierce was 
 already a leading character in the Athenaean, 
 and was soon followed by Cilley, Bridge and 
 Hawthorne. The Peucinian suffered fro- ^e 
 disadvantage of having members of the college 
 faculty on its active list, and this must have 
 given a rather constrained and academic char- 
 acter to its meetings. There was much more 
 of the true college spirit and classmate feeling 
 in the Athenasan. 
 
 Horatio Bridge is our single authority in 
 regard to Bowdoin College at this time, and 
 his off-hand sketches of Hawthorne, Pierce and 
 Longfellow are invaluable. Never has such a 
 group of distinguished young men been gathered 
 together at an American college. He says of 
 Hawthorne : 
 
 "Hawthorne was a slender lad, having a massive head, 
 with dark, brilliant, and most expressive eyes, heavy 
 eyebrows, and a profusion of dark hair. For his appear- 
 ance at that time the inquirers must rely wholly upon the 
 testimony of friends; for, I think, no portrait of him as a 
 lad is extant. On one occasion, in our senior years, the 
 class wished to have their profiles cut in silhouette by a 
 wandering artist of the scissors, and interchanged by all 
 
 5 65
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the thirty-eight. Hawthorne disapproved the proposed 
 plan, and steadily refused to go into the Class Golgotha, 
 as he styled the dismal collection. I joined him in this 
 freak, and so our places were left vacant. I now regret the 
 whim, since even a moderately correct outline of his 
 features as a youth would, at this day, be interesting. 
 
 "Hawthorne's figure was somewhat singular, owing to 
 his carrying his head a little on one side; but his walk was 
 square and firm, and his manner self-respecting and re- 
 served. A fashionable boy of the present day might have 
 seen something to amuse him in the new student's ap- 
 pearance; but had he indicated this he would have rued 
 it, for Hawthorne's clear appreciation of the social pro- 
 prieties and his great physical courage would have made it 
 as unsafe to treat him with discourtesy then as at any 
 later time. 
 
 "Though quiet and most amiable, he had great pluck 
 and determination. I remember that in one of our con- 
 vivial meetings we had the laugh upon him for some cause, 
 an occurrence so rare that the bantering was carried too 
 far. After bearing it awhile, Hawthorne singled out the 
 one among us who had the reputation of being the best 
 pugilist, and in a few words quietly told him that he would 
 not permit the rallying to go farther. His bearing was so 
 resolute, and there was so much of danger in his eye, that 
 no one afterward alluded to the offensive subject in his 
 presence."* 
 
 Horatio Bridge is a veracious witness, but we 
 have to consider that he was nearly ninety 
 years of age at the time his memoirs were 
 given to the public. It is difficult to imagine 
 Hawthorne as a slender youth, for his whole 
 figure was in keeping with the structure of his 
 head. It is more likely that he had a spare 
 figure. Persons of a lively imagination have 
 always been apt to hold their heads on one 
 
 * Horatio Bridge, 5. 
 66
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 side, but not commonly while they are walking. 
 It is for this reason that phrenologists have 
 supposed that the organ of ideality is located 
 on the side of the head, if there really is any 
 such organ. 
 
 Bridge says of Longfellow precisely what one 
 might expect: 
 
 "He had decided personal beauty and most attractive 
 manners. He was frank, courteous, and affable, while 
 morally he was proof against the temptations that beset 
 lads on first leaving the salutary restraints of home. He was 
 diligent, conscientious, and most attentive to all his college 
 duties, whether in the recitation-room, the lecture-hall, 
 or the chapel. The word 'student' best expresses his 
 literary habit, and in his intercourse with all he was con- 
 spicuously the gentleman." 
 
 In addition to those already mentioned, 
 James W. Bradbury of Portland, afterwards 
 United States Senator, and the Reverend Dr. 
 George B. Cheever, the vigorous anti-slavery 
 preacher, were members of this class. Three 
 others, Cilley, Benson and Sawtelle, were after- 
 ward members of the United States House of 
 Representatives. Surely there must have been 
 quite a fermentation of youthful intellect at 
 Bowdoin between 1821 and 1825. 
 
 Franklin Pierce was so deeply interested in 
 military affairs that it was a pity he should 
 not have had a West Point cadetship. He was 
 captain of the college militia company, in which 
 Hawthorne and Bridge drilled and marched; 
 a healthy and profitable exercise, and better 
 than a gymnasium, if rather monotonous. Pierce 
 
 67
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 was the popular hero and magnus Apollo of his 
 class, as distinguished foot-ball players are now; 
 but just at this time he was neglecting his studies 
 so badly that at the close of his second year he 
 found himself at the very foot of the rank list. 
 The fact became known through the college, 
 and Pierce was so chagrined that he concluded 
 to withdraw from Bowdoin altogether, and it 
 was only by the urgent persuasion of his friends 
 that he was induced to continue his course. " If 
 I remain, however," he said, "you will witness 
 a change in me." For months together he 
 burned midnight oil in order to recover lost 
 ground. During his last two years at college, 
 he only missed two recitations, both for suffi- 
 cient reasons. His conduct was unexception- 
 able, he incurred no deductions, and finally 
 graduated third in his class. It is an uncommon 
 character that can play fast-and-loose with 
 itself in this manner. The boy Franklin had 
 departed, and Pierce the man had taken his 
 place.* Horatio Bridge gives a rather more 
 idealized portrait of him than he does of Haw- 
 thorne. He says: 
 
 "In person Pierce was slender, of medium height, with 
 fair complexion and light hair, erect, with a military bear- 
 ing, active, and always bright and cheerful. In character 
 he was impulsive, not rash; generous, not lavish; chivalric, 
 courteous, manly, and warm-hearted, and he was one of 
 the most popular students in the whole college. " 
 
 The instruction in American colleges during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century was 
 
 * Professor Packard's "History of Bowdoin College."
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 excellent for Greek, Latin and mathematics, 
 always the groundwork of a good education, 
 but the modern languages were indifferently 
 taught by French and German exiles, and other 
 subjects were treated still more indifferently. 
 The two noble studies of history and philosophy 
 were presented to the young aspiring soul in 
 narrow, prejudiced text-books, which have long 
 since been consigned to that bourn from which 
 no literary work ever returns. As already 
 stated, Hawthorne's best study was Latin, and 
 in that he acquired good proficiency; but he 
 was slow in mathematics, as artistic minds 
 usually are, and in his other studies he only 
 exerted himself sufficiently to pass his exami- 
 nations in a creditable manner. We may pre- 
 sume that he took the juice and left the rind; 
 which was the sensible thing to do. As might 
 be expected, his themes and forensics were 
 beautifully written, although the arguments 
 in them were not always logical; but it is sig- 
 nificant that he never could be prevailed upon 
 to make a declamation. There have been sensi- 
 tive men, like Sumner and George W. Curtis, 
 who were not at all afraid of the platform, but they 
 were not, like Hawthorne, bashful men. The 
 college faculty would seem to have realized 
 the true difficulty in his case, and treated him 
 in a kindly and lenient manner. No doubt he 
 suffered enough in his own mind on account of 
 this deficiency, and it may have occurred to 
 him what difficulties he might have to encounter 
 in after-life by reason of it. If a student at col- 
 69
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 lege cannot bring himself to make a declamation, 
 how can the mature man face an audience in a 
 lecture-room, command a ship, or administer 
 any important office? Such thoughts must 
 have caused Hawthorne no slight anxiety, 
 at that sensitive age. 
 
 The out-door sports of the students did not 
 attract Hawthorne greatly. He was a fast 
 runner and a good leaper, but seemed to dislike 
 violent exercise. He much preferred walking 
 in the woods with a single companion, or by the 
 banks of the great river on which Brunswick 
 is situated. There were fine trout-brooks in the 
 neighborhood, and formerly the woods of Maine 
 were traversed by vast flocks of passenger 
 pigeons, which with the large gray squirrels 
 afforded excellent shooting. How skilful Haw- 
 thorne became with his fowling-piece we have 
 not been informed, but it is evident from pas- 
 sages in "Fanshawe" that he learned something 
 of trout-fishing; and on the whole he enjoyed 
 advantages at Bowdoin which the present 
 student at Harvard or Oxford might well envy 
 him. The fish we catch in the streams and lakes 
 of Maine only represent a portion of our enjoy- 
 ment there. Horatio Bridge says: 
 
 "There was one favorite spot in a little ravine, where a 
 copious spring of clear, cold water gushed out from the 
 sandy bank, and joined the larger stream. This was the 
 Paradise Spring, which deserves much more than its 
 present celebrity for the absolute purity of its waters. Of 
 late years the brook has been better known as a favorite 
 haunt of the great romance writer, and it is now often 
 called the Hawthorne Brook. 
 70
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 ' ' Another locality, above the bridge, afforded an occasional 
 stroll through the fields and by the river. There, in spring, 
 we used to linger for hours to watch the giant pine-logs (for 
 there were giants in those days) from the far-off forests, 
 floating by hundreds in the stream until they came to the 
 falls; then, balancing for a moment on the brink, they 
 plunged into the foamy pool below." 
 
 At the lower end of the town there was an 
 old weather-beaten cot, where the railroad track 
 now runs, inhabited by a lone woman nearly 
 as old and time-worn as the dwelling itself. 
 She pretended to be a fortune-teller, and to her 
 Hawthorne and Bridge sometimes had recourse, 
 to lift the veil of their future prospects; which 
 she always succeeded in doing to their good 
 entertainment. The old crone knew her business 
 well, especially the art of giving sufficient variety 
 of detail to the same old story. For a nine- 
 pence she would predict a beautiful blond wife 
 for Hawthorne, and an equally handsome dark- 
 complexioned one for Bridge. Riches were of 
 course thrown in by the handful; and Bridge 
 remarks that although these never came to pass 
 they both happened to be blessed with excellent 
 wives. It is not surprising that the handsome 
 Hawthorne and his tall, elegant-looking com- 
 panion should have stimulated the old woman's 
 imagination in a favorable manner. The small 
 coin they gave her may have been the least 
 happiness that their visits brought into her life. 
 
 Close by the college grounds there was a 
 miserable little inn, which went by the name of 
 Ward's Tavern, and thither the more uproar- 
 ious class of students consorted at intervals
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 for the purpose of keeping care at a distance, and 
 singing, "Landlord, fill your flowing bowls." 
 Strange to say, the reserved, thoughtful Haw- 
 thorne was often to be found among them. It does 
 not seem quite consistent with the gravity of 
 his customary demeanor, but youth has its 
 period of reckless ebullition. Punch-bowl 
 societies exist in all our colleges, and many 
 who disapprove of them join them for the sake 
 of popularity. Hawthorne may have been as 
 grave and well-behaved on these occasions as 
 he was customarily. We have Bridge's word 
 for this; and the matter would hardly be worth 
 mentioning if it had not led to more serious 
 proceedings. May 29, 1822, President Allen 
 wrote to Mrs. Hathorne at Salem that her son 
 had been fined fifty cents for gaming at cards.* 
 Certainly this was not very severe treatment; 
 and if the Bowdoin faculty, being on the spot, 
 concluded that young Hawthorne had only 
 injured his moral nature fifty cents' worth, I 
 think we shall do well to agree with their decision. 
 At the same time Nathaniel wrote his mother 
 the following manly letter : 
 
 "BRUNSWICK, May 3oth, 1822. 
 
 "Mv DEAR MOTHER: I hope you have safely arrived in 
 Salem. I have nothing particular to inform you of, except 
 that all the card-players in college have been found out, and 
 my unfortunate self among the number. One has been dis- 
 missed from college, two suspended, and the rest, with my- 
 
 * In 1864 a Harvard student was fined three dollars for 
 writing on the woodwork with a lead-pencil erased with 
 a sponge. 
 
 72
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 self, have been fined fifty cents each. I believe the 
 President intends to write to the friends of all the de- 
 linquents. Should that be the case, you must show the 
 letter to nobody. If I am again detected, I shall have the 
 honor of being suspended. When the President asked what 
 we played for, I thought it proper to inform him it was fifty 
 cents, although it happened to be a quart of wine; but if I 
 had told him of that, he would probably have fined me for 
 having a blow. There was no untruth in the case, as the 
 wine cost fifty cents. I have not played at all this term. I 
 have not drank any kind of spirits or wine this term, and 
 shall not till the last week. " * 
 
 The clemency with which the college authori- 
 ties treated Bridge and Hawthorne is a plain 
 indication of the confidence which they felt in 
 them, and speaks more highly for their respec- 
 tive characters than if they had been patterns 
 of good behavior. Some of the others were not 
 so fortunate. One young man, whose name is 
 properly withheld from us, was expelled from 
 the institution. He was supposed to have been 
 the ringleader in this dubious business, but 
 Hawthorne manfully resented the supposition 
 that any one could have influenced him, or did 
 influence him, in this matter. It is more likely 
 that he was influenced by the spirit of investi- 
 gation, and wished to know what the sensation 
 was like from personal experience. 
 
 "Letters home" from college are not com- 
 monly interesting to the general public, and 
 those which Hawthorne wrote to his mother 
 and sisters do not differ essentially from such as 
 other young men write under similar conditions. 
 
 * Horatio Bridge, 118. 
 73
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 At the age when it is so difficult to decide 
 whether we have become men or are still boys, 
 all our actions partake of a similar uncertainty, 
 and the result of what we do and say is likely 
 to be a rather confused impression. Though 
 college students appear different enough to one 
 another, they all seem alike to the outside world. 
 University towns always contain more or 
 less cultivated society, and young Hawthorne 
 might have been welcome to the best of it if 
 he had felt so inclined ; but he was as shy of the 
 fair sex as Goldsmith's bashful lover. M. D. 
 Conway, who knew him, doubts if he ever be- 
 came well acquainted with a young lady until 
 his engagement to Miss Peabody. Considering 
 this, it seems as if Jonathan Cilley made rather 
 a hazardous wager with Hawthorne, before 
 leaving Bowdoin, a wager of a cask of Madeira, 
 that Hawthorne would become a married man 
 within the next twelve years. Papers to that 
 effect were duly signed by the respective parties, 
 sealed, and delivered for safe-keeping to Horatio 
 Bridge, who preserved them faithfully until 
 the appointed time arrived. Under ordinary 
 conditions the chances of this bet were in Cilley's 
 favor, for in those primitive days it was 
 much easier for educated young men to ob- 
 tain a start in life than it is at present, and 
 early marriages were in consequence much 
 more common.* 
 
 * Horatio Bridge, 47. The contract was dated November 
 14, 1824. 
 
 74
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 The year 1824 was a serious one in American 
 politics. The Republican-Democratic party, 
 having become omnipotent, broke to pieces of 
 its own weight. The eastern interest nominated 
 John Quincy Adams for the Presidency; the 
 western interest nominated Henry Clay; and 
 the frontier interest nominated Andrew Jackson. 
 Unfortunately the frontier interest included all 
 the unsettled and continually shifting elements 
 in the country, so that Jackson had nearly as 
 strong a support in the East as in the West. 
 Bridge says, "We were all enthusiastic sup- 
 porters of old Hickory." It was evidently 
 Pierce who led them into this, and although it 
 proved in a material sense for Hawthorne's 
 benefit, it separated him permanently from the 
 class to which he properly belonged the en- 
 lightened men of culture of his time ; and Cilley's 
 tragical fate can be directly traced to it. 
 The Jackson movement was in its essence 
 a revolt against civility, and it seems as if 
 Hawthorne and Bridge might have recognized 
 this. 
 
 Hawthorne was well liked in his class in spite 
 of his reserved manners, but he held no class 
 offices that we hear of, except a place on a com- 
 mittee of the Athenasan Society with Franklin 
 Pierce. Class days and class suppers, so prolific 
 of small honors, were not introduced at Bowdoin 
 until some years later. He graduated eigh- 
 teenth in a class of thirty-eight, but this was not 
 sufficient to give him a part in the commence- 
 
 75
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 ment exercises.* Accordingly Hawthorne, 
 Bridge, and others who were in a like predic- 
 ament, organized a mock Commencement cele- 
 bration at Ward's Tavern, where they elected 
 officers of a comical sort, such as boatswain 
 and sea-cook, and concluded their celebration 
 in a manner suitable to the occasion. 
 
 Hawthorne was commonly known among his 
 classmates, as " Hath, " and his friends addressed 
 him in this manner long after he had graduated. 
 His degree was made out in the name of Na- 
 thaniel Hathorne, above which he subsequently 
 wrote "Hawthorne," in bold letters. 
 
 The question may well be raised here, how 
 it happened that America produced so many 
 men of remarkable intellect with such slight 
 opportunities for education in former times, 
 while our greatly improved universities have 
 not graduated an orator like Webster, a poet 
 like Longfellow, or a prose-writer equal to 
 Hawthorne during the past forty years. There 
 have been few enough who have risen above 
 mediocrity. 
 
 It is the same, more or less, all over the 
 civilized world. We have entered into a 
 mechanical age, which is natural enough con- 
 sidering the rapid advances of science and the 
 numerous mechanical inventions, but which 
 
 * The President informed him that his rank in the class 
 would have entitled him to a part if it had not been for his 
 neglect of declamations; and Hawthorne wrote to his 
 mother that he was perfectly satisfied with this, for it 
 saved him the mortification of appearing in public. 
 
 76
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 is decidedly unfavorable to the development 
 of art and literature. Everything now goes by 
 machinery, from Harvard University to Ohio 
 politics and the gigantic United States Steel 
 Company; and every man has to find his place 
 in some machine or other, or he is thrown out 
 of line. Individual effort, as well as independence 
 of thought and action, is everywhere frowned 
 upon; but without freedom of thought and 
 action there can be no great individualities, 
 which is the same as saying that there can be 
 no poets like Longfellow, or writers like Haw- 
 thorne and Emerson. Spontaneity is the life 
 of the true artist, and in a mechanical civiliza- 
 tion there can be neither spontaneity nor the 
 poetic material which is essential to artistic 
 work of a high order. There can be no great 
 orators, for masses of men are no longer influ- 
 enced by oratory, but by newspapers. Genius 
 is like a plant of slow growth, which requires 
 sunshine and Mother Earth to nourish it, not 
 chemicals and electric lights. 
 
 77
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 LITTLE MISERY: 1825-1835 
 
 DURING the War of the American Revolution, 
 the officers of the French fleet, which was sta- 
 tioned at Newport, invented a game of cards, 
 called "Boston," of which one peculiarity was, 
 that under certain conditions, whoever held 
 the lowest hand would win the count. This was 
 called "Little Misery, "and this was the kind of 
 hand which Nathaniel Hawthorne had to play 
 for fifteen years after leaving Bowdoin College. 
 Only his indomitable will could have carried 
 him through it. 
 
 A college graduate who lacks the means to 
 study a profession, and who has no influential 
 relative to make a place for him in the world, 
 finds himself in a most discouraging position. 
 The only thing that his education has fitted 
 him to do is, to teach school, and he may not 
 be adapted to this, on account of some personal 
 peculiarity. There was, and I suppose is still, 
 a prejudice among mercantile men against 
 college graduates, as a class of proud, indolent, 
 neglectful persons, very difficult to instruct. Un- 
 doubtedly there are many such, but the innocent 
 have to suffer with the guilty. It is natural 
 that a man who has not had a liberal education 
 should object to employing a subordinate who 
 knows Latin and Greek. Whether Hawthorne's 
 78
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Uncle Robert, who had thus far proved to be 
 his guardian genius, would have educated him 
 for a profession, we have no means of knowing. 
 This would mean of course a partial support 
 for years afterward, and it is quite possible 
 that Mr. Manning considered his duties to his 
 own children paramount to it. What he did 
 for Nathaniel may have been the best he could, 
 to give him the position of book-keeper for the 
 stage-company. This was of course Pegasus 
 in harness (or rather at the hitching-post) , 
 but it is excellent experience for every young 
 man ; although the compensation in Hawthorne's 
 case was small and there could be no expecta- 
 tion of future advancement. 
 
 In this dilemma he decided to do the one 
 thing for which Nature intended him, to be- 
 come a writer of fiction, and he held fast to 
 this determination in the face of most discour- 
 aging obstacles. He composed a series of short 
 stories, echoes of his academic years, which he 
 proposed to publish under the title of Words- 
 worth's popular poem, "We Are Seven." One 
 of these is said to have been based on the witch- 
 craft delusion, and it is a pity that it should not 
 have been preserved, but their feminine titles 
 afford no indication of their character. He 
 carried them to a publisher, who received him 
 politely and promised to examine them, but 
 one month passed after another without Haw- 
 thorne's hearing from him, so that he concluded 
 at length to make inquiries.* The publisher 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 124. 
 79
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 confessed that he had not even undertaken to 
 read them, and Nathaniel carried them back, 
 with a sinking heart, to his little chamber in 
 the house on Herbert Street, where he may 
 have had melancholy thoughts enough for the 
 next few weeks. 
 
 Youth, however, soon outgrows its chagrins. 
 In less than two years Hawthorne was prepared 
 to enter the literary lists, equipped with a 
 novelette, called "Fanshawe"; but here again 
 he was destined to meet with a rebuff. After 
 tendering it to a number of publishers without 
 encouragement, he concluded to take the risk 
 of publishing it himself. This only cost him a 
 few hundred dollars, but the result was un- 
 satisfactory, and he afterward destroyed all 
 the copies that he could regain possession of. 
 
 Hawthorne's genius was of slow development. 
 He was only twenty-four when he published 
 this rather immature work, and it might have 
 been better if he had waited longer. It was to 
 him what the "Sorrows of Werther" was to 
 Goethe, but while the " Sorrows of Werther" 
 made Goethe famous in many countries, " Fan- 
 shawe ' ' fell still-born. The latter was not more 
 imitative of Scott than the " Sorrows of Werther" 
 is of Rousseau, and now that we consider it in 
 the cool critical light of the twentieth century, we 
 cannot but wonder that the "Sorrows of Werther" 
 ever produced such enthusiasm. It is quite as 
 difficult to see why " Fanshawe " should not have 
 proved a success. It lacks the grace and dignity 
 of Hawthorne's mature style, but it has an in- 
 to
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 genious plot, a lively action, and is written in 
 sufficiently good English. One would suppose 
 that its faults would have helped to make it 
 popular, for portions of it are so exciting as to 
 border closely on the sensational. It may be 
 affirmed that when a novel becomes so exciting 
 that we wish to turn over the pages and antici- 
 pate the conclusion, either the action of the 
 story is too heated or its incidents are too highly 
 colored. The introduction of pirates in a work 
 of fiction is decidely sensational, from Walter 
 Scott downward, and, though Hawthorne 
 never fell into this error, he approaches closely 
 to it in "Fanshawe." There is some dark 
 secret between the two villains of the piece, 
 which he leaves to the reader as an exercise for 
 the imagination. This is a characteristic of 
 all his longer stories. There is an unknown 
 quantity, an insoluble point, in them, which 
 tantalizes the reader. 
 
 What we especially feel in "Fanshawe" is 
 the author's lack of social experience. His 
 heroine at times behaves in a truly feminine 
 manner, and at others her performances make 
 us shiver. Her leaving her guardian's house at 
 midnight to go off with an unknown man, whom 
 her maidenly instinct should have taught her 
 to distrust, even if Fanshawe had not warned 
 her against him, might have been characteristic 
 of the Middle Ages, but is certainly not of modern 
 life. Bowdoin College evidently served Haw- 
 thorne as a background to his plot, although 
 removed some distance into the country, and 
 6 81
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 it is likely that the portrait of the kindly professor 
 might have been recognized there. Ward's 
 Tavern serves for the public-house where the 
 various characters congregate, and there is a 
 high rocky ledge in the woods, or what used to 
 be woods at Brunswick, where the students 
 often tried their skill in climbing, and which 
 Hawthorne has idealized into the cliff where 
 the would-be abductor met his timely fate. 
 The trout-brook where Bridge and Hawthorne 
 used to fish is also introduced. 
 
 Fanshawe himself seems like a house of which 
 only two sides have been built. There are such 
 persons, and it is no wonder if they prove to be 
 short-lived. Yet the scene in which he makes 
 his noble renunciation of the woman who is 
 devoted to him, purely from a sense of grati- 
 tude, is finely and tenderly drawn, and worthy 
 of Hawthorne in his best years. The story was 
 republished after its author's death, and fully 
 deserves its position in his works. 
 
 It was about this time (1827) that Nathaniel 
 Hathorne changed his name to Hawthorne. 
 No reason has ever been assigned for his doing 
 so, and he had no legal right to do it without 
 an act of the Legislature, but he took a revolu- 
 tionary right, and as his family and fellow- 
 citizens acquiesced in this, it became an estab- 
 lished fact. His living relatives in the Man- 
 ning family are unable to explain his reason 
 for it. It may have been for the sake of eu- 
 phony, or he may have had a fanciful notion, 
 that such a change would break the spell 
 82
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 which seemed to be dragging his family 
 down with him. Conway's theory that it was 
 intended to serve him as an incognito is quite 
 untenable. His name first appears with a w in 
 the Bowdoin Triennial Catalogue of 1828. 
 
 There are very few data existing as to Haw- 
 thorne's life during his first ten years of man- 
 hood, but it must have been a hard, dreary 
 period for him. The Manning children, Robert, 
 Elizabeth and Rebecca, were now growing up, 
 and must have been a source of entertainment 
 in their way, and his sister Louisa was always 
 a comfort; but Horatio Bridge, who made a 
 number of flying visits to him, states that he 
 never saw the elder sister, even at table, a 
 fact from which we may draw our own conclu- 
 sions. Hawthorne had no friends at this time, 
 except his college associates, and they were all 
 at a distance, Pierce and Cilley both flourishing 
 young lawyers, one at Concord, New Hampshire, 
 and the other at Thomaston, Maine, while 
 Longfellow was teaching modern languages 
 at Bowdoin. He had no lady friends to brighten 
 his evenings for him, and if he went into society, 
 it was only to be stared at for his personal 
 beauty, like a jaguar in a menagerie. He had 
 no fund of the small conversation which serves 
 like oil to make the social machinery run 
 smoothly. Like all deep natures, he found it 
 difficult to adapt himself to minds of a different 
 calibre. Salem people noticed this, and his appar- 
 ent lack of an object in life, for he maintained 
 a profound secrecy in regard to his literary 
 83
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 efforts, and concluded that he was an indolent 
 young man without any faculty for business, 
 and would never come to good in this world. No 
 doubt elderly females admonished him for 
 neglecting his opportunities, and small wits 
 buzzed about him as they have about many 
 another under similar conditions. It was Hans 
 Andersen's story of the ugly duck that proved 
 to be a swan. 
 
 No wonder that Hawthorne betook himself to 
 the solitude of his own chamber, and consoled him- 
 self like the philosopher who said, "When I 
 am alone, then I am least alone." He had an 
 internal life with which only his most intimate 
 friends were acquainted, and he could people 
 his room with forms from his own fancy, much 
 more real to him than the palpable ignota 
 whom he passed in the street. Beautiful visions 
 came to him, instead of sermonizing ladies, 
 patronizing money-changers, aggressive up- 
 starts, grimacing wiseacres, and that large 
 class of amiable, well-meaning persons that 
 makes up the bulk of society. We should not 
 be surprised if angels sometimes came to hover 
 round him, for to the pure in heart heaven 
 descends upon earth. 
 
 There is a passage in Hawthorne's diary under 
 date of October 4, 1840, which has often been 
 quoted ; but it will have to be quoted again, for 
 it cannot be read too often, and no biography of 
 him would be adequate without it. He says : 
 
 " Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber 
 where I used to sit in days gone by ....
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 This claims to be called a haunted chamber, 
 for thousands upon thousands of visions have 
 appeared to me in it; and some few of them 
 have become visible to the world. If ever I 
 should have a biographer, he ought to make 
 great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, 
 because so much of my lonely youth was wasted 
 here, and here my mind and character were 
 formed ; and here I have been glad and hopeful, 
 and here I have been despondent. And here I 
 sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the 
 world to know me, and sometimes wondering 
 why it did not know me sooner, or whether 
 it would ever know me at all, at least, till I 
 were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as 
 if I were already in the grave, with only life 
 enough to be chilled and benumbed. But 
 oftener I was happy, at least as happy as I 
 then knew how to be, or was aware of the pos- 
 sibility of being. By and by, the world found 
 me out in my lonely chamber, and called me 
 forth, not indeed, with a loud roar of acclama- 
 tion, but rather with a still, small voice, and 
 forth I went, but found nothing in the world 
 that I thought preferable to my solitude till 
 now .... and now I begin to under- 
 stand why I was imprisoned so many years 
 in this lonely chamber, and why I could never 
 break through the viewless bolts and bars; 
 for if I had sooner made my escape into the 
 world, I should have grown hard and rough, 
 and been covered with earthly dust, and my 
 heart might have become callous by rude en- 
 85
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 counters with the multitude .... But 
 living in solitude till the fulness of time was 
 come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and 
 the freshness of my heart. " 
 
 During these dismal years Horatio Bridge 
 was Hawthorne's good genius. The letters that 
 Hawthorne wrote to him have not been pre- 
 served, but we may judge of their character 
 by Bridge's replies to him always frank, 
 manly, sympathetic and encouraging. Haw- 
 thorne evidently confided his troubles and 
 difficulties to Bridge, as he would to an elder 
 brother. Bridge finally destroyed Hawthorne's 
 letters, not so much on account of their com- 
 plaining tone as for the personalities they con- 
 tained;* and this suggests to us that there was 
 still another side to Hawthorne's life at this 
 epoch concerning which we shall never be en- 
 lightened. A man could not have had a better 
 friend than Horatio Bridge. He was to Haw- 
 thorne what Edward Irving was to Carlyle; 
 and the world is more indebted to them both 
 than it often realizes. 
 
 There is in fact a decided similarity between 
 the lives of Carlyle and Hawthorne, in spite 
 of radical differences in their work and char- 
 acters. Both started at the foot of the ladder, 
 and met with a hard, long struggle for recogni- 
 tion; both found it equally difficult to earn 
 their living by their pens; both were assisted 
 by most devoted friends, and both finally 
 achieved a reputation among the highest in their 
 
 * Horatio Bridge, 69. 
 86
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 own time. If there is sometimes a melancholy 
 tinge in their writings, may we wonder at it? 
 Pericles said, "We need the theatre to chase 
 away the sadness of life," and it might have 
 benefited the whole Hawthorne family to have 
 gone to the theatre once a fortnight; but there 
 were few entertainments in Salem, except of 
 the stiff conventional sort, or in the shape of 
 public dances open to firemen and shop-girls. 
 Long afterward, Elizabeth Hawthorne wrote 
 of her brother: 
 
 "His habits were as regular as possible. In the evening 
 after tea he went out for about an hour, whatever the 
 weather was ; and in winter, after his return, he ate a pint 
 bowl of thick chocolate (not cocoa, but the old-fashioned 
 chocolate) crumbed full of bread: eating never hurt him 
 then, and he liked good things. In summer he ate some- 
 thing equivalent, finishing with fruit in the season of it. In 
 the evening we discussed political affairs, upon which we 
 differed in opinion; he being a Democrat, and I of the 
 opposite party. In reality, his interest in such things was 
 so slight that I think nothing would have kept it alive but 
 my contentious spirit. Sometimes, when he had a book that 
 he particularly liked, he would not talk. He read a great 
 many novels." * 
 
 If Elizabeth possessed the genius which her 
 brother supposed, she certainly does not indi- 
 cate it in this letter; but genius in the ore is 
 very different from genius smelted and refined 
 by effort and experience. The one important 
 fact in her statement is that Hawthorne was in 
 the habit of taking solitary rambles after dark, 
 an owlish practice, but very attractive to 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 125. 
 8?
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 romantic minds. Human nature appears in 
 a more pictorial guise by lamplight, after the 
 day's work is over. The groups at the street 
 corners, the glittering display in the watch- 
 maker's windows, the carriages flashing by and 
 disappearing in the darkness, the mysterious 
 errands of foot-passengers, all served as object- 
 lessons for this student of his own kind. 
 Jonathan Cilley once said : 
 
 ' ' I love Hawthorne ; I admire him ; but I do not know 
 him. He lives in a mysterious world of thought and 
 imagination which he never permits me to enter. ' ' * 
 
 Long-continued thinking is sure to take 
 effect at last, either in words or in action, and 
 Hawthorne's mind had to disburden itself in 
 some manner. So, after the failure of "Fan- 
 shawe, " he returned to his original plan of 
 writing short stories, and this time with success. 
 In January, 1830, the well-known tale of "The 
 Gentle Boy" was accepted by S. G. Goodrich, 
 the editor of a Boston publication called the 
 Token, who was himself better known in those 
 days under the nom de plume of " Peter Parley. " 
 "The Wives of the Dead," "Roger Malvin's 
 Burial," and "Major Molineaux" soon fol- 
 lowed. In 1833 he published the "Seven Vaga- 
 bonds," and some others. The New York 
 Knickerbocker published the "Fountain of 
 Youth" and "Edward Fayne's Rosebud." 
 After 1833 the Token and the New England 
 Magazine} stood ready to accept all the short 
 
 * Packard's "Bowdoin College," 306. 
 I J. Hawthorne, i. 175.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 pieces that Hawthorne could give them, but 
 they did not encourage him to write serial 
 stories. However, it was not the custom then 
 for writers to sign their names to magazine 
 articles, so that Hawthorne gained nothing in 
 reputation by this. Some of his earliest pieces 
 were printed over the signature of "Oberon. " 
 An autumn expedition to the White Moun- 
 tains, Lake Champlain and Lake Ontario, and 
 Niagara Falls, in 1832, raised Hawthorne's 
 spirits and stimulated his ambition. He wrote 
 to his mother from Burlington, Vermont, Sep- 
 tember 16: 
 
 "I have arrived in safety, having passed through the 
 White Hills, stopping at Ethan Crawford's house, and 
 climbing Mt. Washington. I have not decided as to my 
 future course. I have no intention of going into Canada. 
 I have heard that cholera is prevalent in Boston. " 
 
 It was something to have stood on the highest 
 summit east of the Rocky Mountains, and to 
 have seen all New England lying at his feet. 
 A hard wind in the Crawford Notch, which he 
 describes in his story of " The Ambitious Guest, " 
 must have been in his own experience, and as 
 he passed the monument of the ill-fated Willey 
 family he may have thought that he too might 
 become celebrated after his death, even as 
 they were from their poetic catastrophe. This 
 expedition provided him with the materials 
 for a number of small plots. 
 
 The ice was now broken; but a new class of 
 difficulties arose before him. American litera- 
 ture was then in the bud and promised a beauti- 
 89
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 ful blossoming, but the public was not prepared 
 for it. Monthly magazines had a precarious 
 existence, and their uncertainty of remuneration 
 reacted on the contributors. Hawthorne was 
 poorly paid, often obliged to wait a long time 
 for his pay, and occasionally lost it altogether. 
 For his story of "The Gentle Boy," one of the 
 gems of literature, which ought to be read aloud 
 every year in the public schools, he received 
 the paltry sum of thirty-five dollars. Evidently 
 he could not earn even a modest maintenance on 
 such terms, and his letters to Bridge became 
 more despondent than ever. 
 
 Goodrich, who was a writer of the Andrews 
 Norton class, soon perceived that Hawthorne 
 could make better sentences than his own, and 
 engaged him to write historical abstracts for 
 his pitiful Peter Parley books, paying him a 
 hundred dollars for the whole work, and secur- 
 ing for himself all the credit that appertained 
 to it. Everybody knew who Peter Parley was, 
 but it has only recently been discovered that 
 much of the literature which passed under his 
 name was the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 The editor of a New York magazine to which 
 Hawthorne contributed a number of sketches 
 repeatedly deferred the payment for them, and 
 finally confessed his inability to make it, 
 which he probably knew or intended before- 
 hand. Then, with true metropolitan assurance, 
 he begged of Hawthorne the use of certain 
 unpublished manuscripts, which he still had 
 in his possession. Hawthorne with unlimited 
 90
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 contempt told the fellow that he might keep 
 them, and then wrote to Bridge : 
 
 "Thus has this man, who would be considered a Maecenas, 
 taken from a penniless writer material incomparably 
 better than any his own brain can supply." * 
 
 Whether this New York periodical was the 
 Knickerbocker or some other, we are not informed ; 
 neither do we know what Bridge replied to 
 Hawthorne, who had closed his letter with a 
 malediction, on the aforesaid editor, but else- 
 where in his memoirs he remarks : 
 
 " Hawthorne received but small compensation for any 
 of this literary work, for he lacked the knowledge of 
 business and the self-assertion necessary to obtain even 
 the moderate remuneration vouchsafed to writers fifty 
 years ago." f 
 
 If Horatio Bridge had been an author himself, 
 he would not have written this statement con- 
 cerning his friend. Magazine editors are like 
 men in other professions : some of them are 
 honorable and others are less so; but an author 
 who offers a manuscript to the editor of a maga- 
 zine is wholly at his mercy, so far as that small 
 piece of property is concerned. The author 
 cannot make a bargain with the editor as he 
 can with the publisher of his book, and is obliged 
 to accept whatever the latter chooses to give 
 him. Instances have been known where an 
 editor has destroyed a valuable manuscript, 
 
 * Horatio Bridge, 68, 69. 
 t Horatio Bridge, 77.
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 without compensation or explanation of any 
 kind. Hawthorne was doing the best that a 
 human being could under the conditions that 
 were given him. Above all things, he was true 
 to himself; no man could be more so. 
 
 Yet Bridge wrote to him on Christmas Day, 
 1836: 
 
 "The bane of your life has been self-distrust. This has 
 kept you back for many years; which, if you had im- 
 proved by publishing, would long ago have given you what 
 you must now wait a long time for. It may be for the 
 best, but I doubt it." 
 
 Nothing is more trying in misfortune than 
 the ill-judged advice of well-meaning friends. 
 There is no nettle that stings like it. To expect 
 Hawthorne to become a literary genius, and at 
 the same time to develop the peculiar faculties 
 of a commercial traveller or a curb-stone broker, 
 was unreasonable. In the phraseology of Sir 
 William Hamilton, the two vocations are "non- 
 compossible. " Bridge himself was undertaking 
 a grandly unpractical project about this time: 
 nothing less than an attempt to dam the Andros- 
 coggin, a river liable to devastating floods; 
 and in this enterprise he was obliged to trust 
 to a class of men who were much more uncertain 
 in their ways and methods than those with 
 whom Hawthorne dealt. Horatio Bridge had 
 not studied civil engineering, and the result 
 was that before two years had elapsed the 
 floods on the Androscoggin swept the dam away, 
 and his fortune with it. 
 
 92
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 In the same letter we also notice this para- 
 graph concerning another Bowdoin friend: 
 
 ' ' And so Frank Pierce is elected Senator. There is an 
 instance of what a man can do by trying. With no very 
 remarkable talents, he at the age of thirty-four fills one of 
 the highest stations in the nation. He is a good fellow, 
 and I rejoice at his success."* 
 
 Pierce certainly possessed the cap of For- 
 tunatus, and it seems as if there must have 
 been some magic faculty in the man, which 
 enabled him to win high positions so easily; 
 and he continued to do this, although he had 
 not distinguished himself particularly as a 
 member of Congress, and he appeared to still 
 less advantage among the great party leaders 
 in the United States Senate. He illustrated 
 the faculty for " getting elected. " 
 
 In October, 1836, the time arrived for settling 
 the matrimonial wager between Hawthorne 
 and Jonathan Cilley, which they had made at 
 college twelve years before. Bridge accordingly 
 examined the documents which they had de- 
 posited with him, and notified Cilley that he 
 was under obligation to provide Hawthorne 
 with an octavo of Madeira. 
 
 Cilley's letter to Hawthorne on this occasion 
 does not impress one favorably.! It is familiar 
 and jocose, without being either witty or friendly, 
 and he gives no intimation in it of an inten- 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 148. 
 t J. Hawthorne, i. 144. 
 
 93
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 tion to fulfil his promise. Hawthorne appears 
 to have sent the letter to Bridge, who replied: 
 
 "I doubt whether you ever get your wine from Cilley. 
 His inquiring of you whether he had really lost the bet is 
 suspicious; and he has written me in a manner inconsistent 
 with an intention of paying promptly; and if a bet grows 
 old it grows cold. He wished me to propose to you to have 
 it paid at Brunswick next Commencement, and to have as 
 many of our classmates as could be mustered to drink it. 
 It may be Cilley's idea to pay over the balance after tak- 
 ing a strong pull at it; if so, it is well enough. But still it 
 should be tendered within the month. " 
 
 In short, Cilley behaved in this matter much 
 in the style of a tricky Van Buren politician, 
 making a great bluster of words, and privately 
 intending to do nothing. He was running for 
 Congress at the time on the Van Buren ticket, 
 and it is quite likely that the expenses of the 
 campaign had exhausted his funds. That he 
 should never have paid the bet was less to Haw- 
 thorne's disadvantage than his own. 
 
 It was now that Horatio Bridge proved him- 
 self a true friend, and equally a man. In the 
 spring of 1836 Goodrich had obtained for Haw- 
 thorne the editorship of the American Magazine 
 of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, with a 
 salary of five hundred dollars;* but he soon 
 discovered that he had embarked on a ship 
 with a rotten hulk. He started off heroically, 
 writing the whole of the first number with the 
 help of his sister Elizabeth; but by midsummer 
 the concern was bankrupt, and he retired to 
 his lonely cell, more gloomy and despondent 
 
 * Conway, 45. 
 94
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 than before. There are few sadder spectacles 
 then that of a man seeking work without being 
 able to obtain it ; and this applies to the man of 
 genius as well as to the day laborer. 
 
 Horatio Bridge now realized that the time 
 had come for him to interfere. He recognized 
 that Hawthorne was gradually lapsing into a 
 hypochondria that might terminate fatally; 
 that he was Goethe's oak planted in a flower- 
 pot, and that unless the flower-pot could be 
 broken, the oak would die. He also saw that 
 Hawthorne would never receive the public 
 recognition that was due to his ability, so long 
 as he published magazine articles under an 
 assumed name. He accordingly wrote to Good- 
 rich fortunately before his mill-dam gave way 
 suggesting the publication of a volume of Haw- 
 thorne's stories, and offered to guarantee the 
 publisher against loss. This proposition was 
 readily accepted, but Bridge might have made 
 a much better bargain. What it amounted 
 to was, the half-profit system without the half- 
 profit. The necessary papers were exchanged 
 and Hawthorne gladly acceded to Goodrich 's 
 terms. Bridge, however, had cautioned Good- 
 rich not to inform Hawthorne of his share in 
 the enterprise, and the consequence of this was 
 that he shortly received a letter from Hawthorne, 
 informing him of the good news which he knew 
 already and praising Goodrich, to whom he 
 proposed to dedicate his new volume. Bridge's 
 generosity had come back to him, dried and 
 salted, as it has to many another. 
 
 95
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 What could Bridge do, in the premises? 
 Goodrich had written to Hawthorne that the 
 publisher, Mr. Howes, was confident of making 
 a favorable arrangement with a man of capital 
 who would edit the book; but Bridge did 
 not know this, and he suspected Goodrich of 
 sailing into Hawthorne's favor under a false 
 flag. He therefore wrote to Hawthorne, No- 
 vember 17, 1836: 
 
 " I fear you will hurt yourself by puffing Goodrich un- 
 deservedly, for there is no doubt in my mind of his selfish- 
 ness in regard to your work and yourself. I am perfectly 
 aware that he has taken a good deal of interest in you, but 
 when did he ever do anything for you without a quid pro 
 quo? The magazine was given to you for $100 less than 
 it should have been. The Token was saved by your writing. 
 Unless you are already committed, do not mar the pros- 
 pects of your first book by hoisting Goodrich into favor. " 
 
 This prevented the dedication, for which 
 Hawthorne was afterward thankful enough. 
 The book, which was the first volume of " Twice 
 Told Tales" came from the press the following 
 spring, and proved an immediate success, al- 
 though not a highly lucrative one for its author. 
 With the help of Longfellow's cordial review 
 of it in the North American it established Haw- 
 thorne's reputation on a firm and irrefragable 
 basis. All honor to Horatio. 
 
 As if Hawthorne had not seen a sufficiently 
 long "winter of discontent" already, his friends 
 now proposed to obtain the position of secretary 
 and chronicler for him on Commodore Jones's 
 exploring expedition to the South Pole ! Frank- 
 96
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 lin Pierce was the first to think of this, but 
 Bridge interceded with Cilley to give it his 
 support, and there can be no doubt that they 
 would have succeeded in obtaining the position 
 for Hawthorne, but the expedition itself failed, 
 for lack of a Congressional appropriation. The 
 following year, 1838, the project was again 
 brought forward by the administration, and 
 Congress being in a more amiable frame of mind 
 granted the requisite funds; but Hawthorne 
 had now contracted new ties in his native city, 
 bound, as it were, by an inseparable cord stronger 
 than a Manila hawser, and Doctor Nathaniel 
 Peabody's hospitable parlors were more at- 
 tractive to him than anything the Antarctic 
 regions could offer. 
 
 We have now entered upon the period where 
 Hawthorne's own diary commences, the auto- 
 biography of a pure-minded, closely observing 
 man; an invaluable record, which began ap- 
 parently in 1835, and was continued nearly 
 until the close of his life; now published in a 
 succession of American, English and Italian 
 note-books. In it we find records of what he 
 saw and thought; descriptive passages, after- 
 ward made serviceable in his works of fiction, 
 and perhaps written with that object in view; 
 fanciful notions, jotted down on the impulse 
 of the moment; records of his social life; but 
 little critical writing or personal confessions, 
 although the latter may have been reserved 
 from publication by his different editors. It is 
 known that much of his diary has not yet 
 
 7 97
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 been given to the public, and perhaps never 
 will be. 
 
 In July, 1837, Hawthorne went to Augusta, 
 to spend a month with his friend Horatio Bridge ; 
 went fishing with him, for what they called 
 white perch, probably the saibling;* and was 
 greatly entertained with the peculiarities of an 
 idiomatic Frenchman, an itinerant teacher of 
 that language, whom Bridge, in the kindness 
 of his heart, had taken into his own house. The 
 last of July, Cilley also made his appearance, 
 but did not bring the Madeira with him, and 
 Hawthorne has left this rather critical portrait 
 of him in his diary: 
 
 "Friday, July 28th. Saw my classmate 
 
 and formerly intimate friend, , for the first 
 
 time since we graduated. He has met with 
 good success in life, in spite of circumstances, 
 having struggled upward against bitter op- 
 position, by the force of his abilities, to be a 
 member of Congress, after having been for some 
 time the leader of his party in the State Legisla- 
 ture. We met like old friends, and conversed 
 almost as freely as we used to do in college 
 days, twelve years ago and more. He is a 
 singular person, shrewd, crafty, insinuating, 
 with wonderful tact, seizing on each man by 
 his manageable point, and using him for his 
 own purpose, often without the man's suspecting 
 
 * The American saibling, or golden trout, is only in- 
 digenous to Lake Sunapee, New Hampshire, and to a 
 small lake near Augusta. 
 
 98 

 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 that he is made a tool of; and yet, artificial 
 as his character would seem to be, his conver- 
 sation, at least to myself, was full of natural 
 feeling, the expression of which can hardly be 
 mistaken, and his revelations with regard to 
 himself had really a great deal of frankness. 
 A man of the most open nature might well 
 have been more reserved to a friend, after 
 twelve years separation, than . was to me. 
 Nevertheless, he is really a crafty man, con- 
 cealing, like a murder-secret, anything that it 
 is not good for him to have known. He by 
 no means feigns the good feeling that he pro- 
 fesses, nor is there anything affected in the 
 frankness of his conversation; and it is this 
 that makes him so fascinating. There is such 
 a quantity of truth and kindliness and warm 
 affections, that a man's heart opens to him, 
 in spite of himself. He deceives by truth. 
 And not only is he crafty, but, when occasion 
 demands, bold and fierce like a tiger, deter- 
 mined, and even straightforward and undis- 
 guised in his measures, a daring fellow as well 
 as a sly one. " 
 
 This can be no other than Jonathan Cilley; 
 like many of his class, a man of great good 
 humor but not over-scrupulous, so far as the 
 means he might make use of were concerned. 
 He did not, however, prove to be as skilful a 
 diplomat as Hawthorne seems to have supposed 
 him. The duel between Cilley and Graves, of 
 Kentucky, has been so variously misrepre- 
 sented that the present occasion would seem a 
 
 99
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 fitting opportunity to tell the plain truth con- 
 cerning it. 
 
 President Jackson was an honest man, in 
 the customary sense of the term, and he would 
 have scorned to take a dollar that was not his 
 own; but he suffered greatly from parasites, 
 who pilfered the nation's money, the natural 
 consequence of the spoils-of -office system. 
 The exposure of these peculations gave the 
 Whigs a decided advantage, and Cilley, who 
 had quickly proved his ability in debate, at- 
 tempted to set a back-fire by accusing Watson 
 Webb, the editor of the Courier and Enquirer, 
 of having been bribed to change the politics 
 of his paper. The true facts of the case were, 
 that the paper had been purchased by the 
 Whigs, and Webb, of course, had a right to 
 change his politics if he chose to; and the net 
 result of Cilley's attack was a challenge to mortal 
 combat, carried by Representative Graves, of 
 Kentucky. Cilley, although a man of courage, 
 declined this, on the ground that members of 
 Congress ought not to be called to account out- 
 side of the Capitol, for words spoken in debate. 
 "Then," said Graves, "you will at least admit 
 that my friend is a gentleman. " 
 
 This was a fair offer toward conciliation, 
 and if Cilley had been peaceably inclined he 
 would certainly have accepted it; but he ob- 
 stinately refused to acknowledge that General 
 Webb was a gentleman, and in consequence of 
 this he received a second challenge the next 
 day from Graves, brought by Henry A. Wise,
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 afterward Governor of Virginia. Cilley still 
 objected to fighting, but members of his party 
 urged him into it: the duel took place, and 
 Cilley was killed. 
 
 It may be said in favor of the " code of honor " 
 that it discourages blackguardism and instructs 
 a man to keep a civil tongue; but it is not al- 
 ways possible to prevent outbursts of temper, 
 especially in hot climates, and a man's wife and 
 children should also be considered. Andrew 
 Jackson said at the close of his life, that there 
 was nothing he regretted so much as having 
 killed a human being in a duel. Man rises by 
 humility, and angels fall from pride. 
 
 Hawthorne wrote a kindly and regretful 
 notice of the death of his old acquaintance, 
 which was published in the Democratic Review, 
 and which closed with this significant passage: 
 
 " Alas, that over the grave of a dear friend, 
 my sorrow for the bereavement must be mingled 
 with another grief that he threw away such 
 a life in so miserable a cause! Why, as he was 
 true to the Northern character in all things 
 else, did he swerve from his Northern principles 
 in this final scene?" * 
 
 It will be well to bear this in mind in con- 
 nection with a somewhat similar incident, 
 which we have now to consider. 
 
 An anecdote has been repeated in all the books 
 about Hawthorne published since 1880, which 
 would do him little credit if it could be proved, 
 
 * Conway, 63.
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 a story that he challenged one of his friends to a 
 duel, at the instigation of a vulgar and unprin- 
 cipled young woman. Horatio Bridge says in 
 reference to it: 
 
 "This characteristic was notably displayed several years 
 later, when a lady incited him to quarrel with one of 
 his best friends on account of a groundless pique of hers. 
 He went to Washington for the purpose of challenging the 
 gentleman, and it was only after ample explanation had been 
 made, showing that his friend had behaved with entire 
 honor, that Pierce and Cilley, who were his advisers, could 
 persuade him to be satisfied without a fight." * 
 
 How the good Horatio could have fallen into 
 this pit is unimaginable, for a double contra- 
 diction is contained in his statement. " Some 
 time after this," that is after leaving college, 
 would give the impression that the affair took 
 place about 1830, whereas Pierce and Cilley 
 were not in Washington together till five or six 
 years later probably seven years later. More- 
 over, Hawthorne states in a letter to Pierce 's 
 friend O' Sullivan, on April i, 1853, that ne na cl 
 never been in Washington up to that time. 
 The Manning family and Mrs. Hawthorne's 
 relatives never heard of the story previous to 
 its publication. 
 
 The internal evidence is equally strong against 
 it. What New England girl would behave in 
 the manner that Hawthorne's son represents 
 this one to have done? What young gentleman 
 would have listened to such a communication 
 as he supposes, and especially the reserved and 
 
 * Bridge, 5. 
 1 02
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 modest Hawthorne? One can even imagine 
 the aspect of horror on his face at such an 
 unlady-like proceeding. The story would be 
 an ignominious one for Hawthorne, if it were 
 credible, but there is no occasion for our believing 
 it until some tangible evidence is adduced in 
 its support. There was no element of Quixo- 
 tism in his composition, and it is quite as im- 
 possible to locate the identity of the person 
 whom Hawthorne is supposed to have challenged. 
 
 103
 
 CHAPTER V 
 Eos AND EROS: 1835-1839 
 
 IT was fortunate for Hawthorne that there 
 was at this time a periodical in the United 
 States, the North American Review, which was 
 generally looked upon as an authority in litera- 
 ture, and which in most instances deserved 
 the confidence that was placed in it, for its re- 
 views were written by men of distinguished 
 ability. It was the North American Review 
 which made the reputation of L. Maria Child, 
 and which enrolled Hawthorne in the order 
 of geniuses. 
 
 There is not much literary criticism in Long- 
 fellow's review, and he does not "rise to the 
 level of the accomplished essayist" of our own 
 time,* but he goes to the main point with the 
 single-mindness of the true poet. " A new star, " 
 he says, "has appeared in the skies" a veri- 
 table prediction. " Others will gaze at it with 
 telescopes, and decide whether it is in the con- 
 stellation of Orion or the Great Bear. It is 
 enough for us to gaze at it, to admire it, and 
 welcome it." 
 
 "Although Hawthorne writes in prose, he 
 belongs among the poets. To every subject he 
 touches he gives a poetic personality which 
 emanates from the man himself. His sympathies 
 
 * Who writes so correctly and says so little to the purpose. 
 104
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 extend to all things living, and even to the 
 inanimates. Another characteristic is the ex- 
 ceeding beauty of his style. It is as clear as 
 running waters are. Indeed he uses words as 
 mere stepping-stones, upon which, with a free 
 and youthful bound, his spirit crosses and re- 
 crosses the bright and rushing stream of 
 thought. " 
 
 Again he says: 
 
 "A calm, thoughtful face seems to be looking 
 at you from every page; with now a pleasant 
 smile, and now a shade of sadness stealing 
 over its features. Sometimes, though not 
 often, it glares wildly at you, with a strange 
 and painful expression, as, in the German 
 romance, the bronze knocker of the Archivarius 
 Lindhorst makes up faces at the Student Ansel- 
 mus." 
 
 Here we have a portrait of Hawthorne, by 
 one who knew him, in a few simple words; and 
 behind a calm thoughtful face there is that 
 mysterious unknown quantity which puzzles 
 Longfellow here, and always perplexed Haw- 
 thorne's friends. It may have been the nucleus 
 or tap-root of his genius. 
 
 Longfellow seems to have felt it as a dividing 
 line between them. He probably felt so at 
 college; and this brings us back to an old sub- 
 ject. Hawthorne's superiority to Longfellow 
 as an artist consisted essentially in this, that 
 he was never an optimist. Puritanism looked 
 upon human nature with a hostile eye, and was 
 inclined to see evil in it where none existed; 
 105
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and Doctor Charming, who inaugurated the 
 great moral movement which swept Puritan- 
 ism away in this country, tended, as all re- 
 formers do, to the opposite extreme, to that 
 scepticism of evil which, as George Brandes 
 says, is greatly to the advantage of hypocrites 
 and sharpers. This was justifiable in Doctor 
 Channing, but among his followers it has often 
 degenerated into an inverted or homoeopathic 
 kind of Puritanism, a habit of excusing the 
 faults of others, or of themselves, on the score 
 of good intentions a habit of self -justification, 
 and even to the perverse belief that, as every- 
 thing is for the best, whatever we do in this 
 world must be for good. To this class of senti- 
 mentalists the most serious evil is truth-seeing 
 and truth-speaking. It is an excellent plan 
 to look upon the bright side of things, but one 
 should not do this to the extent of blinding 
 oneself to facts. Doctor Johnson once said to 
 Boswell, " Beware, my friend, of mixing up 
 virtue and vice;" but there is something worse 
 than that, and it is, to stigmatize a writer as 
 a pessimist or a hypochondriac for refusing to 
 take rainbow-colored views. This, however, 
 would never apply to Longfellow. 
 
 Hawthorne, with his eye ever on the mark, 
 pursued a middle course. He separated himself 
 -om the Puritans without joining their oppo- 
 nents, and thus attained the most independent 
 stand-point of any American writer of his time ; 
 and if this alienated him from the various 
 humanitarian movements that were going 
 106
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 forward, it was nevertheless a decided advantage 
 for the work he was intended to do. In this 
 respect he resembled Scott, Thackeray and 
 George Eliot. 
 
 What we call evil or sin is merely the nega- 
 tive of civilization, a tendency to return to 
 the original savage condition. In the light of 
 history, there is always progress or improve- 
 ment, but in individual cases there is often the 
 reverse, and so far as the individual is concerned 
 evil is no imaginary metaphor, but as real and 
 absolute as what we call good. The Bulgarian 
 massacres of 1877 were a historical necessity, 
 and we console ourselves in thinking of them 
 by the fact that they may have assisted the 
 Bulgarians in obtaining their independence; 
 but this was no consolation to the twenty or 
 thirty thousand human beings who were ground 
 to powder there. To them there was no comfort, 
 no hope, only the terrible reality. Neither 
 can we cast the responsibility of such events on 
 the mysterious ways of Providence. The ways 
 of Providence are not so mysterious to those 
 who have eyes to read with. Take for instance 
 one of the most notable cases of depravity, 
 that of Nero. If we consider the conditions 
 under which he was born and brought up, the 
 necessity of that form of government to hold a 
 vast empire together, and the course of history 
 for a hundred years previous, it is not difficult 
 to trace the genesis of Nero's crimes to the greed 
 of the Roman people (especially of its merchants) 
 for conquest and plunder; and Nero was the 
 107
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 price which they were finally called on to pay 
 for this. Marcus Aurelius, a noble nature reared 
 under favorable conditions for its development, 
 became the Washington of his time. 
 
 It is the same in private life. In many families 
 there are evil tendencies, which if they are per- 
 mitted to increase will take permanent hold, 
 like a bad demon, of some weak individual, and 
 make of him a terror and a torment to his 
 relatives fortunate if he is not in a position 
 of authority. He may serve as a warning to 
 the general public, but in the domestic circle 
 he is an unmitigated evil, he or she, though it 
 is not so likely to be a woman. When a crime 
 is committed within the precincts of good 
 society, we are greatly shocked; but we do not 
 often notice the debasement of character which 
 leads down to it, and still more rarely notice the 
 instances in which fear or some other motive 
 arrests demoralization before the final step, 
 and leaves the delinquent as it were in a con- 
 dition of moral suspense. 
 
 It was in such tragic situations that Haw- 
 thorne found the material which was best suited 
 to the bent of his genius. 
 
 In the two volumes, however, of " Twice Told 
 Tales, " the second published two years later, 
 the tragical element only appears as an under- 
 current of pathos in such stories as " The Gentle 
 Boy," "Wakefield," "The Maypole of Merry- 
 mount, " and " The Haunted Mind, " but reaches 
 a climax in "The Ambitious Guest" and "Lady 
 Eleanor's Mantle." There are others, like 
 1 08
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "Lights from a Steeple," and "Little Annie's 
 Ramble," that are of a more cheerful cast, 
 but are also much less serious in their composi- 
 tion. "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Great 
 Carbuncle," and "The Ambitious Guest," are 
 Dantean allegories. We notice that each volume 
 begins with a highly patriotic tale, the "Gray 
 Champion," and "Howe's Masquerade," but 
 the patriotism is genuine and almost fervid. 
 
 When I first looked upon the house in which 
 Hawthorne lived at Sebago, I was immediately 
 reminded of these earlier studies in human 
 nature, which are of so simple and quiet a diction, 
 so wholly devoid of rhetoric, that Elizabeth 
 Peabody thought they must be the work of his 
 sister, and others supposed them to have been 
 written by a Quaker. They resemble Diirer's 
 wood-cuts, gentle and tender in line, but 
 unswerving in their fidelity. We sometimes 
 wish that they were not so quiet and evenly 
 composed, and then repent of our wish that 
 anything so perfect should be different from 
 what it is. His "Twice Told Tales" are a 
 picture-gallery that may be owned in any house- 
 hold. They stand alone in English, and there 
 is not their like in any other language. 
 
 Yet Hawthorne is not a word-painter like 
 Browning and Carlyle, but obtains his pictorial 
 effect by simple accuracy of description, a more 
 difficult process than the other, but also more 
 satisfactory. His eyes penetrate the masks 
 and wrappings which cover human nature, as 
 the Rontgen rays penetrate the human body. 
 109
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 He sees a man's heart through the flesh and 
 bones, and knows what is concealed in it. He 
 ascends a church-steeple, and looking down 
 from the belfry the whole life of the town is 
 spread out before him. Men and women come 
 and go Hawthorne knows the errands they 
 are on. He sees a militia company parading 
 below, and they remind him from that elevation 
 of the toy soldiers in a shop-window, which 
 they turned out to be, pretty much, at Bull 
 Run. A fashionable young man comes along 
 the street escorting two young ladies, and sud- 
 denly at a crossing encounters their father, 
 who takes them away from him; but one of 
 them gives him a sweet parting look, which 
 amply compensates him in its presage of future 
 opportunities. How plainly that consolatory 
 look appears between our eyes and the printed 
 page! Then Hawthorne describes the grand 
 march of a thunder-storm, as in Rembrandt's 
 "Three Trees, " with its rolling masses of dark 
 vapor, preceded by a skirmish-line of white feath- 
 ery clouds. The militia company is defeated at 
 the first onset of this, its meteoric enemy, and 
 driven under cover. The artillery of the skies 
 booms and flashes about Hawthorne himself, until 
 finally : " A little speck of azure has widened in the 
 western heavens; the sunbeams find a passage 
 and go rejoicing through the tempest, and on yon- 
 der darkest cloud, born like hallowed hopes of the 
 glory of another world and the trouble and tears 
 of this, brightens forth the rainbow." All this 
 may have happened just as it is set down.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "Lady Eleanor's Mantle" exemplifies the 
 old proverb, "Pride goeth before destruction," 
 in almost too severe a manner, but the tale is 
 said to have a legendary foundation; and "The 
 Minister's Black Veil" is an equally awful 
 symbolism for that barrier between man and 
 man, which we construct through suspicion 
 and our lack of frankness in our dealings with 
 one another. We all hide ourselves behind 
 veils, and, as Emerson says, "Man crouches 
 and blushes, absconds and conceals." 
 
 "The Ambitious Guest" allegorizes a vain 
 imagination, and is the most important of these 
 three. A young man suffers from a craving 
 for distinction, which he believes will only come 
 to him after this life is ended. He is walking 
 through the White Mountains, and stops over- 
 night at the house of the ill-fated Willey family. 
 He talks freely on the subject of his vain expecta- 
 tions, when Destiny, in the shape of an avalanche, 
 suddenly overtakes him, and buries him so 
 deeply that neither his body nor his name has 
 ever been recovered. Hawthorne might have 
 drawn another allegory from the same source, 
 for if the Willey family had trusted to Provi- 
 dence, and remained in their house, instead of 
 rushing out into the dark, they would not have 
 lost their lives. 
 
 In the Democratic Review for 1834, Hawthorne 
 published the account of a visit to Niagara 
 Falls, one of the fruits of his expedition thither 
 in September, 1832, by way of the White Moun- 
 tains and Burlington, the journey from Salem
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 to Niagara in those days being fully equal to 
 going from New York to the cataracts of the 
 Nile in our own time. "The Ambitious Guest" 
 was published in the same volume with it, and 
 "The Ontario Steamboat" first appeared in 
 the American Magazine of Useful and Entertain- 
 ing Knowledge, in 1836. Hawthorne may have 
 made other expeditions to the White Moun- 
 tains, but we do not hear of them. 
 
 In addition to the three studies already men- 
 tioned, Hawthorne drew from this source the 
 two finest of his allegories, "The Great Car- 
 buncle" and "The Great Stone Face." 
 
 "The Great Carbuncle" is not only one of 
 the most beautiful of Hawthorne's tales, but 
 the most far-reaching in its significance. The 
 idea of it must have originated in the Alpine 
 glow, an effect of the rising or setting sun on 
 the icy peaks of a mountain, which looks at a 
 distance like a burning coal; an appearance 
 only visible in the White Mountains during the 
 winter, and there is no reason why Hawthorne 
 should not have seen it at that season from Lake 
 Sebago. At a distance of twenty miles or more 
 it blazes wonderfully, but on a nearer approach 
 it entirely disappears. Hawthorne could not 
 have found a more fascinating subject, and he 
 imagines it for us as a great carbuncle located 
 in the upper recesses of the mountains. 
 
 A number of explorers for this wonderful 
 gem meet together at the foot of the mountain 
 beyond the confines of civilization, and build a 
 hut in which to pass the night. They are recog-
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 nizable, from Hawthorne's description, as the 
 man of one idea, who has spent his whole life 
 seeking the gem; a scientific experimenter who 
 wishes to grind it up for the benefit of his crucible ; 
 a cynical sceptic who has come to disprove the 
 existence of the great gem; a greedy speculator 
 who seeks the carbuncle as he would prospect 
 for a silver- mine; an English lord who wishes 
 to add it to his hereditary possessions; and 
 finally a young married couple who want to 
 obtain it for an ornament to their new cottage. 
 The interest of the reader immediately centres 
 on these last two, and we care much more con- 
 cerning their fortunes and adventures than we 
 do about the carbuncle. 
 
 The conversation that evening between these 
 ill-assorted companions is in Hawthorne's most 
 subtle vein of irony, and would have delighted 
 old Socrates himself. Meanwhile the young 
 bride weaves a screen of twigs and leaves, to 
 protect herself and her husband from the gaze 
 of the curious. 
 
 The following morning they all set out by 
 different paths in search of the carbuncle; but 
 our thoughts accompany the steps of the young 
 bride, as she makes one toilsome ascent after 
 another until she feels ready to sink to the 
 ground with fatigue and discouragement. They 
 have already decided to return, when the rosy 
 light of the carbuncle bursts upon them from 
 beneath the lifting clouds; but they now feel 
 instinctively that it is too great a prize for their 
 possession. The man of one idea also sees it, 
 
 8 113
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and his life goes out in the exultation over his 
 final success. The sceptic appears, but cannot 
 discover it, although his face is illumined by 
 its light, until he takes off his large spectacles; 
 whereupon, he instantly becomes blind. The 
 English nobleman and the American speculator 
 fail to discover it; the former returns to his 
 ancestral halls, as wise as he was before; and 
 the latter is captured by a party of Indians and 
 obliged to pay a heavy ransom to regain freedom. 
 The scientific pedant finds a rare specimen of 
 primeval granite, which serves his purpose quite 
 as well as the carbuncle; and the two young 
 doves return to their cot, having learned the 
 lesson of contentment. 
 
 How fortunate was Hawthorne at the age of 
 thirty thus to anatomize the chief illusions of 
 life, which so many others follow until old age! 
 
 It is an erroneous notion that Hawthorne 
 found the chief material for his work in old 
 New England traditions. There are some half- 
 a-dozen sketches of this sort, but they are more 
 formally written than the others, and remind 
 one of those portraits by Titian which were 
 painted from other portraits, better than the 
 originals, but not equal to those which he painted 
 from Nature. 
 
 In the "Sights from a Steeple" Hawthorne 
 exposes his methods of study and betrays the 
 active principle of his existence. He says: 
 
 "The most desirable mode of existence might 
 be that of a spiritualized Paul Pry hovering 
 invisible round man and woman, witnessing 
 114
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 their deeds, searching into their hearths, bor- 
 rowing brightness from their felicity and shade 
 from their sorrow, and retaining no emotion 
 peculiar to himself." 
 
 There are those who would dislike this busy- 
 body occupation, and others, such as Emerson 
 perhaps, might not consider it justifiable; but 
 Hawthorne is not to be censured for it, for 
 his motive was an elevated one, and without 
 this close scrutiny of human nature we should 
 have had neither a Hawthorne nor a Shake- 
 speare. There is no quality more conspicuous 
 in "Twice Told Tales" than the calm, evenly 
 balanced mental condition of the author, who 
 seems to look down on human life not so much 
 from a church steeple as from the blue firma- 
 ment itself. 
 
 Such was the Eos or dawn of Hawthorne's 
 literary art. 
 
 Hawthorne returned thanks to Longfellow 
 in a gracefully humorous letter, to which Long- 
 fellow replied with a cordial wish to see Haw- 
 thorne in Cambridge, and by advising him to 
 dive into deeper water and write a history of 
 the Acadians before and after their expulsion 
 from Nova Scotia; but this was not practicable 
 for minds like Hawthorne's, surcharged with 
 poetic images, and the attempt might have 
 proved a disturbing influence for him. He had 
 already contributed the substance to Longfellow 
 of " Evangeline, " and he now wrote a eulogium 
 on the poem for a Salem newspaper, which it 
 must be confessed did not differ essentially
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 from other reviews of the same order. He does 
 not give us any clear idea of how the poem 
 actually impressed him, which is after all the 
 best that one can do in such cases. Poetry 
 is not like a problem in mathematics, which 
 can be marked right or wrong according to its 
 solution. 
 
 When a young man obtains a substantial 
 footing in his profession or business, he looks 
 about him for a wife unless he happens to be 
 already pledged in that particular; and Haw- 
 thorne was not an exception to this rule. He 
 was not obliged to look very far, and yet the 
 chance came to him in such an exceptional 
 manner that it seems as if some special provi- 
 dence were connected with it. His position in 
 this respect was a peculiar one. He does not 
 appear to have been much acquainted in Salem 
 even now; and the only son of a widow with 
 two unmarried sisters may be said to have 
 rather a slim chance for escaping from those 
 strong ties which have grown up between them 
 from childhood. Many a mother has prevented 
 her son from getting married until it has become 
 too late for him to change his bachelor habits. 
 His mother and his sisters realize that he ought 
 to be married, and that he has a right to a home 
 of his own; but in their heart of hearts they 
 combat the idea, and their opposition takes 
 the form of an unsparing criticism of any young 
 lady whom he follows with his eyes. This 
 frequently happens also in a family of girls: 
 Ei6
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 they all remain unmarried because, if one of 
 them shows an inclination in that direction, the 
 others unite in a conspiracy against her. On the 
 other hand, a family of four or five boys will 
 marry early, if they can obtain the means of 
 doing so, simply from the need of feminine 
 cheer and sympathy. A devoted female friend 
 will sometimes prevent a young woman from 
 being married. Love affairs are soft earth for 
 an intriguing and unprincipled woman to work 
 in, but, fortunately, Mrs. Hawthorne did not 
 belong in that category. 
 
 It was stout, large-hearted Elizabeth Peabody 
 who broke the spell of the enchanted castle in 
 which Hawthorne was confined. The Peabodys 
 were a cultivated family in Salem, who lived 
 pretty much by themselves, as the Hawthornes 
 and Mannings did. Doctor Nathaniel Peabody 
 was a respectable practitioner, but he had not 
 succeeded in curing the headaches of his daughter 
 Sophia, which came upon her at the close of her 
 girlhood and still continued intermittently until 
 this time. The Graces had not been bountiful 
 to the Peabody family, so, to compensate for 
 this, they all cultivated the Muses, in whose 
 society they ascended no little distance on the 
 way to Parnassus. Elizabeth Peabody was quite 
 a feminine pundit. She learned French and 
 German, and studied history and archaeology; 
 she taught history on a large scale at Sanborn's 
 Concord School and at many others; she had 
 a method of painting dates on squares, which 
 fixed them indelibly in the minds of her pupils; 
 117
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 she talked at Margaret Fuller's transcendental 
 club, and was an active member of the Radical 
 or Chestnut Street Club, thirty years later; 
 but her chief distinction was the introduction 
 of Froebel's Kindergarten teaching, by which 
 she well-nigh revolutionized primary instruction 
 in America. She was a most self -forgetful 
 person, and her scholars became devotedly 
 attached to her. 
 
 Her sister Mary was as much like Elizabeth 
 mentally as she differed from her in figure and 
 general appearance, but soon after this she 
 was married to Horace Mann and her public 
 activity became merged in that of her husband, 
 who was the first educator of his time. Sophia 
 Peabody read poetry and other fine writings, 
 and acquired a fair proficiency in drawing and 
 painting. They lived what was then called the 
 "higher life," and it certainly led them to ex- 
 cellent results. 
 
 Shortly before the publication of "Twice 
 Told Tales," Elizabeth Peabody learned that 
 the author of "The Gentle Boy," and other 
 stories which she had enjoyed in the Token, 
 lived in Salem, and that the name was Haw- 
 thorne. She immediately jumped to the con- 
 clusion that they were the work of Miss Elizabeth 
 Hawthorne, whom she had known somewhat 
 in earlier days, and she concluded to call upon 
 her and offer her congratulations. When in- 
 formed by Louisa Hawthorne, who came to 
 her in the parlor, instead of the elder sister, 
 that " The Gentle Boy " was written by Na- 
 118
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 thaniel, Miss Peabody made the significant 
 remark, " If your brother can do work like that, 
 he has no right to be idle"* to which Miss 
 Louisa retorted, it is to be hoped with some 
 indignation, that her brother never was idle. 
 
 It is only too evident from this that public 
 opinion in Salem had already decided that 
 Hawthorne was an idle fellow, who was living 
 on his female relatives. That is the way the 
 world judges from external facts without 
 any consideration of internal causes or condi- 
 tions. It gratifies the vanity of those who are 
 fortunate and prosperous, to believe that all 
 men have an equal chance in the race of life. 
 Emerson once blamed two young men for idle- 
 ness, who were struggling against obstacles 
 such as he could have had no conception of. 
 Those who have been fortunate from the cradle 
 never learn what life is really like. 
 
 The spell, however, was broken and the 
 friendliness of Elizabeth Peabody found a 
 deeply sympathetic response in the Hawthorne 
 household. Nathaniel at last found a person 
 who expressed a genuine and heartfelt appre- 
 ciation of his work, and it was like the return of 
 the sun to the Arctic explorer after his long 
 winter night. Rather to Miss Peabody's sur- 
 prise he and his sisters soon returned her call, 
 and visits between the two families thereafter 
 became frequent. 
 
 * Lathrop, 168. Miss Peabody would seem to have 
 narrated this to him. 
 
 119
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Sophia Peabody belonged to the class of 
 young women for whom Shakespeare's Ophelia 
 serves as a typical example. She was gentle, 
 affectionate, refined, and amiable to a fault, 
 much too tender-hearted for this rough world, 
 if her sister Elizabeth had not always stood 
 like a barrier between her and it. 
 
 How Hawthorne might have acted in Hamlet's 
 place it is useless to surmise, but in his true 
 nature he was quite the opposite of Hamlet, 
 slow and cautious, but driven onward by an 
 inexorable will. If Hamlet had possessed half 
 of Hawthorne's determination, he might have 
 broken through the network of evil conditions 
 which surrounded him, and lived to make Ophelia 
 a happy woman. It was only necessary to 
 come into Hawthorne's presence in order to 
 recognize the force that was in him. 
 
 Sophia Amelia Peabody was born September 
 21, 1811, so that at the time of which we are 
 now writing she was twenty-five years of age. 
 Hawthorne was then thirty-two, when a man 
 is more attractive to the fair sex than at any 
 other time of life, for then he unites the freshness 
 and vigor of youth with sufficient maturity of 
 judgment to inspire confidence and trust. Yet 
 her sister Elizabeth found it difficult to per- 
 suade her to come into the parlor and meet the 
 handsomest man in Salem. When she did 
 come she evidently attracted Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne's attention, for, although she said little, 
 he looked at her repeatedly while conversing 
 with her sister. It may not have been an instance
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of love at first sight, which may happen to 
 any young man at a dancing party, and be 
 forgotten two days later, but it was something 
 more than a casual interest. On his second or 
 third call she showed him a sketch she had 
 made of "the gentle boy," according to her 
 idea of him, and the subdued tone with which 
 he received it plainly indicated that he was 
 already somewhat under her influence. Julian 
 Hawthorne writes of this : * 
 
 " It may be remarked here, that Mrs. Hawthorne in telling 
 her children, many years afterwards, of these first meet- 
 ings with their father, used to say that his presence, 
 from the very beginning, exercised so strong a magnetic 
 attraction upon her, that instinctively, and in self-defence 
 as it were, she drew back and repelled him. The power 
 which she felt in him alarmed her; she did not understand 
 what it meant, and was only able to feel that she must 
 resist. " 
 
 Every true woman feels this reluctance at 
 first toward a suitor for her hand, but a sensitive 
 young lady might well have a sense of awe on 
 finding that she had attracted to herself such a 
 mundane force as Hawthorne, and it is no won- 
 der that this first impression was recollected 
 throughout her life. There are many who 
 would have refused Hawthorne's suit, because 
 they felt that he was too great and strong for 
 them, and it is to the honor of Sophia Peabody 
 that she was not only attracted by the magnet- 
 ism of Hawthorne, but finally had the courage 
 to unite herself to such an enigmatical person. 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 179. 
 121
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 We also obtain a glimpse of Hawthorne's 
 side of this courtship from a letter which he 
 wrote to Longfellow in June, 1837, and in which 
 he says," I have now, or shall soon have a sharper 
 spur to exertion, which I lacked at an earlier 
 period;" * and this is all the information he 
 has vouchsafed us on the subject. If there is 
 anything more in his diary, it has not been 
 given to the public, and probably never will be. 
 A number of letters which he wrote to Miss 
 Sophia from Boston, or Brook Farm, have 
 been published by his son, but it would be 
 neither right nor judicious to introduce them 
 here. 
 
 It is, however, evident from the above that 
 Hawthorne was already engaged in June, 1837, 
 but his engagement long remained a secret, 
 for three excellent reasons; viz., his slender 
 means of support, the delicate health of his 
 betrothed, and the disturbance which it might 
 create in the Hawthorne family. The last did 
 not prove so serious a difficulty as he seems to 
 have imagined; but his apprehensiveness on 
 that point many another could justify from 
 personal experience. f 
 
 From this time also the health of Sophia 
 Peabody steadily improved, nor is it necessary 
 to account for it by any magical influence on 
 the part of her lover. Her trouble was plainly 
 some recondite difficulty of the circulation. 
 The heart is supposed to be the seat of the 
 
 * Conway, 75. 
 
 t J. Hawthorne, i. 196. 
 
 122
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 affections because mental emotion stimulates 
 the nervous system and acts upon the heart as 
 the centre of all organic functions. A healthy 
 natural excitement will cause the heart to vibrate 
 more firmly and evenly; but an unhealthy 
 excitement, like fear or anger, will cause it to 
 beat in a rapid and uneven manner. Contra- 
 rily, despondency, or a lethargic state of mind, 
 causes the movement of the blood to slacken. 
 The happiness of love is thus the best of all 
 stimulants and correctives for a torpid circu- 
 lation, and it expands the whole being of a 
 woman like the blossoming of a flower in the 
 sunshine. From the time of her betrothal, 
 Sophia Peabody's headaches became less and 
 less frequent, until they ceased altogether. 
 The true seat of the affections is in the mind. 
 The first consideration proved to be a more 
 serious matter. If Hawthorne had not suc- 
 ceeded in earning his own livelihood by literature 
 so far, what prospect was there of supporting 
 a wife and family in that manner? What should 
 he do; whither should he turn? He continually 
 turned the subject over in his mind, without, 
 however, reaching any definite conclusion. 
 Nor is this to be wondered at. If the ordinary 
 avenues of human industry were not available 
 to him as a college graduate, they were now 
 permanently closed. A man in his predica- 
 ment at the present time might obtain the 
 position of librarian in one of our inland cities; 
 but such places are few and the applications are 
 many. Bronson Alcott once offered his services 
 123
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 as teacher of a primary school, a position he 
 might have filled better than most, for its one 
 requisite is kindliness, but the Concord school 
 committee would not hear of it. If Hawthorne 
 had attempted to turn pedagogue he might 
 have met with a similar experience. 
 
 Conway remarks very justly that an American 
 author could not be expected to earn his own 
 living in a country where foreign books could 
 be pirated as they were in the United States 
 until 1890, and this was especially true during 
 the popularity of Dickens and George Eliot. 
 Dickens was the great humanitarian writer of 
 the nineteenth century, but he was also a cari- 
 caturist and a bohemian. He did not represent 
 life as it is, but with a certain comical oddity. 
 As an author he is to Hawthorne what a peony 
 is to a rose, or a garnet is to a ruby ; but ten 
 persons would purchase a novel of Dickens 
 when one would select the "Twice Told Tales." 
 Scott and Tennyson are exceptional instances 
 of a high order of literary work which also 
 proved fairly remunerative; but they do not 
 equal Hawthorne in grace of diction and in 
 the rare quality of his thought, whatever 
 advantages they may possess in other respects. 
 Thackeray earned his living by his pen, but it 
 was only in England that he could have done 
 this. 
 
 124
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 PEGASUS AT THE CART: 1839-1841 
 
 HORATIO BRIDGE'S dam was washed away 
 in the spring of 1837, by a sudden and unpre- 
 cedented rising of the Androscoggin River. 
 Bridge was financially ruined, but like a brave 
 and generous young man he did not permit this 
 stroke of evil fortune, severe as it was, to oppress 
 him heavily, and Hawthorne seems to have 
 felt no shadow of it during his visit to Augusta 
 the following summer. He returned to Salem 
 in August with pleasanter anticipations than 
 ever before, to enjoy the society of his fiancee, 
 and to prepare the second volume of "Twice 
 Told Tales." 
 
 The course of Hawthorne's life during the 
 next twenty months is mostly a blank to us. 
 He would seem to have exerted himself to escape 
 from the monotone in which he had been living 
 so long, but of his efforts, disappointments, 
 and struggles against the giant coils of Fate, 
 there is no report. He wrote the four Province 
 House tales as a send-off to his second volume, 
 as well as "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," "Foot- 
 prints on the Seashore," "Snow-Flakes," and 
 "Chippings with a Chisel," which are to be 
 found in it.* There is a long blank in Haw- 
 thorne's diary during the winter of 1837-38, 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, 176. 
 125
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 which may be owing to his indifference to the 
 outer world at that time, but more likely be- 
 cause its contents have not yet been revealed 
 to us. It was the period of Cilley's duel, and 
 what Hawthorne's reflections were on that 
 subject, aside from the account which he wrote 
 for the Democratic Review, would be highly 
 interesting now, but the absence of any reference 
 to it is significant, and there is no published 
 entry in his diary between December 6, 1837, 
 and May n, 1838. 
 
 Horatio Bridge obtained the position of pay- 
 master on the United States warship "Cyane," 
 which arrived at Boston early in June, and 
 on the 1 6th of the month Hawthorne went to 
 call on his friend in his new quarters, which he 
 found to be pleasant enough in their narrow 
 and limited way. Bridge returned with him to 
 Boston, and they dined together at the Tremont 
 House, drinking iced champagne and claret in 
 pitchers, which latter would seem to have 
 been a fashion of the place. Hawthorne's 
 description of the day is purely external, and 
 he tells us nothing of his friend, concerning 
 whom we were anxious to hear, or of the new 
 life on which he had entered. 
 
 On July 4, his thirty-fifth birthday, he wrote 
 a microscopic account of the proceedings on 
 Salem Common, which is interesting now, but 
 will become more valuable as time goes on and 
 the customs of the American people change 
 with it. The object of these detailed pictorial 
 studies, which not only remind one of Diirer's 
 126
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 drawings but of Carlyle's local descriptions 
 (when he uses simple English and does not fly 
 off into recondite comparisons), is not clearly 
 apparent; but the artist has instincts of his 
 own, like a vine which swings in the wind and 
 seizes upon the first tree that its tendrils come 
 into contact with. We sometimes wish that, 
 as in the case of Bridge and his warship, they were 
 not so objective and external, and that, like 
 Carlyle, he would throw more of himself into 
 them. 
 
 On July 27, Hawthorne started on an expedi- 
 tion to the Berkshire Hills, by way of Worcester, 
 remaining there nearly till the first of September, 
 and describing the scenery, the people he met 
 by the way, and the commencement at Wil- 
 liams College, which then took place in the 
 middle of August, in his customary accurate 
 manner. He has given a full and connected 
 account of his travels; so full that we wonder 
 how he found time to write to Miss Sophia 
 Peabody. He would seem to have been entirely 
 alone, and to have travelled mainly by stage. 
 On the route from Pittsfield to North Adams 
 he notices the sunset, and describes it in these 
 simple terms:* 
 
 "After or about sunset there was a heavy 
 shower, the thunder rumbling round and round 
 the mountain wall, and the clouds stretching 
 from rampart to rampart. When it abated 
 the clouds in all parts of the visible heavens 
 were tinged with glory from the west; some 
 
 * American Note-book, 130. 
 127
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 that hung low being purple and gold, while 
 the higher ones were gray. The slender curve 
 of the new moon was also visible, brightening 
 amidst the fading brightness of the sunny part 
 of the sky. " 
 
 At North Adams he takes notice of one of 
 the Select-men, and gives this account of him:* 
 
 "One of the most sensible men in this village 
 is a plain, tall, elderly person, who is over- 
 seeing the mending of a road, humorous, 
 intelligent, with much thought about matters 
 and things; and while at work he had a sort 
 of dignity in handling the hoe or crow-bar, 
 which shows him to be the chief. In the even- 
 ing he sits under the stoop, silent and observant 
 from under the brim of his hat; but, occasion 
 suiting, he holds an argument about the benefit 
 or otherwise of manufactories or other things. 
 A simplicity characterizes him more than ap- 
 pertains to most Yankees. " 
 
 He did not return to Salem until September 
 24. A month later he was at the Tremont 
 House in Boston, looking out of the windows 
 toward Beacon Street, which may have served 
 him for an idea in "The Blithedale Romance." 
 After this there are no entries published from 
 his diary till the following spring, so that the 
 manner in which he occupied himself during 
 the winter of 1838-39 will have to be left to 
 the imagination. On April 27, 1839, he wrote 
 a letter to Miss Sophia Peabody from Boston, 
 in which he says: 
 
 * American Note-book, 153.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "I feel pretty secure against intruders, for 
 the bad weather will defend me from foreign 
 invasion; and as to Cousin Haley, he and I 
 had a bitter political dispute last evening, at 
 the close of which he went to bed in high dud- 
 geon, and probably will not speak to me these 
 three days. Thus you perceive that strife and 
 wrangling, as well as east winds and rain, are 
 the methods of a kind Providence to promote 
 my comfort, which would not have been so 
 well secured in any other way. Six or seven 
 hours of cheerful solitude! But I will not be 
 alone. I invite your spirit to be with me, 
 at any hour and as many hours as you please, 
 but especially at the twilight hour before I 
 light my lamp. I bid you at that particular 
 time, because I can see visions more vividly 
 in the dusky glow of firelight than either by 
 daylight or lamplight. Come, and let me renew 
 my spell against headache and other direful 
 effects of the east wind. How I wish I could 
 give you a portion of my insensibility! and 
 yet I should be almost afraid of some radical 
 transformation, were I to produce a change 
 in that respect. If you cannot grow plump 
 and rosy and tough and vigorous without being 
 changed into another nature, then I do think, 
 for this short life, you had better remain just 
 what you are. Yes; but you will be the same 
 to me, because we have met in eternity, and 
 there our intimacy was formed. So get well 
 as soon as you possibly can. " 
 
 This statement deserves consideration under 
 9 129
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 two headings; and the last shall be first, and 
 the first shall be last. 
 
 It will be noticed that the accounts in Haw- 
 thorne's diary are for the most part of a dis- 
 passionate objective character, as if he had 
 come down from the moon to take an observa- 
 tion of mundane affairs. His letters to Miss 
 Peabody were also dispassionate, but strongly 
 subjective, and, like the one just quoted, mainly 
 evolved from his imagination, like orchids 
 living in the air. It was also about this time 
 that Carlyle wrote to Emerson concerning the 
 Dial that it seemed "like an unborn human 
 soul. " The orchid imagination was an influence 
 of the time, penetrating everywhere like an ether. 
 
 In the opening sentences in this letter, Haw- 
 thorne comes within an inch of disclosing his 
 political opinions, and yet provokingly fails 
 to do so. There is nothing about the man con- 
 cerning which we are so much in the dark, and 
 which we should so much like to know, as this ; 
 and it is certain from this letter that he held 
 very decided opinions on political subjects and 
 could defend them with a good deal of energy. 
 On one occasion when Hawthorne was asked 
 why he was a Democrat, he replied, "Because 
 I live in a democratic country," which was, of 
 course, simply an evasion; and such were the 
 answers which he commonly gave to all inter- 
 rogatories. His proclivities were certainly not 
 democratic; but the greater the tenacity with 
 which a man holds his opinions, the less inclined 
 he feels to discuss them with others. The 
 130
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Boston aristocracy now vote the Democratic 
 ticket out of opposition to the dominant party 
 in Massachusetts, and Hawthorne may have 
 done so for a similar reason. 
 
 Hawthorne was now a weigher and gauger 
 in the Boston Custom House, one of the most 
 laborious positions in the government service. 
 The defalcation of Swartwout with over a million 
 of dollars from the New York customs' receipts 
 had forced upon President Van Buren the 
 importance of filling such posts with honorable 
 men, instead of political shysters, and Bancroft, 
 though a rather narrow historian, was a gentle- 
 man and a scholar. He was the right man to 
 appreciate Hawthorne, but whether he bestowed 
 this place upon him of his own accord, or through 
 the ulterior agency of Franklin Pierce, we are 
 not informed. It is quite possible that Eliza- 
 beth Peabody had a hand in the case, for she 
 was always an indefatigable petitioner for the 
 benefit of the needy, and had opportunities 
 for meeting Bancroft in Boston society. His 
 kindness to Hawthorne was at least some com- 
 pensation for having originated the most ill- 
 favored looking public building in the city.* 
 
 Hawthorne's salary was twelve hundred dol- 
 lars a year, fully equal to eighteen hundred 
 at the present time, and his position appears 
 to have been what is now called a store-keeper. 
 He fully earned his salary. He had charge and 
 oversight of all the dutiable imports that came 
 
 * The present Boston Custom House. George S. Hillard 
 called it an architectural monstrosity.
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 to Long Wharf, the most important in the city, 
 and was obliged to keep an account of all duti- 
 able articles which were received there. He 
 had to superintend personally the unloading 
 of vessels, and although in some instances this 
 was not unpleasant, he was constantly receiving 
 shiploads of soft coal, Sidney or Pictou coal, 
 which is the dirtiest stuff in the world ; it cannot 
 be touched without raising a dusty vapor which 
 settles in the eyes, nose, and mouth, and inside 
 the shirt-collar. He counted every basketful 
 that was brought ashore, and his position on 
 such occasions was to be envied only by the 
 sooty laborers who handled that commodity. 
 We wonder what the frequenters of Long Wharf 
 thought of this handsome, poetic-looking man 
 occupied in such a business. 
 
 Yet he appreciated the value of this Spartan 
 discipline, the inestimable value of being for 
 once in his life brought down to hard-pan and 
 the plain necessities of life. The juice of worm- 
 wood is bitter, but it is also strengthening. On 
 July 3, 1839, he wrote: * 
 
 " I do not mean to imply that I am unhappy 
 or discontented, for this is not the case. My 
 life only is a burden in the same way that it is 
 to every toilsome man, and mine is a healthy 
 weariness, such as needs only a night's sleep 
 to remove it. But from henceforth forever I 
 shall be entitled to call the sons of toil my 
 brethren, and shall know how to sympathize 
 with them, seeing that I likewise have risen 
 
 * American Note-book. 
 132
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 at the dawn, and borne the fervor of the midday 
 sun, nor turned my heavy footsteps homeward 
 till eventide. Years hence, perhaps, the ex- 
 perience that my heart is acquiring now will 
 flow out in truth and wisdom. " 
 
 This is one of the noblest passages in his 
 writings. 
 
 On August 27 he notices the intense heat in 
 the centre of the city, although it is somewhat 
 cooler on the wharves. At this time Emerson 
 may have been composing his "Wood Notes" 
 or "Threnody" in the cool pine groves of Con- 
 cord. Such is the difference between inheriting 
 twenty thousand dollars and two thousand. 
 Hawthorne lived in Boston at such a boarding- 
 place as Doctor Holmes describes in the " Auto- 
 crat of the Breakfast Table," and for all we 
 know it may have been the same one. He lived 
 economically, reading and writing to Miss 
 Peabody in the evening, and rarely going to 
 the theatre or other entertainments, a life 
 like that of a store clerk whose salary only 
 suffices for his board and clothing. George 
 Bancroft was kindly disposed toward him, and 
 would have introduced Hawthorne into any so- 
 ciety that he could have wished to enter; but 
 Hawthorne, then and always, declined to be 
 lionized. Hawthorne made but one friend in 
 Boston during this time, and that one, George S. 
 Hillard, a most faithful and serviceable friend, 
 not only to Hawthorne during his life, but 
 afterwards as a trustee for his family, and 
 equally kind and helpful to them in their 
 133
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 bereavement, which is more than could be 
 said of all his friends, especially of Pierce. 
 Hillard belonged to the brilliant coterie of Cam- 
 bridge literary men, which included Longfellow, 
 Sumner and Felton. He was a lawyer, poli- 
 tician, editor, orator and author; at this time, 
 or shortly afterward, Sumner's law partner; 
 one of the most kindly sympathetic men, with 
 a keen appreciation of all that is finest in art 
 and literature, but somewhat lacking in firm- 
 ness and independence of character. His " Six 
 Months in Italy, " written in the purest English, 
 long served as a standard work for American 
 travellers in that ideal land, and his rather 
 unsymmetrical figure only made the graces of his 
 oratory more conspicuous. 
 
 Hawthorne kept at his work through summer's 
 heat and winter's cold. On February n, 1840, 
 he wrote to his fiancee: 
 
 "I have been measuring coal all day, on board of a 
 black little British schooner, in a dismal dock at the north 
 end of the city. Most of the time I paced the deck to keep 
 myself warm. . 
 
 . . . Sometimes I descended into the dirty little 
 cabin of the schooner, and warmed myself by a red-hot 
 stove among biscuit barrels, pots and kettles, sea chests, 
 and innumerable lumber of all sorts, my olfactories, mean- 
 while, being greatly refreshed by the odor of a pipe, which 
 the captain or some of his crew was smoking." 
 
 One would have to go to Dante's "Inferno" 
 to realize a situation more thoroughly disagree- 
 able ; yet the very pathos of Hawthorne's em- 
 ployment served to inspire him with elevated 
 134
 
 AWTHORNE. FROM THE PORTRAIT BY CHARLES OSGOOD IN 1840. IN 
 THE POSSESSION OF MRS. RICHARD C. MANNING, SALEM, MASS. FROM 
 NEGATIVE IN POSSESSION OF AND OWNED BY FRANK COUSIN, SALEM
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 thoughts and beautiful reflections. His letters 
 are full of aerial fancies. He notices what a 
 beautiful day it was on April 18, 1840, and 
 regrets that he cannot " fling himself on a gentle 
 breeze and be blown away into the country." 
 April 30 is another beautiful day, "a real 
 happiness to live; if he had been a mere veg- 
 etable, a hawthorn bush, he would have felt 
 its influence." He goes to a picture-gallery in 
 the Athenaeum, but only mentions seeing two 
 paintings by Sarah Clarke. He returns to Salem 
 in October, and writes in his own chamber the 
 passage already quoted, in which he mourns 
 the lonely years of his youth, and the long, 
 long waiting for appreciation, "while he felt 
 the life chilling in his veins and sometimes it 
 seemed as if he were already in the grave;" 
 but an early return to his post gives him brighter 
 thoughts. He takes notice of the magnificent 
 black and yellow butterflies that have strangely 
 come to Long Wharf, as if seeking to sail to 
 other climes since the last flower had faded. 
 Mr. Bancroft has appointed him to suppress an 
 insurrection among the government laborers, 
 and he writes to Miss Sophia Peabody : 
 
 " I was not at the end of Long Wharf to-day, but in a dis- 
 tant region, my authority having been put in requisition 
 to quell a rebellion of the captain and 'gang' of shovellers 
 aboard a coal-vessel. I would you could have beheld the 
 awful sternness of my visage and demeanor in the execution 
 of this momentous duty. Well, I have conquered the 
 rebels, and proclaimed an amnesty; so to-morrow I shall 
 return to that paradise of measurers, the end of Long 
 Wharf, not to my former salt-ship, she being now dis- 
 
 135
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 charged, but to another, which will probably employ me 
 well-nigh a fortnight longer." 
 
 A month later we meet with this ominous re- 
 mark in his diary : 
 
 "I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft's yesterday with 
 Miss Margaret Fuller; but Providence had given me some 
 business to do, for which I was very thankful." 
 
 Had Hawthorne already encountered this 
 remarkable woman with the feminine heart and 
 masculine mind, and had he already conceived 
 that aversion for her which is almost painfully 
 apparent in his Italian diary? Certainly in 
 many respects they were antipodes. 
 
 The Whig party came into power on March 
 4, 1841, with "Tippecanoe" for a figure-head 
 and Daniel Webster as its conductor of the 
 "grand orchestra." A month later Bancroft 
 was removed, and Hawthorne went with him, 
 not at all regretful to depart. In fact, he had come 
 to feel that he could not endure the Custom 
 House, or at least his particular share of it, 
 any longer. One object he had in view in ac- 
 cepting the position was, to obtain practical 
 experience, and this he certainly did in a rough 
 and unpleasant manner. The experience of a 
 routine office, however, is not like that of a 
 broker who has goods to sell and who must dis- 
 pose of them to the best advantage, in order to 
 keep his reputation at high- water mark; nor 
 is it like the experience of a young doctor or a 
 lawyer struggling to obtain a practice. Those 
 are the men who know what life actually is; 
 136
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 and it is this thoroughness of experience which 
 makes the chief difference between a Dante 
 and a Tennyson. 
 
 These reflections lead directly to Hawthorne's 
 casual and oft-repeated commentary on Ameri- 
 can politicians. He wrote March 1 5 : 
 
 "I do detest all offices all, at least, that 
 are held on a political tenure. And I want 
 nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts 
 wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their 
 consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to 
 some substance as black as that, and which 
 will stretch as much. One thing, if no more, 
 I have gained by my custom-house experience, 
 to know a politician. " * 
 
 This seems rather severe, but at the time 
 when Hawthorne wrote it, American politics 
 were on the lowest plane of demagogism. It 
 was the inevitable result of the spoils-of-office 
 system, and the meanest species of the class 
 were the ward politicians who received small 
 government offices in return for services in can- 
 vassing ignorant foreign voters. They were 
 naturally coarse, hardened adventurers, and 
 it was such that Hawthorne chiefly came in 
 contact with in his official business. Cleon, 
 the brawling tanner of Athens, has reappeared 
 in every representative government since his 
 time, and plays his clownish part with multi- 
 farious variations; but it is to little purpose 
 that we deride the men who govern us, for 
 
 * American Note-book, i. 220. 
 137
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 they are what we and our institutions have made 
 them. If we want better representatives, we 
 must mend our own ways and especially purge 
 ourselves of political cant and national vanity, 
 which is the food that ward politicians grow 
 fat on. The profession of a politician is based 
 on instability, and he cannot acquire, as matters 
 now stand, the solidity of character that we 
 look for in other professions. 
 
 So far, however, was Hawthorne at this 
 juncture from considering men and things 
 critically, that he closes the account of his first 
 government experience in this rather optimistic 
 manner : 
 
 "Old Father Time has gone onward some- 
 what less heavily than is his wont when I am 
 imprisoned within the walls of the Custom-house. 
 My breath had never belonged to anybody 
 but me. It came fresh from the ocean . . . 
 
 It was exhilarating to see the vessels, 
 how they bounded over the waves, while a sheet 
 of foam broke out around them. I found a 
 good deal of enjoyment, too, in the busy scene 
 around me. It pleased me to think that I also 
 had a part to act in the material and tangible 
 business of this life, and that a portion of all 
 this industry could not have gone on without 
 my presence." * 
 
 When Hawthorne philosophizes it is not in 
 old threadbare proverbs or Orphic generali- 
 ties, but always specifically and to the point. 
 
 * American Note-book, i. 230. 
 138
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HAWTHORNE AS A SOCIALIST: 1841-1842 
 
 WHO can compute the amount of mischief 
 that Fourier has done, and those well-meaning 
 but inexperienced dreamers who have followed 
 after him? A Fourth-of-July fire-cracker once 
 consumed the half of a large city. The boy 
 who exploded it had no evil intentions; neither 
 did Fourier and other speculators in philan- 
 thropy contemplate what might be the effect 
 of their doctrines on minds actuated by the 
 lowest and most inevitable wants. Wendell 
 Phillips, in the most brilliant of his orations, 
 said: "The track of God's lightning is a straight 
 line from justice to iniquity," and one might 
 have said to Phillips, in his later years, that 
 there is in the affairs of men a straight line 
 from infatuation to destruction. In what degree 
 Fourier was responsible for the effusion of blood 
 in Paris in the spring of 1871 it is not possible 
 to determine; but the relation of Rousseau to 
 the first French revolution is not more certain. 
 Fate is the spoken word which cannot be re- 
 called, and who can tell the good and evil con- 
 sequences that lie hidden in it? The proper 
 cure for socialism, in educated minds, would 
 be a study of the law. There we discover what 
 a wonderful mechanism is the present organiza- 
 tion of society, and how difficult it would be to 
 reconstruct this, if it once were overturned. 
 139
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 As society is constituted at present, the honest 
 and industrious are always more or less at the 
 mercy of the vicious and indolent, and the only 
 protection against this lies in the right of in- 
 dividual ownership. In a general community 
 of goods, there might be some means of prevent- 
 ing or punishing flagrant misdemeanors, but 
 what protection could there be against indolence ? 
 Those who were ready and willing to work 
 would have to bear all the burdens of society. 
 In order that an idea should take external 
 or concrete form it has to be married, as it were, 
 to some desire or tendency in the individual. 
 Reverend George Ripley had become imbued 
 with Fourierism through his studies of French 
 philosophy, but he had also been brought up 
 on a farm, and preferred the fresh air and vigorous 
 exercise of that mode of life to city preaching. 
 He was endowed with a strong constitution and 
 possessed of an independent fortune, and his 
 aristocratic wife, more devoted than women of 
 that class are usually, sympathized with his 
 plans, and was prepared to follow him to the 
 ends of the earth. He not only felt great enthusi- 
 asm for the project but was capable of inspiring 
 others with it. There were many socialistic 
 experiments undertaken about that time, but 
 George Ripley 's was the only one that has 
 acquired a historical value. It is much to his 
 credit that he gave the scheme a thorough 
 trial, and by carrying it out to a logical con- 
 clusion proved its radical impracticability. 
 Such a failure is more valuable than the successes 
 140
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of a hundred men who merely make their own 
 fortunes and leave no legacy of experience 
 that can benefit the human race. 
 
 It must have been Elizabeth Peabody who 
 persuaded Hawthorne to enlist in the Brook Farm 
 enterprise. She wrote a paper for the Dial * 
 on the subject, explaining the object of the 
 West Roxbury community and holding forth 
 the prospect of the "higher life" which could 
 be enjoyed there. Hawthorne was in himself 
 the very antipodes of socialism, and it was 
 part of the irony of his life that he should have 
 embarked in such an experiment; but he in- 
 vested a thousand dollars in it, which he had 
 saved from his Custom House salary, and was 
 one of the first on the ground. What he really 
 hoped for from it as we learn by his letters 
 to Miss Sophia Peabody was a means of gain- 
 ing his daily bread, with leisure to accomplish 
 a fair amount of writing, and at the same time 
 to enter into such society as might be congenial 
 to his future consort. It seemed reasonable 
 to presume this, and yet the result did not 
 correspond to it. He went to West Roxbury 
 on April 12, 1841, and as it happened in a driving 
 northeast snow-storm, an unpropitious be- 
 ginning, of which he has given a graphic 
 account in "The Blithedale Romance." 
 
 At first he liked his work at the Farm. The 
 novelty of it proved attractive to him. On May 
 3 he wrote a letter to his sister Louisa, which 
 
 * Dial, ii. 361. 
 141
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 reflects the practical nature of his new sur- 
 roundings; and it must be confessed that this 
 is a refreshing change from the sublunary 
 considerations at his Boston boarding-house. 
 He has already "learned to plant potatoes, to 
 milk cows, and to cut straw and hay for the 
 cattle, and does various other mighty works." 
 He has gained strength wonderfully, and can 
 do a day's work without the slightest incon- 
 venience; wears a tremendous pair of cowhide 
 boots. He goes to bed at nine, and gets up at 
 half-past four to sound the rising-horn, much 
 too early for a socialistic paradise, where human 
 nature is supposed to find a pleasant as well 
 as a salutary existence. George Ripley would 
 seem to be driving the wedge in by the larger 
 end. Hawthorne is delighted with the topo- 
 graphical aspect, and writes : 
 
 "This is one of the most beautiful places I 
 ever saw in my life, and as secluded as if it were 
 a hundred miles from any city or village. There 
 are woods, in which we can ramble all day with- 
 out meeting anybody or scarcely seeing a house. 
 Our house stands apart from the main road, 
 so that we are not troubled even with passengers 
 looking at us. Once in a while we have a tran- 
 scendental visitor, such as Mr. Alcott; but 
 generally we pass whole days without seeing 
 a single face save those of the brethren. The 
 whole fraternity eat together ; and such a delect- 
 able way of life has never been seen on earth 
 since the days of the early Christians. " * 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 228. 
 142
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 From Louisa Hawthorne's reply, it may be 
 surmised that his family did not altogether 
 approve of the Brook Farm venture, perhaps 
 because it withdrew him from his own home at 
 a time when they had looked with fond expecta- 
 tion for his return; and here we have a glimpse 
 into the beautiful soul of this younger sister, 
 otherwise so little known to us. Elizabeth is 
 sceptical of its ultimate success, but Louisa is 
 fearful that he may work too hard and wants 
 him to take good care of himself. She is delighted 
 with the miniature of him, which they have lately 
 received: "It has one advantage over the 
 original, I can make it go with me where I 
 choose!" 
 
 Louisa wrote another warm and beautiful 
 letter on June n, recalling the days when they 
 used to go fishing together on Lake Sebago, 
 and adds: 
 
 "Elizabeth Cleveland says she saw Mr. George Bradford 
 in Lowell last winter, and he told her he was going to be 
 associated with you; but they say his mind misgave him 
 terribly when the time came for him to go to Roxbury, 
 and whether to make such a desperate step or not he could 
 not tell." * 
 
 George P. Bradford was the masculine com- 
 plement to Elizabeth Peabody flitting across 
 the paths of Emerson and Hawthorne through- 
 out their lives. His name appears con- 
 tinually in the biographies of that time, 
 but future generations would never know the 
 sort of man he was, but for Louisa's amiable 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 232. 
 143
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 commentary. He appeared at Brook Farm a 
 few days later, and became one of George Rip- 
 ley's strongest and most faithful adherents. 
 He is the historian of the West Roxbury com- 
 munity, and late in life the editor of the Century 
 asked him to write a special account of it for 
 that periodical. Bradford did so, and received 
 one hundred dollars in return for his manu- 
 script; but it never was published, presumably 
 because it was too original for the editor's 
 purpose. 
 
 Is it possible that Hawthorne put on a good 
 face for this letter to his sister, in order to keep 
 up appearances; or was it like the common 
 experience of music and drawing teachers that 
 the first lessons are the best performed; or did 
 he really have some disagreement with Ripley, 
 like that which he represents in "The Blithedale 
 Romance" ? The last is the more probable, 
 although we do not hear of it otherwise. Spring 
 is the least agreeable season for farming, with 
 its muddy soil, its dressing the ground, its weeds 
 to be kept down and its insects to be kept off. 
 After the first week of June, the work becomes 
 much pleasanter; and the harvesting is delight- 
 ful, stacking the grain, picking the fruit, 
 with the cheery wood fires, so restful to mind 
 and body. Yet we find on August 12 that 
 Hawthorne had become thoroughly disenchanted 
 with his Arcadian life, although he admits that 
 the labors of the farm were not so pressing as 
 they had been. Ten days later, he refers to 
 having spent the better part of a night with 
 144
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 one of his co-workers, "who was quite out of 
 his wits" and left the community next day. 
 He then continues in his diary: * 
 
 " It is extremely doubtful whether Mr. Ripley 
 will succeed in locating his community on the 
 
 farm. He can bring Mr. E to no terms, 
 
 and the more they talk about the matter, the 
 further they appear to be from a settlement. 
 We must form other plans for ourselves; for 
 I can see few or no signs that Providence pur- 
 poses to give us a home here. I am weary, 
 weary, thrice weary, of waiting so many ages. 
 Whatever may be my gifts, I have not hitherto 
 shown a single one that may avail to gather 
 gold. " 
 
 Here are already three disaffected personages, 
 desirous of escaping from an earthly paradise. 
 Mr. Ripley has by no means an easy row to 
 hoe. Yet he keeps on ploughing steadily through 
 his difficulties, as he did through the soil of 
 his meadows. In September we find Hawthorne 
 at Salem, and on the third he writes: f 
 
 " But really I should judge it to be twenty 
 years since I left Brook Farm; and I take this 
 to be one proof that my life there was unnatural 
 and unsuitable, and therefore an unreal one. 
 It already looks like a dream behind me. The 
 real Me was never an associate of the com- 
 munity: there has been a spectral appearance 
 there, sounding the horn at daybreak, and 
 
 * American Note-book, ii. 15. 
 t American Note-book, ii. 16. 
 10 145
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 milking the cows, and hoeing potatoes, and 
 raking hay, toiling in the sun, and doing me 
 the honor to assume my name. But this spectre 
 was not myself." 
 
 This idea of himself as a spectre seems to 
 have accompanied him much in the way that the 
 daemon did Socrates, and to have served in a 
 similar manner as a warning to him. He left Brook 
 Farm almost exactly as he describes himself 
 doing, in "The Blithedale Romance," and he 
 returned again on the twenty-second, but the 
 brilliant woodland carnival which he describes, 
 both in his " Note-book " and in " The Blithedale 
 Romance, " did not take place there until Sep- 
 tember 28. It was a masquerade in which Mar- 
 garet Fuller and Emerson appeared as invited 
 guests, and held a meeting of the Transcenden- 
 tal club "sub tegmine fagi." As Hawthorne 
 remarks, "Much conversation followed," in 
 which he evidently found little to interest him. 
 Margaret Fuller also made a present of a heifer 
 to the live-stock of the Farm, of whose unruly 
 gambols Hawthorne seems to have taken more 
 particular notice. He would seem in fact to have 
 attributed the same characteristics to the animal 
 and its owner. 
 
 Having more time at his own disposal, he 
 now attempted to write another volume of 
 history for Peter Parley's library, but, although 
 this was rather a childish affair, he found him- 
 self unequal to it. "I have not," he said, "the 
 sense of perfect seclusion here, which has always 
 been essential to my power of producing any-
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 thing. It is true, nobody intrudes into my 
 room; but still I cannot be quiet. Nothing 
 here is settled; and my mind will not be ab- 
 stracted." During the whole of October he 
 went on long woodland walks, sometimes alone 
 and at others with a single companion. He 
 tried, like Emerson, courting Nature in her 
 solitudes, and made the acquaintance of her 
 denizens as if he were the original Adam taking 
 an account of his animal kingdom. He picks 
 up a terrapin, the Emys picta, which attempts 
 to hide itself from him in a stone wall, and 
 carries it considerately to a pond of water; but 
 there is not much to be found in the woods, 
 and one can travel a whole day in the forest 
 primeval without coming across anything better 
 than a few squirrels and small birds. In fact, 
 two young sportsmen once rode on horseback 
 with their guns from the Missouri River to the 
 Pacific Ocean without meeting any larger game 
 than prairie-chickens. 
 
 It was all in vain. Hawthorne's nature was 
 not like Emerson's, and what stimulated the 
 latter mentally made comparatively little im- 
 pression on the former. Hawthorne found, 
 then as always, that in order to practice his art, 
 he must devote himself to it, wholly and com- 
 pletely, leaving side issues to go astern. In 
 order to create an ideal world of his own, he 
 was obliged to separate himself from all existing 
 conditions, as Beethoven did when composing 
 his symphonies. Composition for Hawthorne 
 meant a severe mental strain. Those sentences, 
 147
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 pellucid as a mountain spring, were not clari- 
 fied without an effort. The faculty on which 
 Hawthorne depended for this, as every artist 
 does, was his imagination, and imagination is 
 as easily disturbed as the electric needle. There 
 is no fine art without sensitiveness. We see 
 it in the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, a man 
 who could bend horseshoes in his hands; and 
 Bismarck, who was also an artist in his way, 
 confessed to the same mental disturbance from 
 noise and general conversation, which Haw- 
 thorne felt at Brook Farm. It was the mental 
 sensitiveness of Carlyle and Bismarck which 
 caused their insomnia, and much other suffering 
 besides. 
 
 George Ripley published an essay in the 
 Dial, in which he heralded Fourier as the great 
 man who was destined to regenerate society; 
 but Fourier has passed away, and society con- 
 tinues in its old course. What he left out of 
 his calculations, or perhaps did not understand, 
 was the principle of population. If food and 
 raiment were as common as air and water, 
 mankind would double its numbers every twelve 
 or fifteen years, and the tendency to do so 
 produces a pressure on poor human nature, 
 which is almost like the scourge of a whip, 
 driving it into all kinds of ways and means in 
 order to obtain sufficient sustenance. Most 
 notable among the methods thus employed is, 
 and always has been, the division of labor, and 
 it will be readily seen that a community like 
 Brook Farm, where skilled labor, properly 
 148
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 speaking, was unknown, and all men were all 
 things by turns, could never sustain so large a 
 population relatively as a community where 
 a strict division of industries existed. If a 
 nation like France, for instance, where the popu- 
 lation is nearly stationary, were to adopt Fourier's 
 plan of social organization, it would prove 
 a more severe restriction on human life than 
 the wars of Napoleon. This is the reason 
 why the attempt to plant a colony of Eng- 
 lishmen in Tennessee failed so badly. There 
 was a kind of division of labor among them, 
 but it was purely a local and a foreign division 
 and not adapted to the region about them. 
 Ripley's method of allowing work to be counted 
 by the hour instead of by the day or half-day, 
 was of itself sufficient to prevent the enter- 
 prise from being a financial success. Farming 
 everywhere except on the Western prairies 
 requires the closest thrift and economy, and all 
 hands have to work hard. 
 
 Neither could such an experiment prove a 
 success from a moral point of view. Emerson 
 said of it: "The women did not object so much 
 to a common table as they did to a common 
 nursery." In truth one might expect that a 
 common nursery would finally result in a free 
 fight. The tendency of all such institutions 
 would be to destroy the sanctity of family life; 
 and it would also include a tendency to the 
 deterioration of manliness. One of the pro- 
 fessed objects of the Brook Farm association 
 was, to escape from the evils of the great world, 
 149
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 from the trickery of trade, the pedantry of 
 colleges, the flunkyism of office, and the ar- 
 rogant pretensions of wealth. Every honest 
 man must feel a sympathy with this; there 
 are times when we all feel that the struggle of 
 life is an unequal conflict, from which it would 
 be a permanent blessing to escape; yet he who 
 turns his back upon it, is like a soldier who 
 runs away from the battle-field. It is the con- 
 flict with evil in the great world, and in our- 
 selves, that constitutes virtue and develops 
 character. It is good to learn the trickery of 
 knaves and to expose it, to contend against 
 pedantry and set a better example, to ad- 
 minister offices with a modest impartiality, 
 and to treat the gilded fool with a dignified 
 contempt. But if the wings of the archangel 
 are torn and soiled in his conflict with sin, 
 does it not add to the honor of the victory? 
 The man who left his wife and children, because 
 he found that he could not live with them with- 
 out occasionally losing his temper, committed 
 a grievous wrong ; and it is equally true that hy- 
 pocrisy, the meanest of vices, may sometimes 
 become a virtue. 
 
 George P. Bradford, and a few others, en- 
 joyed the life at Brook Farm, and would have 
 liked to remain there longer. John S. Dwight, 
 the translator of Goethe's and Schiller's ballads,* 
 said in his old age that if he were a young man, 
 he would be only too glad to return there; and 
 it is undeniable that such a place is suited to 
 
 * One of the most musical translations in any language. 
 150
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 a certain class of persons, both men and women. 
 It cannot be repeated too often, however, that 
 the true object of life is not happiness, but 
 development. It is our special business on 
 this planet, to improve the human race as our 
 progenitors improved it, and developed it out 
 of we know not what. By doing this, we also 
 improve ourselves and happiness comes to us 
 incidentally ; but if we pursue happiness directly, 
 we soon become pleasure-seekers, and, like 
 Faust, join company with Mephistopheles. 
 Happiness comes to a philosopher, perhaps 
 while he is picking berries ; to a judge, watching 
 the approach of a thunder-storm ; to a merchant, 
 teaching his boy to skate. It came to Napoleon 
 listening to a prayer-bell, and to Hawthorne 
 playing games with his children.* Happiness 
 flies when we seek it, and steals upon us un- 
 awares. 
 
 George P. Bradford's account of Brook Farm 
 in the "Memorial History of Boston "f is not 
 so satisfactory as it might have been if he had 
 given more specific details in regard to its man- 
 agement. The general supposition has been 
 that there was an annual deficit in the accounts 
 of the association, which could only be met by 
 Mr. Ripley himself, who ultimately lost the 
 larger portion of his investment. It is difficult 
 to imagine how such an experiment could end 
 otherwise, and the final conflagration of the 
 principal building, or "The Hive," as it was 
 
 * Perhaps also in his kindliness to the terrapin, 
 t Vol. iv. 330.
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 called, served as a fitting consummation of the 
 whole enterprise, a truly dramatic climax. 
 George Ripley went to New York to become 
 literary editor of the Tribune, and was as 
 distinguished there for the excellence of his 
 reviews, and the elegance of his turnout in 
 Central Park as he had been for the use of the 
 spade and pitchfork at West Roxbury. 
 
 Mr. Bradford returned to the instruction of 
 young ladies in French and Latin; and John 
 S. D wight became one of the civilizing forces 
 of his time, by editing the Boston Journal of 
 Music. None of them were the worse for their 
 agrarian experiment. 
 
 Even if the West Roxbury commune had 
 proved a success for two or three generations, 
 it would not have sufficed for a test of Fourier's 
 theory for it would have been a republic within 
 a republic, protected by the laws and govern- 
 ment of the United States, without being sub- 
 jected to the inconvenience of its own political 
 machinery. The only fair trial for such a system 
 would be to introduce it in some tract of country 
 especially set apart and made independent for 
 the purpose; but the chances are ten to one 
 that a community organized in this manner 
 would soon be driven into the same process 
 of formation that other colonies have passed 
 through under similar conditions. The true 
 socialism is the present organization of society, 
 and although it might be improved in detail, 
 to revolutionize it would be dangerous. Yet 
 the interest that has been aroused at various 
 152
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 times by discussions of the Brook Farm pro- 
 ject, shows how strong the undercurrent is 
 setting against the present order of things; 
 and this is my chief excuse for making such a 
 long digression on the subject. 
 
 During these last months of his bachelor- 
 hood, Hawthorne appears to us somewhat in 
 the light of a hibernating bear; for we hear 
 nothing of him at that season at all. Between 
 the last of October, 1841, and July, 1842, there 
 are a large number of odd fancies, themes for 
 romances, and the like, published from his 
 diary, but no entries of a personal character. 
 We hear incidentally that he was at Brook 
 Farm during a portion of the spring, which is 
 not surprising in view of the fact that Doctor 
 Nathaniel Peabody had removed from Salem 
 to Boston in the mean time. One conclusion 
 Hawthorne had evidently arrived at during 
 the winter months, and it was that his engage- 
 ment to Miss Sophia Peabody ought to be termi- 
 nated in the way all such affairs should be; viz., 
 by matrimony. Their prospects in life were not 
 brilliant, but it was difficult to foresee any ad- 
 vantage in waiting longer, and there were decided 
 disadvantages in doing so. It was accordingly 
 agreed that they should be married at, or near, 
 the summer solstice, the most suitable of all 
 times for weddings or engagements. On June 
 20, he wrote to his -fiancee from Salem, reminding 
 her that within ten days they were to become 
 man and wife, and added this significant re- 
 flection : 
 
 153
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 "Nothing can part us now; for God himself 
 hath ordained that we shall be one. So nothing 
 remains but to reconcile yourself to your destiny. 
 Year by year we shall grow closer to each other ; 
 and a thousand years hence, we shall be only 
 in the honeymoon of our marriage. " 
 
 Yet we find him writing again the tenderest 
 and most graceful of love-letters on June 30.* 
 The wedding has evidently been postponed; 
 but two days later he is in Boston, and finds 
 a pleasant recreation watching the boys sail 
 their toy boats on the Frog Pond. The cere- 
 mony finally was performed on July 9, and it 
 was only the day previous that Hawthorne 
 wrote the following letter, which is dated from 
 54 Pinckney Street: 
 
 "My DEAR SIR: 
 
 " Though personally a stranger to you, I am 
 about to request of you the greatest favor which 
 I can receive from any man. I am to be 
 married to Miss Sophia Peabody to-morrow, and 
 it is our mutual desire that you should perform 
 the ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly a 
 rainy day, a carriage will call for you at half- 
 past eleven o'clock in the forenoon. 
 " Very respectfully yours, 
 
 " NATH. HAWTHORNE. 
 "REV. JAMES F. CLARKE, 
 "Chestnut St." 
 
 George S. Hillard lived on Pinckney Street, 
 and Hawthorne may have been visiting him 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 241. 
 154
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 at the moment. The Peabodys attended 
 service at Mr. Clarke's church in Indiana Place, 
 where Hawthorne may also have gone with 
 them. He could not have made a more judicious 
 choice; but, singularly enough, although Mr. 
 Clarke became Elizabeth Peabody's life-long 
 friend, and even went to Concord to lecture, 
 he and Hawthorne never met again after this 
 occasion. 
 
 The ceremony was performed at the house of 
 Sophia Peabody's father, No. 13 West Street, 
 a building of which not one stone now rests 
 upon another. It was a quiet family wedding 
 (such as oftenest leads to future happiness), 
 and most deeply impressive to those concerned 
 in it. What must it have been to Hawthorne, 
 who had known so much loneliness, and had 
 waited so long for the comfort and sympathy 
 which only a devoted wife can give? 
 
 Time has drawn a veil over Hawthorne's 
 honeymoon, but exactly four weeks after the 
 wedding, we find him and his wife installed in 
 the house at Concord, owned by the descend- 
 ants of Reverend Dr. Ripley. It will be re- 
 membered that Hawthorne had invested his 
 only thousand dollars in the West Roxbury 
 Utopia, whence it was no longer possible to 
 recover it. He had, however, an unsubstan- 
 tial Utopian sort of claim for it, against 
 the Association, which he placed in the hands 
 of George S. Hillard, and subsequent negotia- 
 tion would seem to have resulted in giving 
 Hawthorne a lease of the Ripley house, or 
 
 155
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "Old Manse," in return for it. It was already 
 classic ground, for Emerson had occupied the 
 house for a time and had written his first book 
 there; and thither Hawthorne went to locate 
 himself, determined to try once more if he 
 could earn his living by his pen. 
 
 156
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONCORD AND THE OLD MANSE: 1842-1845 
 
 THE Ripley house dates back to the times of 
 Captain Daniel Hathorne, or even before him, 
 and at Concord Fight the British left wing 
 must have extended close to it. Old and un- 
 painted as it is, it gives a distinct impression of 
 refinement and good taste. Alone, I believe, 
 among the Concord houses of former times, it is 
 set back far enough from the country-road to 
 have an avenue leading to it, lined with balm of 
 Gilead trees, and guarded at the entrance by 
 two tall granite posts somewhat like obelisks. 
 On the further side of the house, Dr. Ripley had 
 planted an apple orchard, which included some 
 rare varieties, especially the blue pearmain, a 
 dark-red autumn apple with a purple bloom 
 upon it like the bloom upon the rye. A 
 high rounded hill on the northeast partially 
 shelters the house from the storms in that 
 direction; and on the opposite side the river 
 sweeps by in a magnificent curve, with broad 
 meadows and rugged hills, leading up to the 
 pale-blue outline of Mount Wachusett on the 
 western horizon. The Musketequid or Concord 
 River has not been praised too highly. Its 
 clear, gently flowing current, margined by 
 bulrushes and grassy banks, produces an effect 
 of mental peacefulness, very different from the 
 rushing turbulent waters and rocky banks of 
 157
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Maine and New Hampshire rivers. From what- 
 ever point you approach the Old Manse, it be- 
 comes the central object in a charming country 
 scene, and it does not require the peculiar effect 
 of mouldering walls to make it picturesque. 
 It has stood there long, and may it long 
 remain. 
 
 There was formerly an Indian encampment 
 on the same ground, a well-chosen position 
 both strategically and for its southern exposure. 
 Old Mrs. Ripley had a large collection of stone 
 arrow-heads, corn-mortars, and other relics of 
 the aborigines, which she used to show to the 
 young people who came to call on her grand- 
 children; and there were among them pieces 
 of a dark-bluish porphyry which she said was 
 not to be found in Massachusetts, but must 
 have been brought from northern New England. 
 There was no reason why they should not have 
 been. The Indians could go from Concord in 
 their canoes to the White Mountains or the 
 Maine lakes, and shoot the deer that came down 
 to drink from the banks of the river; but the 
 deer disappeared before the advance of the 
 American farmer, and the Indians went with 
 them. Now a grandson of Madam Ripley, in 
 the bronze likeness of a minute-man of 1775, 
 stands sentinel at "The Old North Bridge." 
 
 Hawthorne ascended the hill opposite his 
 house and wrote of the view from it: 
 
 "The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from 
 the summit of the hill, has no very marked 
 characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet 
 158
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 beauty, in keeping with the river. There are 
 broad and peaceful meadows, which, I think, 
 are among the most satisfying objects in natural 
 scenery. The heart reposes on them with a 
 feeling that few things else can give, because 
 almost all other objects are abrupt and clearly 
 defined; but a meadow stretches out like a 
 small infinity, yet with a secure homeliness 
 which we do not find either in an expanse of 
 water or air." 
 
 The great cranberry meadows below the 
 north bridge are sometimes a wonderful place 
 in winter, when the river overflows its banks 
 and they become a broad sheet of ice extending 
 for miles. There one can have a little skating, 
 an exercise of which Hawthorne was always 
 fond. 
 
 It was now, and not at Brook Farm, that 
 he found his true Arcadia, and we have his 
 wife's testimony that for the first eighteen 
 months or more at the Old Manse, they were 
 supremely happy. Every morning after break- 
 fast he donned the blue frock, which he had 
 worn at West Roxbury, and went to the wood- 
 shed to saw and split wood for the daily con- 
 sumption. After that he ascended to his study 
 in the second story, where he wrote and pondered 
 until dinner-time. It appears also that he 
 sometimes assisted in washing the dishes like 
 a helpful mate. After dinner he usually walked 
 to the post-office and to a reading-room in the 
 centre of the town, where he looked over the 
 Boston Post for half an hour. Later in the 
 159
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 afternoon, he went rowing or fishing on the 
 river, but his wife does not seem to have accom- 
 panied him in these excursions, for Judge Keyes, 
 who often met him in his boat, does not mention 
 seeing her with him. In the evenings he read 
 Shakespeare with Mrs. Hawthorne, commencing 
 with the first volume, and going straight through 
 to the end, "Titus Andronicus" and all, and 
 this must have occupied them a large portion 
 of the winter. How can a man fail to be happy 
 in such a mode of life! 
 
 Hawthorne also went swimming in the river 
 when the weather suited rather exceptional 
 in Concord for a middle-aged gentleman; but 
 there were two very attractive bathing places 
 near the Old Manse, one, a little above on the 
 opposite side of the river, and the other, after- 
 wards known as Simmons's Landing, where 
 there was a row of tall elms a short distance 
 below the bridge. It is probable that Haw- 
 thorne frequented the latter place, as being 
 more remote from human habitations. He did 
 not take to his gun again, although he could 
 see the wild ducks in autumn, flying past his 
 house. There were grouse and quail in the 
 woods, and woodcock were to be found along 
 the brook which ran through Emerson's pasture ; 
 but perhaps Hawthorne had become too tender- 
 hearted for field-sports. 
 
 If Boston is the hub of the universe, Concord 
 might be considered as the linchpin which 
 holds it on. Its population was originally de- 
 rived from Boston, and it must be admitted that 
 160
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 it retains more Bostonian peculiarities than 
 most other New England towns. It does not 
 assimilate readily to the outside world. Nor is 
 it surprising that few local visitors called upon 
 the Hawthornes at the Old Manse. Emerson, 
 always hospitable and public-spirited, went to 
 call on them at once; and John Keyes, also 
 a liberal-minded man, introduced Hawthorne 
 at the reading-club. Margaret Fuller came and 
 left a book for Hawthorne to read, which may 
 have annoyed him more than anything she 
 could have said. Elizabeth Hoar, a woman of 
 exalted character, to whose judgment Emerson 
 sometimes applied for a criticism of his verses, 
 also came sometimes; but the Old Manse was 
 nearly a mile away from Emerson's house, and 
 also from what might be called the "court 
 end" of the town. Hawthorne's nearest neigh- 
 bor was a milk-farmer named George L. Prescott, 
 afterward Colonel of the Thirty-second Massa- 
 chusetts Volunteers. He not only brought 
 them milk, but also occasionally a bouquet 
 culled out of his own fine nature, as a tribute 
 to genius. A slightly educated man, he was 
 nevertheless one of Nature's gentlemen, and 
 his death in Grant's advance on Richmond was 
 a universal cause of mourning at a time when so 
 many brave lives were lost. 
 
 Hawthorne, as usual, was on the lookout 
 for ghosts, and there could not have been a 
 more suitable abode for those airy nothings, 
 than the Old Manse. Mysterious sounds were 
 heard in it repeatedly, especially in the night- 
 ii 161
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 time, when the change of temperature produces 
 a kind of settlement in the affairs of old wood- 
 work. Under date of August 8 he writes in his 
 diary: 
 
 "We have seen no apparitions as yet, but 
 we hear strange noises, especially in the kitchen, 
 and last night, while sitting in the parlor, we 
 heard a thumping and pounding as of some- 
 body at work in my study. Nay, if I mistake 
 not (for I was half asleep), there was a sound 
 as of some person crumpling paper in his hand 
 in our very bedchamber. This must have 
 been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons." 
 
 Evidently he would have preferred seeing 
 a ghost to receiving an honorary degree from 
 Bowdoin College, and if the shade of Doctor 
 Ripley had appeared to him in a dissolving 
 light, like the Rontgen rays, Hawthorne would 
 certainly have welcomed him as a kindred 
 spirit and have expressed his pleasure at the 
 manifestation. 
 
 Another idiosyncrasy of his, which seems 
 like the idiom in a language, was his total in- 
 difference to distinguished persons, simply as 
 such. It was not that he considered all men 
 on a level, for no one recognized more clearly 
 the profound inequalities of human nature; 
 but he was quite as likely to take an interest 
 in a store clerk as in a famous writer. It is not 
 necessary to suppose that a man is a parasite 
 of fame because he goes to a President's re- 
 ception, or wishes to meet a celebrated English 
 lecturer. It is natural that we should desire to 
 162
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 know how such people appear their expression, 
 their tone of voice, their general behavior; but 
 Hawthorne did not care for this. At the time 
 of which we write, Doctor Samuel G. Howe, the 
 hero of Greek independence and the mental 
 liberator of Laura Bridgman, was a more famous 
 man than Emerson or Longfellow. He came to 
 Concord with his brilliant wife, and they called 
 at the Old Manse, where Mrs. Hawthorne re- 
 ceived them very cordially, but they saw nothing 
 of her husband, except a dark figure gliding 
 through the entry with his hat over his eyes. 
 One can only explain this by one of those fits 
 of exceeding bashfulness that sometimes over- 
 take supersensitive natures. School-girls just 
 budding into womanhood often behave in a 
 similar manner; and they are no more to be 
 censured for it than Hawthorne, to whom it 
 may have caused moments of poignant self- 
 reproach in his daily reflections. But Doctor 
 Howe was the man of all men whom Haw- 
 thorne ought to have known, and half an hour's 
 conversation might have made them friends 
 for life. 
 
 George William Curtis was a remarkably 
 brilliant young man, and gave even better 
 promise for the future than he afterwards ful- 
 filled, as the editor of a weekly newspaper. 
 He was at Brook Farm with Hawthorne, 
 and afterward followed him to Concord, but is 
 only referred to by Hawthorne once, and then 
 in the briefest manner. Neither has Hawthorne 
 much to say of Emerson; but Thoreau and 
 163
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Ellery Channing evidently attracted his at- 
 tention, for he refers to them repeatedly in his 
 diary, and he has left the one life-like portrait 
 of Thoreau better than a photograph that 
 now exists. He surveys them both in rather a 
 critical manner, and takes note that Thoreau 
 is the more substantial and original of the two; 
 and he is also rather sceptical as to Channing 's 
 poetry, which Emerson valued at a high rate; 
 yet he narrowly missed making a friend of 
 Channing, with whom he afterward corre- 
 sponded in a desultory way. 
 
 We should not have known of Hawthorne's 
 skating at Concord, but for Mrs. Hawthorne's 
 "Memoirs," from which we learn that he fre- 
 quently skated on the overflowed meadows, 
 where the Lowell railway station now stands. 
 She writes: "Wrapped in his cloak, he moved 
 like a self -impelled Greek statue, stately and 
 grave. " This is the manner in which we should 
 imagine Hawthorne to have skated; but all 
 others were a foil to her husband in the eyes 
 of his wife.* He was evidently a fine skater, 
 gliding over the ice in long sweeping curves. 
 Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with 
 a shorter stroke, and stopping occasionally 
 to take breath, or look about him, as he did 
 in his lectures. Thoreau came sometimes and 
 performed rare glacial exploits, interesting to 
 watch, but rather in the line of the professional 
 acrobat. What a transfiguration of Hawthorne, 
 
 * "Memories of Hawthorne," 52. 
 164
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 to think of him skating alone amid the reflec- 
 tions of a brilliant winter sunset! 
 
 When winter came Emerson arranged a 
 course of evening receptions at his house for 
 the intellectual people of Concord, with apples 
 and gingerbread for refreshments. Curtis at- 
 tended these, and has told us how Hawthorne 
 always sat apart with an expression on his 
 face like a distant thunder-cloud, saying little, 
 and not only listening to but watching the 
 others. Curtis noticed a certain external and 
 internal resemblance in him to Webster, who 
 was at times a thunderous-looking person 
 denoting, I suppose, the electric concentration 
 in his cranium. Emerson also watched Haw- 
 thorne, and the whole company felt his silent 
 presence, and missed him greatly once or twice 
 when he failed to come. Miss Elizabeth Hoar 
 said: 
 
 " The people about Emerson, Channing, 
 Thoreau and the rest, echo his manner so much 
 that it is a relief to him to meet a man like 
 Hawthorne, on whom his own personality makes 
 no impression." Neither did Mrs. Emerson 
 echo her husband. 
 
 The greater a man is, intellectually, the more 
 distinct his difference from a general type and 
 also from other men of genius. No two per- 
 sonalities could be more unlike than Hawthorne 
 and Emerson. 
 
 It would seem to be part of the irony of Fate 
 that they should have lived on the same street, 
 and, have been obliged to meet and speak with 
 165
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 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 impenetra- 
 ble. 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 Haw- 
 thorne 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.* 
 
 While Emerson's mind was essentially ana- 
 lytic, Hawthorne's was synthetic, and, as Con- 
 way says, he did not receive the world into 
 his intellect, but into his heart, or soul, where 
 it was mirrored in a magical completeness. 
 The notion that the artist requires merely an 
 observing eye is a superficial delusion. Obser- 
 vation is worth little without reflection, and 
 everything depends on the manner in which 
 the observer deals with his facts. Emerson 
 looked at life in order to penetrate it; Haw- 
 thorne, in order to comprehend it, and assimi- 
 late it to his own nature. The one talked 
 heroism and the other lived it. Not but that 
 Emerson's life was a stoical one, but Hawthorne's 
 
 * "Sketches from Concord and Appledore. '! 
 166
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 was still more so, and only his wife and children 
 knew what a heart there was in him. 
 
 The world will never know what these two 
 great men thought of one another. Hawthorne 
 has left some fragmentary sentences concerning 
 Emerson, such as, "that everlasting rejecter of 
 all that is, and seeker for he knows not what, " 
 and "Emerson the mystic, stretching his hand 
 out of cloud-land in vain search for something 
 real;" but he likes Emerson's ingenuous way 
 of interrogating people, "as if every man had 
 something to give him." However, he makes 
 no attempt at a general estimate; although 
 this expression should also be remembered: 
 " Clergymen, whose creed had become like an 
 iron band about their brows, came to Emerson 
 to obtain relief," a sincere recognition of his 
 spiritual influence. 
 
 Several witnesses have testified that Emerson 
 had no high opinion of Hawthorne's writing, 
 that he preferred Reade's "Christie Johnstone" 
 to "The Scarlet Letter," but Emerson never 
 manifested much interest in art, simply for its 
 own sake. Like Bismarck, whom he also re- 
 sembled in his enormous self-confidence, he 
 cared little for anything that had not a practical 
 value. He read Shakespeare and Goethe, not 
 so much for the poetry as for the " fine thoughts " 
 he found in them. George Bradford stated 
 more than once that Emerson showed little 
 interest in the pictorial art; and after walking 
 through the sculpture-gallery of the Vatican, 
 he remarked that the statues seemed to him 
 167
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 like toys. His essay on Michel Angelo is little 
 more than a catalogue of great achievements; 
 he recognizes the moral impressiveness of the 
 man, but not the value of his sublime concep- 
 tions. Music, neither he nor Hawthorne cared 
 for, for it belongs to emotional natures. 
 
 In his "Society and Solitude" Emerson has 
 drawn a picture of Hawthorne as the lover of a 
 hermitical life; a picture only representing that 
 side of his character, and developed after Emer- 
 son's fashion to an artistic extreme. "Whilst 
 he suffered at being seen where he was, he con- 
 soled himself with the delicious thought of the in- 
 conceivable number of places where he was not," 
 and " He had a remorse running to despair, of 
 his social gaucheries, and walked miles and miles 
 to get the twitching out of his face, the starts 
 and shrugs out of his shoulders."* 
 
 There is a touch of arrogance in this, and it 
 merely marks the difference between the modest 
 author of the "Essays," and the proud, cen- 
 sorious Emerson of 1870; but his love of ab- 
 solute statements ofttimes led him into strange 
 contradictions, and the injustice which results 
 from judging our fellow-mortals by an inflex- 
 ible standard was the final outcome of his 
 optimism. Hawthorne was more charitable 
 when he remarked that without Byron's faults 
 we should not have had his virtues; but the 
 truth lies between the two. 
 
 There have been many instances of genius 
 as sensitive as Hawthorne's in various branches 
 
 * "Society and Solitude," 4, 5. 
 168
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 of art: Shelley and Southey, Schubert and 
 Chopin, Correggio and Corot. Southey not 
 only blushed red but blushed blue as if the 
 life were going out of him; and in Chopin and 
 Correggio at least we feel that they could not 
 have been what they were without it. Napo- 
 leon, whose nerves were like steel wires, suffered 
 nevertheless from a peculiar kind of physical 
 sensitiveness. He could not take medicines 
 like other men, a small dose had a terrible 
 effect on him, and it was much the same with 
 respect to changes of food, climate, and the like. 
 
 What Hawthorne required was sympathetic 
 company. Do not we all require it? The hyper- 
 critical morality of the Emersonians, especially 
 in Concord, could not have been favorable to 
 his mental ease and comfort. How could a man 
 in a happily married condition feel anything 
 but repugnance to Thoreau's idea of marriage 
 as a necessary evil; or Alcott's theory that 
 eating animal food tended directly to the com- 
 mission of crime? 
 
 On the first anniversary of Hawthorne's wed- 
 ding, a tragical drama was enacted in Concord, 
 in which he was called upon to perform a sub- 
 ordinate part. One Miss Hunt, a school-teacher 
 and the daughter of a Concord farmer, drowned 
 herself in the river nearly opposite the place 
 where Hawthorne was accustomed to bathe. 
 The cause of her suicide has never been ade- 
 quately explained, but as she was a transcenden- 
 talist, or considered herself so, there were those 
 who believed that in some occult way that was 
 169
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the occasion of it. However, as one of her 
 sisters afterward followed her example, it would 
 seem more likely to have come from the de- 
 velopment of some family trait. She was seen 
 walking upon the bank for a long time, before 
 she took the final plunge ; but the catastrophe 
 was not discovered until near evening. 
 
 Ellery Channing came with a man named 
 Buttrick to borrow Hawthorne's boat for the 
 search, and Hawthorne went with them. As 
 it happened, they were the ones who found 
 the corpse, and Hawthorne's account in his 
 diary of its recovery is a terribly accurate de- 
 scription, softened down and poetized in the 
 rewritten statement of "The Blithedale Ro- 
 mance." There is in fact no description of a 
 death in Homer or Shakespeare so appalling 
 as this literal transcript of the veritable fact.* 
 What concerns us here, however, are the com- 
 ments he set down on the dolorous event. 
 Concerning her appearance, he says: 
 
 "If she could have foreseen while she stood, 
 at five o'clock that morning on the bank of 
 the river, how her maiden corpse would have 
 looked eighteen hours afterwards, and how 
 coarse men would strive with hand and foot 
 to reduce it to a decent aspect, and all in vain, 
 it would surely have saved her from the deed." 
 
 And again: 
 
 " I suppose one friend would have saved 
 her; but she died for want of sympathy a 
 severe penalty for having cultivated and refined 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 300. 
 170
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 herself out of the sphere of her natural con- 
 nections. " 
 
 The first remark has often been misunder- 
 stood. It is not the vanity of women, which 
 is after all only a reflection (or the reflective 
 consequence) of the admiration of man, which 
 Hawthorne intends, but that delicacy of feeling 
 which Nature requires of woman for her own 
 protection; and he may not have been far 
 wrong in supposing that if Miss Hunt had fore- 
 seen the exact consequences of her fatal act 
 she would not have committed it. Hawthorne's 
 remark that her death was a consequence of 
 having refined and cultivated herself beyond 
 the reach of her relatives, seems a rather hard 
 judgment. The latter often happens in American 
 life, and although it commonly results. in more 
 or less family discord, are we to condemn it for 
 that reason? If she died as Hawthorne imagines, 
 from the lack of intellectual sympathy, we may 
 well inquire if there was no one in Concord who 
 might have given aid and encouragement to 
 this young aspiring soul. 
 
 ' ' Take her up tenderly ; 
 
 Lift her with care, 
 Fashioned so slenderly, 
 Young and so fair." 
 
 And one is also tempted to add : 
 
 "Alas! for the rarity 
 Of Christian charity." 
 
 Hawthorne's earthly paradise only endured 
 until the autumn of 1843. When cool weather 
 171
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 arrived, want and care came also. On November 
 26 he wrote to George S. Hillard: 
 
 ' ' I wish at some leisure moment you would give yourself 
 the trouble to call into Munroe's book-store and inquire 
 about the state of my 'Twice-told Tales.' At the last 
 accounts (now about a year since) the sales had not been 
 enough to pay expenses; but it may be otherwise now 
 else I shall be forced to consider myself a writer for pos- 
 terity; or at all events not for the present generation. 
 Surely the book was purled enough to meet with a sale. " * 
 
 The interpretation of this is that Longfellow, 
 Hillard and Bridge could appreciate Hawthorne's 
 art, but the solid men of Boston (with some 
 rare exceptions) could not. Even Webster 
 preferred the grotesque art of Dickens to Haw- 
 thorne's "wells of English unde filed. " Re- 
 cently, one of the few surviving original copies 
 of "Fanshawe" was sold at auction for six 
 hundred dollars. Such is the difference between 
 genius and celebrity. 
 
 The trouble then and now is that wealthy 
 Americans as a class feel no genuine interest in 
 art or literature. They do not form a true aris- 
 tocracy, but a plutocracy, and are for the most 
 part very poorly educated. It was formerly 
 the brag of the Winthrops and Otises that they 
 could go through college and learn their lessons 
 in the recitation-room. Now they go to row, 
 and play foot-ball, and after they graduate, 
 they leave the best portion of their lives behind 
 them. Then if they have a talent for business 
 
 * London Aihenczum, August 10, 1889. 
 172
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 they become absorbed in commercial affairs; 
 or if not, they travel from one country to another, 
 picking up a smattering of everything, but not 
 resting long enough in any one place for their 
 impressions to develop and bear good fruit. 
 They are not like the aristocratic classes of 
 England, France and Germany, who become 
 cultivated men and women, and serve to main- 
 tain a high standard of art and literature in 
 those countries. 
 
 The captain of a Cunard steamship, who 
 owned quite a library, said in 1869: "I have 
 bought some very interesting books in New 
 York, especially by a writer named Hawthorne, 
 but the type and paper are so poor that they 
 are not worth binding. " The reason why 
 American publishers do not bring out books 
 in such good form as foreign publishers is 
 that there is no demand for a first-rate article. 
 Thus do the fine arts languish. When rich 
 young Americans take as much interest in 
 painting and sculpture as they do in foot-ball 
 and yachting, we shall have our Vandycks and 
 Murillos, if nothing better. 
 
 Discouraged with the ill success of "Fan- 
 shawe, " Hawthorne had limited himself since 
 then to the writing of short sketches, such as 
 would be acceptable to the magazine editors, 
 and now that he had formed this habit, he 
 found it difficult to escape from it. He informs 
 us in the preface to " Mosses from an Old Manse " 
 that he had hoped a more serious and ex- 
 tended plot would come to him on the banks 
 173
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 of Concord River, but his imagination did not 
 prove equal to the occasion. Most of the stories 
 in "Mosses" must have been composed at 
 Concord, but "Mrs. Bull-Frog" and "Monsieur 
 du Miroir" must have been written previously, 
 for he refers to them in a letter at Brook Farm. 
 A few were published in the Democratic Review, 
 and others may have been elsewhere; but the 
 proceeds he derived from them would not have 
 supported a day-laborer, and toward the close 
 of his second year at the Manse, Hawthorne 
 found himself running in debt for the neces- 
 saries of life . He endured this with his usual stoical 
 reticence, although there is nothing like debt 
 to sicken a man's heart, unless he be a decidedly 
 light-minded man. Better fortune, however, 
 was on its way to him in the shape of a political 
 revolution. 
 
 On March 3, 1844, a daughter was born to 
 the Hawthornes, whom they named Una, in 
 spite of Hillard's objection that the name was 
 too poetic or too fanciful for the prosaic prac- 
 ticalities of real life. The name was an excellent 
 one for a poet's daughter, and did not seem 
 out of place in Arcadian Concord. Miss Una 
 grew up into a graceful, fair and poetic young 
 lady, in all respects worthy of her name. 
 She had an uncommonly fine figure, and, as 
 often happens with first-born children, resem- 
 bled her father much more than her mother. 
 Her name also suggests the early influence 
 of Spenser in her father's style and mode of 
 thought. 
 
 174
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Soon after this fortunate event Hawthorne 
 wrote a letter to Hillard, in which he said: 
 
 ' ' I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that 
 springs from the birth of a child. It ought not come 
 too early in a man's life not till he has fully enjoyed his 
 youth for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly 
 gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain 
 infinitely by the exchange ; but we do give up something 
 nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler pre- 
 posterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my 
 cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into the sombre 
 texture of humanity." 
 
 It seems then that his conscience sometimes 
 reproached him, but this, only proves that his 
 moral nature was in a healthy normal condi- 
 tion. There was a certain kind of indolence 
 in him, a love of the dolce far nient-e, and an 
 inclination to general inactivity which he may 
 have inherited from his seafaring ancestors. 
 Much better so, than to suffer from the nervous 
 restlessness, which is the rule rather than the 
 exception in New England life. 
 
 In the same letter he mentions having for- 
 warded a story to Graham's Magazine, which 
 was accepted but not yet published after many 
 months. He also anticipates an amelioration 
 of his affairs from a Democratic victory in the 
 fall elections. 
 
 Meanwhile, Horatio Bridge had been travers- 
 ing the high seas in the "Cyane," which was 
 finally detailed to watch for slavers and to 
 protect American commerce on the African 
 coast. He had kept a journal of his various ex-
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 periences and observations, which he sent to 
 Hawthorne with a rather diffident interrogation 
 as to whether it might be worth publishing. 
 Hawthorne was decidedly of the opinion that 
 it ought to be published, in which we cordially 
 agree with him, and was well pleased to edit 
 it for his friend ; and, although it has now shared 
 the fate of most of the books of its class, it is 
 excellent reading for those who chance to find 
 a copy of it. Bridge was a good observer, 
 and a candid writer. 
 
 The election of 1844 was the most momentous 
 that had yet taken place in American history. 
 It decided the annexation of Texas, and the 
 acquisition of California, with a coast-line on 
 the Pacific Ocean nearly equal to that on the 
 Atlantic; but it also brought with it an unjust 
 war of greed and spoliation, and other evil 
 consequences of which we are only now begin- 
 ing to reach the end. The slaveholders and 
 the Democratic leaders desired Texas in order 
 to perpetuate their control of the government, 
 and it was precisely through this measure that 
 they lost it, as happens so often in human 
 affairs. It was the gold discoveries in Cali- 
 fornia that upset their calculations. California 
 would not come into the Union as a slave state. 
 Enraged at this failure, the Southern politicians 
 made a desperate attempt to recover lost ground, 
 by seizing on the fertile prairies in the North- 
 west; but there they came into conflict with 
 the industrial classes of the North, who fought 
 them on their own ground and abolished slavery. 
 176
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Never had public injustice been followed by 
 so swift and terrible a retribution. 
 
 In regard to the candidates of 1844, it was 
 hardly possible to compare them. Polk pos- 
 sessed the ability to preside over the House of 
 Representatives, but he did not rise above this; 
 while Clay could be fairly compared on some 
 points with Washington himself, and united 
 with this a persuasive eloquence second only 
 to Webster's. He was practically defeated 
 by fifteen or twenty thousand abolitionists 
 who preferred to throw away their votes rather 
 than to cast them for a slave-holder. 
 
 Hawthorne, in the quiet seclusion of his 
 country home, did not realize this danger to 
 the Republic. He only knew that his friends 
 were victorious, and was happy in the expec- 
 tation of escaping from his debts, and of pro- 
 viding more favorably for his little family. 
 
 177
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 "MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE" I 1845 
 
 THERE is no evidence in the Hawthorne 
 documents or publications to show exactly 
 when the first edition of "Mosses from an Old 
 Manse" made its appearance, and copies of 
 it are now exceedingly rare, but we find the 
 Hawthorne family in Salem reading the book 
 in the autumn of 1845, so that it was probably 
 brought out at that time and helped to main- 
 tain its author during his last days at Con- 
 cord. 
 
 There must have been some magical influ- 
 ence in the Old Manse or in its surrounding 
 scenery, to have stimulated both Emerson's 
 and Hawthorne's love of Nature to such a 
 degree. Emerson's eye dilates as he looks upon 
 the sunshine gilding the trunks of the balm of 
 Gilead trees on his avenue; and Hawthorne 
 dwells with equal delight on the luxuriant 
 squash vines which spread over his vegetable 
 garden. Discoursing on this he says: 
 
 "Speaking of summer squashes, I must say 
 a word of their beautiful and varied forms. 
 They presented an endless diversity of urns 
 and vases, shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, 
 molded in patterns which a sculptor would 
 do well to copy, since art has never invented 
 anything more graceful." 
 178
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 And again: 
 
 "A cabbage, too especially the early Dutch 
 cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circum- 
 ference, until its ambitious heart often bursts 
 asunder is a matter to be proud of when we 
 can claim a share with the earth and sky in 
 producing it." 
 
 It would seem as if no one before Hawthorne 
 had rightly observed these common vegetables, 
 whose external appearance is always before 
 our eyes. He not only humanizes whatever 
 attracts his attention, but he looks through a 
 refining medium of his own personality. He 
 has the gift of Midas to bring back the Golden 
 Age for us. Who besides Homer has been able 
 to describe a chariot-race, and who but Haw- 
 thorne could extract such poetry from a farmer's 
 garden ? 
 
 If we compare this introductory chapter 
 with such earlier sketches as "The Vision at 
 the Fountain" and "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," 
 we recognize the progress that Hawthorne has 
 made since the first volume of "Twice Told 
 Tales." We are no longer reminded of the 
 plain unpainted house on Lake Sebago. His 
 style is not only more graceful, but has acquired 
 greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently 
 working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. 
 Purity of expression is still his polar star, and 
 his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has 
 a warmer tone, a deeper perspective, and an 
 atmospheric quality which painters call cki- 
 179
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 aroscuro. He charms with pleasing fancies, 
 while he penetrates to the soul. 
 
 Hawthorne rarely repeats himself in details, 
 and never in designs. Two of Dickens 's most 
 interesting novels, "Oliver Twist" and "David 
 Copperfield, " are constructed on the same 
 theme, but each of the studies in this collection 
 has a distinct individuality which appeals to 
 the reader after a fashion of its own. Each 
 has its moral, or rather central, idea to which 
 all its component parts are related, and teaches 
 a lesson of its own, so unobtrusively that we 
 become possessed of it almost unawares. Some 
 are intensely, even tragically, serious; others 
 so light and airy that they seem as if woven 
 out of gossamer. 
 
 There are a few, however, that do not har- 
 monize with the general tone and character 
 of the rest, especially "Mrs. Bull-Frog," 
 which Hawthorne himself confessed to having 
 been an experiment, and which strangely 
 enough is much more in the style of his son 
 Julian. "Monsieur du Miroir" and "Sketches 
 from Memory" are relics of his earlier writings; 
 perhaps also "Feather-Top" and "The Pro- 
 cession of Life." It would have been better 
 perhaps if "Young Goodman Brown" had 
 been used to light a fire at the Old Manse. 
 
 "Monsieur du Miroir" is chiefly interesting 
 as an example of Hawthorne's faculty for elab- 
 orating the most simple subject until every 
 possible phase of it has been exhausted. It 
 180
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 may also throw some light scientifically on the 
 origin of consciousness. We see ourselves 
 reflected not only in the mirror, but on the 
 blade of a knife, or a puddle in the road; and, 
 if we look sharply enough, in the eyes of other 
 men even in the expression of their faces. 
 In such manner does Nature force upon us a 
 recognition of our various personalities the 
 nucleus of self-knowledge, and self-respect. 
 
 Whittier once spoke of "Young Goodman 
 Brown" as indicating a mental peculiarity in 
 Hawthorne, which like the cuttle-fish rarely rises 
 to the surface. The plot is cynical, and largely 
 enigmatical. The very name of it (in the way 
 Hawthorne develops the story) is a fearful 
 satire on human nature. He may have intended 
 this for an exposure of the inconsistency, and 
 consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism; but the 
 name of Goodman Brown's wife is Faith, and 
 this suggests that Brown may have been him- 
 self intended for an incarnation of doubt, or 
 disbelief carried to a logical extreme. What- 
 ever may have been Hawthorne's design, the 
 effect is decidedly unpleasant. 
 
 Emerson talked in proverbs, and Hawthorne 
 in parables. The finest sketches in this col- 
 lection are parables. "The Birth Mark," 
 "Rappacini's Daughter," "A Select Party," 
 "Egotism," and "The Artist of the Beauti- 
 ful." "The Celestial Railroad" is an allegory, 
 a variation on " Pilgrim's Progress. " 
 
 "The Birth Mark" and "Rappacini's Daugh- 
 ter" are like divergent lines, which origiate at an 
 181
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 single point ; and that point is the radical vicious- 
 ness of trying experiments on human beings. 
 It is bad enough, although excusable, to vivi- 
 sect dogs and rabbits; but why should we 
 attempt the same course of procedure with 
 those that are nearest and dearest to us? Such 
 parables were not required in the time of Tiberius 
 Cassar and men and women grew up in a natural, 
 vigorous manner; but now we have become 
 so scientific that we continually attempt to 
 improve on Nature, like the artist who left 
 the rainbow out of his picture of Niagara be- 
 cause its colors did not harmonize with the 
 background. 
 
 The line of divergence in "The Birth Mark" 
 is indicated by its name. We all have our 
 birth-marks, traits of character, which may 
 be temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the 
 background, but which cannot be eradicated 
 and are certain to reappear at unguarded mo- 
 ments, or on exceptional occasions. Educa- 
 tion and culture can do much to soften and 
 temper the disposition, but the original ma- 
 terial remains the same. The father who at- 
 tempts to force his son into a mode of life for 
 which Nature did not intend him, or the mother 
 who quarrels with her daughter's friends, com- 
 mits an error similar to that of Hawthorne's 
 alchemist, who endeavors to remove the birth- 
 mark from the otherwise beautiful face of his 
 wife, but only succeeds in effecting this together 
 with her death. The tragical termination of 
 the alchemist's experiments, the pathetic yielding 
 182
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 up of life by his sweet "Clytie, " is described 
 with an impressive tenderness. She sinks to 
 her last sleep without a murmur of reproach. 
 
 "Rappacini's Daughter" might serve as a 
 protest against bringing up children in an ex- 
 ceptional and abnormal manner. I once knew 
 an excellent lady, who, with the best possible 
 intentions, brought up her daughter to be dif- 
 ferent from all other girls. As a consequence, 
 she was different, could not assimilate herself 
 to others. She had no admirers, or young friends 
 of her own sex, for there were few points of 
 contact between herself and general society. 
 Her mother was her only friend. She aged 
 rapidly and died early. Similarly, a boy brought 
 up in a secluded condition of purity and ig- 
 norance, finally developed into one of the most 
 vicious of men. 
 
 Hawthorne has prefigured this by a bright 
 colored flower which sparkles like a gem, very 
 attractive at a distance, but exhaling a deadly 
 perfume. He may not have been aware that 
 the opium poppy has so brilliant a flower that 
 it can be seen at a distance from which all other 
 flowers are invisible. The scene of his story 
 is placed in Italy, the land of beauty, but 
 also the country of poisoners. Rappacini, 
 an old botanist and necromancer, has trained 
 up his daughter in the solitary companionship 
 of this flower, from which she has acquired its 
 peculiar properties. A handsome young student 
 is induced to enter the garden, partly from 
 curiosity and partly through the legerdemain 
 183
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 of Rappacini. The student soon falls under 
 the daughter's influence and finds himself being 
 gradually poisoned. A watchful apothecary, 
 who has penetrated the necromancer's secret, 
 provides the young man with an antidote 
 which saves him, but deprives the maiden of 
 life. She crosses the barrier which separated 
 her from a healthy existence, and the poison 
 reacts upon her system and kills her. The old 
 apothecary looks out from his window, and 
 cries, "O Rappacini! Is this the consummation 
 of your experiment? " 
 
 The underlying agreement between this 
 story and "The Birth Mark" becomes apparent 
 when we observe that the termination of one 
 is simply a variation upon the last scene of the 
 other. In one instance a beautiful daughter 
 is sacrificed by her father, and in the other a 
 lovely wife is victimized by her husband. There 
 have been thousands, if not millions, of such 
 cases. 
 
 There is no other writer but Shakespeare 
 who has portrayed the absolute devotion of a 
 woman's love with such delicacy of feeling 
 and depth of sympathy as Hawthorne. In 
 the two stories we have just considered, and 
 also in "The Bosom Serpent," this element 
 serves, like the refrain of a Greek chorus, to 
 give a sweet, penetrating undertone which 
 reconciles us to much that would otherwise 
 seem intolerable. The heroines in these pieces 
 have such a close spiritual relationship that 
 one suspects them of having been studied from 
 184
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 the same model, and who could this have been 
 so likely as Hawthorne's own wife.* 
 
 The theme of "The Bosom Serpent" is a 
 husband's jealousy; and it is the self -forgetful 
 devotion of his wife that finally cures his malady 
 and relieves him of his unpleasant companion. 
 The tale ends with one of those mystifying 
 passages which Hawthorne weaves so skil- 
 fully, so that it is difficult to determine from 
 the text whether there was a real serpent secreted 
 under the man's clothing, or only an imaginary 
 one, although we presume the latter. Francis 
 of Verulam says, "the best fortune for a hus- 
 band is for his wife to consider him wise, which 
 she will never do if she find him jealous" ; 
 and with good reason, for if he is unreasonably 
 jealous, it shows a lack of confidence in her; 
 but mutal confidence is the well-spring from 
 which love flows, and if the well dries up, there 
 is an end of it. 
 
 "The Select Party" is quite a relief, after 
 this tragical trilogy. It is easy to believe that 
 Hawthorne imagined this dream of a summer 
 evening, while watching the great cumulus 
 clouds, tinted with rose and lavender like aerial 
 snow-mountains, floating toward the horizon. 
 Here were true castles in the air, which he 
 could people with 'shapes according to his fancy ; 
 but he chose the most common abstract con- 
 ceptions, such as, the Clerk of the Weather, 
 the Beau Ideal, Mr. So-they-say, the Coming 
 
 * Notice also the similar character of Sophia in J. Haw- 
 thorne's "Bressant." 
 
 185
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Man, and other ubiquitous personages, whom 
 we continually hear of, but never see. The 
 Man of Fancy invites these and many others 
 to a banquet in his cloud-castle, where they 
 all converse and behave according to their 
 special characters. A ripple of delicate humor, 
 like the ripple made by a light summer breeze 
 upon the calm surface of a lake, runs through 
 the piece from the first sentence to the last; 
 and the scene is brought to a close by the 
 approach of a thunder-storm, which spreads 
 consternation among these unsubstantial guests, 
 much like that which takes place at a picnic 
 under similar circumstances; and Hawthorne, 
 with his customary mystification, leaves us in 
 doubt as to whether they ever reached terra 
 fir ma again. 
 
 There is one proverbial character, however, 
 whom Hawthorne has omitted from this ac- 
 count; namely, Mr. Everybody. "What Every- 
 body says, must be true;" but unfortunately 
 Everybody's information is none of the best, 
 and his judgment does not rise above his informa- 
 tion. His self-confidence, however, is enormous. 
 He understands law better than the lawyer, 
 and medicine better than the physicians. He is 
 never tired of settling the affairs of the country, 
 and of proposing constitutional amendments. 
 Is it not perfectly natural that Everybody 
 should understand Everybody's business as 
 well as or better than his own? He is continu- 
 ally predicting future events, and if they fail 
 to take place he predicts them again. He is 
 186
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 omnipresent, but if you seek him he is nowhere 
 to be found, which we may presume to be 
 the reason why he did not appear at the enter- 
 tainment given by the Man of Fancy. 
 
 That which gives the elevated character to 
 Raphael's faces as in the "Sistine Madonna" 
 and other paintings is not their drawing, 
 though that is always refined, but the expres- 
 sion of the eyes, which are truly the windows of 
 the soul. It was the same in Hawthorne's face, 
 and may be observed in all good portraits of 
 him. An immutable calmness overspread his 
 features, but in and about his eyes there was a 
 spring-like mirthfulness ; while down in the 
 shadowy depth of those luminous orbs was con- 
 cealed the pathos that formed the undercurrent 
 of his life. So it is that high comedy, as Plato 
 long ago observed, lies very close to tragedy. 
 
 A well-known French writer compares English 
 humor, in a general way, to beer-drinking, and 
 this is more particularly applicable to Dickens's 
 characters. The very name of Mark Tapley 
 suggests ale bottles. Thackeray's humor is 
 of a more refined quality, but a trifle sharp 
 and satirical. It is, however, pure and health- 
 ful and might be compared to Rhine-wine. 
 Hawthorne's humor at its best is more refined 
 than Thackeray's, as well as of a more amiable 
 quality, and reminds one (on Taine's principle) 
 of those delicate Italian wines which have very 
 little body, but a delightful bouquet. As a 
 humorist, however, Hawthorne varies in dif- 
 ferent times and places more than in any other 
 187
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 respect. He adapts himself to his subject; is 
 light and playful in "The Select Party" ; takes 
 on a more serious vein in "The Celestial Rail- 
 road"; in his resuscitation of Byron, in the letter 
 from a lunatic called "P's Correspondence" 
 he is simply sardonic; and "The Virtuoso's 
 Collection" has all the effect, although he does 
 not anywhere descend to low comedy, of a 
 roaring farce. In "Mrs. Bull- Frog, " as the 
 title intimates, he approaches closely to the 
 grotesque. 
 
 In "The Virtuoso's Collection" we have the 
 humor of impossibility. Nothing is more com- 
 mon than this, but Hawthorne gives it a peculiar 
 value of his own. A procession of mythological 
 objects, strange historical relics, and the odd 
 creations of fiction passes before our eyes. 
 The abruptness of their juxtaposition excites 
 continuous laughter in us. It would be an ex- 
 tremely phlegmatic person who could read it 
 with a serious face. Don Quixote's Rosinante, 
 Doctor Johnson's cat, Shelley's skylark, a live 
 phoenix, Prospero's magic wand, the hard- 
 ridden Pegasus, the dove which brought the 
 olive branch, and many others appear in such 
 rapid succession that the reader has no time to 
 take breath, or to consider what will turn up 
 next. Like an accomplished showman, Haw- 
 thorne enlivens the performance here and there 
 with original reflections on life, which are per- 
 fectly dignified, but become humorous from 
 contrast with their surroundings. In spite of 
 its comical effect, the piece has a very genteel 
 188
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 air, for its material is taken from that general 
 stock of information that passes current in 
 cultivated families. The young man of fashion 
 who had never heard of Elijah, or of Poe's 
 "Raven," would not have understood it. 
 
 In "The Hall of Fantasy," we catch some 
 glimpses of Hawthorne's favorite authors: 
 
 "The grand old countenance of Homer, the 
 shrunken and decrepit form, but vivid face, 
 of /Esop, the dark presence of Dante, the wild 
 Ariosto, Rabelais's smile of deep-wrought mirth, 
 the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes, 
 the all glorious Shakespeare, Spenser, meet 
 guest for an allegoric structure, the severe 
 divinity of Milton and Bunyan, molded of 
 the homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial 
 fire were those that chiefly attracted my eye. 
 Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied con- 
 spicuous pedestals. " 
 
 He also adds Goethe and Swedenborg, and 
 remarks of them : 
 
 " Were ever two men of transcendent imagina- 
 tion more unlike?" 
 
 It is evident that Byron was not a favorite 
 with Hawthorne. In addition to his severe 
 treatment of that poet, in " P's Correspondence," 
 he says in "Earth's Holocaust," where he im- 
 agines the works of various authors to be con- 
 sumed in a bonfire : 
 
 " Speaking of the properties of flame, me- 
 
 thought Shelley's poetry emitted a purer light 
 
 than almost any other productions of his day, 
 
 contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid 
 
 189
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 gleams and gushes of black vapor that flashed 
 and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron." 
 
 This seems like rather puritanical treatment. 
 If there are false lines in Byron, there are quite 
 as many weak lines in Shelley. If sincerity 
 were to give out a pure flame, Byron would 
 stand that test equal to any. His real fault is 
 to be found in his somewhat glaring diction, 
 like the voix blanc in singing, and in an occasional 
 stroke of persiflage. This increases his attractive- 
 ness to youthful minds, but to a nature like 
 Hawthorne's anything of an exhibitory charac- 
 ter must always be unpleasant. 
 
 Emerson and Hawthorne only knew Goethe 
 through the translations of Dwight, Carlyle 
 and Margaret Fuller, and yet his poetry made 
 a deeper impression on them than on Lowell 
 and Longfellow, who read it in the original. 
 Hawthorne appears to have taken lessons in 
 German while at Brook Farm, for we find him 
 studying a German book at the Old Manse, 
 with a grammar and lexicon; but, as he con- 
 fesses in his diary, without making satisfactory 
 progress. 
 
 "The Artist of the Beautiful" is a Dantean 
 allegory, and a poetic gem. A young watch- 
 maker, imbued with a spirit above his calling, 
 neglects the profits of his business in order to 
 construct an artificial butterfly, at once the 
 type of useless beauty and the symbol of im- 
 mortality, and he perseveres in spite of the dif- 
 ficulties of the undertaking and the contempt- 
 uous opposition of his acquaintances. He 
 190
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 finally succeeds in making one which seems to 
 be almost endowed with life, but only to be in- 
 formed that it is no better than a toy, and that 
 he has wasted his time on a thing which has no 
 practical value. A child (who represents the 
 thoughtlessness of the great world) crushes the 
 exquisite piece of workmanship in his little 
 hand; but the watch-maker does not repine at 
 this, for he realizes that after having achieved 
 the beautiful, in his own spirit, the outward 
 symbol of it has comparatively little value. 
 The Artist of the Beautiful is Hawthorne him- 
 self; and in this exquisite fable he has not 
 only unfolded the secret of all high art, but his 
 own life-secret as well. 
 
 HAWTHORNE AND TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 The French and English scepticism of the 
 eighteenth century, produced a reaction in the 
 more contemplative German nature, which 
 took the form of a strong assertion of spirit or 
 mind as an entity in itself, and distinct from 
 matter. This movement was more like a national 
 impulse than the proselytism of a sect, but 
 the individual in whom this spiritual impulse 
 of the German people manifested itself at that 
 time was Immanuel Kant. Without discredit- 
 ing the revelations of Hebrew tradition, he 
 taught the doctrine that instead of looking for 
 evidence of a Supreme Being in the external 
 world, we should seek him in our own hearts; 
 that every man could find a revelation in his 
 own conscience, in the consciousness of good 
 191
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and evil, by which man improves his condition 
 on earth; that the ideas of a Supreme Being, 
 or of immortality and freedom of will, are in- 
 herent in the human mind, and are not to be 
 acquired from experience; but that, as the 
 finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite, 
 we cannot know God in the same sense that 
 we know our own earthly fathers, or as Goethe 
 afterwards expressed it, 
 
 "Who can say I know Him; 
 Who can say, I know Him not;" 
 
 and that it is in this aspiration for the unat- 
 tainable, in this reverence for absolute purity, 
 wisdom and love, that the spirit of true religion 
 consists. 
 
 The new philosophy was named "Tran- 
 scendentalism" by Kant's followers, because 
 it included ideas which were beyond the range 
 of experience. It became popular in Germany, 
 as Platonism, to which it is closely related, be- 
 came popular in ancient Greece. It has never 
 been accepted in France, where scepticism still 
 predominates, though we hear of it in Taine 
 and a few other writers; but in Great Britain, 
 although the English universities repudiated 
 it, Transcendentalism became so influential that 
 Gladstone has spoken of it, in his Romanes 
 lecture, as the dominant philosophy of the 
 nineteenth century. Every notable English 
 writer of that period, with the exception of 
 Macaulay, Mill, and Spencer, became largely 
 imbued with it. In America its influence did 
 192
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 not extend much beyond New England, but in 
 that section at least its proselytes were numbered 
 by thousands, and it effected an intellectual 
 revolution which has since influenced the whole 
 country. 
 
 The Concord group of transcendentalists did 
 not accept the teaching of Kant in its original 
 purity; but mixed with it a number of other 
 imported products, that in no way appertain 
 to it. Thoreau was an American sansculotte, 
 a believer in the natural man; Ripley was 
 mainly a socialist; Margaret Fuller was one of 
 the earliest leaders in woman's rights; Alcott 
 was a Neo-Platonist, a vegetarian, and a non- 
 resistant; while Emerson sympathized largely 
 with Thoreau, and from his poetic exaltation 
 of Nature was looked upon as a pantheist by 
 those who were not accustomed to nice dis- 
 criminations. Thus it happened that Tran- 
 scendentalism came to be associated in the 
 public mind with any exceptional mode or 
 theory of life. Its best representatives in 
 America, like Professor Hedge of Harvard, 
 Reverend David A. Wasson and Doctor William 
 T. Harris (so long Chief of the National Bureau 
 of Education), were much abler men than 
 Emerson's followers, but did not attract so 
 much attention, simply because they lived 
 according to the customs of good society. 
 
 Sleepy Hollow, before it was converted into 
 a cemetery, was one of the most attractive 
 sylvan resorts in the environs of Concord. It 
 was a sort of natural amphitheatre, a small 
 
 13 193
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 oval plane, more than half surrounded by a 
 low wooded ridge; a sheltered and sequestered 
 spot, cool in summer, but also warm and sunny 
 in spring, where the wild flowers bloomed and 
 the birds sang earlier than in other places. 
 
 There, on August 22, 1842, a notable meeting 
 took place, between Hawthorne, Emerson, and 
 Margaret Fuller, who came that afternoon to 
 enjoy the inspiration of the place, without 
 preconcerted agreement. Margaret Fuller was 
 first on the ground, and Hawthorne found her 
 seated on the hill-side his gravestone now 
 overlooks the spot reading a book with a 
 peculiar name, which he "did not understand, 
 and could not afterward recollect." Such a 
 description could only apply to Kant's " Critique 
 of Pure Reason, ' ' the original fountain-head 
 and gospel of Transcendentalism. 
 
 It does not appear that Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 ever studied "The Critique of Pure Reason." 
 His mind was wholly of the artistic order, 
 the most perfect type of an artist, one might 
 say, living at that time, and a scientific analysis 
 of the mental faculties would have been as 
 distasteful to him as the dissection of a human 
 body. History, biography, fiction, did not 
 appear to him as a logical chain of cause and 
 effect, but as a succession of pictures illustra- 
 ting an ideal determination of the human race. 
 He could not even look at a group of turkeys 
 without seeing a dramatic situation in them. 
 In addition to this, as a true artist, he was pos- 
 sessed of a strong dislike for everything eccentric 
 194
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 and abnormal; he wished for symmetry in all 
 things, and above all in human actions; and 
 those restless, unbalanced spirits, who attached 
 themselves to the transcendental movement 
 and the anti-slavery cause, were particularly 
 objectionable to him. It has been rightly af- 
 firmed that no revolutionary movement could 
 be carried through without the support of that 
 ill-regulated class of persons who are always 
 seeking they know not what, and they have 
 their value in the community, like the rest of 
 us; but Hawthorne was not a revolutionary 
 character, and to his mind they appeared like 
 so many obstacles to the peaceable enjoyment 
 of life. His motto was, "Live and let live." 
 There are passages in his Concord diary in which 
 he refers to the itinerant transcendentalist in no 
 very sympathetic manner. 
 
 His experience at Brook Farm may have 
 helped to deepen this feeling. There is no 
 necessary connection between such an idyllic- 
 socialistic experiment and a belief in the direct 
 perception of a great First Clause; but Brook 
 Farm was popularly supposed at that time to 
 be an emanation of Transcendentalism, and is 
 still largely so considered. He was wearied at 
 Brook Farm by the philosophical discussions 
 of George Ripley and his friends, and took to 
 walking in the country lanes, where he could 
 contemplate and philosophize in his own fashion, 
 which after all proved to be more fruitful 
 than theirs. Having exchanged his interest 
 in the West Roxbury Association for the Old 
 195
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Manse at Concord (truly a poetic bargain), he 
 wrote the most keenly humorous of his 
 shorter sketches, his "The Celestial Railroad," 
 and in it represented the dismal cavern 
 where Bunyan located the two great enemies 
 of true religion, the Pope and the Pagan, as 
 now occupied by a German giant, the Tran- 
 scendentalist, who "makes it his business to 
 seize upon honest travellers and fat them for 
 his table with plentiful meals of smoke, mist, 
 moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust." 
 
 That Transcendentalism was largely associated 
 in Hawthorne's mind with the unnecessary 
 discomforts and hardships of his West Rox- 
 bury life is evident from a remark which he 
 lets fall in "The Virtuoso's Collection." The 
 Virtuoso calls his attention to the seven-league 
 boots of childhood mythology, and Hawthorne 
 replies,"! could show you quite as curious a 
 pair of cowhide boots at the transcendental 
 community of Brook Farm." Yet there could 
 have been no malice in his satire, for Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne's two sisters, Mrs. Mann and Miss Pea- 
 body, were both transcendentalists ; and so 
 was Horace Mann himself, so far as we know 
 definitely in regard to his metaphysical creed. 
 Do not we all feel at times that the search for 
 abstract truth is like a diet of sawdust or Scotch 
 mist, a "chimera buzzing in a vacuum" ? 
 
 James Russell Lowell similarly attacked 
 
 Emerson in his Class Day poem, and afterward 
 
 became converted to Emerson's views through 
 
 the influence of Maria White. It is possible 
 
 196
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 that a similar change took place in Hawthorne's 
 consciousness; although his consciousness was 
 so profound and his nature so reticent that 
 what happened in the depths of it was never 
 indicated by more than a few bubbles at the 
 surface. He was emphatically an idealist, as 
 every truly great artist must be, and Tran- 
 scendentalism was the local costume which 
 ideality wore in Hawthorne's time. He was a 
 philosopher after a way of his own, and his 
 reflections on life and manners often have 
 the highest value. It was inevitable that he 
 should feel and assimilate something from the 
 wave of German thought which was sweeping 
 over England and America, and if he did this 
 unconciously it was so much the better for the 
 quality of his art. 
 
 There are evidences of this even among his 
 earliest sketches. In his account of "Sunday 
 at Home" he says: "Time where a man 
 lives not what is it but Eternity?" Does he 
 not recognize in this condensed statement 
 Kant's theorem that time is a mental condition, 
 which only exists in man, and for man, and 
 has no place in the external world? In fact, 
 it only exists by divisions of time, and it is man 
 who makes the divisions. The rising of the 
 sun does not constitute time; for the sun is 
 always rising somewhere. The positivists and 
 Herbert Spencer deny this, and argue to prove 
 that time is an external entity independent 
 of man like electricity; but Hawthorne did 
 not agree with them. 
 
 197
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 He evidently trusted the validity of his con- 
 sciousness. In that exquisite pastoral, "The 
 Vision at the Fountain, " he says: 
 
 "We were aware of each other's presence, 
 not by sight or sound or touch, but by an in- 
 ward consciousness. Would it not be so among 
 the dead?" 
 
 You have probably heard of the German who 
 attempted to evolve a camel out of his inner 
 consciousness. That and similar jibes are com- 
 mon among those persons of whom the Scriptures 
 tell us that they are in the habit of straining 
 at gnats; but Hawthorne believed conscious- 
 ness to be a trustworthy guide. Why should 
 he not? It was the consciousness of self that 
 raised man above the level of the brute. This 
 was the rock from which Moses struck forth 
 the fountain of everlasting life. 
 
 Again, in "Fancy's Show-Box" we meet 
 with the following: 
 
 " Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are 
 cognizable before an earthly tribunal, will 
 guilty thoughts, of which guilty deeds are 
 no more than shadows, will these draw down 
 the full weight of a condemning sentence in 
 the supreme court of eternity?" 
 
 Is this not an induction from or corollary 
 to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philos- 
 ophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller 
 was the first American critic, if not the first of 
 all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing 
 "Elective Affinities" designed to show that 
 an evil thought may have consequences as 
 198
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 serious and irremediable as an evil action 
 in addition to the well-known homily that evil 
 thoughts lead to evil actions. In his "Hall of 
 Fantasy" Hawthorne mentions Goethe and 
 Swedenborg as two literary idols of the present 
 time who may be expected to endure through 
 all time. Emerson makes the same prediction 
 in one of his poems. 
 
 In "Rappacini's Daughter" Hawthorne says: 
 " There is something truer and more real than 
 what we can see with the eyes and touch with 
 the finger." 
 
 And in "The Select Party" he remarks: 
 "To such beholders it was unreal because 
 they lacked the imaginative faith. Had they 
 been worthy to pass within its portals, they 
 would have recognized the truth that the 
 dominions which the spirit conquers for itself 
 among unrealities become a thousand times 
 more real than the earth whereon they stamp 
 their feet, saying, 'This is solid and substan- 
 tial ! This may be called a fact! ' " 
 
 The essence of Transcendentalism is the as- 
 sertion of the indestructibility of spirit, that 
 mind is more real than matter, and the unseen 
 than the seen. "The visible has value only," 
 says Carlyle, " when it is based on the invisible. " 
 No writer of the nineteenth century affirms this 
 more persistently than Hawthorne, and in none 
 of his romances is the principle so conspicuous 
 as in "The House of the Seven Gables." It is 
 a sister's love which, like a cord stronger than 
 steel, binds together the various incidents of 
 199
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the story, while the avaricious Judge Pyncheon, 
 "with his landed estate, public honors, offices of 
 trust and other solid unrealities," has after 
 all only succeeded in building a card castle for 
 himself, which may be dissipated by a single 
 breath. Holgrave, the daguerreotypist, who 
 serves as a contrast to the factitious judge, is a 
 genuine character, and may stand for a type 
 of the young New England liberal of 1850: a 
 freethinker, and so much of a transcendentalist 
 that we suspect Hawthorne's model for him to 
 have been one of the younger associates of the 
 Brook Farm experiment. He is evidently 
 studied from life, and Hawthorne says of him: 
 
 "Altogether, in his culture and want of 
 culture, in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, 
 and the practical experience that counteracted 
 some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous 
 zeal for man's welfare, and his recklessness of 
 whatever the ages had established in man's 
 behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in 
 what he had, and in what he lacked, the artist 
 might fitly enough stand forth as the repre- 
 sentative of many compeers in his native land. " 
 
 This is a fairly sympathetic portrait, and it 
 largely represents the class of young men who 
 went to hear Emerson and supported Charles 
 Sumner. In the story, Holgrave achieves the 
 reward of a veracious nature by winning the 
 heart of the purest and loveliest young woman 
 in American fiction. 
 
 If Hawthorne were still living he might ob- 
 ject to the foregoing argument as a misrepre-
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 sentation; nor could he be blamed for this, 
 for Ripley, Thoreau, Alcott and other like vision- 
 ary spirits have so vitiated the significance 
 of Transcendentalism that it ought now to be 
 classed among words of doubtful and uncertain 
 meaning. 
 
 Students of German philosophy are now 
 chiefly known as Kantists or Hegelians, and 
 outside of the universities they are commonly 
 classed as Emersonians. 
 
 201
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FROM CONCORD TO LENOX: 1845-1849 
 
 IN May, 1845, Paymaster Bridge found him- 
 self again on the American coast. Meeting 
 with Franklin Pierce in Boston, they agreed to 
 go to Concord together, and look into Haw- 
 thorne's affairs. Soon after breakfast, Mrs. 
 Hawthorne espied them coming through the 
 gateway. She had never met Pierce, but she 
 recognized Bridge's tall, elegant figure, when 
 he waved his hat to her in the distance. Haw- 
 thorne himself was sawing and splitting in the 
 wood-shed, and thither she directed his friends 
 to his no slight astonishment when they ap- 
 peared before him. Pierce had his arm across 
 Hawthorne's broad shoulders when they re- 
 appeared. There is one pleasure, indeed, which 
 young people cannot know, and that is, the 
 meeting of old friends. Mrs. Hawthorne was 
 favorably impressed with Franklin Pierce 's 
 personality; while Horatio Bridge danced about 
 and acted an impromptu pantomime, making 
 up faces like an owl. They assured Hawthorne 
 that something should be done to relieve his 
 financial embarrassment.* 
 
 All those whose attention Hawthorne at- 
 tracted out of the rush and hurry of the world 
 
 *J. Hawthorne, 281. 
 202
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 were sure to become interested in his welfare. 
 O 'Sullivan, the editor of the Democratic Review, 
 had already exerted himself in Hawthorne's 
 behalf; but President Polk evidently did not 
 know who Hawthorne was, so that O 'Sullivan 
 was obliged to have a puff inserted in his review 
 for the President's better information. George 
 Bancroft was now in the Cabinet, and could 
 easily have obtained a lucrative post for Haw- 
 thorne, but it is plain that Bancroft was not 
 over-friendly to him and that Hawthorne was 
 fully aware of this. Hawthorne had suggested 
 the Salem postmastership, but when O 'Sullivan 
 mentioned this, Bancroft objected on the ground 
 that the present incumbent was too good a 
 man to be displaced, and proposed the con- 
 sulates of Genoa and Marseilles, two deplorable 
 positions and quite out of the question for Haw- 
 thorne, in the condition of his family at that 
 time. Perhaps it would have been better for 
 him in a material sense, if he had accepted the 
 invitation to dine with Margaret Fuller. 
 
 The summer wore away, but nothing was 
 acomplished; and late in the autumn Haw- 
 thorne left the Old Manse to return to his Uncle 
 Robert Manning's house in Salem, where he 
 could always count on a warm welcome. There 
 he spent the winter with his wife and child, 
 until suddenly, in March, 1846, he was appointed 
 Surveyor of the Port, or, as it is now more 
 properly called, Collector of Customs. 
 
 This was, in truth, worth waiting for. The 
 salary was not large, but it was a dignified 
 203
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 position and allowed Hawthorne sufficient lei- 
 sure for other pursuits, the leisure of the 
 merchant or banker. Salem had already begun 
 to lose its foreign trade, and for days together 
 it sometimes happened that there was nothing 
 to do. Hawthorne's chief business was to pre- 
 vent the government from being cheated, 
 either by the importers or by his own sub- 
 ordinates; and it required a pretty sharp eye 
 to do this. All the appointments, even to his 
 own clerks, were made by outside politicians, 
 and when a reduction of employees was necessary, 
 Hawthorne consulted with the local Democratic 
 Committee, and followed their advice. Such a 
 method was not to the advantage of the public 
 service, but it saved Hawthorne from an an- 
 noying responsibility. His strictness and im- 
 partiality, however, soon brought him into 
 conflict with his more self-important subordi- 
 nates, who were by no means accustomed to 
 exactness in their dealings, and this finally 
 produced a good deal of official unpleasantness; 
 and the unfavorable reports which were after- 
 ward circulated concerning Hawthorne's life 
 during this period, probably originated in that 
 quarter. 
 
 All the poetry that Hawthorne could extract 
 from his occupation at the Custom House is 
 to be found in his preface to "The Scarlet 
 Letter," but he withholds from us the prosaic 
 side of it, as he well might. At times he comes 
 close to caricature, especially in his descrip- 
 tions of "those venerable incumbents who 
 204
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 hibernated during the winter season, and then 
 crawled out during the warm days of spring 
 to draw their pay and perform those pretended 
 duties, for which they were engaged." There 
 were formerly large numbers of moss-grown 
 loafers in the government service, with whiskey- 
 reddened noses and greasy old clothing, who 
 would sun themselves on the door- steps, and 
 tell anecdotes of General Jackson, Senator 
 Benton, and other popular heroes, with whom 
 they would intimate a good acquaintance at 
 some remote period of their lives. If removed 
 from office, they were quite as likely to turn 
 up in a neighboring jail as in any other location. 
 This is no satire, but serious truth ; and instances 
 of it can be given. 
 
 Hawthorne's life during the next three years 
 was essentially domestic. In June, 1846, his 
 son Julian was born a remarkably vigorous 
 baby at Doctor Peabody's house in West 
 Street, Boston; Mrs. Hawthorne wisely pre- 
 ferring to be with her own mother during her con- 
 finement.* With two small children on her 
 hands, Mrs. Hawthorne had slight opportunity 
 to enjoy general society, fashionable or other- 
 wise. Rebecca Manning says, however: 
 
 "Neither Hawthorne nor his wife could be 
 said to be 'in society' in the technical sense. 
 
 * At the age of thirty-five, Julian resembled his father so 
 closely that Nathaniel Hawthorne's old friends were some- 
 times startled by him, as if they had seen an apparition. 
 He was, however, of a stouter build, and his eyes were 
 different. 
 
 205
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 When the Peabody family lived in Salem, 
 they were, I have been told, somewhat strait- 
 ened pecuniarily. After Hawthorne's marriage, 
 I think I remember hearing of his wife going 
 to parties and dinners occasionally. Dr. Loring's 
 wife was her cousin. Other friends were the 
 Misses Howes, one of whom is now Mrs. Cabot 
 of Boston. Mrs. Foote, who was a daughter 
 of Judge White, was a friend, and I remember 
 some Silsbees who were also her friends. Haw- 
 thorne's wife knew how to cultivate her friends 
 and make the most of them far better than 
 either Hawthorne or his sisters did. I have 
 been told that when Hawthorne was a young 
 man, before his marriage, if he had chosen to 
 enter Salem 's 'first circle' he would have been 
 welcome there." 
 
 During this last sojourn in his native city 
 Hawthorne was chosen on the committee for 
 the lyceum lecture course, and proved instru- 
 mental in bringing Webster to Salem, where 
 he had not been popular since the trial of the 
 two Knapps, to deliver an oration on the 
 Constitution; of which Mrs. Hawthorne has 
 given a graphic description in a letter to her 
 mother on November 19, 1848: 
 
 "The old Lion walked the stage with a sort 
 of repressed rage, when he referred to those 
 persons who cried out, ' Down with the Consti- 
 tution!' 'Madmen! Or most wicked if not 
 mad!' said he with a glare of fire. " 
 
 A pure piece of acting. The national Consti- 
 tution was not even endangered by the Southern 
 206
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 rebellion, much less by the small band of 
 original abolitionists; and Webster was too 
 sensible not to be aware of this. 
 
 While Hawthorne was at the Salem Custom 
 House, he made at least two valuable friends: 
 Doctor George B. Loring, who had married a 
 cousin of Mrs. Hawthorne, and William B. 
 Pike, who occupied a subordinate position in 
 the Custom House, but whom Hawthorne 
 valued for moral and intellectual qualities of 
 which he would seem to have been the first 
 discoverer. They were not friends who would 
 be likely to affect Hawthorne's political views, 
 except to encourage him in the direction to 
 which he had always tended. Four years earlier, 
 Doctor Loring had been on cordial terms with 
 Longfellow and Sumner, being a refined and 
 intellectual sort of man, but like Hillard, had 
 withdrawn from them on account of political 
 differences. He was an able public speaker, 
 and became a Democratic politician, until 1862, 
 when he went over to the Republicans; but 
 after that he was looked upon with a good deal 
 of suspicion by both parties. The governor- 
 ship was supposed to have been the object of 
 his ambition, but he never could obtain the 
 nomination. Late in life he was appointed 
 Commissioner of Agriculture, a post for which 
 he was eminently fitted, and finally went to 
 Portugal as United States Minister. 
 
 William B. Pike either lacked the opportunity 
 or the necessary concentration to develop his 
 genius in the larger world, but Hawthorne 
 207
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 continued to communicate with him irregularly 
 until the close of his life. He invited him to 
 Lenox when he resided there, and Mrs. Lathrop 
 recollects seeing him at the Wayside in Concord, 
 after Hawthorne's return from Europe. She 
 discribes him as a "short, sturdy, phlegmatic 
 and plebeian looking man," but with a gentle 
 step and a finely modulated voice. It may have 
 been as well for him that he never became 
 distinguished.* 
 
 The war with Mexico was now fairly afield, 
 and Franklin Pierce, who left the United States 
 Senate on account of his wife's health, was 
 organizing a regiment of New Hampshire vol- 
 unteers, as a "patriotic duty." Salem people 
 thought differently, and party feeling there 
 soon rose to the boiling-point. There is no 
 other community where political excitement is 
 so likely to become virulent as in a small city. 
 In a country town, like Concord, every man 
 feels the necessity for conciliating his neighbor, 
 but the moneyed class in Salem was sufficient 
 for its own purposes, and was opposed to the 
 war in a solid body. The Whigs looked upon 
 the invasion of Mexico as a piratical attempt of 
 the Democratic leaders to secure the permanent 
 ascendency of their party, and this was prob- 
 ably the true reason for Franklin Pierce 's join- 
 ing it. In their eyes, Hawthorne was the repre- 
 sentative of a corrupt adminstration, and they 
 would have been more than human if they had 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, "Memories of Hawthorne," 154. 
 208
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 not wished him to feel this. The Salem gentry 
 could not draw him into an argument very 
 well, but they could look daggers at him on 
 the street and exhibit their coldness toward 
 him when they went on business to the Custom 
 House. It is evident that he was made to 
 suffer in some such manner, and to a tender- 
 hearted man with a clear conscience, it must 
 have seemed unkind and unjust.* In his Custom 
 House preface, Hawthorne compares the Whigs 
 rather unfavorably with the Democrats, and 
 this is not to be wondered at; but he should 
 have remembered that it was his own party 
 which first introduced the spoils-of -office system. 
 The first use that Hawthorne made of his 
 government salary was to cancel his obligations 
 to the Concord tradespeople, and the next was 
 to provide a home for his wife and mother. 
 They first moved to 18 Chestnut Street, in 
 June, 1846; and thence to a larger house, 14 
 Mall Street, in September, 1847, in which "The 
 Snow Image" was prepared for publication, 
 and "The Scarlet Letter" was written. Haw- 
 thorne's study or workshop was the front room 
 in the third story, an apartment of some width 
 but with a ceiling in direct contradiction to the 
 elevated thoughts of the writer. There is an 
 
 * When the engagement between the "Chesapeake" and 
 the "Shannon" took place off Salem harbor in August, 
 1813, and Captain Lawrence was killed in the action, the 
 anti-war sentiment ran so high that it was difficult to find 
 a respectable mansion where his funeral would be per- 
 mitted. 
 
 14 209
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 ominous silence in the American Note-book 
 between 1846 and 1850, which is rather increased 
 than diminished by the publication from his 
 diary of a number of extracts concerning the 
 children. The babies of geniuses do not differ 
 essentially from those of other people, and it 
 is not supposable that Hawthorne's reflections 
 during this period were wholly confined to his 
 own family. It is to be hoped that fuller in- 
 formation will yet be given to the public con- 
 cerning their affairs in Salem; for the truth 
 deserves to be told. 
 
 In January, 1846, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to 
 her mother : 
 
 "No one, I think, has a right to break the will of a child, 
 but God; and if the child is taught to submit to Him 
 through love, all other submission will follow with heavenly 
 effect upon the character. God never drives even the 
 most desperate sinner, but only invites or suggests through 
 the events of His providence." 
 
 Nothing is more unfortunate than to break 
 the will of a child, for all manliness and woman- 
 liness is grounded in the will; but it is often 
 necessary to control the desires and humors 
 of children for their self-preservation. Haw- 
 thorne himself was not troubled with such 
 fancies. Alcott, who was his nearest neighbor 
 at the Wayside, once remarked that there was 
 only one will in the Hawthorne family, and 
 that was Nathaniel's. His will was law and 
 no one thought of disputing it. Yet what he 
 writes concerning children is always sweet, 
 tender, and beautiful, with the single excep-
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 tion of a criticism of his own daughter, which 
 was published long after his death and could 
 not have been intended for the public eye. 
 
 The war with Mexico was wonderfully suc- 
 cessful from a military point of view, but its 
 political effects were equally confounding to 
 the politicians who projected it. The Ameri- 
 can people resemble the French, quite as much 
 perhaps as they do the English, and the ad- 
 miration of military glory is one of their Gallic 
 traits. It happened that the two highest posi- 
 tions in the army were both held by Whig 
 generals, and the victory of Buena Vista car- 
 ried Zachary Taylor into the White House, in 
 spite of the opposition of Webster and Clay, 
 as well as that of the Democrats and the Free 
 Soilers. Polk, Bancroft, and Pierce had all 
 contributed to the defeat of their own party. 
 The war proved their political terminus to the 
 two former ; but, mirabile dictu, it became the 
 cap of Fortunatus to Pierce and Hawthorne. 
 
 This, however, could not have been fore- 
 seen at the time, and the election of Taylor in No- 
 vember, 1848, had a sufficiently chilling effect 
 on the little family in Mall Street. Hawthorne 
 entertained the hope that he might be spared 
 in the general out-turning, as a distinguished 
 writer and an inoffensive partisan, and this 
 indicates how loath he was to relinquish his 
 comfortable position. Let us place ourselves 
 in his situation and we shall not wonder at it. 
 He was now forty-five, with a wife and two 
 children, and destitution was staring him in
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the face. For ten years he had struggled 
 bravely, and this was the net result of all his 
 endeavors. Never had the future looked so 
 gloomy to him. 
 
 The railroad had superseded his Uncle Man- 
 ning's business, as it had that of half the mer- 
 cantile class in the city, and his father-in-law 
 was in a somewhat similar predicament. At 
 this time Elizabeth Peabody was keeping a 
 small foreign book-store in a room of her father's 
 house on West Street. One has to realize these 
 conditions, in order to appreciate the mood in 
 which Hawthorne's Custom House preface was 
 written. 
 
 There is one passage in it, however, that is 
 always likely to be misunderstood. It is where 
 he says : 
 
 "I thought my own prospects of retaining office, to be 
 better than those of my Democratic brethren ; but who can 
 see an inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own 
 head was the first that fell! " 
 
 It is clear that some kind of an effort was 
 made to prevent his removal, presumably by 
 George S. Hillard, who was a Whig in good 
 favor; but the conclusion which one would 
 naturally draw from the above, that Hawthorne 
 was turned out of office in a summary and 
 ungracious manner, is not justified by the evi- 
 dence. He was not relieved from duty until 
 June 14, 1849; that i s > ne was given a hundred 
 days of grace, which is much more than office- 
 holders commonly are favored with, in such
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 cases. We may consider it morally certain 
 that Hillard did what he could in Hawthorne's 
 behalf. He was well acquainted with Webster, 
 but unfortunately Webster had opposed the 
 nomination of General Taylor, and was so im- 
 prudent as to characterize it as a nomination 
 not fit to be made. This was echoed all over 
 the country, and left Webster without influ- 
 ence at Washington. For the time being Seward 
 was everything, and Webster was nothing. 
 
 In a letter to Horace Mann, shortly after 
 his removal, Hawthorne refers to two distinct 
 calumnies which had been circulated con- 
 cerning him in Salem, and only too widely 
 credited. The most important of these for 
 it has seriously compromised a number of 
 Salem gentlemen was never explained until 
 the publication of Mrs. Lathrop's "Memories 
 of Hawthorne" in 1897; where we find a letter 
 from Mrs. Hawthorne to her mother, dated 
 June 10, 1849, and containing the following 
 passage : 
 
 "Here is a pretty business, discovered in an unexpected 
 manner to Mr. Hawthorne by a friendly and honorable 
 Whig. Perhaps you know that the President said before 
 he took the chair that he should make no removals ex- 
 cept for dishonesty and unfaithfulness. It is very plain 
 that neither of these charges could be brought against 
 Mr. Hawthorne. Therefore a most base and incredible 
 falsehood has been told written down and signed and sent 
 to the Cabinet in secret. This infamous paper certifies 
 among other things (of which we have not heard) that 
 Mr. Hawthorne has been in the habit of writing political 
 articles in magazines and newspapers!" 
 
 213
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 So it appears that the gutta-percha formula* 
 of President Cleveland in regard to " offensive 
 partisanship" was really invented forty years 
 before his time, and had as much value in one 
 case as in the other. It is possible that such 
 a document as Mrs. Hawthorne describes was 
 circulated, signed, and sent to Washington, to 
 make the way easy for President Taylor's 
 advisers, and if so it was a highly contemptible 
 proceeding; but the statement rests wholly 
 on the affirmation of a single witness, whose 
 name has always been withheld, and even if it 
 were true that Hawthorne had written political 
 articles for Democratic papers the fact would 
 have in no wise been injurious to his reputa- 
 tion. The result must have been the same in 
 any case. General Taylor was an honorable 
 man, and no doubt intended to keep his word, 
 as other Presidents have intended since; but 
 what could even a brave general effect against 
 the army of hungry office-seekers who were 
 besieging the White House, a more formid- 
 able army than the Mexicans whom he had 
 defeated at Buena Vista? In all probability 
 he knew nothing of Hawthorne and never 
 heard of his case. 
 
 The second calumny which Hawthorne refers 
 to was decidedly second-rate, and closely re- 
 sembles a servant's intrigue. The Department 
 at Washington, in a temporary fit of economy, 
 
 * By which eighty-eight per cent, of the classified service 
 were removed. 
 
 214
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 had requested him to discharge two of his super- 
 visors. He did not like to take the men's bread 
 away from them, and made a mild protest 
 against the order. At the same time he con- 
 sulted his chief clerk as to what it might be 
 best to do, and they agreed upon suspending 
 two of the supervisors who might suffer less 
 from it than some others. As it happened, 
 the Department considered Hawthorne's report 
 favorably, and no suspension took place; but 
 his clerk betrayed the secret to the two men 
 concerned, who hated Hawthorne in conse- 
 quence, and afterward circulated a report that 
 he had threatened to discharge them unless 
 they contributed to the Democratic campaign 
 fund. This return of evil for good appears to 
 have been a new experience for Hawthorne, 
 but those who are much concerned in the affairs 
 of the world soon become accustomed to it, 
 and pay little attention to either the malice or 
 the mendacity of mankind. 
 
 Twenty years later one of Hawthorne's clerks, 
 who had prudently shifted from the Democratic 
 to the Republican ranks, held a small office in 
 the Boston Navy Yard, and was much given to 
 bragging of his intimacy with "Nat," and of 
 the sprees they went on together; but the style 
 and description of the man were sufficient to 
 discredit his statements without further evi- 
 dence. There were, however, several old ship- 
 masters in the Salem Custom House who had 
 seen Calcutta, Canton, and even a hurricane 
 or two; men who had lived close to reality, 
 
 215
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 with a vein of true heroism in them, moreover; 
 and if Hawthorne preferred their conversation 
 to that of the shipowners, who had spent 
 their lives in calculating the profits of commercial 
 adventures, there are many among the well 
 educated who would agree with him. He refers 
 particularly to one aged inspector of imports, 
 whose remarkable adventures by flood and 
 field were an almost daily recreation to him; 
 and if the narratives of this ancient mariner 
 were somewhat mixed with romance, assuredly 
 Hawthorne should have been the last person to 
 complain of them on that account. 
 
 At first he was wholly unnerved by his dis- 
 missal. He returned to Mall Street and said 
 to his wife: "I have lost my place. What 
 shall we now do for bread?" But Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne replied: "Never fear. You will now 
 have leisure to finish your novel. Meanwhile, 
 I will earn bread for us with my pencil and 
 paint-brush."* Besides this, she brought for- 
 ward two or three hundred dollars, which she 
 had saved from his salary unbeknown to him; 
 but who would not have been encouraged by 
 such a brave wife? Fortunately her pencil and 
 paint-brush were not put to the test; at least 
 so far as we know. Already on June 8, her 
 husband had written a long letter to Hillard, 
 explaining the state of his affairs and contain- 
 ing this pathetic appeal : 
 
 "If you could do anything in the way of procuring me 
 some stated literary employment, in connection with a news- 
 
 * Mrs. George S. Hillard. 
 216
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 paper, or as corrector of the press to some printing estab- 
 lishment, etc., it could not come at a better time. Perhaps 
 Epes Sargent, who is a friend of mine, would know of some- 
 thing. I shall not stand upon my dignity ; that must take 
 care of itself. Perhaps there may be some subordinate 
 office connected with the Boston Athenaeum (Literary). 
 Do not think anything too humble to be mentioned 
 to me."* 
 
 There have been many tragical episodes in 
 the history of literature, but since "Paradise 
 Lost" was sold for five pounds and a contin- 
 gent interest, there has been nothing more simply 
 pathetic than this, that an immortal writer 
 should feel obliged to apply for a subordinate 
 position in a counting-room, a description of 
 work which nobody likes too well, and which 
 to Hawthorne would have been little less than 
 a death in life. "Do not think anything too 
 humble to be mentioned to me" ! 
 
 What Hillard attempted to do at this time 
 is uncertain, but he was not the man to allow 
 the shrine of genius to be converted into a gas- 
 burner, if he could possibly prevent it. We 
 may presume that he went to Salem and en- 
 couraged Hawthorne in his amiable, half-elo- 
 quent manner. But we do not hear of him 
 again until the new year. Meanwhile Madam 
 Hawthorne fell into her last illness and departed 
 this life on July 31; a solemn event even to a 
 hard-hearted son how much more to such a 
 man as she had brought into the world. Three 
 days before her death, he writes in his diary of 
 "her heart beating its funeral march," and 
 
 * Conway, 113. 
 217
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 diverts his mind from the awful finale by an 
 accurate description of his two children playing 
 a serio-comic game of doctor and patient, in 
 the adjoining room. 
 
 It was under such tragical conditions, well 
 suited to the subject, that he continued his 
 work on "The Scarlet Letter," and his pain- 
 fully contracted brow seemed to indicate that 
 he suffered as much in imagination, as the 
 characters in that romance are represented to 
 have suffered. In addition he wrote "The 
 Great Stone Face," one of the most impres- 
 sive of his shorter pieces (published, alas! in a 
 Washington newspaper), and the sketch called 
 "Main Street," both afterward included in the 
 volume of "The Snow Image." On January 
 17, 1850, he was greatly surprised to receive a 
 letter from George S. Hillard with a large check 
 in it, more than half-way to a thousand dol- 
 lars, which the writer with all possible delicacy 
 begged him to accept from a few of his Boston 
 admirers. It was only from such a good friend 
 as Hillard that Hawthorne would have accepted 
 assistance in this form ; but he always considered 
 it in the character of a loan, and afterward 
 insisted on repaying it to the original sub- 
 scribers, Professor Ticknor, Judge Curtis, and 
 others. Hillard also persuaded James T. Fields, 
 the younger partner of Ticknor & Company, to 
 take an interest in Hawthorne as an author 
 who required to be encouraged, and perhaps 
 coaxed a little, in order to bring out the best 
 that was in him. 
 
 218
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Fields accordingly went to Salem soon after- 
 ward, and has given an account of his first 
 interview with Hawthorne in "Yesterdays with 
 Authors," which seems rather melodramatic: 
 "found him cowering over a stove," and al- 
 together in a woe-begone condition. The main 
 point of discussion between them, however, 
 was whether "The Scarlet Letter" should be 
 published separately or in conjunction with 
 other subjects. Hawthorne feared that such a 
 serious plot, continued with so little diversity 
 of motive, would not be likely to produce a 
 favorable impression unless it were leavened 
 with material of a different kind. Fields, on 
 the contrary, thought it better that the work 
 should stand by itself, in solitary grandeur, 
 and feared that it would only be dwarfed by 
 any additions of a different kind. He pre- 
 dicted a good sale for the book, and succeeded 
 in disillusionizing Hawthorne from the notions 
 he had acquired from the failure of " Fanshawe. " 
 
 As it was late in the season, Fields would not 
 even wait for the romance to be finished, but 
 sent it to the press at once ; and on February 4, 
 Hawthorne wrote to Horatio Bridge: 
 
 ' ' I finished my book only yesterday ; one end being in 
 the press at Boston, while the other was in my head here 
 at Salem; so that, as you see, the story is at least fourteen 
 miles long." 
 
 The time of publication was a propitious one: 
 
 the gold was flowing in from California, and 
 
 every man and woman had a dollar to spend. 
 
 The first edition of five thousand copies was 
 
 219
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 taken up within a month, and after this Haw- 
 thorne suffered no more financial embarrass- 
 ments. The succeeding twelve years of his 
 life were as prosperous and cheerful as his friends 
 and readers could desire for him; although 
 the sombre past still seemed to cast a ghostly 
 shadow across his way, which even the sunshine 
 of Italy could not entirely dissipate. 
 
 "THE SCARLET LETTER" 
 
 The germ of this romance is to be found in 
 the tale of "Endicott and the Red Cross," 
 published in the Token in 1838, so that it must 
 have been at least ten years sprouting and 
 developing in Hawthorne's mind. In that 
 story he gives a tragically comic description 
 of the Puritan penitentiary, in the public 
 square, where, among others, a good-looking 
 young woman was exposed with a red letter 
 A on her breast, which she had embroidered 
 herself, so elegantly that it seemed as if it was 
 rather intended for a badge of distinction than 
 as a mark of infamy. Hawthorne did not 
 conjure this up wholly out of his imagination, 
 for in 1704 the General Court of Massachusetts 
 Bay passed the following law, which he was no 
 doubt aware of: 
 
 ' ' Convicted before the Justice of Assize, both Man and 
 Woman to be set on the Gallows an Hour with a Rope 
 about their Necks and the other end cast over the Gal- 
 lowses. And in the way from thence to the common 
 Gaol, to he Scourged not exceeding Forty Stripes. And 
 forever after to wear a Capital A of two inches long, of a 
 contrary colour to their cloathes, sewed on their upper
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Garments, on the Back or Arm, in open view. And as often 
 as they appear without it, openly to be Scourged, not ex- 
 ceeding Fifteen Stripes." * 
 
 The most diligent investigation, however, 
 has failed to discover an instance in which 
 punishment was inflicted under this law, so 
 that we must conclude that Hawthorne in- 
 vented that portion of his statement. In fact, 
 nothing that Hawthorne published himself 
 is to be considered of historical or biographical 
 value. It is all fiction. He sported with his- 
 torical facts and traditions, as poets and painters 
 always have done, and the manuscript which 
 he pretends to have discovered in his office at 
 the Custom House, written by one of his pre- 
 decessors there, is a piece of pure imagination, 
 which serves to give additional credibility to 
 his narrative. He knew well enough how 
 large a portion of what is called history is fiction 
 after all, and the extent to which professed 
 historians deal in romance. He felt that he 
 was justified so long as he did not depart from 
 the truth of human nature. We may thank 
 him that he did not dispel the illusion of his 
 poetic imagery by the introduction of well- 
 known historical characters. This is permis- 
 sible in a certain class of novels, but its effect 
 is always more or less prosaic. 
 
 Our Puritan ancestors evidently did not 
 realize the evil effects of their law against 
 faithless wives, its glaring indelicacy, and 
 
 * Boston, Timothy Green, 1704. 
 
 221
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 brutalizing influence on the minds of the young ; 
 but it was of a piece with their exclusion of 
 church-music and other amenities of civili- 
 zation. Was it through a natural attraction 
 for the primeval granite that they landed on 
 the New England coast? Their severe self- 
 discipline was certainly well adapted to their 
 situation, but, while it built up their social 
 edifice on an enduring foundation, its tendency 
 was to crush out the gentler and more sym- 
 pathetic qualities in human nature. In no 
 other community would the story of Hester 
 Prynne acquire an equal cogency and signifi- 
 cance. A German might, perhaps, understand 
 it; but a Frenchman or an Italian not at all. 
 The same subject has been treated in its 
 most venial form by Shakespeare in " Measure 
 for Measure," and in its most condemnable 
 form in Goethe's " Faust. " " The Scarlet Letter " 
 lies midway between these two. Hester Prynne 
 has married a man of morose, vindictive dis- 
 position, such as no woman could be happy 
 with. He is, moreover, much older than her- 
 self, and has gone off on a wild expedition in 
 pursuit of objects which he evidently cares 
 for, more than for his wife. She has not heard 
 from him for over a year, and knows not whether 
 he has deserted her, or if he is no longer living. 
 She is alone in a strange wild country, and it 
 is natural that she should seek counsel and 
 encouragement from the young clergyman, who 
 is worthy of her love, but, unfortunately, not 
 a strong character. Lightning is not swifter
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 than the transition in our minds from good to 
 evil, and in an unguarded moment he brings 
 ruin upon himself, and a life-long penance on 
 Hester Prynne. Hawthorne tells this story 
 with such purity and delicacy of feeling that a 
 maiden of sixteen can read it without offence. 
 
 "The Scarlet Letter" is at once the most 
 poetic and the most powerful of Hawthorne's 
 larger works, much more powerful than "The 
 Vicar of Wakefield, " which has been accepted 
 as the type of a romance in all languages. Gold- 
 smith's tale will always be more popular than 
 "The Scarlet Letter," owing to its blithesome 
 spirit, its amusing incidents and bright effects 
 of light and shade; but "The Scarlet Letter" 
 strikes a more penetrating chord in the human 
 breast, and adheres more closely to the truth 
 of life. There are certain highly improbable 
 circumstances woven in the tissue of "The 
 Vicar of Wakefield," which a prudent, reflec- 
 tive reader finds it difficult to surmount. It 
 is rather surprising that the Vicar should not 
 have discovered the true social position of his 
 friend Mr. Burchell, which must have been 
 known to every farmer in the vicinity; and 
 still more so that Mr. Burchell should have 
 permitted the father of a young woman in whom 
 he was deeply interested, to be carried to prison 
 for debt without making an inquiry into his 
 case. "The Scarlet Letter" is, as Hawthorne 
 noticed, a continual variation on a single theme, 
 and that a decidedly solemn one; but its dif- 
 ferent incidents form a dynamic sequence, 
 223
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 leading onward to the final catastrophe, and if 
 its progress is slow the narrative extends 
 over a period of seven years this is as inevi- 
 table as the march of Fate. From the first 
 scene in the drama, we are lifted above our- 
 selves, and sustained so by Hawthorne's genius, 
 until the close. 
 
 This sense of power arises from dealing with 
 a subject which demanded the whole force 
 and intensity of Hawthorne's nature. Hester 
 Prynne herself is a strong character, and her 
 errors are those of strength and independence 
 rather than of weakness. She says to Mr. 
 Dimmesdale that what they did "had a con- 
 secration of its own," and it is this belief which 
 supports her under a weight of obloquy that 
 would have crushed a more fragile spirit. 
 She does not collapse into a pitiful nonentity, 
 like Scott's Effie Deans, nor is she maddened 
 to crime like George Eliot's "Hetty Sorrel";* 
 but from the outset she forms definite resolu- 
 tions, first to rehabilitate her own character, 
 and next to protect the partner of her shame. 
 This last may seem to be a mistaken devotion, 
 and contrary to his true interest, for the first 
 step in the regeneration from sin is to acknowl- 
 edge manfully the responsibility of it; but 
 to give the repentance even the appearance of 
 sincerity, the confession must be a voluntary 
 one, and not be forced upon the delinquent 
 person by external pressure. We cannot with- 
 
 * A name apparently compounded from Hester Prynne 
 and Schiller's Agnes Sorrel. 
 
 224
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 hold our admiration for Hester's unswerving 
 fidelity to this twofold purpose. We may con- 
 demn her in our minds, but we cannot refuse 
 her a measure of sympathy in our hearts. 
 
 I believe this to be the explanation of her 
 apparent inconsistency at the close of the 
 book. Many of Hawthorne's commentators 
 have been puzzled by the fact that Hester, 
 after so many years of contrition, should advise 
 Dimmesdale to fly to England, and even offered 
 to accompany him. Women have not the 
 same idea of law that men have. In their ideas 
 of right and wrong they depend chiefly on 
 their sense of purity; and it is very difficult 
 to persuade a woman that she could be wrong 
 in obeying the dictates of her heart. Hester 
 perceives that her former lover is being tortured 
 to death by the silent tyranny of Chillingworth ; 
 the tide of affection so long restrained flows 
 back into her soul; and her own reputation 
 is as nothing compared with the life of the man 
 she hopes to save. There is no other passage 
 in American fiction so pathetic as that wood- 
 land meeting, at which their mutual hopes of 
 happiness blaze up like the momentary bright- 
 ness of a dying flame. Hester's innocent child, 
 however, representing the spirit of truthful- 
 ness, is suddenly seized with an aversion to her 
 father and refuses to join their company, an 
 unfavorable omen and dark presage of the 
 minister's doom. 
 
 Pearl's behavior, on this occasion, may be 
 supposed to represent the author's own judg- 
 15 225
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 ment. How far shall we agree with him? The 
 past generation witnessed one of the noblest 
 of women uniting herself, for life and death, to 
 a man whom she could not marry on account 
 of purely legal objections. Whether Hester's 
 position in the last act of this drama is com- 
 parable with that of Marian Evans every one 
 must decide according to his or her conscience. 
 
 Hawthorne certainly proves himself a good 
 Puritan when he says, " And be the stern and 
 sad truth spoken that the breach which guilt 
 has once made into the human soul, is never in 
 this mortal state repaired." The magnitude 
 of the evil of course makes a difference ; but do 
 we not all live in a continual state of sinning, 
 and self-correction? That is the road to self- 
 improvement, and those who adhere most closely 
 to inflexible rules of conduct discover at length 
 that the rules themselves have become an evil. 
 Mankind has not yet fully decided as to what 
 things are evil, and what are good; and neither 
 Hawthorne nor the Puritan lawmakers would 
 seem to have remembered Christ's admonition on 
 a similar occasion: "Let him who is without 
 sin among you, cast the first stone." 
 
 A writer in the Andover Review, some twenty 
 years ago, criticised the impersonation of 
 Pearl as a fable " a golden wreck. " He quoted 
 Emerson to the effect that in all the ages that 
 man has been upon the earth, no communica- 
 tion has been established between him and the 
 lower animals, and he affirmed that we know 
 quite as little of the thoughts and motives of 
 226
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 our own children. Both conclusions are wide of 
 the mark. There is much more communication 
 between man and the domestic animals than 
 between animals of the same species. The 
 understanding between an Arab and his horse 
 is almost perfect, and so is that between a sports- 
 man and his setters. Even the sluggish ox 
 knows the word of command. Then what shall 
 we say of the sympathetic relation between a 
 mother and her child? Who can describe it 
 that clairvoyant sensibility, intangible, too swift 
 for words? Who has depicted it, except Haw- 
 thorne and Raphael? Pearl is like a pure spirit 
 in "The Scarlet Letter," reconciling us to its 
 gloomy scenes. She is like the sunshine in a 
 dark forest, breaking through the tree-tops and 
 dancing in our pathway. It is true that Haw- 
 thorne has carried her clairvoyant insight to 
 its furthest limits, but this is in accordance with 
 the ideal character of his work. She has no 
 rival except Goethe's Mignon. 
 
 Hawthorne's method of developing his stories 
 resembled closely that of the historical painter; 
 and it was only in this way that he could pro- 
 duce such vivid effects. He selected models 
 for his principal characters and studied them 
 as his work progressed. The original of Reverend 
 Mr. Dimmesdale was quickly recognized in Salem 
 as an amiable inoffensive person, of whom no one 
 suspected any evil, and that was, no doubt, 
 the reason why Hawthorne selected him for his 
 purpose. It was no discredit to the man him- 
 self, although tongues were not wanting to 
 227
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 blame Hawthorne for it. Who Hester may 
 have been still remains a mystery; but it was 
 evidently some one with whom the author was 
 well acquainted, perhaps his younger sister. 
 So Rubens painted his own wife at one time an 
 angel, and at another in the likeness of Herodias. 
 It is still more probable that Pearl is a picture 
 of Hawthorne's own daughter, who was of the 
 right age for such a study, and whose sprightly, 
 fitful, and impulsive actions correspond to 
 those of Hester's child. This would also ex- 
 plain why her father gave Una so much space 
 in his Note-book. He may have noticed the 
 antagonism between her and the Whig children 
 of the neighborhood and have applied it to 
 Pearl's case. It was also his custom, as ap- 
 pears from his last unfinished work, to leave 
 blank spaces in his manuscript while in the 
 heat of composition, which, like a painter's 
 background, were afterwards filled in with 
 descriptions of scenery or some subsidiary 
 narrative. 
 
 The models of the novelist cannot be hired 
 for the purpose, like those used by the painter 
 or sculptor, but have to be studied when and 
 where they can be found, for the least self- 
 consciousness spoils the effect. Hawthorne 
 in this only followed the example of the best 
 authors and dramatists; and those who think 
 that good fiction or dramatic poetry can be 
 written wholly out of a man's or a woman's 
 imagination, would do well to make the experi- 
 ment themselves. 
 
 228
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 PEGASUS is FREE: 1850-1852 
 
 FREDERICK W. LORING, that bright young 
 poet who was so soon lost to us, once remarked : 
 "Appreciation is to the artist what sunshine is 
 to flowers. He cannot expand without it." 
 The success of "The Scarlet Letter" proved 
 that all Hawthorne's genius required was a 
 little moderate encouragement, not industry 
 but opportunity. His pen, no longer slow and 
 hesitating, moved freer and easier; the long 
 pent-up flood of thoughts, emotions, and ex- 
 periences had at length found an outlet; and 
 the next three years were the most productive 
 of his life. 
 
 His first impulse, however, was to escape 
 from Salem. Although his removal from office 
 had been a foregone conclusion, Hawthorne 
 felt a certain degree of chagrin connected with 
 it, and also imagined a certain amount of ani- 
 mosity toward himself which made the place 
 uncomfortable to him. He was informed that 
 the old Sparhawk mansion, close to the Ports- 
 mouth Navy Yard, was for sale or to rent, and 
 the first of May, Hawthorne went thither to 
 consider whether it would serve him for a home.* 
 One would suppose that sedate old Portsmouth, 
 with its courteous society and its dash of military 
 
 * Lathrop, 225. 
 229
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 life, would have suited Hawthorne even better 
 than Concord; but he decided differently, and 
 he returned to meet his family in Boston, where 
 he made the acquaintance of Professor Ticknor, 
 who introduced him at the Athenaeum Library. 
 He saw Hildreth at the Athenaeum working on 
 his history of the United States; sat for his 
 portrait to C. E. Thompson; went to the theatre; 
 studied human nature in the smoking-room at 
 Parker's; and relaxed himself generally. He 
 must have stayed with his family at Doctor 
 Peabody's on West Street, for he speaks of the 
 incessant noise from Washington Street, and 
 of looking out from the back windows on Temple 
 Place. This locates the house very nearly. 
 
 Two months later, July 5, 1850, he was at 
 Lenox, in the Berkshire Mountains. Mrs. 
 Caroline Sturgis Tappan, a brilliant Boston 
 lady, equally poetic and sensible, owned a small 
 red cottage there, which she was ready to lease 
 to Hawthorne for a nominal rent. Lowell was 
 going there on account of his wife, a delicate 
 flower-like nature already beginning to droop. 
 Doctor Holmes was going on account of Lowell, 
 and perhaps with the expectation of seeing a 
 rattlesnake; Fields was going on account of 
 Lowell and Holmes. Mrs. Frances Kemble, 
 already the most distinguished of Shakespearian 
 readers, had a summer cottage there ; and it 
 was hoped that in such company Hawthorne 
 would at last find the element to which he 
 properly belonged. 
 
 Unfortunately Hawthorne took to raising 
 230
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 chickens, and that seems to have interested 
 him more than anything else at Lenox. He fell 
 in cordially with the plans of his friends; as- 
 cended Monument Mountain, and went on 
 other excursions with them; but it may be 
 more than suspected that Lowell and Holmes 
 did most of the talking. He assimilated himself 
 more to Holmes perhaps than to any of the 
 others. His meeting with Mrs. Kemble must 
 have been like a collision of the centrifugal and 
 centripetal forces; and for once, Hawthorne 
 may be said to have met his antipodes. They 
 could sincerely admire one another as we 
 all do, in their respective spheres; but such a 
 chasm as yawned between them in difference 
 of temperament, character, and mode of living, 
 could not have been bridged over by Captain 
 Eads. 
 
 Fannie Kemble, as she was universally called, 
 had by long and sympathetic reading of Shake- 
 speare transformed herself into a woman of the 
 Elizabethan era, and could barely be said to be- 
 long to the nineteenth century. Among other 
 Elizabethan traits she had acquired an uncon- 
 sciousness of self, together with an enormous self- 
 confidence, and no idea of what people thought of 
 her in polite society ever seems to have occurred 
 to her. She had the heart of a woman, but 
 mentally she was like a composite picture of 
 Shakespeare's dramatis persona, and that Emer- 
 son should have spoken of her as "a great 
 exaggerated creature" is not to be wondered at. 
 In her own department she was marvellous. 
 231
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 The severity of a mountain winter and the 
 disagreeableness of its thawing out in spring, is 
 atoned for by its summer, that fine exhila- 
 rating ether, which seems to bring elevated 
 thoughts, by virtue of its own nature. Haw- 
 thorne enjoyed this with his children and his 
 chickens; and his wife enjoyed it with him. 
 It is evident from her letters that she had not 
 been so happy since their first year at the Old 
 Manse. She had now an opportunity to in- 
 dulge her love of artistic decoration, in adorn- 
 ing the walls of their little red cottage, which 
 has since unfortunately been destroyed by fire. 
 She even began to give her daughter, who was 
 only six years old, some instruction in drawing. 
 The following extract concerning her husband, 
 from a letter written to her mother, is charm- 
 ingly significant of her state of mind at this time. 
 
 " Beauty and the love of it, in him, are the 
 true culmination of the good and true, and 
 there is no beauty to him without these bases. 
 He has perfect dominion over himself in every 
 respect, so that to do the highest, wisest, love- 
 liest thing is not the least effort to him, any 
 more than it is to a baby to be innocent. It is 
 his spontaneous act, and a baby is not more 
 unconscious in its innocence. I never knew 
 such loftiness, so simply borne. I have never 
 known him to stoop from it in the most trivial 
 household matter, any more than in a larger 
 or more public one."* 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 373. 
 232
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Truly this gives us a beautiful insight into 
 their home-life, and Hawthorne himself could 
 not have written a more accurate eulogium. 
 As intimated in the last chapter, we all make 
 our way through life by correcting our daily 
 trespasses, and Hawthorne was no exception 
 to it; but as a mental analysis of this man at 
 his best Mrs. Hawthorne's statement deserves a 
 lasting recognition. 
 
 "THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES" 
 
 It was not until early frosts and shortening 
 days drove Hawthorne within doors that he 
 again took up his writing, but who can tell how 
 long he had been dreaming over his subject? 
 Within five months, or by the last week of 
 January, "The House of the Seven Gables" 
 was ready for the press. There is no such house 
 in Salem, exactly as he describes it; but an 
 odd, antiquated-looking structure at No. 54 
 Turner Street is supposed to have served him 
 for the suggestion of it. The name is picturesque 
 and well suited to introduce the reader to a 
 homely suburban romance. 
 
 The subject of the story goes back to the 
 witchcraft period, and its active principle is a 
 wizard's curse, which descends from one gener- 
 ation to another, until it is finally removed by 
 the marriage of a descendant of the injured 
 party to a descendant of the guilty one. Woven 
 together with this, there is an exposition of 
 mesmerism, or, as it is now called, Christian 
 Science, with its good and evil features. 
 233
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Each of Hawthorne's larger romances has a 
 distinct style and quality of its own, apart 
 from the fine individualized style of the author. 
 Lathrop makes an excellent remark in regard 
 to "The House of the Seven Gables," that the 
 perfection of its art seems to stand between 
 the reader and his subject. It resembles in this 
 respect those Dutch paintings whose enamelled 
 surface seems like a barrier to prevent the 
 spectator from entering the scenes which they 
 represent. It would be a mistake to consider 
 this a fault, but one cannot help noticing the 
 accuracy with which the subordinate details 
 of the plot are elaborated. Is it possible that 
 this is connected in a way with the rarefied 
 atmosphere of Lenox, in which distant objects 
 appear so sharply defined? 
 
 "The House of the Seven Gables" might be 
 symbolized by two paintings, in the first of 
 which Hepzibah Pyncheon stands as the central 
 figure, her face turned upward in a silent prayer 
 for justice, her brother Clifford, with his head 
 bowed helplessly, at one side, and the judge, 
 with his chronic smile of satisfaction, behind 
 Clifford; on the other side the keen-eyed Hoi- 
 grave would appear, sympathetically watching 
 the progress of events, with Phcebe Pyncheon 
 at his left hand. Old Uncle Banner and little 
 Ned Higgins might fill in the background. 
 In the second picture the stricken judge would 
 be found in a large old-fashioned arm-chair, 
 with Clifford and Hepzibah flying through a 
 doorway to the right, while Phcebe and Hol- 
 234
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 grave, the one happy and the other startled, 
 enter on the left. 
 
 Hepzibah, not Phoebe, is the true heroine of 
 the romance, or at least its central figure. 
 Nowhere do we look more deeply into Haw- 
 thorne's nature than through this sympathetic 
 portrait of the cross-looking old maid, whose 
 only inheritance is the House of the Seven 
 Gables, in which she has lived many years, 
 poor, solitary, friendless, with a disgrace upon 
 her family, only sustained by the hope that 
 she may yet be a help and comfort to her 
 unfortunate brother. The jury before whom 
 Clifford was tried believed him to be guilty, but 
 his sister never would believe it. She lives for 
 him and suffers with him. Hawthorne does not 
 mitigate the unpleasantness of her appearance, 
 but he instructs us that there is a divine spark 
 glowing within. Very pitiful is her attempt to 
 support the enfeebled brother by keeping a 
 candy store; but noble and heroic is her resist- 
 ance to the designs of her tyrannical cousin. 
 It is her intrepidity that effects the crisis of 
 the drama. 
 
 Both Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon are 
 examples of what fine portraiture Hawthorne 
 could accomplish in exceptional or abnormal 
 personalities, without ever descending to cari- 
 cature. Judge Pyncheon has been criticised as 
 being too much of a stage villain, but the same 
 might be alleged of Shakespeare's (or Fletcher's) 
 Richard III. What is he, in effect, but a Richard 
 III. reduced to private life? Moreover, his habit 
 
 235
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 of smiling is an individual trait which gives 
 him a certain distinction of his own. Usually, 
 
 Faces ever blandly smiling 
 
 Are victims of their own beguiling. 
 
 But Judge Pyncheon is a candidate for the 
 governorship, and among the more mercenary 
 class of politicians smiling often becomes a 
 habit for the sake of popularity. Hawthorne 
 might have added something to the judge's 
 personate by representing him with a droll wit, 
 like James Fiske, Jr., or some others that we 
 have known, and he might have exposed more 
 of his internal reflections; but he serves as a 
 fair example of the hard, grasping, hypocritical 
 type of Yankee. We see only one side of him, 
 but there are men, and women too, who only 
 have one side to their characters. 
 
 It has been affirmed that Hawthorne made 
 use of the Honorable Mr. Upham, the excellent 
 historian of Salem witchcraft, as a model for 
 Judge Pyncheon, and that this was done in 
 revenge for Mr. Upham 's inimical influence in 
 regard to the Salem surveyorship. It is im- 
 possible, at this date, to disentangle the snarl 
 of Hawthorne's political relations in regard to 
 that office, but Upham had been a member of 
 Congress and was perhaps as influential a Whig 
 as any in the city. If Hawthorne was removed 
 through his instrumentality, he performed our 
 author a service, which neither of them could 
 have realized at the time. Hawthorne, however, 
 had a strong precedent in his favor in this 
 236
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 instance; namely, Shakespeare's caricature of 
 Sir Thomas Luce, as Justice Shallow in " The 
 Merry Wives of Windsor"; but there is no 
 reason why we should think better or worse 
 of Mr. Upham on this account. 
 
 Phcebe Pyncheon is an ideal character, the 
 type of youthful New England womanhood, 
 and the most charming of all Hawthorne's 
 feminine creations. Protected by the shield of 
 her own innocence, she leaves her country 
 home from the same undefined impulse by 
 which birds fly north in spring, and accomplishes 
 her destiny where she might have least ex- 
 pected to meet with it. She fills the whole 
 book with her sunny brightness, and like many 
 a young woman at her age she seems more 
 like a spirit than a character. Her maidenly 
 dignity repels analysis, and Hawthorne himself 
 extends a wise deference to his own creation. 
 
 The future of a great nation depends more 
 on its young women than upon its laws or its 
 statesmen. 
 
 In regard to Holgrave, we have already said 
 somewhat; but he is so lifelike that it seems 
 as if he must have been studied from one of the 
 younger members of the Brook Farm asso- 
 ciation; perhaps the one of whom Emerson 
 tells us,* that he spent his leisure hours in play- 
 ing with the children, but had "so subtle a 
 mind" that he was always consulted whenever 
 important business was on foot. He is visible 
 to our mental perspective as a rather slender 
 
 * Lecture on Brook Farm. 
 237
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 man, above medium height, with keen hazel 
 eyes, a long nose, and long legs, and quick and 
 lively in his movements. Phoebe has a more 
 symmetrical figure, bluish-gray eyes, a com- 
 plexion slightly browned from going without 
 her hat, luxuriant chestnut-brown hair, always 
 quiet and graceful. We have no doubt that 
 Holgrave made a worthy husband for her, and 
 that he occasionally took a hand in public 
 affairs. 
 
 Judge Pyncheon's duplicity is revealed to 
 Holgrave by the medium of a daguerreotype. 
 Men or women who are actors in real life should 
 avoid being photographed, for the camera is 
 pretty sure to penetrate their hypocrisy, and 
 expose them to the world as they actually are. 
 Every photograph album is to a certain extent 
 a rogues' gallery, in which our faults, peculiari- 
 ties, and perhaps vices are ruthlessly portrayed 
 for the student of human nature. If a merchant 
 were to have all his customers photographed, 
 he would soon learn to distinguish those who 
 were not much to be trusted. 
 
 Notice also Hawthorne's eye for color. When 
 Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe are about to 
 leave the seven-gabled house for the last time, 
 "A plain, but handsome dark-green barouche" 
 is drawn to the door. This is evidently his 
 idea of a fine equipage ; and it happens that the 
 background of Raphael's "Pope Julius" is of 
 this same half-invisible green, and harmonizes 
 so well with the Pope's figure that few realize 
 its coloring. 
 
 238
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 The plot of this picturesque story is the most 
 ingenious of Hawthorne's life, but sufficiently 
 probable throughout to answer the purpose of 
 a romance, and it is the only one of Hawthorne's 
 larger works which ends happily. It was brought 
 out by Ticknor & Company at Easter 1850, 
 less than ten weeks after it was finished ; but we 
 think of the House of the Seven Gables as 
 standing empty, deserted and forlorn. 
 
 In December Emerson had written to Haw- 
 thorne concerning a new magazine in which he 
 and Lowell were interested, and if Hawthorne 
 would only give it his support its success could 
 not be questioned. What Hawthorne replied 
 to this invitation has never been discovered, 
 but he had seen too many such periodicals go 
 to wreck to feel much confidence in this enter- 
 prise.* It is of more importance now that 
 Emerson should have addressed him as "My 
 dear Hawthorne," for such cordial friendliness 
 was rare in "the poet of the pines." Mrs. 
 Alcott once remarked that Emerson never 
 spoke to her husband otherwise than as "Mr. 
 Alcott," and it is far from likely that he ever 
 spoke to Hawthorne differently from this. The 
 conventionalities of letter-writing run back to a 
 period when gentlemen addressed one another 
 and perhaps felt so too in a more friendly 
 manner than they do at present. 
 
 Works of fiction and sentimental poetry 
 stir up a class of readers which no other literature 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 381. 
 239
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 seems to reach, and Hawthorne was soon in- 
 undated with letters from unknown, and per- 
 haps unknowable, admirers; but the most 
 remarkable came from a man named Pynchon, 
 who asserted that his grandfather had been a 
 judge in Salem, and who was highly indignant 
 at the use which Hawthorne had made of his 
 name.* This shows how difficult it is for a 
 writer of fiction or a biographer to escape giving 
 offence. The lightning is sure to strike some- 
 where. 
 
 "THE SNOW IMAGE" 
 
 The question now was, what next? As it 
 happened, the next important event in the 
 Hawthorne family was the advent of their 
 younger daughter, born like Agassiz, "in the 
 lovely month of May," and amid scenery as 
 beautiful as the Pays de Vaud. Her father 
 named her Rose, in defiance of Hillard's ob- 
 jection to idyllic nomenclature; and as a child 
 she seemed much like the spirit of that almost 
 fabulous flower, the wild orange-rose. Ten 
 years later, she was the most graceful girl in the 
 Concord dancing-school, and resembled her 
 elder sister so closely that they could not have 
 been mistaken for anything but sisters. As 
 she grew older she came more and more to 
 resemble her mother. 
 
 It was said that Hawthorne's "Wonder 
 Book" originated in his telling free versions of 
 
 * Conway, 135. 
 240
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 the Greek myths to his children on winter 
 evenings; and also that Horace Mann's boys, 
 who were almost exactly of the same age as 
 Una and Julian, participated in the entertain- 
 ment. This may have happened the following 
 winter at Newton, but could hardly have taken 
 place at Lenox; and otherwise it is quite im- 
 possible to identify all the children with botanical 
 names in Hawthorne's introduction. Julian 
 once remarked, at school, that he believed 
 that he was the original of Squash-blossom, 
 and that is as near as we can get to it. Some of 
 them may have been as imaginary as the ingenious 
 Mr. Eustace Bright, and might serve as well to 
 represent one group of children as another. 
 
 The book was written very rapidly, at an 
 average of ten pages a day, and it has Haw- 
 thorne's grace and purity of style, but it does not 
 belong to the legitimate series of his works. 
 It is an excellent book for the young, for they 
 learn from it much that every one ought to 
 know; but to mature minds the original fables, 
 even in a translation, are more satisfactory 
 than these Anglo-Saxon versions in the " Wonder 
 Book." V 
 
 The collection of tales which passes by the 
 name of "The Snow Image" is a much more 
 serious work. "The Great Stone Face" and 
 one or two others in the collection were pre- 
 pared at Salem for the same volume as "The 
 Scarlet Letter," but judiciously excluded by 
 Mr. Fields. "The Snow Image" itself, however, 
 is plainly derived from Hawthorne's own ex- 
 16 241
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 perience during the winter at Lenox. The 
 common-sensible farmer and his poetic wife 
 could not be mistaken for Mr. and Mrs. Haw- 
 thorne, but the two sportive children are easily 
 identified as Una and Julian. They are not 
 only of the same age, but the "slight graceful 
 girl" and "chubby red-cheeked boy" describes 
 them exactly. The idea has been derived from 
 the fable of the Greek sculptor Pygmalion whose 
 statue came to life. That seems far enough 
 off to be pleasantly credible, but to have such 
 a transubstantiation take place in the front 
 yard of a white-fenced American residence, is 
 rather startling. Yet Hawthorne, with the 
 help of the twilight, carries us through on the 
 broad wings of his imagination, even to the 
 melting of the little snow-sister before an air- 
 tight stove in a close New England parlor. 
 The moral that Hawthorne draws from this 
 fable might be summed up in the old adage, 
 "What is one man's meat is another man's 
 poison" ; but it has a deeper significance, 
 which the author does not seem to have per- 
 ceived. The key-note of the fable is the same 
 as that in Goethe's celebrated ballad, " The Erl 
 King"; namely, that those things which 
 children imagine, are as real to them as the 
 facts of the external world. Nor do we altogether 
 escape from this so long as we live. 
 
 The origin of "The Great Stone Face" is 
 
 readily traced to the profile face in the Fran- 
 
 conia Mountains, which has not only a strangely 
 
 human appearance, but a grave dignified ex- 
 
 242
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 pression, and, as a natural phenomenon, ranks 
 next to Niagara Falls. The value of the fable, 
 however, has perhaps been over-estimated. It 
 is an old story in a modern garb, the saying so 
 often repeated in the Book of Isaiah: "The 
 last shall be first, and the first shall be last." 
 The man Ernest, who is much in his ways like 
 Hawthorne himself, spends his leisure in con- 
 templating the Great Stone Face, and thus 
 acquires a similar expression in his own. The 
 wealthy merchant, the famous general, the 
 great party leader, and the popular poet, all 
 come upon the scene; but not one of them ap- 
 pears to advantage before the tranquil counte- 
 nance of the Great Stone Face. Finally, Ernest 
 in his old age carries off the laurel; and in this 
 Hawthorne hits the mark, for it is only through 
 earnestness that man becomes immortal. Yet, 
 one would suppose that constantly gazing at a 
 face of stone, would give one a rather stony 
 expression; as sculptors are liable to become 
 statuesque from their occupation. 
 
 Another Dantean allegory, and fully equal in 
 power to any Canto in Dante's "Inferno," is 
 the story of "Ethan Brandt," or "The Un- 
 pardonable Sin." We have a clew to its origin 
 in the statement that it was part of an un- 
 finished romance ; presumably commenced at 
 Concord, but afterward discarded, owing to 
 the author's dissatisfaction with his work an 
 illustration of Hawthorne's severe criticism of 
 his own writing. The scene is laid at a lime- 
 kiln in a dark and gloomy wood, where a lime- 
 
 243
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 burner, far from human habitations, is watching 
 his fires at night. To him Ethan Brandt ap- 
 pears, a strange personage, long known for 
 his quest after the unpardonable sin, and the 
 solitude echoes back the gloominess of their 
 conversation. Finally, the lime-burner fixes his 
 fires for the night, rolls himself up in his blanket, 
 and goes to sleep. When he awakes in the 
 morning, the stranger is gone, but, on ascending 
 the kiln to look at his caldron, he finds there 
 the skeleton of a man, and between its ribs a 
 heart of white marble. This is the unpardon- 
 able sin, for which there is neither dispensation 
 nor repentance. Ethan Brandt has committed 
 suicide because life had become intolerable on 
 such conditions. 
 
 The summer of 1851 in Lenox was by no 
 means brilliant. It had not yet become the 
 tip end of fashion, and Hawthorne's chief en- 
 tertainment seems to have been the congrat- 
 ulatory letters he received from distinguished 
 people. Mrs. Frances Kemble wrote to him 
 from England, announcing the success of his 
 book there, and offering him the use of her 
 cottage, a more palatial affair than Mrs. Tappan's, 
 for the ensuing winter. Mrs. Hawthorne, how- 
 ever, felt the distance between herself and her 
 relatives, and perhaps they both felt it. Mrs. 
 Hawthorne's sister Mary, now Mrs. Horace 
 Mann, was living in West Newton, and the 
 last of June Mrs. Hawthorne went to her for a 
 long summer visit, taking her two daughters 
 with her and leaving Julian in charge of his 
 244
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 father, with whom it may be affirmed he was 
 sufficiently safe. It rarely happens that a 
 father and son are so much together as these 
 two were, and they must have become very 
 strongly attached. 
 
 For older company he had Hermann Mel- 
 ville, and G. P. R. James, whose society he 
 may have found as interesting as that of more 
 distinguished writers, and also Mr. Tappan, 
 whom Hawthorne had learned to respect for 
 his good sense and conciliatory disposition a 
 true peace-maker among men and women. 
 Burill Curtis, the amateur brother of George W. 
 Curtis, came to sketch the lake from Hawthorne's 
 porch, and Doctor Holmes turned up once or 
 twice. On July 24 Hawthorne wrote to his 
 friend Pike at Salem : * 
 
 "By the way, if I continue to prosper as heretofore in 
 the literary line, I shall soon be in a condition to buy a 
 place; and if you should hear of one, say worth from 
 $1500 to $2000, I wish you would keep your eye on it for 
 me. I should wish it to be on the seacoast, or at all events 
 with easy access to the sea." 
 
 The evident meaning of this is that the Haw- 
 thornes had no desire to spend a second winter 
 in the Berkshire hills. The world was large, 
 but he knew not where to rest his head. Mrs. 
 Hawthorne solved the problem on her return to 
 Lenox, and it was decided to remove to West 
 Newton when cold weather came. Thither 
 they went November 21 in a driving storm of 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 151. 
 245
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 snow and sleet, a parting salute from old 
 Berkshire, and reached Horace Mann's house 
 the same evening. 
 
 Nobody knows where the Hawthornes lived 
 in Newton. The oldest survivors of both 
 families were only five years of age at that time. 
 Mrs. Hawthorne's father also resided in Newton 
 that winter, and it is more than likely that they 
 made their residence with him. Julian Haw- 
 thorne has a distinct recollection of the long 
 freight-trains with their clouds of black smoke 
 blowing across his father's ground during the win- 
 ter ; so they could not have lived very far from 
 the Worcester railroad. Horace Mann's house is 
 still standing, opposite a school-house on the 
 road from the station, where a by-way meets 
 it at an acute angle. The freight- trains and 
 their anthracite smoke must have had a dis- 
 turbing influence on Hawthorne's sensibility. 
 
 The long-extended town of Newton, which 
 is now a populous city, has much the best situa- 
 tion of any of the Boston suburbs on a moder- 
 ately high range of hills, skirted by the Charles 
 River, both healthful and picturesque. It is 
 not as hot in summer nor so chilly at other 
 seasons as Concord, and enjoys the advantage 
 of a closer proximity to the city. Its society 
 is, and always has been, more liberal and pro- 
 gressive than Salem society in Hawthorne's 
 time. Its citizens, mainly professional and 
 mercantile men, are active, intelligent, and 
 sensible, without being too fastidious. It was 
 a healthful change for Hawthorne, and we are 
 246
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 not surprised to find that his literary work was 
 affected by it. Mrs. L. Maria Child lived there 
 at the time, and so did Celia Thaxter, although 
 not yet known to fame. The sound, penetrating 
 intelligence of Horace Mann may have also had 
 its salutary effect. 
 
 "THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE" 
 
 Hawthorne's "Wonder Book" and "The 
 Snow Image" were expressed to Ticknor & 
 Company before leaving Lenox, and " The 
 Blithedale Romance" may also have been com- 
 menced before that change of base. We only 
 know, from his diary, that it was finished on the 
 last day of April, 1852, and that he received 
 the first proof-sheets of it two weeks later 
 which shows what expedition publishers can 
 make, when they feel inclined. 
 
 The name itself is somewhat satirical, for 
 Hawthorne did not find the life at Brook Farm 
 very blithesome, and in the story, with the ex- 
 ception of the sylvan masquerade, there is much 
 more rue than heart 's-ease, as commonly hap- 
 pens in his stories. The tale ends tragically, and. 
 without the gleam of distant happiness which 
 lights up the last scenes of "The Scarlet Let- 
 ter. " It commences with a severe April snow- 
 storm, an unfavorable omen ; the same in which 
 Hawthorne set out to join the West Roxbury 
 community. 
 
 And yet the name is not without a serious 
 meaning a stern, sad moral significance. The 
 247
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 earth is not naturally beautiful, for rank Nature 
 ever runs to an excess. It is only beautiful 
 when man controls and remodels it; but what 
 man makes physically, he can unmake spiritually. 
 We pass by a handsome estate, a grand arcade 
 of elms over its avenue, spacious lawns, an 
 elegant mansion, a luxurious flower-garden; 
 but we are informed that happiness does not 
 dwell there, that its owner is a misanthropic 
 person, whose nature has been perverted by 
 the selfishness of luxury; that there are no 
 pleasant parties on the lawn, no happy wooing 
 in that garden, no marriage festivals in those 
 halls; and those possessions, which might have 
 proved a blessing to generations yet unborn, 
 are no better than a curse and a whited sepulchre. 
 How many such instances could be named. 
 
 It may have occurred to Hawthorne, that, if 
 George Ripley, instead of following after a 
 will-o'-the-wisp notion, which could only lead 
 him into a bog, had used the means at his disposal 
 to cultivate Brook Farm in a rational manner, 
 and had made it a hospitable rendezvous for 
 intellectual and progressive people, an oasis 
 of culture amid the wide waste of commercial- 
 ism, the place might well have been called 
 Blithedale, and Mr. Ripley would have inaugu- 
 rated a movement as rare as it was beneficial. 
 It was only at a city like Boston, whose suburbs 
 were pleasant and easily accessible, that such a 
 plan could be carried out; and it was only a 
 man of Mr. Ripley's scholarship and intellectual 
 acumen who could have drawn together the 
 248
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 requisite elements for it. It looks as if he missed 
 an opportunity. 
 
 We should avoid, however, confounding 
 George Ripley with Hawthorne's Hollings- 
 worth. It is quite possible that Hawthorne 
 made use of certain traits in Ripley 's character 
 for this purpose, and also that he may have 
 had some slight collision with him, such as he 
 represents in "The Blithedale Romance;" but 
 Ripley was an essentially veracious nature, who, 
 as already remarked, carried out his experiment 
 to its logical conclusion. Hollingsworth, on 
 the contrary, proposes to pervert the trust 
 confided to him, in order to establish at Blithe- 
 dale an institution for the reformation of crim- 
 inals, by which proceeding he would, after a 
 fashion, become a criminal himself. At the 
 same time, he plays fast and loose with the 
 affections of Zenobia and Priscilla, who are 
 both in love with him, designing to marry the 
 one who would make the most favorable match 
 for his purpose. It is through the junction of 
 these two streams of evil that the catastrophe 
 is brought about. 
 
 Priscilla is evidently taken from the little 
 seamstress whom Hawthorne mentions in his 
 diary for October 9, 1841, and if she ever dis- 
 covered this, she could hardly have been dis- 
 pleased, for she is one of his most lovable 
 creations; not so much of an ideal as Phosbe 
 Pyncheon, for she is older and has already 
 seen hard fortune. Her quiet, almost sub- 
 missive ways at first excite pity rather than 
 249
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 admiration, but at length we discover that there 
 is a spirit within her, which shines through its 
 earthly envelope, like the twinkling of a star. 
 
 Zenobia has a larger nature and a more gifted 
 mind than Priscilla, but also a more mixed 
 character. Her name suggests a queenly presence 
 and she is fully conscious of this. She does not 
 acquire an equal influence over the other sex, 
 for she is evidently in love with herself. She 
 is described as handsome and attractive, but 
 no sooner had " Blithedale " been published than 
 people said, " Margaret Fuller " * although 
 Margaret Fuller was rather plain looking, and 
 never joined the Brook Farm association. 
 
 If this surmise be correct, it leads to a curious 
 consideration. After painting a portrait of 
 Zenobia in Chapter VI of "Blithedale," quite 
 worthy of Rubens or Titian, he remarks, 
 through the incognito of Miles Coverdale, in the 
 first part of Chapter VII, that Priscilla reminds 
 him of Margaret Fuller, and says this to Priscilla 
 herself. Now it proves in the sequel that Pris- 
 cilla and Zenobia are half-sisters, but it would 
 be as difficult to imagine this from anything 
 that is said in the story about them, as it is 
 to understand how the shy, undemonstrative 
 Priscilla could have reminded Coverdale of the 
 brilliant and aggressive leader of the Tran- 
 scendentalists. 
 
 * The name of Zenobia is not very remotely significant 
 of Margaret Fuller. Palmyra was the centre of Greek 
 philosophy in Zenobia 's time, and she also resembled 
 Margaret in her tragical fate. 
 
 250
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 The introduction of Margaret Fuller's name 
 in that place comes abruptly on the reader, 
 and momentarily dispels the illusion of the tale. 
 Was Hawthorne conscious of the undercurrent 
 of relationship, which he had already formulated 
 in his mind, between Priscilla and Zenobia; or 
 what is more likely, did he make the comparison 
 in order to lead his readers away from any 
 conceptions they might have formed in regard 
 to the original of his heroine? If the latter 
 supposition be true, he certainly was not very 
 successful, for in either case it is evident that 
 Margaret Fuller was prominent in his thoughts 
 at the time he wrote those two chapters. 
 
 Hawthorne's idea of her, however, should 
 not be accepted as a finality. What Emerson 
 and other friends have said concerning her 
 should also be considered in order to obtain a 
 just impression of a woman who combined 
 more varied qualities than perhaps any other 
 person of that time. Hawthorne says of Zenobia, 
 that she was naturally a stump oratoress, 
 rather an awkward expression for him and that 
 "her mind was full of weeds. " Margaret Fuller 
 was a natural orator, and her mind was full of 
 many subjects in which Hawthorne could take 
 little interest. She was a revolutionary character, 
 a sort of female Garibaldi, who attacked old 
 Puritan traditions with a two-edged sword ; she 
 won victories for liberalism, but left confusion 
 behind her. Like all such characters, she made 
 friends and enemies wherever she went. She 
 sometimes gave offence by hasty impulsive 
 251
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 utterances, but more frequently by keenly pene- 
 trating arguments for the various causes which 
 she espoused. Only a woman could deliver 
 such telling shots. 
 
 Lowell, who was fond of an argument himself, 
 did not like her better than Hawthorne did. 
 There may be some truth in what he says in 
 "The Fable for Critics," that the expression of 
 her face seemed to suggest a life-long familiarity 
 with the " infinite soul " ; but Margaret Fuller was 
 sound at heart, and when she talked on those 
 subjects which interested her, no one could be 
 more self-forgetful or thoroughly in earnest. 
 At times, she seemed like an inspired prophetess, 
 and if she had lived two thousand years earlier, 
 she might have been remembered as a sibyl.* 
 
 "The Blithedale Romance" is written with a 
 freer pen and less carefully than " The House of 
 the Seven Gables," and is so much the better; 
 for the author's state of mind in which he is 
 writing will always affect the reader more or 
 less, and if the former feels under a slight con- 
 straint the latter will also. A writer cannot be 
 too exact in ascertaining the truth, Macaulay 
 to the contrary, but he can trouble himself 
 too much as to the expression of it. At the 
 same time, "The Blithedale Romance" is the 
 least poetic of Hawthorne's more serious works 
 (which is the same as saying that it is more 
 like a novel), for the reason that Hawthorne 
 in this instance was closer to his subject. It is 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 252
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 also more of a personal reminiscence, and less 
 an effort of the imagination. He has included 
 in it a number of descriptive passages taken 
 from his Brook Farm diary; most notably the 
 account of that sylvan masquerade, in which 
 Coverdale finds his former associates engaged 
 on his return to Blithedale in the autumn. 
 Perhaps this is the reason why the book has so 
 pleasant a flavor a mellow after-thought of 
 old associations. 
 
 An air of mystery adds an enchantment to a 
 work of art, whether in poetry, painting, or 
 sculpture, perhaps also in music; but there 
 is a difference in kind between mystery and 
 uncertainty. We do not like to be left half in 
 the dark, in regard to things which we think we 
 ought to know. There is a break in Hawthorne's 
 chain of evidence against Hollingsworth and 
 Zenobia, which might possibly have been filled 
 to advantage. He would certainly have been 
 non-suited, if his case had been carried into 
 court. We are permitted to suppose that 
 Zenobia, in order to clear her path of a successful 
 rival, assists the mountebank, Westervelt, to 
 entrap Priscilla, over whom he possesses a kind 
 of hypnotic power, and to carry her off for the 
 benefit of his mountebank exhibitions; but it 
 remains a supposition and nothing more. We 
 cannot but feel rejoiced, when Hollingsworth 
 steps onto the platform and releases Priscilla 
 from the psychological net-work in which she is 
 involved, and from which she has not sufficient 
 will-power to free herself. He certainly deserves 
 
 253
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 her hand and fortune; but, as to his condem- 
 natory charges against Zenobia, which led 
 directly to her suicide, what could they have 
 been? Was there nothing more than the trick 
 she had attempted upon Priscilla? And if he 
 accused her of that only, why should he suffer 
 perpetual remorse on account of her death? 
 Surely there was need of further explanation 
 here, for the catastrophe and its consequences 
 are out of all proportion to the apparent cause. 
 
 His account of the recovery of Zenobia's 
 body is a close transcript of the search for that 
 unfortunate school-mistress, who drowned her- 
 self in Concord River; and it is possible that, 
 if Hawthorne had not been present on that 
 occasion, the plot might have terminated in 
 some other manner. 
 
 The story closes without a ray of hope for 
 Hollingsworth ; but the reader can perceive 
 one in the generous devotion of his single- 
 minded wife, even if Hawthorne did not. 
 
 254
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE LIVERPOOL CONSULATE: 1852-1854 
 
 WHY Hawthorne returned to Concord in 
 1852 is more of a mystery than the suicide of 
 Zenobia. Horace Mann also left Newton, to be 
 President of Antioch College (and to die there 
 in the cause of feminine education), in the 
 autumn of that year; but this could hardly 
 have been expected six months earlier. Haw- 
 thorne was not very favorably situated at 
 Newton, being rather too near the railroad ; 
 but there was plenty of land on the top of the 
 hill, where he might have built himself a house, 
 and in the course of twelve years his property 
 would have quadrupled in value. A poet will 
 not be less of a poet, but more so, for under- 
 standing the practical affairs of life. Or he 
 might have removed to Cambridge, where 
 Longfellow, always foremost in kind offices, 
 would have been like a guardian angel to him, 
 and where he could have made friends like 
 Felton and Agassiz, who would have been 
 much more in harmony with his political views. 
 Ellery Channing was the only friend he appears 
 to have retained in Concord, and it was not 
 altogether a favorable place to bring up his 
 children ; but the natural topography of Concord 
 is unusually attractive, and it may be suspected 
 that he was drawn thither more from the love 
 
 255
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 of its pine solitudes and shimmering waters, 
 than from any other motive. 
 
 The house he purchased was nearly a mile 
 from the centre of the town, and has ever since 
 been known by the name of the Wayside. After 
 Hawthorne's return from Europe in 1860, he 
 remodelled it somewhat, so that it has a more 
 dignified aspect than when he first took pos- 
 session of it. Alcott, who occupied it for some 
 years previously, had adorned it with that 
 species of rustic architecture in which he was 
 so skilful. The house was half surrounded by 
 a group of locust trees, much in fashion seventy 
 years ago, and had been set so close against 
 the hill-side, that a thicket of stunted pines and 
 other wild growth rose above the roof like a 
 crest. Bronson Alcott was his next-door 
 neighbor, almost too strong a contrast to him, 
 and Emerson's house was half a mile away; 
 so that these three families formed a group by 
 themselves in that portion of Concord. 
 
 Hawthorne wrote a letter to his sister Eliza- 
 beth, describing his new acquisition, and ex- 
 pressing satisfaction in it. It was the first house 
 that he had ever owned; and it is no small 
 comfort to a man to live under his own roof, 
 even though it be a humble one. At this time, 
 however, he did not remain at the Wayside but 
 a single year. After that, the house stood 
 empty until the untimely death of Horace 
 Mann, August 2, 1859, when Mrs. Mann 
 came to Concord with her three boys, and 
 256
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 occupied it until Hawthorne's return from 
 Europe. 
 
 It may as well be noticed here, that, during 
 the eight years which Hawthorne spent alto- 
 gether in Concord, he accomplished little 
 literary work, and none of any real importance. 
 It is impossible to account for this, except upon 
 those pyschological conditions which sometimes 
 affect delicately balanced minds. Whether the 
 trouble was in the social atmosphere of the place, 
 or in its climatic conditions, perhaps Hawthorne 
 himself could not have decided; but there must 
 have been a reason for it of some description. 
 Julian Hawthorne states that his father had a 
 plan at this time of writing another romance, 
 of a more cheerful tone than "The Blithedale 
 Romance," but the full current of his poetic 
 activity was suddenly brought to a stand- 
 still by an event that nobody would have 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Hawthorne had hardly established himself 
 in his new abode, when Franklin Pierce was 
 nominated for the presidency by the Democratic 
 party. The whole country was astonished, 
 for no such nomination had ever been made 
 before, and it is probable that Pierce himself 
 shared largely in this. The New Hampshire 
 delegation had presented his name to the con- 
 vention, in order to procure him distinction in 
 his own State, but without expectation that he 
 would become a serious, candidate. Like the 
 nomination of Hayes in 1876, it resulted from 
 the jealousy of the great party leaders, always 
 17 257
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 an unfortunate position for a public man to be 
 placed in. Theodore Parker said, "Any one is 
 now in danger of becoming President." 
 
 Hawthorne evidently felt this, for he wrote to 
 Bridge, "I do not consider Pierce the brightest 
 man in the country, for there are twenty more 
 so." It would have been a mild statement if 
 he had said two hundred. Pierce wanted him, 
 of course, to write a campaign biography, and 
 communicated with him to that effect; but 
 Hawthorne disliked meddling in such matters, 
 and at first declined to do it, although it was 
 expected to be highly remunerative. Pierce, 
 however, insisted, for Hawthorne's reputation 
 was now much beyond his own, and he felt that 
 a biography by so distinguished a writer would 
 confer upon him great dignity in the eyes of 
 the world ; and as Hawthorne felt already much 
 indebted to Pierce, he finally consented, 
 although a cheap spread-eagle affair would 
 have served the purpose of his party quite as well. 
 The book had to be written in haste, and just 
 at the time when Hawthorne wished to take a 
 little leisure. There were so few salient points 
 in Pierce 's life, that it was almost like making a 
 biography out of nothing, and as for describing 
 him as a hero, that was quite impossible. It 
 was fortunate that he knew so much of Pierce 's 
 early life, and also that Pierce had kept a diary 
 during the Mexican War, which formed a 
 considerable portion of the biography. 
 
 The book is worth reading, although written 
 in this prosaic manner. Hawthorne states in the 
 258
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 preface, frankly and manfully, that he objected 
 to writing it, and this ought to be an excuse 
 sufficient for his doing so if excuse be needed. 
 He does not attempt to represent his friend as 
 a great statesman, but rather as a patriotic 
 country gentleman, who is interested in public 
 affairs, and who rises from one honorable position 
 to another through a well-deserved popularity. 
 This would seem to have been the truth; and 
 yet there was a decided inconsistency in Frank- 
 lin Pierce 's life, which Hawthorne represents 
 plainly enough, although he makes no comment 
 thereon. 
 
 Franklin Pierce 's father was captain of a 
 militia company in 1798, when war was declared 
 against the French Directory, for seizing and 
 confiscating American merchant ships, con- 
 trary to the law of nations. There could not 
 have been a more just occasion for war, but 
 Captain Pierce resigned his commission, because 
 he considered it wrong to fight against a republic ; 
 and Hawthorne approves of him for this. 
 Franklin Pierce, however, resigned his seat in 
 the Senate in 1842, on account of the interests 
 of his family, alleging that "he would never 
 enter public life again, unless the needs of his 
 country imperatively demanded it," yet four 
 years later he organized a regiment for the 
 invasion of Mexico, not only for making war 
 upon a republic, but an unjust and indefensible 
 war. General Grant's opinion ought to be 
 conclusive on this latter point, for he belonged 
 to the same political party as Pierce and Haw- 
 
 259
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 thorne. Certainly, Pierce 's services were not 
 required for the defence of his native land. 
 
 To do Hawthorne justice, there can be no 
 doubt that in his heart he disapproved of this; 
 for in one of his sketches written at the Old 
 Manse, he speaks censoriously of "those ad- 
 venturous spirits who leave their homes to 
 emigrate to Texas." He evidently foresaw 
 that trouble would arise in that direction, and 
 perhaps Ellery Channing assisted him in pene- 
 trating the true inwardness of the movement. 
 
 It will be remembered that in Franklin 
 Pierce 's youth, he was exceptionally interested 
 in military manoeuvres, and this may have been 
 one of the inducements which led him into the 
 Mexican War; but young men who are fond of 
 holiday epaulets do not, for obvious reasons, 
 make the best fighters. Pierce's military career 
 was not a distinguished one; for, whether he 
 was thrown from his horse in his first engage- 
 ment, or, as the Whigs alleged, fell from it as 
 soon as he came under fire, it is certain that he 
 did not cover himself with glory, as the phrase 
 was at that time. But we can believe Haw- 
 thorne, when he tells us that Pierce took good 
 charge of the troops under his command, and 
 that he was kind and considerate to sick and 
 wounded soldiers. That was in accordance 
 with his natural character. 
 
 It was impossible at that time to avoid the 
 
 slavery question in dealing with political subjects, 
 
 and what Hawthorne said on this point, in the life 
 
 of General Pierce, attracted more attention than 
 
 260
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 the book itself. Like Webster he considered 
 slavery an evil, but he believed it to be one of 
 those evils which the human race outgrows, 
 by progress in civilization, like the .human 
 sacrifices of the Gauls perhaps, and he greatly 
 deprecated the anti-slavery agitation, which 
 only served to inflame men's minds and make 
 them unreasonable. 
 
 There were many sensible persons in the 
 Northern States at that time, like Hawthorne 
 and Hillard, who sincerely believed in this 
 doctrine, but they do not seem to have been 
 aware that there was a pro-slavery agitation at 
 the South which antedated Garrison's Liberator 
 and which was much more aggressive and 
 vehement than the anti-slavery movement, 
 because there were large pecuniary interests 
 connected with it. The desperate grasping of 
 the slave-holders for new territory, first in the 
 Northwest and then in the Southwest, was not 
 because they were in any need of land, but 
 because new slave States increased their political 
 power. Horatio Bridge says, relatively to this 
 subject: 
 
 "No Northern man had better means for 
 knowing the dangers impending, previous to 
 the outbreak of the war, than had General 
 Pierce. Intimately associated as he was 
 with the strong men of the South, in his Cabinet 
 and in Congress, he saw that the Southerners 
 were determined, at all hazards, to defend 
 their peculiar institution of slavery, which was 
 imperilled by the abolitionists. " 
 261
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 If Franklin Pierce was desirous of preserving 
 the Union, why did he give Jefferson Davis a 
 place in his Cabinet, and take him for his chief 
 adviser ? Davis was already a pronounced 
 secessionist, and had been defeated in his own 
 State on that issue. In subserviency to Southern 
 interests, no other Northern man ever went so 
 far as Franklin Pierce, nor did Garrison himself 
 accomplish so much toward the dissolution of 
 the Union. He was an instance in real life of 
 Goldsmith's "good-natured man," and the same 
 qualities which assisted him to the position of 
 President prevented his administration from 
 being a success. Presidents ought to be made of 
 firmer and sterner material. 
 
 Hawthorne had barely finished with the proofs 
 of this volume, when he received the saddest, 
 most harrowing news that ever came to him. 
 After her mother's death, in 1849, Louisa Haw- 
 thorne had gone to live with her aunt, Mrs. 
 John Dike; and in July, 1852, Mr. Dike went 
 with her on an excursion to Saratoga and New 
 York City. On the morning of July 27, they 
 left Albany on the steamboat " Henry Clay," 
 which, as is well known, never reached its destina- 
 tion. When nearing Yonkers, a fire broke out 
 near the engines, where the wood- work was 
 saturated with oil, and instantly the centre of the 
 vessel was in a bright blaze. Mr. Dike happened 
 to be on the forward deck at the moment, but 
 Louisa Hawthorne was in the ladies' cabin, and 
 it was impossible to reach her. The captain of 
 the Henry Clay immediately ran the vessel on 
 262
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 shore, so that Mr. Dike and those who were with 
 him escaped to land, but Louisa and more than 
 seventy others, who threw themselves into the 
 water, were drowned. It would seem to have 
 been impossible to save her. 
 
 The death of Hawthorne's mother may be said 
 to have come in the course of Nature, and his 
 mind was prepared for it; but Louisa had been 
 the playmate of his childhood, and her death 
 seemed as unnecessary as it was sharp and 
 sudden. It happened almost on the third 
 anniversary of his mother's death, and these 
 were the only two occasions in Hawthorne's 
 life, when the Dark Angel hovered about his 
 door. 
 
 Rebecca Manning says: 
 
 "Louisa Hawthorne was a most delightful, 
 lovable, interesting woman not at all ' common- 
 place, ' as has been stated. Her death was a 
 great sorrow to all her friends. Her name 
 was Maria Louisa, and she was often called 
 Maria by her mother and sister and aunts. " 
 
 Depressed and unnerved, in the most trying 
 season of the year, Hawthorne went in the 
 latter part of August to visit Franklin Pierce at 
 Concord, New Hampshire; but there a severe 
 torrid wave came on, so that Pierce advised him 
 to go at once to the Isles of Shoals, promising 
 to follow in a few days, if his numerous engage- 
 ments would permit him. 
 
 The Isles of Shoals have the finest summer 
 climate on the Atlantic Ocean; an atmosphere 
 at once quieting and strengthening, and always 
 263
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 at its best when it is hottest on the main-land. 
 Hawthorne found a pair of friends ready-made 
 there, and prepared to receive him, Levi 
 Thaxter, afterwards widely known as the 
 apostle of Browning in America, and his wife, 
 Celia, a poetess in the bud, only sixteen, but 
 very bright, original, and pleasant. They 
 admired Hawthorne above all living men, and 
 his sudden advent on their barren island seemed, 
 as Thaxter afterward expressed it, like a super- 
 natural presence . They became good companions 
 in the next two weeks; climbing the rocks, 
 rowing from one island to another, bald pieces 
 of rock, like the summits of mountains rising 
 above the surface of the sea, visiting the 
 light-house, the monument to Captain John 
 Smith, Betty Moody 's Cave, the graves of the 
 Spanish sailors, the trap dikes of ancient lava, 
 and much else. Every day Hawthorne wrote 
 a minute account in his diary of his various 
 proceedings there, including the observation of 
 a live shark, which came into the cove by the 
 hotel, a rare spectacle on that coast. General 
 Pierce did not make his appearance, however, 
 and on September 15, Hawthorne returned to 
 his own home. 
 
 The election of Pierce to the presidency was 
 as remarkable as his nomination. In 1848, 
 General Taylor, the victor of a single battle, 
 but a man of little education, was nominated 
 for the presidency over the heads of the finest 
 orators and ablest statesmen in America, and was 
 enthusiastically elected. General Scott, Franklin 
 264
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Pierce 's opponent, defeated the Mexicans in 
 four decisive battles, captured the capital of the 
 country, and conducted one of the most skilful 
 military expeditions of the past century. He 
 was a man of rare administrative ability, and 
 there is no substantial argument against his 
 character. We have Grant's testimony that it 
 was pleasant to serve under him. Yet he was 
 overwhelmingly defeated at the polls by a 
 militia general without distinction, military or 
 civil. 
 
 Hawthorne was naturally delighted at the 
 result of the election; unfortunate as it after- 
 wards proved for his country. He derived a 
 threefold satisfaction from it, in the success of 
 his friend, in the defeat of the Whigs, and in the 
 happy prospects which it opened for himself. 
 He could now return to the Salem Custom 
 House in triumph, as the wisest man might 
 be tempted to do, but he looked forward to 
 something that would be more advantageous 
 to his family. He had already written on 
 October 18 to Horatio Bridge: 
 
 "Before undertaking it [the biography] I made an in- 
 ward resolution, that I should accept no office from him; 
 but, to say the truth, I doubt whether it would not be 
 rather folly than heroism to adhere to this purpose, in case 
 he should offer me anything particularly good. We shall 
 see. A foreign mission I could not afford to take. The 
 consulship at Liverpool, I might." * 
 
 We may conclude from this, that Pierce had 
 already intimated the Liverpool consulate, which 
 
 * Bridge, 130. 
 265
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 at that time was supposed to be worth twenty- 
 five thousand dollars a year in fees. It was an 
 excellent plan for the President of the United 
 States to have such a gift at his disposal, to 
 reward some individual like Hawthorne, to 
 whom the whole nation was indebted to an 
 extent that could never be repaid; but it is a 
 question whether it would not have been as well, 
 in this particular case, for Hawthorne to have 
 remained in his own country. If he could have 
 written five or six romances more, this would 
 have secured him a good competency, and 
 would have assured a sufficient income for his 
 family after his death. As it happened, the 
 Liverpool consulate did not prove so profitable 
 as was anticipated. 
 
 With such "great expectations" before him, 
 Hawthorne could do no serious work that winter, 
 so he occupied himself leisurely enough, with 
 writing a sequel to his " Wonder Book," which he 
 called "Tanglewood Tales," apparently after the 
 thicket which surmounted the hill above his 
 residence. This was finished early in March, and 
 given to Ticknor & Company to publish when 
 they saw fit. As it is a book intended for children, 
 the consideration of it need not detain us. 
 
 Early in April, 1853, Hawthorne was appointed 
 and confirmed to the Liverpool consulate, and 
 on the 1 4th he went to Washington, as he tells 
 us, for the first time, to thank the President in 
 person. Otherwise he has divulged nothing 
 concerning this journey, except that he was 
 introduced to a larger number of persons than he 
 266
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 could remember the names or faces of, and 
 received ten times as many invitations as he 
 could accept. If Charles V. honored himself 
 with posterity by picking up the paint-brush 
 which Titian had dropped on the floor, President 
 Pierce might have done himself equal credit 
 by making Hawthorne his guest at the White 
 House; but if he did not go so far as this, it 
 cannot be doubted that he treated Hawthorne 
 handsomely. There were giants at Washington 
 in those days. Webster and Clay were gone, 
 but Seward was the Charles Fox and Sumner the 
 Edmund Burke of America; Chase and Marcy 
 were not much less in intellectual stature. 
 Hawthorne must have met them, but we hear 
 nothing of them from him. 
 
 Hawthorne delayed his departure for England, 
 until the most favorable season arrived, for his 
 fragile wife and infant children to cross the 
 " rolling forties." At length, on July 6, two days 
 after his forty-ninth birthday, he sailed from 
 Boston in the " Niagara," and with placida onda 
 prospero il vento, in about twelve days they all 
 arrived safely at their destination. 
 
 The great stone docks of Liverpool, extending 
 along its whole water-front, give one a strong 
 impression of the power and solidity of England. 
 Otherwise the city is almost devoid of interest, 
 and travellers customarily pass through it, to 
 take the next train for Oxford or London, 
 without further observation, unless it be to give 
 a look at the conventional statue of Prince 
 Albert on an Arab horse. Liverpool is not so 
 267
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 foggy a place as London, but it has a damper 
 and less pleasant climate, without those varied 
 attractions and substantial enjoyments which 
 make London one of the most pleasant resi- 
 dences and most interesting of cities. 
 
 London fog is composed of soft-coal smoke, 
 which, ascending from innumerable chimneys, 
 is filtered in the upper skies, and then, mixed 
 with vapor, is cast back upon the city by every 
 change of wind. It is not unpleasant to the 
 taste, and seems to be rather healthful than 
 otherwise; but all the vapors which sail down 
 the Gulf Stream, and which are not condensed 
 on the Irish coast in the form of rain, collect about 
 the mouth of the Mersey, so that the adjacent 
 country is the best watered portion of all Eng- 
 land, Cornwall possibly excepted. There is 
 plenty of wealth in Liverpool, and all kinds of 
 private entertainments, but in no other city 
 of its size are there so few public entertainments, 
 and the only interesting occupation that a 
 stranger might find there, would be to watch the 
 strange and curious characters in the lower 
 classes, faces and figures that cannot be cari- 
 catured, emerging from cellar- ways or dis- 
 appearing through side-doors. Go into an ale- 
 house in the evening and, beside the pretty 
 barmaid, who deserves consideration as much 
 for her good behavior as for her looks, you will 
 see plainly enough where Dickens obtained his 
 dramatis persona for "Barnaby Rudge" and 
 "The Old Curiosity Shop." Either in Liverpool 
 or in London you can see more grotesque comedy 
 268
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 characters in a day, than you could meet with 
 in a year in America. These poor creatures are 
 pressed down, and squeezed out into what they 
 are, under the superincumbent weight- of an 
 enormous leisure class. 
 
 Such was the environment in which Haw- 
 thorne was obliged to spend the ensuing four 
 years. He soon, however, discovered a means to 
 escape from the monotonous and labyrinthine 
 streets of the city, by renting an imitation castle 
 at Rock Ferry, a very pretty place, much like 
 Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson, although the river 
 is not so fine, where his wife and children 
 enjoyed fresh air, green grass, and all the sun- 
 shine attainable, and whence he could reach the 
 consulate every morning by the Mersey boat. 
 We find them located there before September i . 
 
 Of the consulate itself, Hawthorne has given 
 a minute pictorial description in "Our Old 
 Home," from which the following extract is 
 especially pertinent to our present inquiry: 
 
 "The Consulate of the United States in my 
 day, was located in Washington Buildings (a 
 shabby and smoke-stained edifice of four stories 
 high, thus illustriously named in honor of our 
 national establishment), at the lower corner 
 of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the Goree 
 Arcade, and in the neighborhood of some of 
 the oldest docks. This was by no means a 
 polite or elegant portion of England's great 
 commercial city, nor were the apartments of 
 the American official so splendid as to indicate 
 the assumption of much consular pomp on his 
 269
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase gave 
 access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted pas- 
 sage-way on the first floor, at the extremity of 
 which, surmounting a door frame, appeared 
 an exceedingly stiff pictorial representation of 
 the Goose and Gridiron, according to the 
 English idea of those ever-to-be-honored 
 symbols. The staircase and passage-way were 
 often thronged of a morning, with a set of 
 beggarly and piratical-looking scoundrels (I 
 do no wrong to our countrymen in styling them 
 so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American) , 
 purporting to belong to our mercantile marine, 
 and chiefly composed of Liverpool Blackball- 
 ers, and the scum of every maritime nation 
 on earth; such being the seamen by whose 
 assistance we then disputed the navigation of 
 the world with England. These specimens of a 
 most unfortunate class of people were ship- 
 wrecked crews in quest of bed, board, and cloth- 
 ing, invalids asking permits for the hospital, 
 bruised and bloody wretches complaining of 
 ill-treatment by their officers, drunkards, des- 
 peradoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly 
 intermingled with an uncertain proportion of 
 reasonably honest men. All of them (save 
 here and there a poor devil of a kidnapped 
 landsman in his shore-going rags) wore red flan- 
 nel shirts, in which they had sweltered or shiv- 
 ered throughout the voyage, and all required 
 consular assistance in one form or another." 
 
 The position of an American consul in a large 
 foreign seaport, especially at Liverpool, is any- 
 270
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 thing but a sinecure, and in fact requires a con- 
 tinual exercise of judgment much beyond the 
 average duties of a foreign minister. The 
 difficulty also of being continually obliged to 
 distinguish between true and false applications 
 for charity, especially when the false are greatly 
 in excess of the true, and among a class of 
 persons notably given to mendacious tricks, is 
 one of the most unpleasant conditions in which 
 a tender-hearted man can find himself. As 
 curious studies in low life, the rascality of 
 these nautical mendicants may often have been 
 interesting, and even amusing, to Hawthorne, 
 but as a steady pull they must have worn hard 
 on his nerves, even though his experienced 
 clerk served as a breakwater to a considerable 
 portion. It has already been noticed that 
 Hawthorne was a conscientious office-holder, 
 and he never trusted to others any duties 
 which he was able to attend to in person. More- 
 over, although he was a man of reserved manners, 
 there was an exceptionally tender, sympathetic 
 heart behind this impenetrable exterior, and it 
 may be suspected that he relieved many instances 
 of actual distress, which could not be brought 
 within the government regulations. He may 
 have suffered like the ghost in Dickens 's 
 "Haunted Man," on account of those whom he 
 could not assist. It is certain that he aged more, 
 in appearance at least, during these four years, 
 than at any similar period of his life. 
 
 It is no wonder, therefore, that, after a visit to 
 the English lakes, the following summer, Haw- 
 271
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 thorne wrote to his friend, Henry Bright, from 
 Liverpool : 
 
 "I have come back only for a day or two to this black 
 and miserable hole. I do not mean to apply these two ad- 
 jectives to my consulate, but to the whole of Liverpool." 
 
 Yet it should be recollected that there were 
 nearly a million of persons in Liverpool, who 
 were obliged to spend their lives there, for good 
 and evil fortune; and, as Emerson says, we can 
 never think too lightly of our own difficulties. 
 
 Neither did Hawthorne find the news from 
 America particularly interesting. On March 
 30, 1854, he wrote to Bridge: 
 
 "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 induce- 
 ment to keep me here, though they are not above a 
 quarter part what some people suppose them. 
 
 "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, and 
 live and die there. If Mrs. Bridge and you 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." * 
 
 The last sentence in this ought to be printed in 
 italics, for it is the essence of patriotism. The 
 "fuss and tumult" in America were due, for the 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 65. 
 272
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 time being, to the apple of discord which Douglas 
 had cast into the Senate, by his Kansas-Ne- 
 braska bill. Hawthorne was too far away to 
 distinguish the full force and insidious character 
 of that measure, but if he had been in Concord, 
 we believe he would have recognized (as so 
 many did who never had before) the imminent 
 danger to the Union, from the repeated con- 
 cessions to the slave power. After he had 
 become disenthralled from his allegiance to 
 party, we find him in his letters to Bridge, 
 taking broad views on political subjects. 
 
 An event was soon to happen, well calculated 
 to disenthrall him. The Congress of 1854, after 
 passing the Kansas-Nebraska bill, resolved, in 
 order to prove its democratic spirit, to economize 
 in the representation of our government to 
 foreign powers. On April 14, the good-hearted, 
 theoretical O' Sullivan arrived in Liverpool, 
 on his way to be minister to Portugal, and 
 warned Hawthorne that there was a bill before 
 Congress to reduce the consulate there to a 
 salaried position. This was a terrible damper 
 on Hawthorne's great expectations, and on 
 April 17 he wrote again to Bridge, protesting 
 against the change : * 
 
 "I trust, in Heaven's mercy, that no change will be made 
 as regards 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; and if Liverpool is touched 
 
 * Bridge, 135, 136. 
 18 273
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 at all, it will be to limit its emoluments by a fixed salary 
 which 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 embroidery of their lives. Then I feel bound to exer- 
 cise some hospitality towards my own country men. I keep 
 out of society as much as I decently can, and really practice 
 as stern an economy as I ever did in my life; but, nev- 
 ertheless, I have spent many thousands of dollars in the 
 few months of my residence here, and cannot reasonably 
 hope to spend less than six thousand per annum, even 
 after all the expenditure of setting up an establishment is 
 defrayed." 
 
 In addition to this, he states that his pred- 
 ecessor in office, John J. Crittenden, never 
 received above fifteen thousand dollars in fees, 
 of which he saved less than half. 
 
 We can trust this to be the plain truth in 
 regard to the Liverpool consulate, and if twenty- 
 five thousand a year was ever obtained from it, 
 there must have been some kind of deviltry 
 in the business. Congress proved inexorable, 
 as it might not have been, had Hawthorne 
 possessed the influence of a prominent politician 
 like Crittenden. It was a direct affront to the 
 President from his own party, and Pierce did not 
 dare to veto the bill. 
 
 What O' Sullivan said to Hawthorne on other 
 subjects may be readily inferred from Haw- 
 thorne's next letter to Bridge, in which he begs 
 274
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 him to remain in Washington for Pierce 's sake, 
 and says: 
 
 ' ' I feel a sorrowful sympathy for the poor f elldw (for 
 God's sake don't show him this), and hate to have him 
 left without one true friend, or one man, who will speak a 
 single honest word to him." 
 
 It is not very clear how Horatio Bridge could 
 counteract the influence of Jefferson Davis and 
 Caleb Gushing, but this shows that Franklin 
 Pierce 's weakness as an administrator was 
 already painfully apparent to his friends, and 
 that even Hawthorne could no longer disguise 
 it to himself. 
 
 275
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 HAWTHORNE IN ENGLAND: 1854-1858 
 
 f HAWTHORNE'S life in England was too gen- 
 erally monotonous to afford many salient points 
 to his biographer. It was monotonous in his 
 official duties, in his pleasure- trips, and in his 
 
 , social experiences. He found one good friend 
 in Liverpool, Mr. Henry Bright, to whom he had 
 already been introduced in America, and he 
 soon made another in Mr. Francis Bennoch, 
 who lived near the same city. They were both 
 excellent men, and belonged to that fine class 
 of Englishmen who possess a comfortable income, 
 but live moderately, and prefer cultivating 
 their minds and the society of their friends, to 
 clubs, yachting, horse-racing, and other forms 
 of external show. They were not distinguished, 
 and were too sensible to desire distinction. 
 Henry Bright may have been the more highly 
 favored in Hawthorne's esteem, but they both 
 possessed that tact and delicacy of feeling which 
 is rare among Englishmen, and by accepting 
 Hawthorne simply as a man like themselves, 
 instead of as a celebrity, they won that place in 
 his confidence from which so many had been 
 excluded. 
 
 Otherwise, Hawthorne contracted no friend- 
 ships among distinguished Englishmen of letters, 
 like that between Emerson and Carlyle; and 
 276
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 from first to last he saw little of them. He had 
 no sooner landed than he was greeted with a 
 number of epistles from sentimental ladies, 
 or authors of a single publication, who claimed a 
 spiritual kinship with him, because of their 
 admiration for his writings. One of them even 
 addressed him as "My dear brother." These he 
 filed away with a mental reservation to give 
 the writers as wide a circuit as he possibly could. 
 He attended a respectable number of dinner 
 parties in both Liverpool and London, at which 
 he remained for the most part a silent and 
 unobtrusive guest. He was not favored with an 
 invitation to Holland House, although he met 
 Lady Holland on one occasion, and has left a 
 description of her, not more flattering than 
 others that have been preserved for us. He also 
 met Macaulay and the Brownings at Lord 
 Houghton's; but for once Macaulay would not 
 talk. Mrs. Browning evidently pleased Haw- 
 thorne very much.* The great lights of English 
 literature besides these, Tennyson, Carlyle, 
 Ruskin, Thackeray, Dickens, he was never 
 introduced to, although he saw Tennyson in a 
 picture-gallery at Manchester, and has left a 
 description of him, such as might endure to the 
 end of time. Neither did he make the acquaint- 
 ance of those three luminaries, Froude, Marian 
 Evans, and Max Muller, who rose above the 
 horizon, previous to his return to America. 
 That he was not presented at Court was a matter 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 129. 
 
 277
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 of course. There was nothing which he could 
 have cared for less. 
 
 After his return he published a volume 
 of English sketches, which he entitled "Our 
 Old Home," but he seems to have felt actually 
 less at home in England than in any other 
 country that he visited. In that book, and also 
 in his diary, the even tenor of his discourse is 
 interrupted here and there by fits of irritability 
 which disclose themselves in the use of epithets 
 such as one would hardly expect from the pen 
 of Hawthorne. If we apply to him the well- 
 known proverb with respect to the Russians, 
 we can imagine that under similar conditions 
 an inherited sailor-like tendency in him came 
 to the surface. We only remember one such 
 instance in his American Note-book, that in 
 which he speaks of Thoreau's having a face "as 
 homely as sin."* Hawthorne did not carry with 
 him to Europe that narrow provincialism, 
 which asserts itself in either condemning or 
 ridiculing everything that differs essentially 
 '; from American ways and methods. On the 
 < contrary, when he compares the old country 
 with the new, for instance, the English scenery 
 with that of New England, Hawthorne is 
 usually as fair, discriminating, and dispassionate 
 as any one could wish, and perhaps more so than 
 some would desire. His judgment cannot 
 /be questioned in preferring the American elm, 
 
 * The general effect of Thoreau's face was by no means 
 unpleasant. 
 
 278
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 with its wine-glass shape, to the rotund European 
 species ; but he admires the English lake country 
 above anything that he has seen like it in his 
 own land. " Centuries of cultivation have given 
 the English oak a domestic character," while 
 American trees are still to be classed with the 
 wild flowers which bloom beneath their out- 
 stretched arms. 
 
 Matthew Arnold spoke of his commentaries 
 on England as the writing of a man chagrined ; 
 but what could have chagrined Hawthorne 
 there ? The socially ambitious man may become 
 chagrined, if he finds that doors are closed to 
 him, and so may an unappreciated would-be 
 genius. But Hawthorne's position as an author 
 was already more firmly established than 
 Matthew Arnold's ever could be; and as for 
 social ambition, no writer since Shakespeare has 
 been so free from it. It seems more probable 
 that the difficulty with Hawthorne in this 
 respect was due to his old position on the 
 slavery question, which now began to bear 
 bitter fruit for him. All Englishmen at that 
 time, with the exception of Carlyle, Froude, 
 and the nobility, were very strongly anti- 
 slavery, the more so, as it cost them nothing 
 to have other men's slaves liberated, and the 
 English are particularly blunt, not to say gauche, 
 in introducing topics of conversation which are 
 liable to become a matter of controversy. At 
 the first dinner-party I attended in London 
 some thirty-odd years ago, I had scarcely 
 tasted the soup, before a gentleman opposite 
 279
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 asked me: "What progress are you making in 
 the United States toward free trade? Can you 
 tell me, sir?" He might as well have asked me 
 what progress we were making in the direction 
 of monarchy. Fortunately for Hawthorne, his 
 good taste prevented him from introducing the 
 slavery question in his publications, excepting 
 in the life of Pierce, but for this same reason his 
 English acquaintances in various places were 
 obliged to discover his opinions at first hand, nor 
 is it very likely that they were slow to do this. 
 Phillips and Garrison had been to England and 
 through England, and their dignified speeches 
 had made an excellent impression. Longfellow, 
 Emerson, Lowell and Whittier had spoken with 
 no uncertain sound, protesting against what 
 they considered a great national evil. How did 
 it happen that Hawthorne was an exception? 
 
 Through his kind friend Mr. Bennoch, he fell in 
 with a worthy whom it would have been just as 
 well to have avoided the proverbial-philosophy 
 poet, Martin Farquhar Tupper; not a genuine 
 poet, nor considered as such by trustworthy 
 critics, but such a good imitation, that he per- 
 suaded himself and a large portion of the British 
 public, including Queen Victoria, that he was one. 
 Hawthorne has given an account of his visit to 
 this man,* second only in value to his description 
 of Tennyson ; for it is quite as important for us 
 to recognize the deficiencies of the one, as it is 
 to know the true appearance of the other. It 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 114. 
 280
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 is an unsparing study of human nature, but if a 
 man places himself on a pedestal for all people 
 to gaze at, it is just this and nothing more that 
 he has to expect. Hawthorne represents him 
 as a kindly, domestic, affectionate, bustling little 
 man, who kept on bustling with his hands and 
 tongue, even while he was seated a man of no 
 dignity of character or perception of his de- 
 ficiency of it. This all does well enough, but 
 when Hawthorne says, " I liked him, and laughed 
 in my sleeve at him, and was utterly weary 
 of him; for certainly he is the ass of asses," we 
 feel that he has gone too far, and suspect that 
 there was some unpleasantness connected with 
 the occasion, of which we are not informed. 
 The word "ass," as applied to a human being, 
 is not current in good literature, unless low 
 comedy be entitled to that position, and coming 
 from Hawthorne, of all writers, it seems like 
 an oath from the mouth of a woman. Tupper, 
 who was quite proud of his philanthropy, was 
 also much of an abolitionist, and he may have 
 trodden on Hawthorne's metaphysical toes half 
 a dozen times, without being aware of what he 
 was doing. Altogether, it seems like rather an 
 ill return for Tupper's hospitality; but Haw- 
 thorne himself did not intend it for publication, 
 and on the whole one does not regret that it has 
 been given to the public. We have been, how- 
 ever, anticipating the order of events. 
 
 During the summer of 1854, the Hawthorne 
 family made a number of unimportant expe- 
 ditions, visiting mediaeval abbeys and ruinous 
 281
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 castles, especially one to Chester and Eton Hall, 
 which was not quite worth the fees they paid 
 . to the janitors. An ancient walled city is much 
 / of a novelty to an American for the first time, 
 i but, having seen one, you have seen them all, 
 and Chester Cathedral does not stand high in 
 v English architecture. On September 14, O'Sul- 
 livan appeared again, and they all went into the 
 Welsh mountains, where they examined the old 
 fortresses of Rhyl and Conway, which were built 
 by Edward Longshanks to hold the Welshmen 
 in check. Those relics of the feudal system are 
 very impressive, not only on account of their 
 solidity and the great human forces which they 
 represent, but from a peculiar beauty of their 
 own, which modern fortifications do not possess 
 at all. They seem to belong to the ground they 
 stand on, and the people who live about them 
 look upon them as cherished landmarks. They 
 are the monuments of an heroic age, and Haw- 
 thorne's interest in them was characteristic of 
 his nature. 
 
 O 'Sullivan returned to Lisbon early in October, 
 and on the 5th of that month, Hawthorne 
 found himself obliged to make a speech at an 
 entertainment on board a merchant vessel called 
 the "James Barnes," which had been built in 
 Boston for a Liverpool firm of ship-owners. 
 He considered this the most serious portion of his 
 official duty, the necessity of making after- 
 dinner speeches at the Mayor's or other public 
 tables. He writes several pages on the subject in 
 a humorously complainant tone, congratulating
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 himself that on the present occasion he has 
 succeeded admirably, for he has really said 
 nothing, and that is precisely what he intended to 
 do. After-dinner speeches are like soap-bubbles : 
 they are made of nothing, signify nothing, float 
 for a moment in the air, attract a momentary 
 attention, and then disappear. But the diffi- 
 culty is, to make an apparent something out 
 of nothing, to say nothing that will offend 
 anybody, and to say something that will be 
 different from what others say. It is truly a 
 hard situation in which to place even a very 
 talented man, and, as Longfellow once remarked, 
 those were most fortunate who made their 
 speeches first, and could then enjoy their dinner, 
 while their successors were writhing in agony. 
 However, there are those who like it, and having 
 practised it to perfection, can do it better than 
 anything else. Hawthorne analyzes his sensa- 
 tions, after finishing his speech, with rare self- 
 perception. " After sitting down, I was conscious 
 of an enjoyment in speaking to a public assembly, 
 and felt as if I should like to rise again. It is 
 something like being under fire, a sort of 
 excitement, not exactly pleasure, but more 
 piquant than most pleasures." Was it President 
 Jackson, or Senator Benton, who said that 
 fighting a duel was very much like making one's 
 maiden speech? 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne thus describes the residence of 
 the President of the Chamber of Commerce at 
 Liverpool : * 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 238. 
 283
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 "We were ushered into the drawing-room, 
 which looked more like a brilliant apartment 
 in Versailles than what I had expected to see. 
 The panels were richly gilt, with mirrors in the 
 centre, and hangings of gilded paper; and the 
 broad windows were hung with golden-colored 
 damask; the furniture was all of the same 
 hue; with a carpet of superb flowers; and 
 vases of living flowers standing everywhere; 
 and a chandelier of diamonds (as to indefatig- 
 able and vivid shining), and candlesticks of 
 the same, not the long prisms like those on 
 Mary's astral, but a network of crystals diamond- 
 cut. " 
 
 This was the coarse commercial taste of the 
 time, previous to the reforms of Ruskin and 
 Eastlake. The same might be said of Versailles. 
 There is no true elegance in gilding and glass- 
 work, including mirrors, unless they be sparingly 
 used. 
 
 The Hawthornes were equally overpowered 
 by a dinner-party given by a millionaire and 
 country squire of Liscard Vale; "two enormous 
 silver dish-covers, with the gleam of Damascus 
 blades, putting out all the rest of the light;" 
 and after the fish, these were replaced by two 
 other enormous dishes of equal brilliancy. The 
 table was shortly covered with an array of 
 silver dishes, reflecting the lights above in dazzling 
 splendor. At one end of the table was a roast 
 goose and at the other a boiled turkey; while 
 "cutlets, fricassees, ragouts, tongue, chicken- 
 pies," and much else, filled the intermediate 
 284
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 spaces, and the sideboard groaned under a 
 round of beef "like the dome of St. Peter's." 
 It was fortunate that the American consul came 
 to this Herculean repast with an excellent 
 appetite. 
 
 Henry Bright was their chief refuge from this 
 flummery, as Hawthorne called it ; " an extremely 
 interesting, sincere, earnest, independent, warm 
 and generous hearted man; not at all dogmatic; 
 full of questions, and with ready answers. He 
 is highly cultivated, and writes for the West- 
 minster," a man who respected formalities and 
 could preserve decorum in his own household, but 
 liked a simple, unostentatious mode of living in 
 brief, he was a true English gentleman. Mrs. 
 Hawthorne has drawn his portrait with only 
 less skill than her husband: 
 
 "His eyes are large, bright, and prominent, 
 rather indicating great facility of language, 
 which he has. He is an Oxford scholar, and has 
 decided literary tastes. He is delicately strung, 
 and is as transparent-minded and pure-hearted 
 as a child, with great enthusiasm and earnest- 
 ness of character; and, though a Liberal, very 
 loyal to his Queen and very admiring of the 
 aristocracy." 
 
 He appears to have been engaged in the 
 Australian carrying trade, and owned the largest 
 sailing vessel afloat. 
 
 Hawthorne went to an exhibition of English 
 landscape paintings, and he remarked that 
 Turner's seemed too ethereal to have been 
 painted by mortal hands, the finest com-
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 pliment that Turner could have received, for in 
 delicate effects of light and shade, in painting 
 the atmosphere itself, he has no rival. 
 
 In January, James Buchanan, who was then 
 minister to England, came to visit Hawthorne, 
 and talked with him about the presidency, 
 for which he considered himself altogether too 
 old ; but at the same time he did not suggest the 
 renomination of Franklin Pierce. This, of course, 
 disclosed his own ambition, and as Hawthorne's 
 impartial pen-and-ink sketch of him may not 
 be recognized by many readers, on account 
 of the form in which it appears in the note-books, 
 we append it here, with the regret that Haw- 
 thorne could not have treated his friend Pierce 
 in an equally candid manner. 
 
 " I like Mr. . He cannot exactly be called 
 
 gentlemanly in his manners, there being a sort 
 of rusticity about him; moreover, he has a 
 habit of squinting one eye, and an awkward 
 carriage of his head; but, withal, a dignity in 
 his large person, and a consciousness of high 
 position and importance, which give him ease 
 and freedom. Very simple and frank in his 
 address, he may be as crafty as other diplo- 
 matists are said to be; but I see only good 
 sense and plainness of speech, appreciative, 
 too, and genial enough to make himself con- 
 versable. He talked very freely of himself 
 and of other public people, and of American 
 and English affairs. He returns to America, 
 he says, next October, and then retires forever 
 from public life." 
 
 286
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 A certain amount of rusticity would seem to 
 have been essential to a presidential candidate 
 during the middle of the past century. 
 
 During this dismal winter Hawthorne was 
 beset more than ever, by nautical mendicants 
 of all countries, Hungarians, Poles, Cubans, 
 Spanish Americans, and French Republicans, 
 who, unhappily for him, had discovered that the 
 American consul was a tender-hearted man. 
 He had, beside, to deal with a number of dif- 
 ficult cases of maltreated American sailors, 
 the more difficult, because both parties to the 
 suits were greatly given to lying, even on 
 occasions when it would have been more ex- 
 pedient for them to tell the truth. He has 
 recorded one such in his diary, that deserves 
 more than a superficial consideration. 
 
 An American bark was on the point of sailing, 
 when the captain cast ashore a bruised and 
 battered-looking man, who made his way pain- 
 fully to the consulate, and begged Hawthorne 
 for a permit to be placed in the hospital. He 
 called himself the son of a South Carolina farmer, 
 and stated that he had gone on board this vessel 
 with a load of farm products, but had been 
 impressed by the captain for the voyage, and 
 had been so maltreated, that he thought he 
 would die, and so he did, not long afterward, at 
 the hospital. Letters were found upon him, 
 substantiating the statement concerning his 
 father, but it was discovered, from the same 
 source, that he was a jail-bird, and the tattooed 
 figures upon his arms showed that he had been
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 a sailor of many years' standing, although he 
 had denied this to the consul. Hawthorne 
 speaks of him as an innocent man, the victim 
 of criminal brutality little less than murder; 
 it is certainly difficult to account for such severe 
 ill-treatment, but the man was clearly a bad 
 character, and it is also true that sea-captains 
 do not interfere with their deck-hands without 
 some kind of provocation. The man clung 
 desperately to life up to the last moment, and 
 the letters he carried with him indicated that he 
 was more intelligent than the average of the 
 nautical fraternity. 
 
 In June, Hawthorne went with his family 
 to Leamington, of which he afterward published 
 an account in the Atlantic Monthly, criticised at 
 the time for the manner in which he referred 
 to English ladies, as "covering a large area of 
 Nature's foot-stool"; but this element in Haw- 
 thorne's English writing has already been 
 considered. From Leamington he went, early 
 in July, to the English lakes, especially Winder- 
 mere, and fortunately found time to thoroughly 
 enjoy them. He enjoyed them not only for their 
 scenery, which he preferred to that of New 
 England, but also as illustrations to many 
 descriptive passages in Wordsworth's poetry, 
 which serves the same purpose in the guidebook 
 of that region, as "Childe Harold" serves in the 
 guidebooks for Italy and Greece. Hawthorne 
 also was interested in such places for the sake of 
 their associations. He describes Wordsworth's 
 house, the grounds about it, and the cemetery
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 where he lies, with the accuracy of a scientific 
 report. He finds the grass growing too high 
 about the head-stone of Wordsworth's grave, 
 and plucks it away with his own hands, reflecting 
 that it may have drawn its nourishment from his 
 mortal remains. We may suppose that he 
 preserved this grass, and it is only from such 
 incidental circumstances that we discover who 
 were Hawthorne's favorites among poets and 
 other distinguished writers. He twice visited 
 Wordsworth's grave. 
 
 Their first two winters in Liverpool had not 
 proved favorable to Mrs. Hawthorne's health 
 She had contracted a disorder in her throat 
 from the prevailing dampness, which threatened 
 to become chronic, and her husband felt that it 
 would not be prudent for her to remain there 
 another winter. He thought of resigning and 
 returning to America. Then he thought of 
 exchanging his consulship for one in southern 
 Europe, although the salaries of the more 
 southern consulates were hardly sufficient to 
 support a married man. Then he thought of 
 exchanging places with 'Sullivan, but he 
 hardly knew languages well enough for an 
 ambassador. The doctors, however, had advised 
 Mrs. Hawthorne to spend a winter at Madeira, 
 and she courageously solved the problem by 
 proposing to go there alone with her daughters, 
 for which Lisbon and O' Sullivan would serve as 
 a stepping-stone by the way. There are wives 
 who would prefer such an expedition to spending 
 a winter in England with their husbands, but 
 19 289
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne was not of that mould, and in 
 her case it was a brave thing to do. 
 
 Accordingly, on the second Monday in October, 
 Mrs. Hawthorne and her two daughters sailed for 
 Lisbon. She was presented at court there; 
 concerning which occasion she wrote a lengthy 
 and very interesting account to her husband, 
 published in her son's biography. The King of 
 Portugal held a long conversation with her and 
 Minister O' Sullivan, and she describes him as 
 dressed in a flamboyant manner, a scarlet 
 uniform, lavishly ornamented with diamonds. 
 With how much better taste did the Empress of 
 Austria receive the President of the French 
 Republic, in a simple robe of black velvet, 
 fastened at her throat with a diamond brooch. 
 One can envy Mrs. Hawthorne a winter at 
 Madeira, for there is no place in Europe pleasanter 
 for that purpose, unless it be Rome. Meanwhile, 
 her husband spent the winter with his son (who 
 was now old enough to be trusted safely about the 
 streets), at a sea-captains' boarding-house in 
 Liverpool. There, as in Salem, he felt himself 
 most companionable in such company, as he had 
 been accustomed to it from boyhood; and it 
 appears that at this time he was in the habit 
 of composing fables for the entertainment of 
 Julian, not unlike the yarns which sailors often 
 spin to beguile landsmen.* 
 
 Hawthorne found his third winter in Liverpool 
 dismal enough without his wife and the two 
 
 *J. Hawthorne, ii. 75. 
 290
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 little girls, and this feeling was considerably 
 increased by his dislike for the sea-captains' 
 boarding-house keeper,* with whom he was 
 living, and concerning whom he remarks, that a 
 woman in England "is either decidedly a lady\ 
 or decidedly not. ' ' She would not have annoyed 
 him so much, had it not been for "her bustle, j 
 affectation, intensity, and pretension of literary I 
 taste." The race of landladies contains curious ' 
 specimens, although we have met with some 
 who were real ladies nevertheless. Thackeray's 
 description of a French boarding-house keeper 
 in "The Adventures of Philip" goes to every 
 heart. Hawthorne writes much in his diary, 
 at this juncture, of his friend Francis Bennoch, 
 who clearly did the best he could, as a man and a 
 brother, to make life cheerful for his American 
 friend ; a true, sturdy, warm-hearted Englishman. 
 Christmas was celebrated at Mrs. Blodgett's, 
 after the fashion of a second-rate English house 
 of entertainment. The servants hung mistletoe 
 about in various places, and woe to the unlucky 
 wight that was caught under it. Hawthorne 
 presents an amusing picture of his boy Julian, 
 nine years old, struggling against the endear- 
 ments of a chamber-maid, and believes that he 
 himself was the only male person in the house 
 that escaped.! If any man would be sure to 
 escape that benediction, he would have been the 
 one ; for no one could be more averse to public 
 demonstrations of affection. 
 
 * English Note-book, November 28, 1855. 
 t English Note-book, December, 1855. 
 291
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Hawthorne was witness to a curious strategic 
 manoeuvre between President Pierce and Minister 
 Buchanan, which, however, he was not suffi- 
 ciently familiar with practical politics to perceive 
 the full meaning of. On the way to Southampton 
 with his wife in October, they called on Buchanan 
 in London, and were not only civilly but kindly 
 received. Mrs. Hawthorne wished to view the 
 Houses of Parliament while they were in session, 
 and the ambassador made a knot in his handker- 
 chief, so as to be sure to remember his promise to 
 her. He informed Hawthorne at that time of 
 his desire to return to America, but stated that 
 the President had just written to him, requesting 
 him to remain until April, although he was 
 determined not to do so. He excused himself on 
 the plea of old age, and Hawthorne seems to have 
 had a suspicion of the insincerity of this, but 
 concluded on reflection not to harbor it. Pierce 
 knew already that Buchanan was his most 
 dangerous rival for renomination, and desired 
 that he should remain as far off as possible; 
 while Buchanan was aware that, if he intended 
 to be on the ground, he must not return so late 
 as to attract public attention. There were so 
 many presidential aspirants that Pierce may 
 have found it difficult to supply Buchanan's 
 place, for the time being. 
 
 Buchanan delayed a respectful length of time, 
 and then handed in his resignation. His suc- 
 cessor, George M. Dallas, arrived at Liverpool 
 during the second week of March, and Hawthorne 
 who does not mention him by name, called upon
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 him at once, and gives us this valuable portrait 
 of him. 
 
 "The ambassador is a venerable old gentle- 
 man, with a full head of perfectly white hair, 
 looking not unlike an old-fashioned wig; and 
 this, together with his collarless white neck- 
 cloth and his brown coat, gave him precisely 
 such an aspect as one would expect in a respect- 
 able person of pre-revolutionary days. There 
 was a formal simplicity, too, in his manners, 
 that might have belonged to the same era. He 
 must have been a very handsome man in his 
 youthful days, and is now comely, very erect, 
 moderately tall, not overburdened with flesh; 
 of benign and agreeable address, with a pleasant 
 smile; but his eyes, which are not very large, 
 impressed me as sharp and cold. He did not at 
 all stamp himself upon me as a man of much 
 intellectual or characteristic vigor. I found 
 no such matter in his conversation, nor did I 
 feel it in the indefinable way by which strength 
 always makes itself acknowledged. Buchanan, 
 though somehow plain and uncouth, yet vindi- 
 cates himself as a large man of the world, able, 
 experienced, fit to handle difficult circumstances 
 of life, dignified, too, and able to hold his own 
 in any society."* 
 
 Morton McMichael, whose statue now stands 
 in Fairmount Park, once related this incident 
 concerning Dallas, at a meeting of the Phila- 
 delphia Hock Club. Somewhere about 1850 
 
 * English Note-book, March, 1856. 
 293
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Dallas was invited to deliver a 4th of July 
 oration at Harrisburg, where McMichael was 
 also requested to read the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. McMichael performed his part of the 
 ceremony, and sat down; then Dallas arose and 
 thanked the assembly for honoring him with 
 such an invitation, but confessed to some dif- 
 ficulty in considering what he should say, for 
 an occasion which had been celebrated by so 
 many famous orators; but that a few nights 
 since, while he was lying awake, it occurred to 
 him what he should say to them. After this he 
 proceeded to read his address from a newspaper 
 printed in 1841, which the audience could not 
 see, but which McMichael, from his position on 
 the platform, could see perfectly well. 
 
 Hawthorne's description suggests a man some- 
 what like this ; but the opinion of the Hock Club 
 was that Dallas was not greatly to blame; for 
 how could any man make two distinct and 
 original 4th of July orations? 
 
 The ist of April 1856, Hawthorne and Ben- 
 noch set off on a bachelor expedition of their 
 own, first to visit Tupper at Albany, as has 
 been already related, and then going to view 
 a muster of British troops at Aldershot; thence 
 to Battle Abbey, which Hawthorne greatly 
 admired, and the field of Hastings, where 
 England's greatness began in defeat. He does 
 / not mention the battle, however, in his diary, 
 i and it may be remarked that, generally, Haw- 
 thorne felt little interest in historical subjects. 
 After this, they went to London, where Bennoch 
 294
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 introduced Hawthorne at the Milton Club and 
 the Reform Club. At the former, he again 
 encountered Martin F. Tupper, and became 
 acquainted with Tom Taylor, the editor of 
 Punch, as well as other writers and editors, of 
 whom he had not previously heard. The Club 
 was by no means Miltonic, and one would suppose 
 not exactly the place where Hawthorne would 
 find himself much at home. Neither were the 
 proceedings altogether in good taste. Bennoch 
 opened the ball with a highly eulogistic speech 
 about Hawthorne, and was followed by some 
 fifty others in a similar strain, so that the un- 
 fortunate incumbent must have wished that the 
 earth would open and let him down to the shades 
 of night below. On such an occasion, even a 
 feather weight becomes a burden. Oh, for a boy, 
 with a tin horn! 
 
 Neither did Hawthorne apparently find his 
 peers at the Reform Club. Douglas Jerrold, 
 who reminded him somewhat of Ellery Channing, 
 was the most notable writer he met there. 
 There was, however, very little speech-making, 
 and plenty of good conversation. Unfortunately, 
 he offended Jerrold, by using the word "acrid" 
 as applied to his writing, instead of some other 
 word, which he could not think of at the moment. 
 The difficulty, however, was made up over a 
 fresh bottle of Burgundy, and with the help of 
 Hawthorne's unlimited good-will, so that they 
 parted excellent friends, and much the better 
 for having known each other. Either Jerrold or 
 some other present told Hawthorne that the 
 
 295
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 English aristocracy, for the most part hated, 
 despised, and feared men of literary genius. 
 Is it not much the same in America? 
 
 After these two celebrations, and attending 
 the Lord Mayor's banquet, where he admired 
 the beautiful Jewess whom he has described as 
 Miriam in "The Marble Faun," Hawthorne 
 returned to Liverpool; and early in May took 
 another recess, with a Mr. Bowman, to York, 
 Edinburgh, the Trossachs, Abbotsford, and all 
 the haunts of Scott and Burns ; with his account 
 of which a large portion of the second volume of 
 English Note -books is filled; so that, if Scotland 
 should sink into the sea, as a portion is already 
 supposed to have done in antediluvian times, 
 all those places could be reconstructed through 
 Hawthorne's description of them. 
 
 This expedition lasted nearly three weeks, and 
 on June 12 Hawthorne received word that his 
 wife, with Una and Rose, had already landed 
 at Southampton. He hastened at once to meet 
 them, greatly rejoiced to find Mrs. Hawthorne 
 entirely restored to health. They had been 
 separated for more than seven months. 
 
 They first proceeded to Salisbury, to see the 
 cathedral and Stonehenge, the former, very 
 impressive externally, but not so satisfactory 
 within ; and the latter, a work of man emerging 
 out of Nature. Then they went to London, to 
 enjoy the June season, and see the regular 
 course of sights in that huge metropolis. They 
 visited St. Paul's, the Tower, Guildhall, the 
 National Gallery, the British Museum, West- 
 296
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 minster Abbey, and the Houses of Parliament, 
 apparently finding as much satisfaction in this 
 conventional occupation as they did in the 
 social entertainments of London. At the house 
 of Mr. S. C. Hall, a noted entertainer of those 
 days, Hawthorne became acquainted with the 
 most celebrated singer of her time, or perhaps of 
 all time; namely, Jenny Lind. No modern 
 orator has held such a sway over the hearts of 
 men and women, as that Swedish nightingale, 
 for the purity of her voice seemed no more than 
 the emanation of her lofty nature. Hawthorne 
 describes her as a frank, sincere person, rather 
 tall, certainly no beauty, but with sense and 
 self-reliance in her aspect and manners. She 
 immediately gave Hawthorne an illustration of 
 her frankness by complaining of the unhealthy 
 manner in which Americans, and especially 
 American women, lived. This seems like a pro- 
 saic subject for such a person, but it was natural 
 enough; for a concert singer has to live like 
 a race-horse, and this would be what would 
 constantly strike her attention in a foreign 
 country. Hawthorne rallied to the support of 
 his countrywomen, and believed that they 
 were, on the whole, as healthy and long-lived 
 as Europeans. This may be so now, but there has 
 been great improvement in the American mode 
 of living, during the past fifty years, and we can 
 imagine that Jenny Lind often found it difficult 
 to obtain such food as she required. 
 
 That she should have requested an intro- 
 duction to Hawthorne is significant of her 
 297
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 interest in American literature, and suggests a 
 taste as refined and elevated as her music. 
 
 It was on Hawthorne's wedding-day this 
 happened, and a few days later he was invited 
 to a select company at Monckton Milnes's, 
 which included Macaulay, the Brownings, and 
 Professor Ticknor. He found both the Brownings 
 exceedingly pleasant and accessible, but was 
 somewhat startled to find that Mrs. Browning 
 was a believer in spiritism not such a sound and 
 healthy intelligence as the author of " Middle- 
 march," and he might have been still more so, 
 if he had known that she and her husband were 
 ardent admirers of Louis Napoleon. That was 
 something which an American in those days 
 could not quite understand. However, he found 
 her an exceedingly pleasant companion. After 
 dinner they looked over several volumes of 
 autographs, in which Oliver Cromwell's was the 
 only one that would to-day be more valuable 
 than Hawthorne's own. 
 
 A breakfast at Monckton Milnes's usually 
 included the reading of a copy of verses of his 
 own composition, but perhaps he had not yet 
 reached that stage on the present occasion. 
 
 Hawthorne heard such varied and conflicting 
 accounts of Charles Dickens that he hardly 
 knew whether he would like to meet him or not. 
 He wanted to see Tennyson when he was at the 
 Isle of Wight, but feared that his visit might be 
 looked on as an intrusion, by a person who 
 lived so retired a life, judging perhaps from 
 his own experience. While at Windermere he 
 298
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 paused for a moment in front of Harriet Mar- 
 tineau's cottage, but on second thought he con- 
 cluded to leave the good deaf lady in peace. 
 
 Conway speaks of Hawthorne's social life in 
 England as a failure ; but failure suggests an ef- 
 fort in some direction or other, and Hawthorne 
 made no social efforts. Being lionized was not 
 his business. He had seen enough of it during 
 the London season of 1856, and after that he 
 retired into his domestic shell, cultivating 
 the acquaintance of his wife and children more 
 assiduously than ever, so that even his two faith- 
 ful allies, Bright and Bennoch, found it diffi- 
 cult to withdraw him from it. Watching the 
 development of a fine child is much more 
 satisfactory than any course of fashionable 
 entertainments even than Lowell's twenty-nine 
 dinner-parties in the month of June. Nothing 
 becomes more tedious than long-continued pleas- 
 ure-seeking, with post-prandial speeches and a 
 constant effort to be agreeable. 
 
 Hawthorne remained in England fully seven- 
 teen months after this, and made a number of 
 excursions; especially one to Oxford, where he 
 and his family were dined by a former mayor of 
 the city, and where he greatly admired the broad 
 verdant grounds and Gothic architecture of the 
 colleges; and also a second journey to Edin- 
 burgh and the Trossachs, undertaken for the 
 benefit of Mrs. Hawthorne and Una. But we 
 hear no more of him in London society, and it 
 only remains for us to chronicle his exceptional 
 kindness to an unfortunate American woman. 
 299
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 It seems strange that the first doubt in regard 
 to the authorship of Shakespeare should have 
 originated on this side of the Atlantic. If 
 Dante was a self-educated poet, there seems no 
 good reason why Shakespeare should not have 
 been ; and if the greatest of French writers earned 
 his living as an actor, why should not the great- 
 est of English writers have done the same? 
 That would seem to be much more in harmony 
 with the central idea of American life the prin- 
 ciple of self-helpfulness; but this is a skeptical 
 epoch, and the tendency of our political insti- 
 tutions is toward skepticism of character and 
 distrust of tradition. Hence we have Delia 
 Bacon, Holmes, and Donnelly. 
 
 Hawthorne has given future generations an 
 account of Delia Bacon, which will endure as the 
 portrait of a gifted and interesting woman, 
 diverted from the normal channels of feminine 
 activity by the force of a single idea; but he 
 makes no mention of his efforts in her behalf. 
 
 / He found her in the lodgings of a London trades- 
 man, and although she received him in a pleas- 
 
 | ant and lady-like manner, he quickly perceived 
 that her mind was in an abnormal condition, 
 
 - and that it was positively dangerous to discuss 
 her favorite topic in a rational manner. He 
 had a feeling that the least opposition on his 
 part to the Baconian theory would result in his 
 expulsion from the room, yet he found her con- 
 versation interesting, and recognized that if her 
 conclusions were erroneous she had neverthe- 
 less unearthed valuable historic material, which 
 300
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 ought to be given to the world. He loaned her 
 money, which he did not expect to be repaid, 
 and exerted himself to find a publisher for her, 
 recollecting perhaps the vows he had made to 
 the gods in the days of his own obscurity. He 
 mentions in his diary calling on the Rutledges for 
 this purpose where he saw Charles Reade, a 
 tall, strong-looking man, just leaving the office. 
 He also wrote to Ticknor & Fields, and finally 
 did get Miss Bacon's volume brought out in Lon- 
 don. The critics treated it in a contemptuous 
 manner, as a desecration of Shakespeare's mem- 
 ory; and Hawthorne was prepared for this, but 
 it opened a new era in English bibliography. 
 Shortly after the publication of her book Miss 
 Bacon became insane. 
 
 To many this appeared like a Quixotic adven- 
 ture, but now we can see that it was not, and 
 that it was necessary in its way to prove the 
 generosity of Hawthorne. We can readily infer 
 from it what he might have done with ampler 
 means, and what he must often have wished to 
 do. To be sure, the truest kindness to Delia 
 Bacon would have been to have purchased a 
 ticket on a Cunard steamer for her, after her 
 own funds had given out, and to have persuaded 
 her to return to her own country ; but those who 
 have dealt with persons whose whole vitality is 
 absorbed in a single idea, can testify how dif- 
 ficult, if not impossible, this would have been. 
 It redounds the more to Hawthorne's credit 
 that although Elizabeth Peabody was converted 
 to Delia Bacon's theory, Hawthorne himself 
 301
 
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 never entertained misgivings as to the reality 
 of Shakespeare as a poet and a dramatist. 
 
 He had doubts, however, and I felt the same 
 in regard to the authenticity of the verses on 
 Shakespeare's marble slab. It is fortunate that 
 Miss Bacon's purpose of opening the tomb at 
 Stratford was not carried out, but that is no 
 reason why it should not be opened in a prop- 
 erly conducted manner, for scientific purposes 
 in order to discover all that is possible concern- 
 ing so remarkable and mysterious a personality. 
 Raphael's tomb has been opened, and why 
 should not Shakespeare's be also? 
 
 At the Democratic convention in 1856 the 
 Southern delegates wished to renominate Frank- 
 lin Pierce, but the Northern delegates refused 
 their agreement to this, because they knew that 
 in such a case they would be liable to defeat in 
 their own districts. James Buchanan was ac- 
 cordingly nominated, and Pierce's fears in regard 
 to him were fully realized. He was elected in 
 November, and the following June appointed 
 Beverly Tucker to succeed Hawthorne as consul 
 at Liverpool. Hawthorne resigned his office 
 on July i, 1857, and went with his family on a 
 long tour in Scotland. Two weeks earlier he 
 had written a memorial to the Secretary of State 
 concerning the maltreatment of a special class of 
 seamen, which deserved more consideration than 
 it received from the government at Washington. 
 
 The gold discoveries in California had induced 
 a large immigration to America from the Brit- 
 302
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 ish Isles, and many who went thither in hopes of 
 bettering their fortunes became destitute from 
 lack of employment, and attempted to work their 
 passage back to Liverpool in American sailing 
 vessels. It is likely that they often repre- 
 sented themselves as more experienced mari- 
 ners than they actually were, and there were 
 also a good many stowaways who might ex- 
 pect little mercy; but there was no court in 
 England that could take cognizance of their 
 wrongs, in order to obtain justice they would 
 have to return to America, and it cannot be 
 doubted that the more brutal sort of officers 
 took advantage of this fact. The evil became so 
 notorious that the British minister at Wash- 
 ington requested Pierce 's administration to 
 have legislation enacted that would cover this 
 class of cases, but the President declined to in- 
 terfere. This may have been prudent policy, 
 but Hawthorne felt for the sufferers, and the 
 memorial that he submitted to our government 
 on their account has a dignity, a clearness and 
 cogency of statement, worthy of Blackstone 
 or Marshall. It is in marked contrast to the 
 evasive reply of Secretary Cass, both for its fine 
 English and for the directness of its logic. It 
 is published at length in Julian Hawthorne's 
 biography of his father, and is unique for the in- 
 sight which it affords as to Hawthorne's men- 
 tal ability in this direction. We may infer 
 from it that if he had made a study of juris- 
 prudence, he might have risen to the highest 
 position as a writer on law. 
 
 303
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Hawthorne's English Note-books are the least 
 interesting of that series, on account of the 
 literal descriptions of castles, abbeys, scenery 
 and palaces, with which they abound. The 
 perfectly cultivated condition of England and 
 Scotland, so far as he went in the latter country, 
 is not stimulating to the imagination; for, as 
 he says somewhere, even the trees seemed to be 
 thoroughly domesticated. They are excellent 
 reading for Americans who have never been to 
 England, or for those who wish to renew their 
 memories in regard to certain places there 
 perhaps better for the latter than for the former ; 
 and there are fine passages in them, especially 
 his descriptions of the old abbeys and Gothic 
 cathedrals, which seem to have delighted him 
 more than the gardens at Blenheim and Eton, 
 and to have brought to the surface a rare 
 quality in his nature, or otherwise hidden in its 
 depths, his enthusiasm. Never before did 
 words fail him until he attempted to describe the 
 effect of a Gothic cathedral, the time-hon- 
 ored mystery of its arches, the sober radiance 
 of its stained windows, and the solemn aspira- 
 tion of its lofty vault. As Schiller says, they 
 are the monuments of a mighty civilization of 
 which we know only too little. 
 
 Hawthorne's object in writing these detailed 
 accounts of his various expeditions becomes 
 apparent from a passage in his Note-book, of 
 the date of August 21, 1856, in which he says: 
 " In my English romance, an American might 
 bring a certain tradition from over the sea, 
 304
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 and so discover the cross which had been long 
 since forgotten." It may have been his inten- 
 tion from the first to write a romance based on 
 English soil, but that soil was no longer pro- 
 ductive of such intellectual fruit, except in the 
 form in which Dickens dug it up, like peat, out 
 of the lower classes. We find Francis Ben- 
 noch writing to Hawthorne after his return 
 to America,* hoping to encourage him in this di- 
 rection, but without apparent effect. Instead of 
 a romance, he made a collection of essays from 
 those portions of his diary which were most 
 closely connected together, enlarging them and 
 rounding them out, which he published after his 
 return to America, in the volume we have often 
 referred to as "Our Old Home." But as truth- 
 ful studies of English life and manners Mrs. 
 Hawthorne's letters, though not always sensi- 
 ble, are much more interesting than her hus- 
 band's diary. 
 
 When Doctor Johnson was inquired of by a 
 lady why he defined "pastern" in his Diction- 
 ary as the knee of a horse, he replied, " Igno- 
 rance, madam, pure ignorance;" and if Haw- 
 thorne had been asked a year afterwards why 
 he went to Scotland in the summer of 1857, 
 instead of to the Rhine and Switzerland, he 
 might have given a similar excuse. In this 
 way he missed the grandest and some of the 
 most beautiful scenery in Europe. He could 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 310. 
 20 305
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 not, however, have been ignorant of the at- 
 tractions of Paris, and yet he lingered in Eng- 
 land until the following January, and then 
 went over to that metropolis of fashion at a 
 most unseasonable time. He had, indeed, 
 planned to leave England in October,* and does 
 not explain why he remained longer. He made 
 a last visit to London in November, where he 
 became reconciled to his fellow-townsmen of 
 Salem, in the person of Edward Silsbee, of 
 whom he writes as "a man of great intelligence 
 and true feeling, absolutely brimming over 
 with ideas." Mr. Silsbee was an amateur 
 art critic and connoisseur, who often made 
 himself serviceable to American travellers in 
 the way of a gentleman-cicerone. He went 
 with the Hawthorne family to the Crystal 
 Palace, where there were casts of all famous 
 statues, models of architecture, and the like, 
 and gave Hawthorne his first lesson in art criti- 
 cism. Hawthorne indicated a preference for 
 Michel Angelo's statue of Giuliano de' Medici, 
 called "II Pensero;" also for the "Perseus" 
 of Cellini, and the Gates of the Florentine Bap- 
 tistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti. If we except the 
 other statues of Michel Angelo, these are the 
 most distinguished works in sculpture of the 
 modern world. 
 
 * English Note-book, December, 1857. 
 
 306
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 ITALY 
 
 HAWTHORNE went to Italy as naturally as 
 the salmon ascends the rivers in spring. His 
 artistic instinct drew him thither as the original 
 home of modern art and literature, and per- 
 haps also his interest in the Latin language, 
 the single study which he cared for in boyhood. 
 Does not romance come originally from Roma, 
 as well as Romulus? He wished to stand where 
 Caesar stood, to behold the snowy Soracte of 
 Horace, and to read Virgil's description of an 
 Italian night on Italian ground. It is noticeable 
 that he cared little or nothing for the splendors 
 of Paris, the glittering peaks of Switzerland, 
 medical-musical Vienna, or the grand scholar- 
 ship and homely sweetness of old Germany. 
 
 Of all the Anglo-Saxon writers who have 
 celebrated Italy, Byron, Shelley, Rogers, Ruskin 
 and the two Brownings, none were more ad- 
 mirably equipped for it than Hawthorne. We 
 cannot read "The Romance of Monte Beni" 
 without recognizing a decidedly Italian element 
 in his composition, not the light-hearted, 
 subtle, elastic, fiery Italian, such as we are 
 accustomed to think them, but the tenderly 
 feeling, terribly earnest Tuscan, like Dante 
 and Savonarola. The myrtle and the cypress 
 are both emblematic of Italian character, and 
 307
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 there was more of the latter than the former, 
 though something of either, in Hawthorne's 
 own make-up. 
 
 The Hawthornes left London on January 
 6, and, reaching Paris the following day, they 
 made themselves comfortable at the Hotel du 
 Louvre. However, they only remained there 
 one week, during which it was so cold that they 
 saw little and enjoyed little. They went to 
 Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Madeleine, and 
 the Champs Elysees, but without being greatly 
 impressed by what they beheld. Hawthorne 
 does not mention a single painting or statue 
 among the art treasures of the Louvre, which 
 if rivalled elsewhere are certainly unsurpassed; 
 but Hawthorne began his studies in this line by 
 an examination of the drawings of the old 
 masters, and confesses that he was afterward too 
 much fatigued to appreciate their finished 
 paintings. 
 
 On January 19 they reached Marseilles, and 
 two days later they embarked on that dreary 
 winter voyage, so pleasant at an earlier season, 
 for Civita Vecchia; and on the 2oth they rolled 
 into the Eternal City, with such sensations as 
 one may imagine. On the 24th they located 
 themselves for the season in the Palazzo Lara- 
 zani, Via Porta Pinciana.* 
 
 Nemo similis Homeri. There is nothing 
 like the charm of a first visit to Rome. The 
 first sight of the Forum, with its single pathetic 
 
 * Italian Note-book.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 column, brings us back to our school-days, to 
 the study of Caesar and the reading of Plutarch; 
 and the intervening period drops out of our 
 lives, taking all our care and anxiety with it. 
 In England, France, Germany, we feel the 
 weight of the present, but in Rome the present 
 is like a glass window through which we view 
 the grand procession of past events. What is, 
 becomes of less importance than what was, and 
 for the first time we feel the true sense of our 
 indebtedness to the ages that have gone before. 
 We bathe deep in the spirit of classical anti- 
 quity, and we come out refreshed, enlarged and 
 purified. We return to the actualities of to-day 
 with a clearer understanding, and better pre- 
 pared to act our part in them. 
 
 Hawthorne did not feel this at first. He ar- 
 rived in inclement weather, and it was some 
 weeks before he became accustomed to the 
 climatic conditions so different from any 
 northern atmosphere. He hated the filth of the 
 much-neglected city, the squalor of its lower 
 classes, the narrowness of its streets, and the 
 peculiar pavement, which, as he says makes 
 walking in Rome a penitential pilgrimage. 
 He goes to the carnival, and his penetrating 
 glance proves it to be a sham entertainment. 
 
 But in due course he emerges from this mood ; 
 he rejoices in the atmospheric immensity of 
 St. Peter's; he looks out from the Pincian hill, 
 and sees Nivea Soracte as Horace beheld it ; and 
 he is overawed (if Hawthorne could be) by the 
 Forum of Trajan and the Column of Antoninus. 
 
 309
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 He makes a great discovery, or rediscovery, that 
 Phidias 's colossal statues of Castor and Pollux 
 on the Monte Cavallo are the finest figures in 
 Rome. They are late Roman copies, but prob- 
 ably from Phidias, not by Lysippus or Prax- 
 iteles ; and he felt the presence of Michel Angelo 
 in the Baths of Diocletian. It is not long 
 before he goes to the Pincian in the after- 
 noon to play at jack-stones with his youngest 
 daughter. 
 
 William W. Story, the American sculptor, 
 would seem to have been a former acquaintance. 
 His father, the famous law lecturer, lived in 
 Salem during Hawthorne's youth, but after- 
 ward removed to Cambridge, where the younger 
 Story was educated, and there married an 
 intimate friend of Mrs. James Russell Lowell. 
 This brought him into close relations with 
 Lowell, Longfellow, and their most intimate 
 friends. He was something of a poet, and more 
 of a sculptor, but, inheriting an independent 
 fortune and living in the Barberini Palace, he soon 
 became more of an Englishman than an Ameri- 
 can, a tendency which was visibly increased by 
 a patent of nobility bestowed on him by the 
 King of Naples. 
 
 Hawthorne soon renewed William Story's 
 acquaintance, and found him modelling the 
 statue of Cleopatra, of which Hawthorne has 
 given a somewhat idealized description in " The 
 Marble Faun." This may have interested 
 him the more from the fact that he witnessed 
 310
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 its development under the sculptor's hands, 
 and saw that distinguished historical person 
 emerge as it were out of the clay, like a second 
 Eve; but he makes a mental reservation that 
 it would be better if English and American 
 sculptors would make a freer use of their chisels 
 of which more hereafter. Story was a light- 
 hearted, discursive person, with a large amount 
 of bric-a-brac information, who could appreciate 
 Hawthorne either as a genius or as a celebrity. 
 He soon became Hawthorne's chief companion 
 and social mainstay in Rome, literally a vade 
 mecum, and we may believe that he exercised 
 more or less influence over Hawthorne's judg- 
 ment in matters of art. 
 
 Hawthorne listened to Story, and read Mrs. 
 Jameson, although Edward Silsbee had warned 
 him against her as an uncertain authority; 
 but Hawthorne depended chiefly on his own 
 investigations. He and his wife declined an 
 invitation to Mrs. Story's masquerade, and 
 lived very quietly during this first winter in 
 Rome, making few acquaintances, but seeing 
 a good deal of the city. They went together 
 to all the principal churches and the princely 
 galleries; and beside this Hawthorne traversed 
 Rome from one end to the other, and across in 
 every direction, sometimes alone, or in com- 
 pany with Julian, investigating everything from 
 the Mamartine prison, in which Jugurtha was 
 starved, to the catacombs of St. Calixtus and the 
 buffaloes on the Campagna. The impression 
 which Con way gives, that he went about sight-
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 seeing and drinking sour wine with Story and 
 Lothrop Motley, is not quite correct, for Motley 
 did not come to Rome until the following Decem- 
 ber, and then only met Hawthorne a few times, 
 according to his own confession.* We must 
 not forget, however, that excellent lady and 
 skilful astronomer, Miss Maria Mitchell, who 
 joined the Hawthorne party in Paris, and be- 
 came an indispensable accompaniment to them 
 the rest of the winter. 
 
 Hawthorne also became acquainted with 
 Buchanan Read, who afterward painted that 
 stirring picture of General Sheridan galloping 
 to the battle of Cedar Run; and on March 12 
 Mr. Read gave a party, at his Roman dwelling, 
 of painters and sculptors, which Hawthorne 
 attended, and has entered in full, with the 
 moonlight excursion afterward, in " The Marble 
 Faun." There Hawthorne met Gibson, to 
 whom he refers as the most distinguished sculptor 
 of the time. So he was, in England, but there 
 were much better sculptors in France and in 
 Germany. Gibson's personality interested 
 Hawthorne, as it well might, but he saw clearly 
 that Gibson was merely a skilful imitator of 
 the antique, or, as he calls him, a pagan idealist. 
 He also made acquaintance with two American 
 sculptors, a Yankee and a girlish young woman, 
 whose names are prudently withheld; for he 
 afterward visited their studios, and readily 
 discovered that they had no real talent for their 
 profession. 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 406. 
 312
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 If we feel inclined to quarrel with Hawthorne 
 anywhere, it is in his disparagement of Crawford. 
 There might be two opinions in regard to the 
 slavery question, but there never has been but 
 one as to the greatest of American artists. It 
 was a pity that his friend Hillard could not 
 have been with Hawthorne at this time to 
 counteract the jealous influences to which he 
 was exposed. He writes no word of regret at 
 the untimely death of Crawford, but goes into 
 his studio after that sad event and condemns 
 his work. Only the genre figure of a boy playing 
 marbles, gives him any satisfaction there; 
 although a plea of extenuation might be entered 
 in Hawthorne's favor, for statues of heroic size 
 could not be seen to greater disadvantage than 
 when packed together in a studio. The immense 
 buttons on the waistcoats of our revolutionary 
 heroes seem to have startled him on his first 
 entrance, and this may be accepted as an indica- 
 tion of the rest. Yet the tone of his criticism, 
 both in the "Note-book" and in "The Marble 
 Faun," is far from friendly to Crawford. He 
 does not refer to the statue of Beethoven, which 
 was Crawford's masterpiece, nor to the statue 
 of Liberty, which now poses on the lantern of 
 the Capitol at Washington, much too beautiful, 
 as Hartmann says, for its elevated position, 
 and superior in every respect to the French 
 statue of Liberty in New York harbor. 
 
 Hawthorne had already come to the conclu- 
 sion that there was a certain degree of poison in 
 the Roman atmosphere, and in April he found 
 
 313
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the climate decidedly languid, but he had fallen 
 in love with this pagan capital and he hated to 
 leave it. Mrs. Anna Jameson arrived late in 
 April; a sturdy, warm-hearted Englishwoman 
 greatly devoted to art, for which her books 
 served as elementary treatises and pioneers to 
 the English and Americans of those days. She 
 was so anxious to meet Hawthorne that she 
 persuaded William Story to bring him and his 
 wife to her lodgings when she was too ill to go 
 forth. They had read each other's writings and 
 could compliment each other in all sincerity, 
 for Mrs. Jameson had also an excellent narrative 
 style; but Hawthorne found her rather didactic, 
 and although she professed to be able "to read 
 a picture like a book," her conversation was 
 by no means brilliant. She had contracted an 
 unhappy marriage early in life, and found an 
 escape from her sorrows and regrets in this 
 elevated interest. 
 
 It was just before leaving Rome that Haw- 
 thorne conceived the idea of a romance in which 
 the "Faun" of Praxiteles should come to life, 
 and play a characteristic part in the modern 
 world ; the catastrophe naturally resulting from 
 his coming into conflict with a social organi- 
 zation for which he was unfitted. This portion 
 of Hawthorne's diary is intensely interesting to 
 those who have walked on classic ground. 
 
 On May 24 Hawthorne commenced his journey 
 
 to Florence with a vetturino by easy stages, and 
 
 one can cordially envy him this portion of his 
 
 Italian sojourn; with his devoted wife and 
 
 314
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 three happy children; travelling through some 
 of the most beautiful scenery in the world, 
 nearly if not quite equal to the Rhineland 
 without even the smallest cloud of care and 
 anxiety upon his sky, his mind stored with 
 mighty memories, and looking forward with 
 equal expectations to the prospect before him, 
 bella Firenze, the treasure-house of Italian 
 cities ; through sunny valleys, with their streams 
 and hill-sides winding seaward; up the precipi- 
 tous spurs of the Apennines, with their old 
 baronial castles perched like vultures' nests on 
 inaccessible crags; passing through gloomy, 
 tortuous defiles, guarded by Roman strong- 
 holds; and then drawn up by white bullocks 
 over Monte Somma, and to the mountain cities 
 of Assisi and Perugia, older than Rome itself; 
 by Lake Trasimenus. still ominous of the name 
 of Hannibal; over hill-sides silver-gray with 
 olive orchards; always a fresh view and a new 
 panorama, bounded by the purple peaks on the 
 horizon; and over all, the tender blue of the 
 Italian sky. Hawthorne may have felt that 
 his whole previous life, all he had struggled, 
 lived and suffered for, was but a preparation 
 for this one week of perfectly harmonious exist- 
 ence. Such vacations from earthly troubles 
 come but rarely in the most fortunate lives, and 
 are never of long duration. 
 
 When they reached Florence, they found it, 
 
 as Rose Hawthorne says, very hot much too 
 
 hot to enjoy the city as it should be enjoyed. 
 
 Her reminiscences of their life at Florence, and 
 
 315
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 especially of the Villa Manteuto, have a charm- 
 ing freshness and virginal simplicity, although 
 written in a somewhat high-flown manner. 
 She succeeds, in spite of her peculiar style, in 
 giving a distinct impression of the old chateau, 
 its surroundings, the life her family led there, 
 and of the wonderful view from Bellosguardo. 
 One feels that beneath the disguise of a fashion- 
 able dress there is an innocent, sympathetic, 
 and pure-spirited nature. 
 
 The Hawthornes arrived in Florence on the 
 afternoon of June 3, and spent the first night 
 at the Albergo della Fontano, and the next day 
 obtained apartments in the Casa del Bello, 
 opposite Hiram Powers' studio, and just out- 
 side of the Porta Romana. Hawthorne made 
 Mr. Powers' acquaintance even before he entered 
 the city, and Powers soon became to him what 
 Story had been in Rome. The Brownings were 
 already at Casa Guidi, still noted in the 
 annals of English poesy, and called upon the 
 Hawthornes at the first notice of their arrival. 
 Alacrity or readiness would seem to have been 
 one of Robert Browning's prominent charac- 
 teristics. Elizabeth Browning's mind was as 
 much occupied with spiritism as when Haw- 
 thorne met her two years previously at Monck- 
 ton Milnes's breakfast; an unfortunate pro- 
 clivity for a person of frail physique and delicate 
 nerves. Neither did she live very long after 
 this. Her husband and Hawthorne both cor- 
 dially disapproved of these mesmeric practices; 
 but Mrs. Browning could not be prevented 
 316
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 from talking on the subject, and this evidently 
 produced an ecstatic and febrile condition of 
 mind in her, very wearing to a poetic tempera- 
 ment. Hawthorne heartily liked Browning 
 himself, and always speaks well of him; but 
 there must also have been an undercurrent of 
 disagreement between him and so ardent an 
 admirer of Louis Napoleon, and he recalls 
 little or nothing of what Browning said to him. 
 This continued till the last of June, when Robert 
 and Elizabeth left Florence for cooler regions. 
 
 Meanwhile Hawthorne occupied himself seri- 
 ously with seeing Florence and studying art, 
 like a man who intends to get at the root of the 
 matter. Florence afforded better advantages 
 thaa Rome for the study of art, not only from 
 the superiority of its collections, but because 
 there the development of mediaeval art can be 
 traced to its fountain-source. He had no text- 
 books to guide him, at least he does not refer 
 to any, and his investigations were conse- 
 quently of rather an irregular kind, but it was 
 evidently the subject which interested him 
 most deeply at this time. His Note-book is full 
 of it, and also of discussions on sculpture with 
 Hiram Powers, in which Hawthorne has fre- 
 quently the best of the argument. 
 
 In fact Powers looked upon his art from much 
 too literal a stand-point. He agreed with Haw- 
 thorne as to the fine expression of the face of 
 Michel Angelo's "Giuliano de' Medici,"* but 
 
 *As Hawthorne did not prepare his diary for publication, 
 it would not be fair to hold him responsible for the many 
 
 317
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 affirmed that it was owing to a trick of over- 
 shadowing the face by the projecting visor of 
 Giuliano's helmet. Hawthorne did not see why 
 such a device did not come within the range of 
 legitimate art, the truth of the matter being 
 that Michel Angelo left the face unfinished; 
 but the expression of the statue is not in its 
 face, but in the inclination of the head, the posi 
 tion of the arms, the heavy droop of the armor, 
 and in fact in the whole figure. Powers' " Greek 
 Slave," on the contrary, though finely modelled 
 and sufficiently modern in type, has no definite 
 expression whatever. 
 
 Hawthorne found an exceptional interest in 
 the "Venus de' Medici," now supposed to have 
 been the work of one of the sons of Praxiteles, 
 and its wonderful symmetry gives it a radiance 
 like that of the sun behind a summer cloud; 
 but Powers cooled down his enthusiasm by 
 objecting to the position of the ears, the vacancy 
 of the face, the misrepresentation of the inner 
 surface of the lips, and by condemning particu- 
 larly the structure of the eyes, which he de- 
 clared were such as no human being could see 
 with.* Hawthorne was somewhat puzzled by 
 these subtleties of criticism, which he did not 
 know very well how to answer, but he still held 
 fast to the opinion that he was fundamentally 
 right, and retaliated by criticising Powers' 
 own statues in his diary. 
 
 instances of bad Italian in the Note-book, which ought to 
 have been edited by some one who knew the language. 
 * Italian Note-book, June 13, 1858.
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 The Greeks, in the best period of their 
 favorite art, never attempted a literal repro- 
 duction of the human figure. Certain features, 
 like the nostrils, were merely indicated; others, 
 like the eyelashes, often so expressive in woman, 
 were omitted altogether ; hair and drapery were 
 treated in a schematic manner. In order to 
 give an expression to the eyes, various devices 
 were resorted to. The eyelids of the bust of 
 Pericles on the Acropolis had bevelled edges, 
 and the eyeballs of the "Apollo Belvedere" 
 are exceptionally convex, to produce the effect 
 of looking to a distance, although the human 
 eye when gazing afar off becomes slightly con- 
 tracted. The head of the "Venus de' Medici" is 
 finely shaped, but small, and her features are 
 pretty, rather than beautiful ; but her eyes are 
 exceptional among all feminine statues for their 
 tenderness of expression swimming, as it were, 
 with love; and it is the manner in which this 
 effect is produced that Powers mistook for bad 
 sculpture. Hiram Powers' most exceptional 
 proposition was to the effect that the busts of 
 the Roman emperors were not characteristic 
 portraits. Hawthorne strongly dissented from 
 this ; and he was in the right, for if the character 
 of a man can be read from marble, it is from 
 those old blocks. Hawthorne has some admirable 
 remarks on this point. 
 
 Such was Hawthorne's internal life during his 
 first month at Florence. He was full of admi- 
 ration for the cathedral, the equestrian statue 
 of Cosmo de' Medici, the "David" of Michel 
 319
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Angelo, the Loggia de' Lanzi, Raphael's portrait 
 of Julius II., the "Fates" of Michel Angelo, and 
 many others; yet he confesses that the Dutch, 
 French, and English paintings gave him a more 
 simple, natural pleasure, probably because their 
 subjects came closer to his own experience. 
 
 A strange figure of an old man, with " a Palmer- 
 like beard," continually crossed Hawthorne's 
 path, both in Rome and in Florence, where he 
 dines with him at the Brownings'. His name is 
 withheld, but Hawthorne informs us that he is 
 an American editor, a poet; that he voted for 
 Buchanan, and was rejoicing in the defeat of 
 the Free-soilers, "a man to whom the world 
 lacks substance because he has not sufficiently 
 cultivated his emotional nature;" and "his 
 personal intercourse, though kindly, does not 
 stir one's blood in the least." Yet Hawthorne 
 finds him to be good-hearted, intelligent, and 
 sensible. This can be no other than William 
 Cullen Bryant.* 
 
 In the evening of June 27 the Hawthornes 
 went to call on a Miss Blagden, who occupied 
 a villa on Bellosguardo, and where they met 
 the Brownings, and a Mr. Trollope, a brother 
 of the novelist. It could not have been the 
 Villa Manteiito, which Miss Blagden rented, 
 for we hear of her at Bellosguardo again in 
 August, when Hawthorne was living there him- 
 self ; and after this we do not hear of the Brown- 
 ings again. 
 
 * Italian Note-book, ii. 15. 
 320
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hawthorne's remark on Browning's poetry 
 is one of the rare instances in which he criticises 
 a contemporary author: 
 
 " I am rather surprised that Browning's con- 
 versation should be so clear, and so much to the 
 purpose at the moment, since his poetry can 
 seldom proceed far, without running into the high 
 grass of latent meanings and obscure allusions." 
 
 It is precisely this which has prevented 
 Browning from achieving the reputation that 
 his genius deserves. We wish that Hawthorne 
 could have favored us with as much literary 
 criticism as he has given us of art criticism, and we 
 almost lose patience with him for his repeated 
 canonization of General Jackson St. Hickory 
 united with a disparagement of Washington and 
 Sumner ; but although Hawthorne's insight into 
 human nature was wonderful in its way, it 
 would seem to have been confined within narrow 
 boundaries. At least he seems to have pos- 
 sessed little insight into grand characters and 
 magnanimous natures. He wishes now that 
 Raphael could have painted Jackson's portrait. 
 So, conversely, Shakespeare belittles Caesar in 
 order to suit the purpose of his play. Which of 
 Shakespeare's male characters can be measured 
 beside George Washington? There is not one 
 of them, unless Kent in "King Lear." Strong, 
 resolute natures, like Washington, Hamilton, 
 Sumner, are not adapted to dramatic fiction, 
 either in prose or in verse. 
 
 A Florentine summer is about equal to one 
 in South Carolina, and now, when Switzerland 
 
 21 3 2I
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 can be reached by rail in twenty-four hours, no 
 American or Englishman thinks of spending 
 July and August there; but in Hawthorne's 
 time it was a long and expensive journey over 
 the Pennine Alps; Hawthorne's physique was 
 as well attempered to heat as to cold; and he 
 continued to frequent the picture-galleries and 
 museums after all others had ceased to do so; 
 although he complains in his diary that he had 
 never known it so hot before, and that the flag- 
 stones in the street reflect the sun's rays upon 
 him like the open doors of a furnace. 
 
 At length, in an entry of July 27, he says: 
 
 "I seldom go out nowadays, having already 
 seen Florence tolerably well, and the streets 
 being very hot, and myself having been engaged 
 in sketching out a romance,* which whether 
 it will ever come to anything is a point yet to 
 be decided. At any rate, it leaves me little 
 heart for journalizing, and describing new 
 things; and six months of uninterrupted mo- 
 notony would be more valuable to me just now, 
 than the most brilliant succession of novelties. " 
 
 This is the second instance in which we hear 
 of a romance based on the " Faun" of Praxiteles, 
 and now at last he appears to be in earnest. 
 
 It may be suspected that his entertaining 
 friend, Hiram Powers, was the chief obstacle to 
 the progress of his new plot, and it is rather 
 amusing to believe that it was through the 
 agency of Mr. Powers, who cared for nothing so 
 
 *"The Marble Faun." 
 322
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 much as Hawthorne's welfare, that this im- 
 pediment was removed. Five days later, Haw- 
 thorne and his household gods, which were 
 chiefly his wife and children, left the Casa del 
 Bello for the Villa Manteiito where they remained 
 in peaceful retirement until the first of October. 
 
 On the tower of the Villa he could enjoy 
 whatever enlivening breezes came across to 
 Florence from the mountains to the north and 
 east. When the tramontana blew, he was com- 
 fortable enough. Thunder-storms also came 
 frequently, with the roar of heaven's artillery 
 reverberating from peak to peak, and enveloping 
 Bellosguardo in a dense vapor, like the smoke 
 from Napoleon's cannon ; after which they would 
 career down the valley of the Arno to Pisa, 
 flashing and cannonading like a victorious army 
 in pursuit of the enemy. 
 
 The beauty of the summer nights at Florence 
 amply compensates for the sultriness of the 
 days, especially if they be moonlight nights, 
 and the bright starlight of the Mediterranean 
 is little less beautiful. Travellers who only see 
 Italy in winter, know not what they miss. 
 Hawthorne noticed that the Italian sky had a 
 softer blue than that of England and America, 
 and that there was a peculiar luminous quality 
 in the atmosphere, as well as a more decided 
 difference between sunshine and shadow, than 
 in countries north of the Alps. The atmosphere 
 of Italy, Spain, and Greece is not like any Ameri- 
 can air that I am acquainted with. During the 
 summer season, all Italians whose occupation 
 
 323
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the climate decidedly languid, but he had fallen 
 in love with this pagan capital and he hated to 
 leave it. Mrs. Anna Jameson arrived late in 
 April; a sturdy, warm-hearted Englishwoman 
 greatly devoted to art, for which her books 
 served as elementary treatises and pioneers to 
 the English and Americans of those days. She 
 was so anxious to meet Hawthorne that she 
 persuaded William Story to bring him and his 
 wife to her lodgings when she was too ill to go 
 forth. They had read each other's writings and 
 could compliment each other in all sincerity, 
 for Mrs. Jameson had also an excellent narrative 
 style; but Hawthorne found her rather didactic, 
 and although she professed to be able "to read 
 a picture like a book," her conversation was 
 by no means brilliant. She had contracted an 
 unhappy marriage early in life, and found an 
 escape from her sorrows and regrets in this 
 elevated interest. 
 
 It was just before leaving Rome that Haw- 
 thorne conceived the idea of a romance in which 
 the "Faun" of Praxiteles should come to life, 
 and play a characteristic part in the modern 
 world ; the catastrophe naturally resulting from 
 his coming into conflict with a social organi- 
 zation for which he was unfitted. This portion 
 of Hawthorne's diary is intensely interesting to 
 those who have walked on classic ground. 
 
 On May 24 Hawthorne commenced his journey 
 to Florence with a vetturino by easy stages, and 
 one can cordially envy him this portion of his 
 Italian sojourn; with his devoted wife and 
 
 314
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 three happy children; travelling through some 
 of the most beautiful scenery in the world, 
 nearly if not quite equal to the Rhineland 
 without even the smallest cloud of care and 
 anxiety upon his sky, his mind stored with 
 mighty memories, and looking forward with 
 equal expectations to the prospect before him, 
 bella Firenze, the treasure-house of Italian 
 cities ; through sunny valleys, with their streams 
 and hill-sides winding seaward; up the precipi- 
 tous spurs of the Apennines, with their old 
 baronial castles perched like vultures' nests on 
 inaccessible crags; passing through gloomy, 
 tortuous defiles, guarded by Roman strong- 
 holds; and then drawn up by white bullocks 
 over Monte Somma, and to the mountain cities 
 of Assisi and Perugia, older than Rome itself; 
 by Lake Trasimenus, still ominous of the name 
 of Hannibal; over hill-sides silver-gray with 
 olive orchards; always a fresh view and a new 
 panorama, bounded by the purple peaks on the 
 horizon; and over all, the tender blue of the 
 Italian sky. Hawthorne may have felt that 
 his whole previous life, all he had struggled, 
 lived and suffered for, was but a preparation 
 for this one week of perfectly harmonious exist- 
 ence. Such vacations from earthly troubles 
 come but rarely in the most fortunate lives, and 
 are never of long duration. 
 
 When they reached Florence, they found it, 
 as Rose Hawthorne says, very hot much too 
 hot to enjoy the city as it should be enjoyed. 
 Her reminiscences of their life at Florence, and 
 
 315
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 vagaries of persons in the same room, conveyed 
 in some occult manner to the brain of the me- 
 dium. The governess, Miss Shepard, agreed 
 with him in this, but she could give no expla- 
 nation as to the manner in which the response 
 came to her. Twenty years of scientific in- 
 vestigations have added little or nothing to 
 this diagnosis of Hawthorne's, nor are we any 
 nearer to an explanation of the simple fact; 
 which is wonderful enough in its way. Haw- 
 thorne compares the revelations of mediums to 
 dreams, but they are not exactly like them, 
 for they are at the same time more rational and 
 less original or spontaneous than dreams. In 
 my dreams my old friends often come back to 
 me and speak in their characteristic manner, 
 more characteristic perhaps than I could rep- 
 resent them when awake, but the responses 
 of mediums are either evasive or too highly 
 generalized to be of any particular value. The 
 story of Mary Runnel, or Rondel, which Julian 
 Hawthorne narrates, is an excellent case in 
 point. Hawthorne had probably heard of that 
 flirtation of his grandfather some time in his 
 youth, and the fact was unconsciously latent in 
 his mind; but nothing that Mary divulged at 
 Bellosguardo was of real interest to him or to 
 the others concerned. The practice of spiritism, 
 hypnotism, or Christian Science opens a wide 
 door for superstition and imposture to walk in 
 and seat themselves by our firesides. 
 
 About a year before this, Congress had given 
 Hiram Powers a commission to model a colossal 
 326
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 statue of America for the Capitol at Washington. 
 This he had done, and the committee in charge 
 accepted his design, Hawthorne also writes 
 admiringly of it, but it was also necessary to 
 receive the approval of the President, and this 
 Buchanan with his peculiar obstinacy refused 
 to give. Powers was left without compensation 
 for a whole year of arduous labor, and Haw- 
 thorne for once was thoroughly indignant. 
 He wrote in his diary: 
 
 "I wish our great Republic had the spirit 
 to do as much, according to its vast means, as 
 Florence did for sculpture and architecture 
 
 when it was a republic -. And 
 
 yet the less we attempt to do for art the better, 
 if our future attempts are to have no better 
 result than such brazen troopers as the eques- 
 trian statue of General Jackson, or even such 
 naked respectabilities as Greeneough's Washing- 
 ton. " 
 
 Perhaps Powers' "America" was a fortunate 
 escape, and yet it does not seem right that any 
 enlightened government should set such a pit- 
 fall for honest men to stumble into. There 
 certainly ought to be some compensation in 
 such cases. The experience of history hitherto 
 has been that, whereas painting and literature 
 have flourished under all forms of government, 
 sculpture has only attained its highest excellence 
 in republics like Athens, Rhodes, Florence, and 
 Nuremberg; so that upon this line of argument 
 there is good hope for America in the future. 
 
 327
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 HAWTHORNE AS ART CRITIC: 1858 
 
 NEARLY one-third of the Italian Note-book 
 is devoted to the criticisms or descriptions of 
 paintings, statues, and architecture, for which 
 we can be only too thankful as coming from 
 such a bright, penetrating, and ingenious in- 
 telligence. It is much in their favor that 
 Hawthorne had not previously undertaken a 
 course of instruction in art ; that he wrote for his 
 own benefit, and not for publication; and that 
 he was not biased by preconceived opinions. 
 It cannot be doubted that he was sometimes 
 influenced by the opinions of Story, Powers, 
 and other artists with whom he came in contact ; 
 but this could have happened only in particular 
 cases, and more especially in respect to modern 
 works of art. When Hawthorne visited the 
 galleries he usually went alone, or only accom- 
 panied by his wife. 
 
 The only opportunities for the study of aes- 
 thetics or art criticism, fifty years ago, were to be 
 found in German universities. Kugler's hand- 
 book of painting was the chief authority in use, 
 rather academic, but correct enough in a gen- 
 eral way. Ruskin, a more eloquent and dis- 
 criminating writer, had devoted himself chiefly 
 to celebrating the merits of Turner and Tin- 
 toretto, but was never quite just to Florentine 
 328
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 art. Mrs. Jameson followed closely after Kug- 
 ler, and was the only one of these that Haw- 
 thorne appears to have consulted. Winckel- 
 mann's history of Greek sculpture, which was 
 not a history in the proper sense of the word, 
 had been translated by Lodge, but Hawthorne 
 does not mention it, and it would not have been 
 much assistance to him if he had read it. Like 
 Winckelmann and Lessing, however, he ad- 
 mired the "Laocoon," an admiration now 
 somewhat out of fashion. 
 
 There can be no final authority in art, for the 
 most experienced critics still continue to differ 
 in their estimates of the same painting or statue. 
 More than this, it is safe to affirm that any one 
 writer who makes a statement concerning a certain 
 work of art at a given time, would have made 
 a somewhat different statement at another 
 time. In fact, this not unfrequently happens 
 in actual practice ; for all that any of us can do 
 is, to reproduce the impression made on us at 
 the moment, and this depends as much on our 
 own state of mind, and on our peculiarities, as 
 on the peculiarities of the picture or statue that 
 we criticise. It is the same in art itself. If 
 Raphael had not painted the " Sistine Madonna' ' 
 at the time he did, he would have produced a 
 different work. It was the concentration of 
 that particular occasion, and if any accident 
 had happened to prevent it, that pious and 
 beautiful vision would have been lost to the world. 
 
 It requires years of study and observation 
 of the best masters to become a trustworthy 
 329
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 art critic, and then everything depends of course 
 upon the genius of the individual. It has hap- 
 pened more than once that a wealthy American, 
 with a certain kind of enthusiasm for art, has 
 prepared himself at a German university, has 
 studied the science of connoisseurship, and has 
 become associate member of a number of for- 
 eign societies, only to discover at length that he 
 had no talent for the profession. Hawthorne 
 enjoyed no such advantages, nor did he even 
 think of becoming a connoisseur. His whole 
 experience in the art of design might be 
 included within twelve months, and his origi- 
 nal basis was nothing better than his wife's 
 water-color painting and the mediocre pictures 
 in the Boston Athenaeum; but he brought to 
 his subject an eye that was trained to the closest 
 observation of Nature and a mind experienced 
 beyond all others * in the mysteries of human 
 life. He begins tentatively, and as might be ex- 
 pected makes a number of errors, but quite as 
 often he hits the nail, where others have missed 
 it. He learns by his mistakes, and steadily 
 improves in critical faculty. Hawthorne's Ital- 
 ian Note -book is a unique record, in which the 
 development of a highly organized mind has 
 advanced from small beginnings to exceptional 
 skill in a fresh department of activity. 
 
 Hawthorne brought with him to Italy the 
 Yankee preference for newness and nicety, 
 which our forefathers themselves derived from 
 
 * At least at that time. 
 330
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 their residence in Holland, and there is no city 
 in Europe where this sentiment could have 
 troubled him so much as in Rome. He dis- 
 liked the dingy picture-frames, the uncleanly 
 canvases, the earth-stains and broken noses 
 of the antique statues, the smoked-up walls of 
 the Sistine Chapel, and the cracks in Raphael's 
 frescos. He condemns everything as rubbish 
 which has not an external perfection; forget- 
 ting that, as in human nature, the most precious 
 treasures are sometimes allied with an ungainly 
 exterior. Yet in this he only echoes the impres- 
 sions of thousands of others who have gone to 
 the Vatican and returned disconsolate, because 
 amid a perplexing multitude of objects they 
 knew not where to look for consummate art. 
 One can imagine if an experienced friend had 
 accompanied Hawthorne to the Raphael stanza, 
 and had pointed out the figures of the Pope, the 
 cardinal, and the angelic boys in the "Mass at 
 Bolsena," he would have admired them without 
 limitation. He quickly discovered Raphael's 
 "Transfiguration," and considered it the greatest 
 painting that the world contains. 
 
 The paintings in the princely collections in 
 Rome are, with the exception of those in the 
 Borghese gallery, far removed from princely. 
 A large proportion of their best paintings had 
 long since been sold to the royal collections of 
 northern Europe, and had been replaced either 
 by copies or by works of inferior masters. In 
 the Barberini palace there are not more than 
 three or four paintings such as might reasonably 
 
 331
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 detain a traveller, and it is about the same in 
 the Ludovisi gallery. There was not a grain of 
 affectation in Hawthorne; he never pretended 
 to admire what he did not like, nor did he strain 
 himself into liking anything that his inner na- 
 ture rebelled against. 
 
 Hawthorne's taste in art was much in ad- 
 vance of his time. His quick appreciation of 
 the colossal statues of Castor and Pollux on 
 the Quirinal is the best proof of this. Ten years 
 later it was the fashion in Rome to deride those 
 statues, as a late work of the empire and greatly 
 lacking in artistic style. Brunn, in his history 
 of ancient sculpture, attributes them to the 
 school of Lysippus, a contemporary of Alex- 
 ander, which Brunn certainly would not have 
 done if he had possessed a good eye for form. 
 Vasari, on the contrary, a surer critic, con- 
 sidered them worthy to be placed beside Michel 
 Angelo's "David"; but it remained for Furtwan- 
 gler to restore them to their true position as a 
 work of the Periclean age, although copied by 
 Italian sculptors. They must have been the 
 product of a single mind,* either Phidias, Al- 
 cameres, or the elder Praxiteles if there ever 
 was such a person; and they have the finest 
 figures of any statues in Rome (much finer than 
 the dandified "Apollo Belvedere") and also the 
 most spirited action. 
 
 Hawthorne went to the Villa Ludovisi to 
 see the much- vaunted bas-relief of Antinous, 
 
 * On the base of one is Opus Phidice, and on that of the 
 other, Opus Praxitelis. 
 
 332
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 which fifty years ago was considered one of 
 the art treasures of the city ; but a more refined 
 taste has since discovered that in spite of the 
 rare technical skill, its hard glassy finish gives 
 it a cold and conventional effect. Hawthorne 
 returned from it disappointed, and wrote in his 
 diary: 
 
 "This Antinous is said to be the finest relic 
 of antiquity next to the Apollo and the Laocoon ; 
 but I could not feel it to be so, partly, I suppose, 
 because the features of Antinous do not seem 
 to me beautiful in themselves; and that heavy, 
 downward look is repeated till I am more weary 
 of it than of anything else in sculpture. " 
 
 The Greek artist of Adrian's time attempted 
 to give the face a pensive expression, but only 
 succeeded in this heavy downward look. 
 
 Hawthorne felt the same disappointment 
 after his first visit to the sculpture-gallery of 
 the Vatican. " I must confess," he wrote, "tak- 
 ing such transient glimpses as I did, I was more 
 impressed with the extent of the Vatican, and 
 the beautiful order in which it is kept and its 
 great sunny, open courts, with fountains, grass, 
 and shrubs . . . than with the statuary." The 
 Vatican collection has great archaeological value, 
 but, with the exception of the "Laocoon," the 
 "Meleager," the "Apollo," and a few others, little 
 or no artistic value. The vast majority of the 
 statues there are either late Roman works or 
 cheap Roman copies of second-rate Hellenic 
 statues. Some of them are positively bad and 
 others are archaic, and Hawthorne was fully justi- 
 
 333
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 fied in his disatisf action with them. He noticed, 
 however, a decided difference between the original 
 "Apollo" and the casts of it with which he was 
 familiar. On a subsequent visit he fails to observe 
 the numerous faults in Canova's " Perseus," and 
 afterwards writes this original statement con- 
 cerning the " Laocoon" : 
 
 "I felt the Laocoon very powerfully, though 
 very quietly; an immortal agony with a strange 
 calmness diffused through it, so that it resem- 
 bles the vast age of the sea, calm on account 
 of its immensity; as the tumult of Niagara, 
 which does not seem to be tumult, because it 
 keeps pouring on forever and ever. " 
 
 Professor E. A. Gardner and the more fas- 
 tidious school of crities have recently decided 
 that the action of the "Laocoon" is too violent 
 to be contained within the proper boundaries 
 of sculpture; but Hawthorne controverts this 
 view in a single sentence. The action is violent, 
 it is true, but the impression which the statue 
 makes on him is not a violent one; for the 
 greatness of the art sublimates the motive. It 
 is a tragedy in marble, and Pliny, who had 
 seen the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, placed 
 Agesander's "Laocoon" above them all. 
 This, however, is a Roman view. What Haw- 
 thorne wrote in his diary should not always 
 be taken literally. When he declares that he 
 would like to have every artist that perpetrates 
 an allegory put to death, he merely expresses 
 the puzzling effects which such compositions 
 frequently exercise on the weary -minded 
 
 334
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 traveller ; and when he wishes that all the frescos 
 on Italian walls could be obliterated, he only 
 repeats a sentiment of similar strain. Perhaps 
 we should class in the same category Haw- 
 thorne's remark concerning the Elgin marbles 
 in the British Museum, that "it would be well if 
 they were converted into paving-stones." There 
 are no grander monuments of ancient art than 
 those battered and headless statues from the 
 pediment of the Parthenon (the figures of the 
 so-called "Three Fates" surpass the "Venus of 
 Melos"), and archaeologists are still in dispute 
 as to what they may have represented; but 
 the significance of the subject before him was 
 always the point in which Hawthorne was in- 
 terested. Julian Hawthorne says of his father, 
 in regard to a similar instance: 
 
 "Of technicalities, difficulties overcome, harmony of 
 lines, and so forth, he had no explicit knowledge; they 
 produced their effect upon him of course, but without his 
 recognizing the manner of it. All that concerned him was 
 the sentiment which the artist had meant to express; the 
 means and method were comparatively unimportant. "* 
 
 The technicalities of art differ with every clime 
 and every generation. They belong chiefly to 
 the connoisseur, and have their value, but the 
 less a critic thinks of them in making a general 
 estimate of a painting or statue, the more likely 
 he is to render an impartial judgment. Haw- 
 thorne's analysis of Praxiteles's "Faun," in 
 his "Romance of Monte Beni," being a subject 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 193. 
 335
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 in which he was particularly interested, is almost 
 without a rival in the literature of its kind; 
 and this is the more remarkable since the copy 
 of the "Faun" in the museum of the Capitol 
 is not one of the best, at least it is inferior to 
 the one in the Glyptothek at Munich. It seems 
 as if Hawthorne had penetrated to the first con- 
 ception of it in the mind of Praxiteles. 
 
 The Sistine Chapel, like the Italian scenery, 
 only unfolds its beauties on a bright day, and 
 Hawthorne happened to go there when the sky 
 was full of drifting clouds, a time when it is 
 difficult to see any object as it really is. It may 
 have been on this account that he entirely mis- 
 took the action of the Saviour in Michel Angelo's 
 "Last Judgment." Christ has raised his arm 
 above his head in order to display the mark 
 where he was nailed to the cross, and Hawthorne 
 presumed this, as many others have done, to be 
 an angry threatening gesture of condemnation, 
 which would not accord with his merciful spirit. 
 He appreciated the symmetrical figure of Adam, 
 and the majestic forms of the prophets and 
 sibyls encircling the ceiling, and if he had seen 
 the face of the Saviour in a fair light, he might 
 have recognized that such divine calmness of 
 expression could not coexist with a vindictive 
 motive. This, however, can be seen to better 
 advantage in a Braun photograph than in the 
 painting itself. 
 
 Hawthorne goes to the Church of San Pietro 
 in Vincolo to see Michel Angelo's "Moses," but 
 he does not moralize before it, like a certain 
 336
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Concord artist, on " the weakness of exaggera- 
 tion;" nor does he consider, like Ruskin, that 
 its conventional horns are a serious detriment. 
 On the contrary he finds it "grand and sublime, 
 with a beard flowing down like a cataract; a 
 truly majestic figure, but not so benign as it 
 were desirable that such strength should hold." 
 An Englishman present remarked that the 
 " Moses" had very fine features, "a compli- 
 ment," says Hawthorne, "for which the colossal 
 Hebrew ought to have made the Englishman 
 a bow."* 
 
 Perhaps the Englishman really meant that 
 the face had a noble expression. The somewhat 
 satyr-like features of the "Moses" would seem 
 to have been unconsciously adopted, together 
 with the horns, from a statue of the god Pan, 
 which thus serves as an intermediate link be- 
 tween the "Moses" and the "Faun" of Praxiteles; 
 but he who cannot appreciate Michel Angelo's 
 "Moses" in spite of this, knows nothing of the 
 Alpine heights of human nature. 
 
 Of all the paintings that Hawthorne saw in 
 Rome none impressed him so deeply as Guide's 
 portrait of Beatrice Cenci, and none more justly. 
 If the "Laocoon" is the type of an old Greek 
 tragedy, a strong man strangled in the coils of 
 Fate, the portrait of Beatrice represents the 
 tragedy of mediaeval Italy, a beautiful woman 
 crushed by the downfall of a splendid civiliza- 
 tion. The fate of Joan of Arc or of Madame 
 
 * Italian Note-book, p. 164. 
 22 337
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Roland was merciful compared to that of poor 
 Beatrice. Religion is no consolation to her, 
 for it is the Pope himself who signs her death- 
 warrant. She is massacred to gratify the av- 
 arice of the Holy See. Yet in this last evening 
 of her tragical life, she does find strength and 
 consolation in her dignity as a woman. Never 
 was art consecrated to a higher purpose; Guido 
 rose above himself; and, as Hawthorne says, 
 it seems as if mortal man could not have wrought 
 such an effect. It has always been the most pop- 
 ular painting in Rome, but Hawthorne was the 
 first to celebrate its unique superiority in writ- 
 ing, and his discourse upon it in various places 
 leaves little for those that follow. 
 
 It may have been long since discovered that 
 Hawthorne's single weakness was a weakness 
 for his friends; certainly an amiable weakness, 
 but nevertheless that is the proper name for it. 
 When Phocion was Archon of Athens, he said 
 that a chief magistrate should know no friends; 
 and the same should be true of an authoritative 
 writer. Hawthorne has not gone so far in this 
 direction as many others have who had less 
 reason to speak with authority than he; but 
 he has indicated his partiality for Franklin 
 Pierce plainly enough, and his over-praise 
 of Hiram Powers and William Story, as well 
 as his under-praise of Crawford, will go down 
 to future generations as something of an in- 
 justice to those three artists. 
 
 It is not necessary to repeat here what Haw- 
 thorne wrote concerning Powers' Webster. The 
 338
 
 WAS IN PRISON, WHICH SUGGESTED TO 
 OF " THE MARBLE FAUN " 
 
 1AWTHORNE THE PLOT
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 statue stands in front of the State House 
 at Boston, and serves as a good likeness of the 
 famous orator, but more than that one cannot 
 say for it. The face has no definable expres- 
 sion, and those who have looked for a central 
 motive in the figure will be pleased to learn what 
 it is by reading Hawthorne's description of it, 
 as he saw it in Powers' studio at Florence. 
 A sculptor of the present day can find no better 
 study for his art than the attitudes and changes 
 of countenance in an eloquent speaker ; but 
 which of them can be said to have taken ad- 
 vantage of this? Story made an attempt in his 
 statue of Everett, but even his most indulgent 
 friends did not consider it a success. His 
 " George Peabody," opposite the Bank of Eng- 
 land, could not perhaps have been altogether 
 different from what it is. 
 
 What chiefly interested Story in his profession 
 seems to have been the modelling of unhappy 
 women in various attitudes of reflection. He 
 made a number of these, of which his "Cleo- 
 patra" is the only one known to fame, and in 
 the expression of her face he has certainly 
 achieved a high degree of excellence. Neither 
 has Hawthorne valued it too highly, the ex- 
 pression of worldly splendor incarnated in a 
 beautiful woman on the tragical verge of an 
 abyss. If she only were beautiful! Here the 
 limitations of the statue commence. Haw- 
 thorne says, "The sculptor had not shunned 
 to give the full, Nubian lips and other char- 
 acteristics of the Egyptian physiognomy." 
 
 339
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Here he follows the sculptor himself, and it is 
 remarkable that a college graduate like William 
 Story should have made so transparent a mis- 
 take. Cleopatra was not an Egyptian at all. 
 The Ptolemies were Greeks, and it is simply 
 impossible to believe that they would have 
 allied themselves with a subject and alien race. 
 This kind of small pedantry has often led artists 
 astray, and was peculiarly virulent during the 
 middle of the past century. The whole figure 
 of Story's "Cleopatra" suffers from it. Haw- 
 thorne says again, "She was draped from head 
 to foot in a costume minutely and scrupulously 
 studied from that of ancient Egypt." In fact, 
 the body and limbs of the statue are so closely 
 shrouded as to deprive the work of that sense 
 of freedom of action and royal abandon which 
 greets us in Shakespeare's and Plutarch's "Cleo- 
 patra." Story might have taken a lesson from 
 Titian's matchless "Cleopatra" in the Cassel 
 gallery, or from Marc Antonio's small wood- 
 cut of Raphael's "Cleopatra." 
 
 Perhaps it is not too much to say of Craw- 
 ford that he was the finest plastic genius of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. His technique may not have 
 been equal to Flaxman's or St. Gaudens', but 
 his designs have more of grandeur than the 
 former, and he is more original than the latter. 
 There are faults of modelling in his "Orpheus," 
 and its attitude resembles that of the eldest 
 son of Niobe in the Florentine gallery, although 
 the Niobe youth looks upward and Orpheus is 
 peering into darkness, its features are rather 
 340
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 too pretty; but the statue has exactly what 
 Powers' "Greek Slave" lacks, a definite motive, 
 that of an earnest seeker, which pervades it 
 from head to foot ; and it is no imaginary pathos 
 that we feel in its presence. There is, at least, 
 no imitation of the antique in Crawford's 
 "Beethoven," for its conception, the listening to 
 internal harmonies, would never have occurred 
 to a Greek or a Roman. Even Hawthorne 
 admits Crawford's skill in the treatment of 
 drapery; and this is very important, for it is 
 in his drapery quite as much as in the nude 
 that we recognize the superiority of Michel 
 Angelo to Raphael; and the folds of Bee- 
 thoven's mantle are as rhythmical as his own 
 harmonies. The features lack something of 
 firmness, but it is altogether a statue in the 
 grand manner. 
 
 Hawthorne is rather too exacting in his re- 
 quirements of modern sculptors. Warrington 
 Wood, who commenced life as a marble-worker, 
 always employed Italian workmen to carve his 
 statues, although he was perfectly able to do 
 it himself, and always put on the finishing 
 touches, as I presume they all do. Bronze 
 statues are finished with a file, and of course 
 do not require any knowledge of the chisel. 
 
 In regard to the imitation of antique atti- 
 tudes, there has certainly been too much of it, 
 as Hawthorne supposes; but the Greeks them- 
 selves were given to this form of plagiarism, 
 and even Praxiteles sometimes adopted the 
 motives of his predecessors; but Hawthorne 
 
 341
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 praises Powers, Story, and Harriet Hosmer 
 above their merits. 
 
 The whole brotherhood of artists and their 
 critical friends might rise up against me, if I 
 were to support Hawthorne's condemnation 
 of modern Venuses, and "the guilty glimpses 
 stolen at hired models." They are not neces- 
 sarily guilty glimpses. To an experienced artist 
 the customary study from a naked figure, male 
 or female, is little more than what a low-necked 
 dress at a party would be to many others. 
 Yet the instinct of the age shrinks from this 
 exposure. We can make pretty good Venuses, 
 but we cannot look at them through the same 
 mental and moral atmosphere as the contem- 
 poraries of Scopas, or even with the same eyes 
 that Michel Angelo saw them. We feel the 
 difference between a modern Venus and an 
 ancient one. There is a statue in the Vatican 
 of a Roman emperor, of which every one says 
 that it ought to wear clothes; and the reason 
 is because the face has such a modern look. 
 A raving Bacchante may be a good acquisition 
 to an art museum, but it is out of place in a public 
 library. A female statue requires more or less 
 drapery to set off the outlines of the figure and 
 to give it dignity. We feel this even in the finest 
 Greek work like the "Venus of Cnidos." 
 
 In this matter Hawthorne certainly exposes 
 his Puritanic education, and he also places too 
 high a value on the carving of button-holes and 
 shoestrings by Italian workmen. Such things 
 are the fag-ends of statuary. 
 342
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 His judgment, however, is clear and convinc- 
 ing in regard to the tinted Eves and Venuses 
 of Gibson. Whatever may have been the ancient 
 practice in this respect, Gibson's experiment 
 proved a 'failure. Nobody likes those statues; 
 and no other sculptor has since followed Gib- 
 son's example. The tinting of statues by the 
 Greeks did not commence until the time of 
 Aristotle, and does not seem to have been very 
 general. Their object evidently was, not so 
 much to imitate flesh as to tone down the 
 crystalline glare of the new marble. Pausanias 
 speaks of a statue in Arcadia, the drapery of 
 which was painted with vermilion, "so as to look 
 very gay." This was of course the consequence 
 of a late and degraded taste. That traces of 
 paint should have been discovered on Greek 
 temples is no evidence that the marble was 
 painted when they were first built. 
 
 It may be suspected that Hawthorne was one 
 of the very few who have seen the "Venus de' 
 Medici " and recognized the true significance 
 of the statue. The vast majority of visitors to 
 the Uffizi only see in it the type of a perfectly 
 symmetrical woman bashfully posing for her 
 likeness in marble, but Hawthorne's perception 
 in it went much beyond that, and the fact that 
 he attempts no explanation of its motive is 
 in accordance with the present theory. He 
 also noticed that statues had sometimes ex- 
 ercised a potent spell over him, and at others 
 a very slight influence. 
 
 Froude says that a man's modesty is the best 
 
 343
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 part of him. Notice that, ye strugglers for 
 preferment, and how beautifully modest Haw- 
 thorne is, when he writes in his Florentine 
 diary : 
 
 "In a year's time, with the advantage of 
 access to this magnificent gallery, I think I 
 might come to have some little knowledge of 
 pictures. At present I still know nothing ; 
 but am glad to find myself capable, at least, 
 <if loving one picture better than another. I 
 am sensible, however, that a process is going on, 
 and has been ever since I came to Italy, that 
 puts me in a state to see pictures with less toil, 
 and more pleasure, and makes me more fastid- 
 ious, yet more sensible of beauty where I saw 
 none before." 
 
 Hawthorne belongs to the same class of 
 amateur critics as Shelley and Goethe, who, 
 even if their opinions cannot always be ac- 
 cepted as final, illuminate the subject with the 
 radiance of genius and have an equal value 
 with the most experienced connoisseurs. 
 
 The return of the Hawthornes to Rome 
 through Tuscany was even more interesting 
 than their journey to Florence in the spring, 
 and they enjoyed the inestimable advantage 
 of a vetturino who would seem to have been the 
 Sir Philip Sidney of his profession, a compen- 
 dium of human excellences. There are such 
 men, though rarely met with, and we may trust 
 Hawthorne's word that Constantino Bacci was 
 
 344
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 one of them; not only a skilful driver, but a 
 generous provider, honest, courteous, kindly, 
 and agreeable. They went first to Siena, where 
 they were entertained for a week or more 
 by the versatile Mr. Story, and where Haw- 
 thorne wrote an eloquent description of the 
 cathedral; then over the mountain pass where 
 Radicofani nestles among the iron-browed crags 
 above the clouds; past the malarious Lake of 
 Bolsena, scene of the miracle which Raphael has 
 commemorated in the Vatican; through Viterbo 
 and Sette Vene; and finally, on October 16, into 
 Rome, through the Porta' del Popolo, designed 
 by Michel Angelo in his massive style, Do- 
 nati's comet flaming before them every night. 
 Thompson, the portrait painter, had already 
 secured a furnished house, No. 68 Piazza Poli, 
 for the Hawthornes, to which they went im- 
 mediately. 
 
 Since the death of Julius Caesar, comets have 
 always been looked upon as the forerunners 
 of pestilence and war, but wars are sometimes 
 blessings, and Donati's discovery proved a 
 harbinger of good to Italy, but to the Haw- 
 thornes, a prediction of evil. Continually in 
 Hawthorne's Italian journal we meet with 
 references to the Roman malaria, as if it were 
 a subject that occupied his thoughts, and no- 
 where is this more common than during the 
 re turn- journey from Florence. Did it occur 
 to him that the lightning might strike in his 
 own house? No sensible American now would 
 take his children to Rome unless for a very 
 
 345
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 brief visit; and yet William Story brought up 
 his family there with excellent success, so far 
 as health was concerned. 
 
 We can believe that Hawthorne took 
 every possible precaution, so far as he knew, 
 but in spite of that on November i his eldest 
 daughter was seized with Roman fever, and 
 for six weeks thereafter lay trembling be- 
 tween life and death, so that it seemed as if a 
 feather might turn the balance. 
 
 She does not appear to have been imprudent. 
 Her father believed that the "old hag" breathed 
 upon her while she was with her mother, who 
 was sketching in the Palace of the Caesars; but 
 the Palatine Hill is on high ground, with a 
 foundation of solid masonry, and was guarded 
 by French soldiers, and it would have been 
 difficult to find a more cleanly spot in the city. 
 A German count, who lived in a villa on the 
 Caelian Hill, close by, considered his residence 
 one of the most healthful in Rome. Miss Una 
 had a passionate attachment for the capital 
 of the ancient world; and it seems as if the 
 evil spirit of the place had seized upon her, 
 as the Ice Maiden is supposed to entrap chamois 
 hunters in the Alps. 
 
 One of the evils attendant on sickness in a 
 foreign country is, the uncertainty in regard 
 to a doctor, and this naturally leads to a dis- 
 trust and suspicion of the one that is employed. 
 Even so shrewd a man as Bismarck fell into 
 the hands of a charlatan at St. Petersburg and 
 suffered severely in consequence. Hawthorne 
 346
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 either had a similar experience, or, what came 
 to the same thing, believed that he did. He 
 considered himself obliged to change doctors 
 for his daughter, and this added to his care 
 and anxiety. During the next four months 
 he wrote not a word in his journal (or else- 
 where, so far as we know), and he visibly aged 
 before his wife's eyes. He went to walk on 
 occasion with Story or Thompson, but it was 
 merely for the preservation of his own health. 
 His thoughts were always in his daughter's 
 chamber, and this was so strongly marked upon 
 his face that any one could read it. Toward 
 the Ides of March, Miss Una was sufficiently 
 improved to take a short look at the carnival, 
 but it was two months later before she was 
 in a condition to travel, and neither she nor her 
 father ever wholly recovered from the effects 
 of this sad experience. 
 
 347
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 "THE MARBLE FAUN": 1859-1860 
 
 WHAT the Roman carnival was a hundred and 
 fifty years ago, when the Italian princes poured 
 out their wealth upon it, and when it served 
 as a medium for the communication of lovers 
 as well as for social and political intrigue, 
 which sometimes resulted in conflicts like those 
 of the Montagues and Capulets, can only be 
 imagined. Goethe witnessed it from a balcony 
 in the Corso, and his carnival in the second 
 part of "Faust" was worked up from notes 
 taken on that occasion; but it is so highly 
 poetized that little can be determined from 
 it, except as a portion of the drama. By 
 Hawthorne's time the aristocratic Italians 
 had long since given up their favorite holi- 
 day to English and American travellers, 
 crowded out, as it were, by the superiority of 
 money; and since the advent of Victor Em- 
 manuel, the carnival has become so demo- 
 cratic that you are more likely to encounter 
 your landlady's daughter there than any more 
 distinguished person. Hawthorne's description 
 of it in "The Marble Faun" is not overdrawn, 
 and is one of the happiest passages in the 
 book. 
 
 The carnival of 1859 was an exceptionally 
 brilliant one. The Prince of Wales attended 
 348
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 it with a suite of young English nobles, who, 
 always decorous and polite on public occasions, 
 nevertheless infused great spirit into the pro- 
 ceedings. Sumner and Motley were there, and 
 Motley rented a balcony in a palace, to which 
 the Hawthornes received general and repeated 
 invitations. On March 7, Miss Una was driven 
 through the Corso in a barouche, and the Prince 
 of Wales threw her a bouquet, probably recog- 
 nizing her father, who was with her; and to 
 prove his good intentions he threw her another, 
 when her carriage returned from the Piazza 
 del Popolo. The present English sovereign 
 has always been noted for a sort of journalistic 
 interest in prominent men of letters, science, 
 and public affairs, and it is likely that he was 
 better informed in regard to the Hawthornes 
 than they imagined. Hawthorne himself was 
 too much subdued by his recent trial to enter 
 into the spirit of the carnival, even with a heart 
 much relieved from anxiety, but he sometimes 
 appeared in the Motleys' balcony, and some- 
 times went along the narrow sidewalk of the 
 Corso, "for an hour or so among the people, 
 just on the edges of the fun." Sumner invited 
 Mrs. Hawthorne to take a stroll and see pictures 
 with him, from which she returned delighted 
 with his criticisms and erudition. 
 
 A few days later Franklin Pierce suddenly 
 appeared at No. 68 Piazza Poli, with that shadow 
 on his face which was never wholly to leave 
 it. The man who fears God and keeps his com- 
 mandments will never feel quite alone in the 
 
 349
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 world ; but for the man who lives on popularity, 
 what will there be left when that forsakes him? 
 Hawthorne was almost shocked at the change 
 in his friend's appearance; not only at his gray 
 hair and wrinkled brow, but at the change in 
 his voice, and at a certain lack of substance in 
 him, as if the personal magnetism had gone out 
 of him. Hawthorne went to walk with him, 
 and tried to encourage him by suggesting 
 another term of the presidency, but this did 
 not help much, for even Pierce 's own State had 
 deserted him, a fact of which Hawthorne 
 may not have been aware. The companionship 
 of his old friend, however, and the manifold 
 novelty of Rome itself, somewhat revived the 
 ex-President, as may be imagined ; and a month 
 later he left for Venice, in better spirits than 
 he came. 
 
 They celebrated the Ides of March by going 
 to see Harriet Hosmer's statue of Zenobia, 
 which was afterward exhibited in America. 
 Hawthorne immediately detected its resem- 
 blance to the antique, the figure was in fact 
 a pure plagiarism from the smaller statue of 
 Ceres in the Vatican, but Miss Hosmer suc- 
 ceeded in giving the face an expression of 
 injured and sorrowing majesty, which Haw- 
 thorne was equally ready to appreciate. 
 
 On this second visit to Rome he became 
 acquainted with a sculptor, whose name is not 
 given, but who criticised Hiram Powers with a 
 rather suspicious severity. He would not allow 
 Powers "to be an artist at all, or to know any- 
 350
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 thing of the laws of art, although acknowledging 
 him to be a great bust-maker, and to have put 
 together the " Greek Slave " and the " Fisher- 
 Boy" very ingeniously. " The latter, however 
 (he says) , is copied from the Spinario in the Trib- 
 une of the Uffizi; and the former made up of 
 beauties that had no reference to one another; 
 and he affirms that Powers is ready to sell, and 
 has actually sold, the ' Greek Slave,' limb by 
 limb, dismembering it by reversing the process 
 of putting it together. Powers knows nothing 
 scientifically of the human frame, and only 
 succeeds in representing it, as a natural bone- 
 doctor succeeds in setting a dislocated limb, by 
 a happy accident or special providence." * 
 
 We may judge, from "the style, the matter, 
 and the drift" of this discourse, that it emanated 
 from the same sculptor who is mentioned, in 
 "Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife," as 
 having traduced Margaret Fuller and her hus- 
 band Count Ossoli. As Tennyson says, "A lie 
 that is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies," 
 and this fellow would seem to have been an 
 adept in unveracious exaggeration. It is re- 
 markable that Hawthorne should have given 
 serious attention to such a man ; but an English 
 critic said in regard to this same incident that 
 if Hawthorne had been a more communicative 
 person, if he had talked freely to a larger number 
 of people, he would not have been so easily 
 prejudiced by those few with whom he was 
 
 * Italian Note-book, 483. 
 35i
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 chiefly intimate. To which it could be added, 
 that he might also have taken broader views in 
 regard to public affairs. 
 
 Hawthorne was fortunate to have been present 
 at the discovery of the St. Petersburg "Venus," 
 the twin sister of the "Venus de' Medici," 
 which was dug up in a vineyard outside the 
 Porta Portese. The proprietor of the vineyard, 
 who made his fortune at a stroke by the dis- 
 covery, happened to select the site for a new 
 building over the buried ruins of an ancient 
 villa, and the "Venus" was discovered in what 
 appeared to Hawthorne as an old Roman 
 bath-room. The statue was in more perfect 
 preservation than the "Venus de' Medici," 
 both of whose arms have been restored, and 
 Hawthorne noticed that the head was larger and 
 the face more characteristic, with wide-open 
 eyes and a more confident expression. He was 
 one of the very few who saw it before it was 
 transported to St. Petersburg, and a thorough 
 artistic analysis of it is still one of the deside~ 
 rata. The difference in expression, however, 
 would seem to be in favor of the "Venus de' 
 Medici," as more in accordance with the ruling 
 motive of the figure. 
 
 Miss Una Hawthorne had not sufficiently 
 recovered to travel until the last of May, when 
 they all set forth northward by way of Genoa 
 and Marseilles, in which latter place we find 
 them on the 28th, enjoying the comfort and 
 elegance of a good French hotel. Thence they 
 proceeded to Avignon, but did not find much 
 352
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 to admire there except the Rhone; so they 
 continued to Geneva, the most pleasant, home- 
 like resting place in Europe, but quite deficient 
 in other attractions. 
 
 It seems as if Hawthorne's Roman friends 
 were somewhat remiss in not giving him better 
 advice in regard to European travelling. At 
 Geneva he was within a stone's throw of 
 Chamounix, and hardly more than that of 
 Strasburg Cathedral, and yet he visited neither. 
 Why did he go out of his way to see so little 
 and to miss so much? He went across the lake 
 to visit Lausanne and the Castle of Chillon, and 
 he was more than astonished at the view of the 
 Pennine Alps from the deck of the steamer. 
 He had never imagined anything like it ; and he 
 might have said the same if he had visited 
 Cologne Cathedral. Instead of that, however, 
 he hurried through France again, with the 
 intention of sailing for America the middle of 
 July; but after reaching London he concluded 
 to remain another year in England, to write 
 his "Romance of Monte Beni," and obtain an 
 English copyright for it. 
 
 He left Geneva on June 15, and as he turned 
 his face northward, he felt that Henry Bright 
 and Francis Bennoch were his only real friends 
 in Great Britain. There could hardly have 
 been a stronger contrast than these two. Bright 
 was tall, slender, rather pale for an Englishman, 
 grave and philosophical. Bennoch was short, 
 plump, lively and jovial, with a ready fund of 
 humor much in the style of Dickens, with whom 
 
 23 353
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 he was personally acquainted. Yet Haw- 
 thorne recognized that Bright and Bennoch 
 liked him for what he was, in and of himself, 
 and not for his celebrity alone. 
 
 Bright was in London when Hawthorne 
 reached there, and proposed that they should 
 go together to call on Sumner,* who had been 
 cured from the effects of Brooks's assault by 
 an equally heroic treatment; but Hawthorne 
 objected that as neither of them was Lord 
 Chancellor, Sumner would not be likely to pay 
 them much attention; to which Bright replied, 
 that Sumner had been very kind to him in 
 America, and they accordingly went. Sumner 
 was kind to thousands, the kindest as well as 
 the most upright man of his time, and no one 
 in America, except Longfellow, appreciated 
 Hawthorne so well; but he was the champion 
 of the anti-slavery movement and the inveterate 
 opponent of President Pierce. I suppose a man's 
 mind cannot help being colored somewhat by 
 such conditions and influences. 
 
 Hawthorne wished for a quiet, healthful 
 place, where he could write his romance without 
 the disturbances that are incident to celebrity, 
 and his friends recommended Redcar, on the 
 eastern coast of Yorkshire, a town that other- 
 wise Americans would not have heard of. 
 He went there about the middle of July, remain- 
 ing until the 5th of October, but of his life there 
 we know nothing except that he must have 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 223. 
 354
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 worked assiduously, for in that space of time 
 he nearly finished a book containing almost 
 twice as many pages as "The Scarlet Letter." 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Hawthorne entertained the 
 children and kept them from interfering with 
 their father (in his small cottage), by making 
 a collection of sea-mosses, which Una and 
 Julian gathered at low tides, and which their 
 mother afterward dried and preserved on paper. 
 On October 4th Una Hawthorne wrote to her 
 aunt, Elizabeth Peabody: 
 
 "Our last day in Redcar, and a most lovely one it is. 
 The sea seems to reproach us for leaving it. But I am glad 
 we are going, for I feel so homesick that I want constant 
 change to divert my thoughts. How troublesome feelings 
 and affections are." * 
 
 One can see that it was a pleasant place 
 even after the days had begun to shorten, 
 which they do very rapidly in northern England. 
 From Redcar, Hawthorne went to Leamington, 
 where he finished his romance about the first of 
 December, and remained until some time in 
 March, living quietly and making occasional 
 pedestrian tours to neighboring towns. He 
 was particularly fond of the walk to Warwick 
 Castle, and of standing on the bridge which 
 crosses the Avon, and gazing at the walls of 
 the Castle, as they rise above the trees "as 
 fine a piece of English scenery as exists any- 
 where ; the gray towers and long line of windows 
 of the lordly castle, with a picturesquely varied 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 35 a. 
 355
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 outline; ancient strength, a little softened by 
 decay." It is a view that has often been 
 sketched, painted and engraved. 
 
 The romance was written, but had to be 
 revised, the least pleasant portion of an author's 
 duties, unless he chooses to make the index 
 himself. This required five or six weeks longer, 
 after which Hawthorne went to London and 
 arranged for its publication with Smith & 
 Elder, who agreed to bring it out in three vol- 
 umes although two would have been quite 
 sufficient; but according to English ideas, the 
 length of a work of fiction adds to its importance. 
 Unfortunately, Smith & Elder also desired to 
 cater to the more prosaic class of readers by 
 changing the name of the romance from "The 
 Marble Faun" to "Transformation," and they 
 appear to have done this without consulting 
 Hawthorne's wishes in the matter. It was 
 simply squeezing the title dry of all poetic 
 suggestions; and it would have been quite as 
 appropriate to change the name of " The Scarlet 
 Letter" to "The Clergyman's Penance," or to 
 call "The Blithedale Romance" "The Suicide 
 of a Jilt." If Smith & Elder considered "The 
 Marble Faun" too recondite a title for the 
 English public, what better name could they 
 have hit upon than "The Romance of Monte 
 Beni"? Would not the Count of Monte Beni 
 be a cousin Italian, as it were, to the Count of 
 Monte Cristo? We are thankful to observe that 
 when Hawthorne published the book in America, 
 he had his own way in regard to this point. 
 356
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 It was now that a new star was rising in the 
 literary firmament, not of the "shooting" or 
 transitory species, and the genius of Marian 
 Evans (George Eliot) was casting its genial 
 penetrating radiance over Great Britain and 
 the United States. She was as difficult a person 
 to meet with as Hawthorne himself, and they 
 never saw one another; but a friend of Mr. 
 Bennoch, who lived at Coventry, invited the 
 Hawthornes there in the first week of February 
 to meet Bennoch and others, and Marian 
 Evans would seem to have been the chief subject 
 of conversation at the table that evening. 
 What Hawthorne gathered concerning her on 
 that occasion he has preserved in this compact 
 and discriminating statement: 
 
 "Miss Evans (who wrote 'Adam Bede') 
 was the daughter of a steward, and gained her 
 exact knowledge of English rural life by the 
 connection with which this origin brought her 
 with the farmers. She was entirely self-educated, 
 and has made herself an admirable scholar in 
 classical as well as in modern languages. Those 
 who knew her had always recognized her won- 
 derful endowments, and only watched to see 
 in what way they would develop themselves. 
 She is a person of the simplest manners and 
 character, amiable and unpretending, and 
 
 Mrs. B spoke of her with great affection 
 
 and respect." 
 
 There is actually more of the real George 
 Eliot in this summary than in the three volumes 
 of her biography by Mr. Cross. 
 
 357
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Thorwaldsen's well-known simile in regard to 
 the three stages of sculpture, the life, the death 
 and the resurrection, also has its application 
 to literature. The manuscript is the birth of 
 an author's work, and its revision always seems 
 like taking the life out of it ; but when the proof 
 conies, it is like a new birth, and he sees his 
 design for the first time in its true proportions. 
 Then he goes over it as the sculptor does his 
 newly-cast bronze, smoothing the rough places 
 and giving it those final touches which serve 
 to make its expression clearer. Hawthorne 
 was never more to be envied than while correct- 
 ing the proof of "The Marble Faun" at Leam- 
 ington. The book was given to the public at 
 Easter-time; and there seems to have been 
 only one person in England that appreciated 
 it, even as a work of art John Lothrop Motley. 
 The most distinguished reviewers wholly failed 
 to catch the significance of it; and even Henry 
 Bright, while warmly admiring the story, ex- 
 pressed a dissatisfaction at the conclusion of 
 it, although he could have found a notable 
 precedent for that in Goethe's "Wilhelm 
 Meister." The Saturday Review, a publication 
 similar in tone to the New York Nation, said 
 of ' ' Transformation : " * 
 
 "A mystery is set before us to unriddle; at the end 
 the author turns round and asks us what is the good 
 of solving it. That the impression of emptiness and un- 
 meaningness thus produced is in itself a blemish to the 
 work no one can deny. Mr. Hawthorne really trades upon 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 250. 
 358
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 the honesty of other writers. We feel a sort of interest in 
 the story, slightly and sketchily as it is told, because 
 our experience of other novels leads us to assume that, 
 when an author pretends to have a plot, he has one." 
 
 The Art Journal said of it: * 
 
 "We are not to accept this book as a story; in that 
 respect it is grievously deficient. The characters are 
 utterly untrue to nature and to fact; they speak, all 
 and always, the sentiments of the author ; their words also 
 are his; there is no one of them for which the world has 
 furnished a model." 
 
 And the London Athen&um said:f 
 
 "To Mr. Hawthorne truth always seems to arrive through 
 the medium of the imagination. . . . His hero, the Count 
 of Monte Beni, would never have lived had not the Faun 
 of Praxiteles stirred the author's admiration. . . . The 
 other characters, Mr. Hawthorne must bear to be told, 
 are not new to a tale of his. Miriam, the mysterious, 
 with her hideous tormentor, was indicated in the Zeno- 
 bia of 'The Blithedale Romance.' Hilda, the pure and 
 innocent, is own cousin to Phoebe in 'The House of the 
 Seven Gables'." 
 
 If the reviewer is to be reviewed, it is not 
 too much to designate these criticisms as miser- 
 able failures. They are not even well written. 
 Henry Bright seemed to be thankful that they 
 were no worse, for he wrote to Hawthorne: 
 "I am glad that sulky Athen&um was so civil; 
 for they are equally powerful and unprincipled." 
 The writer in the Athen&um evidently belonged 
 to that class of domineering critics who have 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 249. 
 t Ibid., ii. 244. 
 
 359
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 no literary standing, but who, like bankers' 
 clerks, arrogate to themselves all the importance 
 of the establishment with which they are con- 
 nected. Fortunately, there are few such in 
 America. No keen-witted reader would ever 
 confound the active, rosy, domestic Phoebe 
 Pyncheon with the dreamy, sensitive, and 
 strongly subjective Hilda of " The Marble Faun ; " 
 and Hawthorne might have sent a communi- 
 cation to the Athenazum to refresh the reviewer's 
 memory, for it was not Zenobia in "The Blithe- 
 dale Romance" who was dogged by a mysteri- 
 ous persecutor, but her half-sister Priscilla. 
 Shakespeare's Beatrice and his Rosalind are 
 more alike (for Brandes supposes them to have 
 been taken from the same model) than Zenobia 
 and Miriam; and the difference between the 
 persecutors of Priscilla and Miriam, as well as 
 their respective methods, is world-wide; but 
 there are none so blind as those who are en- 
 veloped in the turbid medium of their self- 
 conceit. 
 
 The pure-hearted, chivalrous Motley read 
 these reviews, and wrote to Hawthorne a 
 vindication of his work, which must have seemed 
 to him like a broad belt of New England sun- 
 shine in the midst of the London fog. In 
 reference to its disparagement by so-called 
 authorities, Motley said : * 
 
 "I have said a dozen times that nobody can write 
 English but you. With regard to the story which has been 
 
 * Mrs. Lathrop, 408. 
 360
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 slightingly criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite 
 satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Haw- 
 thornesque 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; and to those who complain 
 
 "I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really 
 moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down 
 the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an every- 
 day novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the book 
 in which I revel." 
 
 The calm face of Motley, with his classic 
 features, rises before us as we read this, illumined 
 as it were by "the mild radiance of a hidden 
 sun." He also had known what it was to be 
 disparaged by English periodicals; and if it 
 had not been for Froude's spirited assertion in 
 his behalf, his history of the Dutch Republic 
 might not have met with the celebrity it de- 
 served. He was aware of the difference between 
 a Hawthorne and a Reade or a Trollope, and 
 knew how unfair it would be to judge Haw- 
 thorne even by the same standard as Thackeray. 
 He does not touch in this letter on the phil- 
 osophical character of the work, although that 
 must have been evident to him, for he had said 
 enough without it; but one could wish that he 
 had printed the above statement over his own 
 name, in some English journal. 
 
 American reviewers were equally puzzled 
 
 by "The Marble Faun," and, although it was 
 
 generally praised here, the literary critics treated 
 
 it in rather a cautious manner, as if it contained 
 
 361
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 material of a dangerous nature. The North 
 American, which should have devoted five or 
 six pages to it, gave it less than one; praising 
 it in a conventional and rather unsympathetic 
 tone. Longfellow read it, and wrote in his 
 diary, "A wonderful book; but with the old, 
 dull pain in it that runs through all Hawthorne's 
 writings." There was always something of 
 this dull pain in the expression of Hawthorne's 
 face. 
 
 ANALYSIS OF "THE MARBLE FAUN" 
 
 It is like a picture, or a succession of pictures, 
 painted in what the Italians call the sfumato, 
 or "smoky" manner. The book is pervaded 
 with the spirit of a dreamy pathos, such as 
 constitutes the mental atmosphere of modern 
 Rome ; not unlike the haze of an Indian summer 
 day, which we only half enjoy from a foreboding 
 of the approach of winter. All outlines are 
 softened and partially blurred in it, as time and 
 decay have softened the outlines of the old 
 Roman ruins. We recognize the same style 
 with which we are familiar in "The Scarlet 
 Letter," but influenced by a change in Haw- 
 thorne's external impressions. 
 
 It is a rare opportunity when the work of a 
 great writer can be traced back to its first 
 nebulous conception, as we trace the design of a 
 pictorial artist to the first drawing that he made 
 for his subject. Although we cannot witness 
 the development of the plot of this romance in 
 Hawthorne's mind, it is much to see in what 
 362
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 manner the different elements of which it is 
 composed, first presented themselves to him, 
 and how he adapted them to his purpose. 
 
 The first of these in order of time was the 
 beautiful Jewess, whom he met at the Lord 
 Mayor's banquet in London; who attracted him 
 by her tout ensemble, but at the same time 
 repelled him by an indefinable impression, a 
 mysterious something, that he could not analyze. 
 There would seem, however, to have been another 
 Jewess connected with the character of Miriam ; 
 for I once heard Mrs. Hawthorne narrating a 
 story in which she stated that she and her hus- 
 band were driving through London in a cab, and 
 passing close to the sidewalk in a crowded street 
 they saw a beautiful woman, with black hair and 
 a ruddy complexion, walking with the most 
 ill-favored and disagreeable looking Jew that 
 could be imagined; and on the woman's face 
 there was an expression of such deep-seated 
 unhappiness that Hawthorne and his wife 
 turned to each other, and he said, " I think that 
 woman's face will always haunt me." I did not 
 hear the beginning of Mrs. Hawthorne's tale, 
 but I always supposed that it related to "The 
 Marble Faun," and it would seem as if the 
 character of Miriam was a composite of these 
 two daughters of Israel, uniting the enigmatical 
 quality of one with the unfortunate companion- 
 ship of the other, and the beauty of both. 
 
 As previously noticed, the portrait of Beatrice 
 Cenci excited a deeply penetrating interest in 
 Hawthorne, and his reflections on it day after 
 363
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 day would naturally lead him to a similar design 
 in regard to the romance which he was con- 
 templating. The attribution of a catastrophe 
 like Beatrice's to either of the two Jewesses, 
 would of course be adventitious, and should 
 be considered in the light of an artistic 
 privilege. 
 
 The "Faun" of Praxiteles in the museum of 
 the Capitol next attracted his attention. This 
 is but a poor copy of the original ; but he pene- 
 trated the motive of the sculptor with those 
 deep-seeing eyes of his, and there is no analysis 
 of an ancient statue by Brunn or Furtwangler 
 that, equals Hawthorne's description of this one. 
 It seems as if he must have looked backward 
 across the centuries into the very mind of 
 Praxiteles, and he was, in fact, the first critic 
 to appreciate its high value. The perfect ease 
 and simple beauty of the figure belong to a 
 higher grade of art than the Apollo Belvedere, 
 and Hawthorne discovered what Winckelmann 
 had overlooked. He immediately conceived the 
 idea of bringing the faun to life, and seeing 
 how he would behave and comport himself in 
 the modern world in brief, to use the design 
 of Praxiteles as the mainspring of a romance. 
 In the evening of April 22, 1858, he wrote in 
 his journal : 
 
 " I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was 
 sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan 
 beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at 
 once. It seems to me that a story, with all 
 sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived 
 364
 
 'ATUE OF PRAXITELES RESTING FAUN, WHICH HAWTHORNE HAS 
 DESCRIBED AND BROUGHT TO LIFE IN THE CHARACTER OF DONA-
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 on the idea of their species having become 
 intermingled with the human race; a family 
 with the faun blood in them, having prolonged 
 itself from the classic era till our own days. 
 The tail might have disappeared, by dint of 
 constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; 
 but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally 
 reappear in members of the family; and the 
 moral instincts and intellectual characteristics 
 of the faun might be most picturesquely brought 
 out, without detriment to the human interest 
 of the story." 
 
 This statue served to concentrate the various 
 speculative objects which had been hovering 
 before Hawthorne's imagination during the past 
 winter, and when he reached Florence six weeks 
 later, the chief details of the plot were already 
 developed in his mind. 
 
 Hilda and Kenyon are, of course, subordinate 
 characters, like the first walking lady and the 
 first walking gentleman on the stage. They are 
 the sympathetic friends who watch the progress 
 of the drama, continually hoping to be of service, 
 but still finding themselves powerless to prevent 
 the catastrophe. It was perhaps their unselfish 
 interest in their mutual friends that at length 
 taught them to know each other's worth, so 
 that they finally became more than friends to 
 one another. True love, to be firmly based, 
 requires such a mutual interest or common 
 ground on which the parties can meet, some- 
 thing in addition to the usual attraction of the 
 sexes. 
 
 365
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne has been supposed by some 
 to have been the original of Hilda ; and by others 
 her daughter Una. 
 
 Conway holds an exceptional opinion, that 
 Hilda was the feminine counterpart of Hawthorne 
 himself; but Hilda is only too transparent a 
 character, while Hawthorne always was, and 
 still remains, impenetrable; and there was 
 enough of her father in Miss Una, to render 
 the same objection applicable in her case. Hilda 
 seems to me very much like Mrs. Hawthorne, 
 as one may imagine her in her younger days; 
 like her in her mental purity, her conscientious- 
 ness, her devotion to her art, which we trust 
 afterwards was transformed into a devotion 
 to her husband, her tendency to self-seclu- 
 sion, her sensitiveness and her lack of decisive 
 resolution. She is essentially what they call 
 on the stage an ingenue character; that is, 
 one that remains inexperienced in the midst 
 of experience; and it is in this character 
 that she contributes to the catastrophe of the 
 drama. 
 
 If Hawthorne appears anywhere in his own 
 fiction, it is not in "The Blithedale Romance," 
 but in the role of Kenyon. Although Kenyon's 
 profession is that of a sculptor, he is not to be 
 confounded with the gay and versatile Story. 
 Neither is he statuesque, as the English reviewer 
 criticised him. He is rather a shadowy character, 
 as Hawthorne himself was shadowy, and as 
 an author always must be shadowy to his 
 readers; but Kenyon is to Hawthorne what 
 366
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Prospero is to Shakespeare, and if he does not 
 make use of magic arts, it is because they no 
 longer serve their purpose in human affairs. 
 He is a wise, all-seeing, sympathetic mind, and 
 his active influence in the play is less conspicuous 
 because it is always so quiet, and so correct. 
 
 It will be noticed that the first chapter and 
 the last chapter of this romance have the same 
 title: "Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello." 
 This is according to their respective ages and 
 sexes; but it is also the terms of a proportion, 
 as Miriam is to Hilda, so is Kenyon to Dona- 
 tello. As the experienced woman is to the 
 inexperienced woman, so is the experienced man 
 to the inexperienced man. This seems simple 
 enough, but it has momentous consequences 
 in the story. Donatello, who is a type of natural 
 but untried virtue, falls in love with Miriam, 
 not only for her beauty, but because she has 
 acquired that worldly experience which he 
 lacks. Hilda, suddenly aroused to a sense of 
 her danger in the isolated life she is leading, 
 accepts Kenyon as a protector. The means in 
 this proportion come together and unite, be- 
 cause they are the mean terms, and pursue a 
 medium course. The extremes fly apart and are 
 separated, simply because they are extremes. 
 But there is a spiritual bond between them, 
 invisible, but stronger than steel, which will 
 bring them together again at the Day of 
 Judgment, if not sooner. 
 
 All tragedy is an investigation or exempli- 
 fication of that form of human error which we 
 367
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 call sin ; a catastrophe of nature or a simple error 
 of judgment may be tragical, but will not 
 constitute a tragedy without the moral or poetic 
 element. 
 
 In "The Scarlet Letter," we have the sin of 
 concealment and its consequences. The first 
 step toward reformation is confession, and 
 without that, repentance is little more than a 
 good intention. 
 
 In "The House of the Seven Gables," Haw- 
 thorne has treated the sin of hypocrisy a 
 smiling politician who courts popularity and 
 pretends to be everybody's friend, and agrees 
 with everybody, only with a slight reservation. 
 There may be occasions on which hypocrisy 
 is a virtue ; but the habit of hypocrisy for personal 
 ends is like a dry rot in the heart of man. 
 
 In "The Blithedale Romance," we find the 
 sin of moral affectation. Neither Hollingsworth 
 nor Zenobia is really what they pretend them- 
 selves to be. Their morality is a hollow shell, 
 and gives way to the first effective temptation. 
 Zenobia betrays Priscilla; and is betrayed in 
 turn by Hollingsworth, as well as the interests 
 of the association which had been committed 
 to his charge. 
 
 The kernel of "The Marble Faun" is original 
 sin. It is a story of the fall of man, told again in 
 the light of modern science. It is a wonderful 
 coincidence that almost in the same months that 
 Hawthorne was writing this romance, Charles 
 Darwin was also finishing his work on the 
 "Origin of Species;" for one is the moral coun- 
 368
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 terpart of the other. Hawthorne did not read 
 scientific and philosophical books, but he may 
 have heard something of Darwin's undertaking 
 in England, as well as Napoleon's prophetic 
 statement at St. Helena, that all the animals 
 form an ascending series, leading up to man.* 
 The skeleton of a prehistoric man discovered 
 in the Neanderthal cave, which was supposed 
 to have proved the Darwinian theory, does not 
 suggest a figure similar to the "Faun" of 
 Praxiteles, but the followers of Darwin have 
 frequently adverted to the Hellenic traditions 
 of fauns and satyrs in support of their theory. 
 Hawthorne, however, has made a long stride 
 beyond Darwin, for he has endeavored to 
 reconcile this view of creation with the Mosaic 
 cosmogony; and it must be admitted that he 
 has been fairly successful. The lesson that 
 Hawthorne teaches is, that evil does not reside 
 in error, but in neglecting to be instructed by 
 our errors. It is this which makes the difference 
 between a St. Paul and a Nero. The fall of man 
 was only apparent; it was really a rise in life. 
 The Garden of Eden prefigures the childhood of 
 the human race. Do we not all go through this 
 idyllic moral condition in childhood, learning 
 through our errors that the only true happiness 
 consists in self-control ? Do not all judicious par- 
 ents protect their children from a knowledge of 
 the world's wickedness, so long as it is possible to 
 prevent it, and yet not too long, for then they 
 
 * Dr. O'Meara's "A Voice from St. Helena." 
 24 369
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 would become unfitted for their struggle with 
 the world, and in order to avoid the pitfalls of 
 mature life they must know where the pitfalls 
 are. It is no longer essential for the individual 
 to pass through the Cain and Abel experience 
 that has been accomplished by the race as a 
 whole; but it is quite possible to imagine an 
 incipient condition of society in which the 
 distinction of justifiable homicide in self-defence 
 (which is really the justification of war between 
 nations) has not yet obtained. 
 
 Hawthorne's Donatello is supposed to belong, 
 in theory at least, to that primitive era ; but it 
 is not necessary to go back further than the 
 feudal period to look for a man who never has 
 known a will above his own. Donatello seizes 
 Miriam's tormentor and casts him down the 
 Tarpeian Rock, from the same instinct, or 
 clairvoyant perception, that a hound springs at 
 the throat of his master's enemy. When the 
 deed is done he recognizes that the punishment 
 is out of all proportion to the offence, which 
 is in itself the primary recognition of a penal 
 code, and more especially that the judgment of 
 man is against him. He realizes for the first 
 time the fearful possibilities of his nature, and 
 begins to reflect. He is a changed person; and 
 if not changed for the better yet with a pos- 
 sibility of great improvement in the future. 
 His act was at least an unselfish one, and it 
 might serve as the argument for a debate, 
 whether Donatello did not do society a service in 
 ridding the earth of such a human monstrosity. 
 370
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hawthorne has adjusted the moral balance of 
 his case so nicely, that a single scruple would 
 turn the scales. 
 
 The tradition among the Greeks and Romans, 
 of a Golden Age, corresponds in a manner to the 
 Garden of Eden of Semitic belief. There may 
 be some truth in it. Captain Speke, while ex- 
 ploring the sources of the Nile, discovered in 
 central Africa a negro tribe uncontaminated by 
 European traders, and as innocent of guile as 
 the antelopes upon their own plains; and this 
 suggests to us that all families and races of men 
 may have passed through the Donatello stage 
 of existence. 
 
 Hawthorne's master-stroke in the romance is 
 his description or analysis of the effect produced 
 by this homicide on the different members of 
 the group to which he has introduced us. The 
 experienced and worldly-wise Kenyon is not 
 informed of the deed until his engagement to 
 Hilda, but he has sufficient reason to suspect 
 something of the kind from the simultaneous 
 disappearance of Donatello and the model, as 
 well as from the sudden change in Miriam's 
 behavior. Yet he does not treat Donatello with 
 any lack of confidence. He visits him at his 
 castle of Monte Beni, which is simply the Villa 
 Manteiito somewhat idealized and removed 
 into the recesses of the Apennines; he consoles 
 him in his melancholy humor; tries to divert 
 him from gloomy thoughts; and meanwhile 
 watches with a keen eye and friendly solicitude 
 for the denouement of this mysterious drama. 
 371
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 If he had seen what Hilda saw, he would probably 
 have left Rome as quickly as possible, never to 
 return; and Donatello's fate might have been 
 different. 
 
 The effect on the sensitive and inexperienced 
 Hilda was like a horrible nightmare. She cannot 
 believe her senses, and yet she has to believe 
 them. It seems to her as if the fiery pit has 
 yawned between her and the rest of the human 
 race. Her position is much like that of Hamlet, 
 and the effect on her is somewhat similar. She 
 thrusts Miriam from her with bitterness; yet 
 forms no definite resolutions, and does she knows 
 not what ; until, overburdened by the conscious- 
 ness of her fatal secret, she discloses the affair 
 to an unknown priest in the church of St. Peter. 
 Neither does she seem to be aware at any time 
 of the serious consequences of this action. 
 
 Miriam, more experienced even than Kenyon, 
 is not affected by the death of her tormentor so 
 much directly as she is by its influence on 
 Donatello. Hitherto she had been indifferently 
 pleased by his admiration for her; now the 
 tables are turned and she conceives the very 
 strongest attachment for him. She follows him 
 to his castle in disguise, dogs his footsteps on 
 the excursion which he and Kenyon make 
 together, shadows his presence again in Rome, 
 and is with him at the moment of his arrest. 
 This is all that we know of her from the time of 
 her last unhappy interview with Hilda. Her 
 crime consisted merely in a look, the expression 
 of her eyes, and the whole world is free to her; 
 372
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 but her heart is imprisoned in the same cell 
 with Donatello. There is not a more powerful 
 ethical effect in Dante or Sophocles. 
 
 A certain French writer * blames Hilda severely 
 for her betrayal of Miriam (who was at least 
 her best friend in Rome), and furthermore 
 designates her as an immoral character. This, 
 we may suppose, is intended for a hit at New 
 England Puritanism; and from the French 
 stand-point, it is not unfair. Hilda represents 
 Puritanism in its weakness and in its strength. 
 It is true, what Hamlet says, that "conscience 
 makes cowards of us all," but only true under 
 conditions like those of Hamlet, desperate 
 emergencies, which require exceptional expedi- 
 ents. On the contrary, in carrying out a great 
 reform like the abolition of slavery, the educa- 
 tion of the blind, or the foundation of national 
 unity, a man's conscience becomes a tower of 
 strength to him. As already intimated, what 
 Hilda ought to have done was, to leave Rome 
 at once, and forever ; but she is no more capable 
 of forming such a resolution, than Hamlet was 
 of organizing a conspiracy against his usurping 
 uncle. When, however, the priest steps out 
 from the confessional-box and attempts to make 
 a convert of Hilda, for which indeed she has 
 given him a fair opening, she asserts herself 
 and her New England training, with true 
 feminine dignity, and in fact has decidedly the 
 best of the argument. It is a trying situation, 
 
 * Name forgotten, but the fact is indelible . 
 373
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 in which she develops unexpected resources. 
 Hawthorne's genius never shone forth more 
 brilliantly than in this scene at St. Peter's. 
 It is Shakespearian. 
 
 Much dissatisfaction was expressed when 
 "The Marble Faun" was first published, at the 
 general vagueness of its conclusion. Haw- 
 thorne's admirers wished especially for some 
 clearer explanation of Miriam's earlier life, and 
 of her relation to the strange apparition of the 
 catacombs. He answered these interrogatories 
 in a supplementary chapter which practically 
 left the subject where it was before an additional 
 piece of mystification. In a letter to Henry 
 Bright he admitted that he had no very definite 
 scheme in his mind in regard to Miriam's previous 
 history, and this is probably the reason why 
 his readers feel this vague sense of dissatisfaction 
 with the plot. I have myself often tried to 
 think out a prelude to the story, but without 
 any definite result. Miriam's persecuting model 
 was evidently a husband who had been forced 
 upon her by her parents, and would not that be 
 sufficient to account for her moods of gloom and 
 despondency? Yet Hawthorne repeatedly inti- 
 mates that there was something more than this. 
 Let us not think of it. If the tale was not 
 framed in mystery, Donatello would not seem 
 so real to us. Do not the characters in "Don 
 Quixote" and "Wilhelm Meister" spring up as 
 it were out of the ground? They come we know 
 not whence, and they go we know not whither. 
 It is with these that "The Marble Faun" should 
 
 374
 
 5RRE MEDIA VALLE DELLA SCIMMIA (HILDA'S TOWER), ON THE VIA POR- 
 TOGHESE AT ROME, WHERE HAWTHORNE REPRESENTS HILDA TO HAVE LIVED
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 be classed and compared, and not with "Middle- 
 march," "Henry Esmond," or "The Heart of 
 Midlothian." 
 
 Goethe said, while looking at the group of the 
 "Laocoon," "I think that young fellow on the 
 right will escape the serpents." This was not 
 according to the story Virgil tells, but it is 
 true to natural history. Similarly, it is pleasant 
 to think that the Pope's mercy may ultimately 
 have been extended to Donatello. We can 
 imagine an aged couple living a serious, retired 
 life in the castle of Monte Beni, childless, and to 
 a certain extent joyless, but taking comfort in 
 their mutual affection, and in acts of kindness 
 to their fellow-mortals. 
 
 In order to see Hilda's tower in Rome, go 
 straight down from the Spanish Steps to the 
 Corso, turn to the right, and you will soon come 
 to the Via Portoghese (on the opposite side), 
 where you will easily recognize the tower on the 
 right hand. The tower is five stories in height, 
 set in the front of the palace, and would seem to 
 be older than the building about it; the relic, 
 perhaps, of some distinguished mediaeval struc- 
 ture. The odd little shrine to the Virgin, a 
 toy-like affair, still surmounts it ; but its lamp 
 is no longer burning. It was fine imagination 
 to place Hilda in this lofty abode. 
 
 375
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 HOMEWARD BOUND : 1860-1862 
 
 THERE is no portion of Hawthorne's life 
 concerning which we know less than the four 
 years after his return from England to his 
 native land. He was so celebrated that every 
 eye was upon him; boys stopped their games 
 to see him pass by, and farmers stood still in 
 the road to stare at him. He was Hawthorne 
 the famous, and every movement he made 
 was remembered, every word spoken by him 
 was recorded or related, and yet altogether it 
 amounts to little enough. Letters have been 
 preserved in number, many of his own and 
 others from his English friends, and those from 
 his wife to her relatives; but they do not add 
 much to the picture we have already formed in 
 our minds of the man. As he said somewhere, 
 fame had come too late to be a satisfaction to 
 him, but on the contrary more of an annoyance. 
 Hawthorne left Leamington the last of March, 
 and transferred his family to Bath, which he 
 soon discovered to be the pleasantest English 
 city he had lived in yet, symmetrically laid 
 out, like a Continental city, and built for the 
 most part of a yellowish sandstone, not unlike 
 in appearance the travertine of which St. Peter's 
 at Rome is built. The older portion of the 
 city lies in a hollow among the hills, like an 
 376
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 amphitheatre, and the more recent additions 
 rise upon the hill-sides above it to a consider- 
 able height. This is the last note of enthusiasm 
 in his writings; and in the next entry in his 
 diary, which was written at Lothrop Motley's 
 house, Hertford Street, London, May 16, he 
 makes this ominous confession: "I would gladly 
 journalize some of my proceedings, and describe 
 things and people, but I find the same coldness 
 and stiffness in my pen as always since our 
 return to England." It is only too evident 
 that from this time literary composition, which 
 had been the chief recreation of his youth, and 
 in which he had always found satisfaction until 
 now, was no longer a pleasure to him. It is 
 the last entry in his journal, at least for more 
 than two years, and whatever writing he ac- 
 complished in the mean time was done for the 
 sake of his wife and children. Dickens had a 
 similar experience the last year of his life. 
 Clearly, Hawthorne's nervous force was waning. 
 On May 15, Hawthorne and Motley were 
 invited to dine by Earl Dufferin, that admi- 
 rable diplomat and one of the pleasantest of 
 men. In fact, if there was a person living who 
 could make Hawthorne feel perfectly at his 
 ease, it was Dufferin. Motley provided some 
 entertainment or other for his guest every day, 
 and Hawthorne confessed that the stir and 
 activity of London life were doing him "a won- 
 derful deal of good." What he seems to have 
 needed at this time was a vigorous, objective 
 employment that would give his circulation a 
 
 377
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 start in the right direction; but how was he to 
 obtain that? 
 
 He enjoyed one last stroll with Henry Bright 
 through Hyde Park and along the Strand, 
 and found time to say a long farewell to Francis 
 Bennoch: the last time he was to meet either 
 of them on this side of eternity. 
 
 He returned to Bath the ist of June, and 
 ten days later they all embarked for Boston, 
 as it happened, by a pleasant coincidence, with 
 the same captain with whom they had left 
 America seven years before. Mrs. Hawthorne's 
 sister, Mrs. Horace Mann, prepared their house 
 at Concord for their reception, and there they 
 arrived at the summer solstice. 
 
 The good people of Concord had been 
 mightily stirred up that spring, by an attempt 
 to arrest Frank B. Sanborn and carry him 
 forcibly to Washington, contrary to law, as 
 the Supreme Court of the State decided the 
 following day. The marshal who arrested 
 him certainly proceeded more after the manner 
 of a burglar than of a civil officer, hiding 
 himself with his posse comitatus in a barn 
 close to Sanborn's school-house, watching his 
 proceedings through the cracks in the boards, 
 and finally arresting him at night, just as he 
 was going to bed; but the alarm was quickly 
 sounded, and the whole male population of the 
 place, including Emerson, turned out like a 
 swarm of angry hornets, and the marshal and 
 his posse were soon thankful to escape with 
 their bones in a normal condition. A few nights 
 378
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 later, the barn, which was owned by a promi- 
 nent official in the Boston Custom House, was 
 burned to the ground (the fire-company assist- 
 ing), as a sacrifice on the altar of personal 
 liberty. 
 
 The excitement of this event had not yet 
 subsided when the arrival of the Hawthorne 
 family produced a milder and more amiable, 
 but no less profound, sensation in the old 
 settlement; and this was considerably increased 
 by the fact that for the first month nothing was 
 seen of them, except a sturdy-looking boy 
 fishing from a rock in Concord River, opposite 
 the spot where his father and Channing had 
 discovered the unfortunate school-mistress. Old 
 friends made their calls and were cordially 
 received, but Hawthorne himself did not appear 
 in public places; and it was soon noticed that 
 he did not take the long walks which formerly 
 carried him to the outer limits of the town. 
 He was sometimes met on the way to Walden 
 Pond, either alone or in company with his son; 
 but Bronson Alcott more frequently noticed 
 him gliding along in a ghost-like manner by 
 the rustic fence which separated their two 
 estates, or on the way to Sleepy Hollow. When 
 the weather became cooler he formed a habit 
 of walking back and forth on the hill-side 
 above his house, where the bank descends 
 sharply like a railroad-cut, with dwarf pines and 
 shrub oaks on the further side of it. He wore a 
 path there, which is described in "Septimius 
 Felton, " and it is quite possible that the first 
 
 379
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 inception of that story entered his mind while 
 looking down upon the Lexington road beneath 
 him, and imagining how it appeared while filled 
 with marching British soldiers. 
 
 About July 10, 1860, the scholars of Mr. 
 Sanborn's school, male and female, gave an 
 entertainment in the Town Hall, not unlike 
 Harvard Class Day. Mrs. Hawthorne and her 
 eldest daughter appeared among the guests, 
 and attracted much attention from the quiet 
 grace and dignity of their manners; but there 
 was an expression of weariness on Miss Una's 
 face, which contrasted strangely with the happy, 
 blithesome looks of the school-girls. Some 
 idea of the occasion may be derived from a 
 passing remark of Mrs. Hawthorne to a Harvard 
 student present: "My daughter will be happy 
 to dance with you, sir, if I can only find her." 
 
 In September Hawthorne wrote to James T. 
 Fields:* 
 
 "We are in great trouble on account of our 
 poor Una, in whom the bitter dregs of that 
 Roman fever are still rankling, and have now 
 developed themselves in a way which the 
 physicians foreboded. I do not like to write 
 about it, but will tell you when we meet. Say 
 nothing. " 
 
 Miss Una was evidently far from well, and her 
 father's anxiety for her sensibly affected his 
 mental tone. 
 
 He was invited at once to join the Saturday 
 Club, popularly known at that time as the 
 
 *Mrs. J. T. Fields, 118. 
 380
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Atlantic Club, because its most conspicuous 
 members were contributors to that periodical. 
 Hawthorne did not return in season to take 
 part in the Club's expedition to the Adirondack 
 Mountains, concerning which Doctor Holmes 
 remarked that, considering the number of rifles 
 they carried, it was fortunate that they all 
 returned alive. The meetings of the Club came 
 but once a month, and as the last train to Con- 
 cord was not a very late one, Judge Hoar had 
 his carryall taken down to Waltham on such 
 occasions, and thence he, with Hawthorne and 
 Emerson, drove back to Concord through the 
 woods in the darkness or moonlight; and Haw- 
 thorne may have enjoyed this as much as any 
 portion of the entertainment. 
 
 A club whose membership is based upon 
 celebrity reminds one rather of a congregation 
 of stags, all with antlers of seven tines. There 
 was every shade of opinion, political, philo- 
 sophical and religious, represented in the Satur- 
 day Club, and if they never fought over such 
 subjects it was certainly much to their credit. 
 Very little has been divulged of what took 
 place at their meetings; but it is generally 
 known that in the winter of 1861 Longfellow 
 was obliged to warn his associates that if they 
 persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged 
 to leave their company; Sumner being looked 
 upon by the Democrats and more timid Re- 
 publicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; 
 as if any one man could prop a house up when it 
 was about to fall. After the War began, this 
 381
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 naturally came to an end, and Sumner was 
 afterwards invited to join the Club, with what 
 satisfaction to Hoar, Lowell, and Holmes it 
 might be considering rather curiously to inquire. 
 We can at least feel confident that Hawthorne 
 had no share in this. He did not believe in 
 fighting shadows, and he at least respected 
 Sumner for his frankness and disinterestedness. 
 
 Such differences of opinion, however, are not 
 conducive to freedom of discussion. Henry 
 James, Sr., lifts the veil for a moment in a letter 
 to Emerson, written about this time,* and 
 affords us a picture of Hawthorne at the Satur- 
 day Club, which might bear the designation of a 
 highly-flavored caricature. According to Mr. 
 James, John M. Forbes, the Canton millionaire, 
 preserved the balance at one end of the table, 
 while Hawthorne, an oasis in a desert, served as 
 the nearest approach to a human being, at the 
 other. " How he buried his eyes in his plate 
 and ate with such a voracity ! that no one should 
 dare to ask him a question." 
 
 We do not realize the caricaturist in Henry 
 James, Jr., so readily, on account of his elastic 
 power of expression; but the relationship is 
 plain and apparent. Both father and son ought 
 to have been baptized in the Castalian Fount. 
 There are those who have been at table with both 
 Hawthorne and the elder James, and without 
 the slightest reflection on Mr. James, have con- 
 
 * Memoir of Bronson Alcott; also the "Hawthorne 
 Centenary."
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 fessed their preference for the quiet composure 
 and simple dignity of Hawthorne. In truth 
 Hawthorne's manners were above those of the 
 polished courtier or the accomplished man of 
 fashion: they were poetic manners, and in this 
 respect Longfellow most nearly resembled him 
 of all members of the Club; although Emerson 
 also had admirable manners and they were 
 largely the cause of his success. It would have 
 done no harm if Emerson had burned this letter 
 after its first perusal, but since it is out of the 
 bag we must even consider it as it deserves. 
 
 Hawthorne must have enjoyed the meetings of 
 the Club or he would not have attended them 
 so regularly. He wrote an account of the first 
 occasion on which he was present, giving an 
 accurate description of the dinner itself and 
 enclosing a diagram of the manner in which 
 the guests were seated, but without any com- 
 mentary on the proceedings of the day. It 
 was, after all, one of the nerve-centres of the 
 great world, and an agreeable change from the 
 domestic monotony of the Wayside. Thackeray 
 would have descried rich material for his pen in 
 it, but Hawthorne's studies lay in another direc- 
 tion. Great men were not his line in literature. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Hawthorne and her daughter 
 were transforming their Concord home into a 
 small repository of the fine arts. Without much 
 that would pass by the title of elegance, they 
 succeeded in giving it an unpretentious air of 
 refinement, and one could not enter it without 
 realizing that the materials of a world-wide 
 383
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 culture had been brought together there. Haw- 
 thorne soon found the dimensions of the house 
 too narrow for the enlarged views which he had 
 brought with him from abroad, and he designed 
 a tower to be constructed at one corner of it, 
 similar to, if not so lofty as that of the Villa 
 Manteiito. This occupied him and the dila- 
 tory Concord carpenter for nearly half a year; 
 and meanwhile chaos and confusion reigned 
 supreme. There was no one whose ears could 
 be more severely offended by the music of the 
 carpenter's box and the mason's trowel than 
 Hawthorne, and he knew not whether to fly 
 his home or remain in it. Not until all this 
 was over could he think seriously of a new 
 romance. 
 
 He made his study in the upper room of the 
 tower; a room exactly twenty feet square, 
 with a square vaulted ceiling and five windows, 
 too many, one would suppose, to produce 
 a pleasant effect of light, and walls papered 
 light yellow. There he could be as quiet and 
 retired as in the attic of his Uncle Robert Man- 
 ning's house in Salem. Conway states that he 
 wrote at a high desk, like Longfellow, and 
 walked back and forth in the room while thinking 
 out what he was going to say. The view from 
 his windows extended across the meadows to 
 Walden woods and the Fitchburg railroad 
 track, and it also commanded the Alcott house 
 and the road to Concord village. It was in this 
 work-shop that he prepared "Our Old Home" 
 for the press and wrote the greater part of 
 384
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "Septimius Felton" and "The Dolliver Ro- 
 mance." 
 
 The War was a new source of distraction. 
 It broke out before the tower was finished, 
 stimulating Hawthorne's nerves, but disturbing 
 that delicate mental equilibrium upon which 
 satisfactory procedure of his writing depended. 
 On May 26, 1861, he wrote to Horatio Bridge: 
 
 "The war, strange to say, has had a beneficial 
 effect upon my spirits, which were flagging 
 wofully before it broke out. But it was delight- 
 ful to share in the heroic sentiment of the time, 
 and to feel that I had a country, a conscious- 
 ness which seemed to make me young again. 
 One thing as regards this matter I regret, and 
 one thing I am glad of. The regrettable thing 
 is that I am too old to shoulder a musket 
 myself, and the joyful thing is that Julian is 
 too young."* 
 
 Hawthorne's patriotism was genuine and 
 deep-seated. He was not the only American 
 whom the bombardment of Fort Sumter had 
 awakened to the fact that he had a country. 
 What we have always enjoyed, we do not think 
 of until there is danger of losing it. In the 
 same letter, he confesses that he does not quite 
 understand "what we are fighting for, or what 
 definite result can be expected. If we pummel 
 the South ever so hard, they will love us none 
 the better for it; and even if we subjugate 
 them, our next step should be to cut them adrift." 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 276. 
 25 385
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 There were many in those times who thought 
 and felt as Hawthorne did. Douglas said in 
 the Senate, "Even if you coerce the Southern 
 States and bring them back by force, it will 
 not be the same Union." A people does not 
 necessarily mean a nation; for the idea of 
 nationality is of slow growth, and is in a manner 
 opposed to the idea of democracy; for if the 
 right of government depends on the consent of 
 the governed, the primary right of the governed 
 must be to abrogate that government whenever 
 they choose to do so. Hawthorne was simply a 
 consistent democrat; but time has proved the 
 fallacy of Douglas's statement, and that a 
 forcible restoration of the Union was entirely 
 compatible with friendliness and mutal good-will 
 between the different sections of the country, 
 after slavery, which was the real obstacle to 
 this, had been eliminated. If the States east 
 of the Alleghanies should attempt to separate 
 from the rest of the nation, it would inevitably 
 produce a war similar to that of 1861. 
 
 Hawthorne even went to the length at this 
 time of proposing to arm the negroes, and pre- 
 paring them " for future citizenship by allowing 
 them to fight for their own liberties, and educat- 
 ing them through heroic influences."* When 
 George L. Stearns was organizing the colored 
 regiments in Tennessee in 1863 he wrote con- 
 cerning his work, in almost exactly these terms ; 
 and the inference is plain that Hawthorne 
 
 * The "Hawthorne Centenary," 197. 
 386
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 might have been more of a humanitarian if 
 his early associations had been different. 
 
 Such an original character as Bronson Alcott 
 for a next-door neighbor could not long escape 
 Hawthorne's penetrating glance. Alcott was 
 an interesting personality, perfectly genuine, 
 frank, kindly and imperturbably good-humored. 
 He had a benevolent aspect, and in general 
 appearance so much resembled the portraits of 
 Benjamin Franklin that his ingenious daughters 
 made use of him in charades and theatricals 
 for that purpose. Hawthorne had known him 
 many years earlier, and had spoken very pleas- 
 antly of him in his first publication of "The 
 Hall of Fantasy." He even said, "So calm 
 and gentle was he, so quiet in the utterance of 
 what his soul brooded upon, that one might 
 readily conceive his Orphic Sayings to well up 
 from a fountain in his breast, which commu- 
 nicated with the infinite abyss of thought," 
 rather an optimistic view for Hawthorne. 
 Alcott's philosophy had the decided merit, 
 which Herbert Spencer's has not, of a strong 
 affirmation of a Great First Cause, and our 
 direct responsibility thereto: but it was chiefly 
 the philosophy of Plotinus; and his constant 
 reiteration of a "lapse" in human nature from 
 divine perfection (which was simply the Dona- 
 tello phase expressed in logic), with the various 
 corollaries deduced from it, finally became as 
 wearisome as the harp with a single string. 
 Whether he troubled Hawthorne in that way, 
 387
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 is rather doubtful, for even as a hobby-rider, 
 Alcott was a man of Yankee shrewdness and 
 considerable tact. Rose Hawthorne says that 
 "he once brought a particularly long poem to 
 read aloud to my mother and father ; a seemingly 
 harmless thing from which they never recovered." 
 What poem this could have been I have no idea, 
 but in his later years Alcott wrote some excel- 
 lent poetry, and those who ought to know do 
 not think that he bored Hawthorne very se- 
 verely. They frequently went to walk together, 
 taking Julian for a make-weight, and Hawthorne 
 could easily have avoided this if he had chosen. 
 There are times for all of us when our next-door 
 neighbors prove a burden; and it cannot be 
 doubted that in most instances this is reciprocal.* 
 Alcott was a romance character of exceptional 
 value, and Hawthorne recognized this, but did not 
 succeed in inventing a plot that would suit the 
 subject. The only one of Hawthorne's pre- 
 paratory sketches given to the public in which 
 we see his genius in the "midmost heat of com- 
 position" supposes a household in which an 
 old man keeps a crab-spider for a pet, a deadly 
 poisonous creature; and in the same family 
 there is a boy whose fortunes will be mysteri- 
 ously affected in some manner by this dangerous 
 
 * Rose Hawthorne, however, writes charmingly of the 
 Alcotts. Take this swift sketch, among others: "I imagine 
 his slightly stooping, yet tall and well-grown figure, clothed 
 in black, and with a picturesque straw hat, twining itself in 
 and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning home with 
 gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders."
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 insect. He did not proceed sufficiently to in- 
 dicate for us how this would turn out, but he 
 closes the sketch with the significant remark, 
 "In person and figure Mr. Alcott"; from which 
 it may be inferred that the crab-spider was 
 intended to symbolize Alcott's philosophy, and 
 the catastrophe of the romance would naturally 
 result from the unhealthy mental atmosphere 
 in which the boy grew up, a catastrophe 
 which in Alcott's family was averted by the 
 practical sagacity of his daughters. The idea, 
 however, became modified in its application. 
 It is with regret that we do not allot a larger 
 space to this important sketch, for it is clearly 
 an original study (like an artist's drawing) of 
 the unfinished romance which was published 
 in 1883 under the title of "Doctor Grimshawe's 
 Secret." Long lost sight of in the mass of 
 Hawthorne's manuscripts, this last of his post- 
 humous works was reviewed by the critics 
 with some incredulity, and Lathrop had the 
 hardihood to publicly assert that no such ro- 
 mance by Hawthorne's pen existed, thereby 
 casting a gratuitous slander on his own brother- 
 in-law. We may have our doubts in regard to 
 the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, for we 
 have no absolute standard by which to judge of 
 Shakespeare's style, but the "style, the matter, 
 and the drift" of "Doctor Grimshawe's Secret" 
 are so essentially Hawthornish that a person 
 experienced in judging of such matters should 
 not hesitate long in deciding that it belongs 
 in the same category with "Fanshawe" and 
 389
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 "The Dolliver Romance." It is even possible 
 to determine, from certain peculiarities in its 
 style, the exact period at which it was written; 
 which must have been shortly after Hawthorne's 
 return from Europe. In addition to this, if 
 further evidence were required, its close rela- 
 tionship to the aforementioned sketch is a 
 fact which no sophistry can reason away.* 
 
 The bloody footstep suggested to Hawthorne 
 by the antediluvian print in the stone step at 
 Smithell's Hall, in Lancashire, serves as the 
 key-note of this romance; but the eccentric 
 recluse, the big crab-spider, the orphaned grand- 
 child, and even Bronson Alcott also appear in 
 it. Alcott, however, and his identity cannot 
 be mistaken, does not play the leading part 
 in the piece, but comes in at the fifth chapter, 
 only to disappear mysteriously in the eighth; 
 the orphan boy is companioned by a girl of 
 equal age, and these two bright spirits, mutually 
 sustaining each other, cast a radiance over the 
 old Doctor in his dusty, frowsy, cobwebby study, 
 which brings out the external appearance and 
 internal peculiarities of the man, in the most 
 vivid manner. The dispositions and appear- 
 ances of the two children are also contrasted, 
 as Raphael might have drawn and contrasted 
 them, if he had painted a picture on a similar 
 subject. 
 
 The crab-spider is one of the most horrible 
 of Nature's creations. Hawthorne saw one in 
 
 * This sketch was published in the Century, January, 
 1883. 
 
 390
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 the British Museum and it seems to have haunted 
 his imagination ever afterward. Why the 
 creature should have been introduced into this 
 romance is not very clear, for it plays no part 
 in the development of the plot. The spider 
 hangs suspended over the old Doctor's head 
 like the sword of Damocles, and one would ex- 
 pect it to descend at the proper moment in the 
 narrative, and make an end of him with its 
 nippers; but Doctor Grimshawe dies a com- 
 paratively natural death, and the desiccated 
 body of the spider is found still clinging to the 
 web above him. The man and the insect were 
 too closely akin in the modes and purposes of 
 their lives for either to outlast the other. There 
 is nothing abnormal in the fact of Doctor Grim- 
 shawe 's possessing this dangerous pet; for all 
 kinds of poisonous creatures have a well-known 
 fascination for the medical profession. Doctor 
 Holmes amused himself with a rattlesnake. 
 
 In spite of its unpleasant associations with 
 spiders and blood-stains, " Doctor Grimshawe's 
 Secret" is one of the most interesting of Haw- 
 thorne's works, containing much of his finest 
 thought and most characteristic description. 
 The portrait of the grouty old Doctor himself 
 has a solidity of impast like Shakespeare's 
 Falstaff, and the grave-digger, who has sur- 
 vived from colonial times, carries us back in- 
 voluntarily to the burial scene in "Hamlet." 
 Alcott, whose name is changed to Colcord, is 
 not treated realistically, but rather idealized 
 in such kindly sympathetic manner as might 
 
 391
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 prevent all possibility of offence at the artistic 
 theft of his personality. The plot, too, is a 
 most ingenious one, turning and winding like 
 a hare, and even diving out of sight for a time ; 
 but only to reappear again, as the school-master 
 Colcord does, with a full and satisfactory ex- 
 planation of its mysterious course. To judge 
 from the appearance of the manuscript, this 
 romance was written very rapidly, and there 
 are places in the text which intimate this; but 
 it vies in power with "The Scarlet Letter," 
 and why Hawthorne should have become dis- 
 satisfied with it, why he should have failed 
 to complete, revise, and publish it can only 
 be accounted for by the mental or nervous 
 depression which was now fastening itself upon 
 him. 
 
 It is noticeable, however, that where the 
 plot is transferred to English ground Hawthorne's 
 writing has much the same tone and quality 
 that we find in "Our Old Home." External 
 appearances seem to impede his insight there; 
 but this is additional proof of the authenticity 
 of the work.* 
 
 Shortly after the battle of Bull Run Haw- 
 thorne went with his boy to recuperate at 
 Beverly Farms, leaving his wife and daughters 
 at the Wayside, and the letters which passed 
 between these two divisions of the family, 
 
 * There are many other evidences ; such as, ' ' after-dinner 
 speeches on the necessity of friendly relations between 
 England and the United States," and "the whistling of 
 the railway train, two or three times a day. " 
 
 392
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 during his absence, give some very pretty 
 glimpses of their idyllic summer life. Mrs. 
 Hawthorne "cultivated her garden," and gave 
 drawing lessons to the neighbors' children, 
 while her husband, forty miles away, was fishing 
 and bathing. The Beverly shore has not a 
 stimulating climate, but is very attractive in 
 summer to those who do not mind a few sultry 
 nights from land breezes. It was near enough to 
 Salem for Hawthorne to revive the reminiscences 
 of his youth (which become more and more 
 precious after the age of fifty), without obtrud- 
 ing himself on the gaze of his former townsmen 
 or of the young lady "who wished she could 
 poison him." * It is to be hoped that he saw 
 something of his sister Elizabeth again, the last 
 remnant of his mother's household, who for 
 some inscrutable reason had never visited him 
 at Concord. 
 
 We note here a curious circumstance ; namely, 
 that Hawthorne appears to have lost the art 
 of writing short sketches. It will be recollected 
 that twenty years earlier he did not feel equal 
 to anything beyond this, and that it cost him 
 a strenuous effort to escape from the habit. 
 Now when he would have liked to return to 
 that class of composition he could not do so. 
 Fields would have welcomed anything from his 
 pen (so severe a critic he was of himself), but 
 his name does not appear in the Atlantic Monthly 
 from July, 1861, to June, 1862, and it cannot 
 
 * W. D. Howells' Memoirs. 
 393
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 be doubted that with the education of his son 
 before him, the remuneration would have been 
 welcome. It was not until nearly a year later 
 that he conceived the idea of cutting his English 
 Note-book into sections, and publishing them 
 as magazine articles. 
 
 From this time forth, one discouragement 
 followed another. In the autumn of 1861 the 
 illness of his daughter, which he had expected 
 and predicted, came to pass in a violent form. 
 The old Roman virus, kept under in her blood, 
 for a time, by continual changes of air and 
 climate, at last gained the mastery, and brought 
 her once more in danger of her life. She had 
 to be removed to the house of her aunt, Mrs. 
 Mann, who lived in the centre of the town, on 
 account of her father's nerves, so that the 
 Concord doctor could attend her at night when 
 necessary. It was the severest and most pro- 
 tracted case of fever that the physician had ever 
 known to be followed by a recovery. Miss Una 
 did recover, but the mental strain upon her 
 father was even more exhausting than that 
 which her previous illness had caused, and he 
 was not in an equal condition to bear it. 
 
 " Septimius Felton" may have been written 
 about this time (perhaps during his daughter's 
 convalescence), but his family knew nothing 
 of it, until they discovered the manuscript after 
 his death. When it was published ten years 
 later, the poet Whittier spoke of it as a failure, 
 and Hawthorne would seem to have considered 
 it so; for he left it in an unfinished condition, 
 
 394
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 and immediately began a different story on the 
 same theme, the elixir of life. It has no con- 
 nection with the sketch already mentioned, 
 in which Alcott's personality becomes the 
 mainspring, but with another abortive romance, 
 called "The Ancestral Footstep," which Haw- 
 thorne commenced while he was in England. 
 It is invaluable for the light it throws on his 
 method of working. Descriptive passages are 
 mentioned in it " to be inserted" at a later time, 
 meanwhile concentrating his energy on more 
 important portions of the narrative. Half 
 way through the story he changed his original 
 plan, transforming the young woman who 
 previously had been Septimius's sweetheart to 
 Septimius's sister; and it may have been the 
 difficulty of adjusting this change to the portion 
 previously written, that discouraged Hawthorne 
 from completing the romance. But the work 
 suffers also from a tendency to exaggeration. 
 The name of Hagburn is unpleasantly realistic, 
 and Doctor Portsoaken, with his canopy of 
 spider-webs hanging in noisome festoons above 
 his head, is closely akin to the repulsive. The 
 amateur critic who averred that he could not 
 read Hawthorne without feeling a sensation 
 as if cobwebs were drawn across his face, must 
 have had "Septimius Felton" in mind. Yet 
 there are refreshing passages in it, and the 
 youthful English officer who kisses Septimius's 
 sweetheart before his eyes, and afterward fights 
 an impromptu duel with him, dying as cheerfully 
 as he had lived, is an orginal and charming 
 
 395
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 character. The scene of the story has a peculiar 
 interest, from the fact that it is laid at Haw- 
 thorne's own door; the Feltons are supposed 
 to have lived at the Wayside and the Hagburns 
 in the Alcott house. 
 
 The firm of Ticknor & Fields now began to 
 feel anxious on Hawthorne's account, and the 
 last of the winter the senior partner proposed 
 a journey to Washington, which was accordingly 
 accomplished in the second week of March. 
 Horatio Bridge was now chief of a bureau in 
 the Navy Department, and was well qualified 
 to obtain for his veteran friend an inside position 
 for whatever happened to be going on. In the 
 midst of the turmoil and excitement of war, 
 Hawthorne attracted as much attention as 
 the arrival of a new ambassador from Great 
 Britain. Secretary Stanton appointed him on a 
 civil commission to report concerning the con- 
 dition of the Army of the Potomac. He was 
 introduced to President Lincoln, and made 
 excursions to Harper's Ferry and Fortress 
 Monroe. Concerning General McClellan, he 
 wrote to his daughter on March 1 6 : 
 
 "The outcry opened against Gen. McClellan, 
 since the enemy's retreat from Manassas, is 
 really terrible, and almost universal; because 
 it is found that we might have taken their 
 fortifications with perfect ease six months ago, 
 they being defended chiefly by wooden guns. 
 Unless he achieves something wonderful within 
 a week, he will be removed from command, 
 at least I hope so; I never did more than half 
 396
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 believe in him. By a message from the State 
 Department, I have reason to think that there 
 is money enough due me from the government 
 to pay the expenses of my journey. I think 
 the public buildings are as fine, if not finer, 
 than anything we saw in Europe. " * 
 
 General McClellan was not a great man, and 
 Hawthorne's opinion of him is more significant 
 from the fact that at that time McClellan was 
 expected to be the Joshua who would lead the 
 Democratic party out of its wilderness. On 
 his return to Concord, Hawthorne prepared a 
 commentary on what he had seen and heard 
 at the seat of war, and sent it to the Atlantic 
 Monthly; but, although patriotic enough, his 
 melancholy humor was prominent in it, and 
 Fields particularly protested against his refer- 
 ring to President Lincoln as "Old Abe," al- 
 though the President was almost universally 
 called so in Washington; and the consequence 
 of this was that Hawthorne eliminated every- 
 thing that he had written about Lincoln in his 
 account, which might be called "dehamletiz- 
 ing" the subject. In addition to this he wrote a 
 number of foot-notes purporting to come from 
 the editor, but really intended to counteract 
 the unpopularity of certain statements in the 
 text. This was not done with any intention 
 to deceive, but, with the exception of Emerson 
 and a few others who could always recognize 
 Hawthorne's style, the readers of the Atlantic 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 309. 
 397
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 supposed that these foot-notes were written 
 by either James T. Fields or James Russell 
 Lowell, who had been until recently the editor 
 of the Magazine, a practical joke which Haw- 
 thorne enjoyed immensely when it was discovered 
 to him. 
 
 This contribution, essay, or whatever it may 
 be called, had only a temporary value, but it 
 contained a prediction, which has been often 
 recollected in Hawthorne's favor; namely, that 
 after the war was over "one bullet-headed 
 general after another would succeed to the 
 presidential chair." In fact, five generals, 
 whether bullet-headed or not, followed after 
 Lincoln and Johnson ; and then the sequence 
 came to an end apparently because the supply 
 of politician generals was exhausted. Cer- 
 tainly the Anglo-Saxon race yields to no other 
 in admiration for military glory. 
 
 Fields afterward published Hawthorne's mon- 
 ograph on President Lincoln, and, although it 
 is rather an unsympathetic statement of the 
 man, it remains the only authentic pen-and-ink 
 sketch that we have of him. Most important 
 is his recognition of Lincoln as "essentially a 
 Yankee" in appearance and character; for it 
 has only recently been discovered that Lincoln 
 was descended from an old New England family, 
 and that his ancestors first emigrated to Virginia 
 and afterward to Kentucky.* Hawthorne says 
 of him: 
 
 * Essay on Lincoln in "True Republicanism." 
 398
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 "If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I 
 should have taken him for a country school- 
 master as soon as anything else.* He was 
 dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and panta- 
 loons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that 
 the suit had adapted itself to the curves and 
 angularities of his figure, and had grown to be 
 the outer skin of the man. He had shabby 
 slippers on his feet. His hair was black, still 
 unmixed with gray, stiff, somewhat bushy, 
 and had apparently been acquainted with 
 neither brush nor comb that morning, after the 
 disarrangement of the pillow; and as to a night- 
 cap, Uncle Abe probably knows nothing of such 
 effeminacies. His complexion is dark and sallow, 
 betokening, I fear, an insalubrious atmosphere 
 around the White House; he has thick black 
 eyebrows and impending brow ; his nose is large, 
 and the lines about his mouth are very strongly 
 defined. 
 
 "The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one 
 as you would meet anywhere in the length and 
 breadth of the States ; but, withal, it is redeemed, 
 illuminated, softened, and brightened by a 
 kindly though serious look out of his eyes, 
 and an expression of homely sagacity, that 
 seems weighted with rich results of village 
 experience. A great deal of native sense; no 
 bookish cultivation, no refinement; honest at 
 heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some 
 sort, sly, at least, endowed with a sort of tact 
 
 * The country school-master of that time. Ed. 
 399
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and wisdom that are akin to craft . . . But 
 on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, saga- 
 cious visage, with the homely human sympathies 
 that warmed it; and, for my small share in the 
 matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a 
 ruler as any man whom it would have been 
 practicable to put in his place. " * 
 
 This is not a flattered portrait, like those by 
 Lincoln's political biographers; neither is it 
 an idealized likeness, such as we may imagine 
 him delivering his Gettysburg Address. It is 
 rather an external description of the man, but 
 it is, after all, Lincoln as he appeared in the 
 White House to the innumerable visitors, who, 
 as sovereign American citizens, believed they 
 had a right to an interview with the people's 
 distinguished servant. 
 
 Hawthorne's European letter-bag in 1862 is 
 chiefly interesting for Henry Bright's state- 
 ment that the English people might have more 
 sympathy with the Union cause in the War 
 if they could understand clearly what the 
 national government was fighting for; and that 
 Lord Houghton and Thomas Hughes were the 
 only two men he had met who heartily supported 
 the Northern side. Perhaps Mr. Bright would 
 have found it equally as difficult to explain 
 why the British Government should have made 
 war upon Napoleon for twelve consecutive years. 
 
 Henry Bright, moreover, seemed to be quite as 
 much interested in a new American poet, named 
 
 * " Yesterdays with Authors," 99. 
 400
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 J. G. Holland, and his poem called "Bitter- 
 Sweet." Lord Hough ton agreed with him that 
 it was a very remarkable poem, and they wished 
 to know what Hawthorne could tell them about 
 its author. As Holland was not recognized as 
 a poet by the Saturday Club, Hawthorne's 
 answer on this point would be very valuable 
 if we could only obtain a sight of it. Holland 
 was in certain respects the counterpart of 
 Martin F. Tupper. 
 
 In the summer of this year Hawthorne went 
 to West Goldsboro', Maine, an unimportant 
 place opposite Mount Desert Island, taking 
 Julian with him; a place with a stimulating 
 climate but a rather foggy atmosphere. He 
 must have gone there for his health, and it is 
 pathetic to see how the change of climate braced 
 him up at first, so that he even made the com- 
 mencement of a new diary, and then, as always 
 happens in such cases, it let him down again 
 to where he was before. He did not complain, 
 but he felt that something was wrong with him 
 and he could not tell what it was. 
 
 Wherever he went in passing through the 
 civilized portion of Maine, he found the country 
 astir with recruits who had volunteered for 
 the war, so that it seemed as if that were the 
 only subject which occupied men's minds. 
 He says of this in his journal: 
 
 "I doubt whether any people was ever 
 actuated by a more genuine and disinterested 
 public spirit; though, of course, it is not un- 
 alloyed with baser motives and tendencies. 
 26 401
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 We met a train of cars with a regiment or two 
 just starting for the South, and apparently 
 in high spirits. Everywhere some insignia of 
 soldiership were to be seen, bright buttons, 
 a red stripe down the trousers, a military cap, 
 and sometimes a round-shouldered bumpkin 
 in the entire uniform. They require a great 
 deal to give them the aspect of soldiers ; indeed, 
 it seems as if they needed to have a good deal 
 taken away and added, like the rough clay of a 
 sculptor as it grows to be a model. " 
 
 Such is the last entry in his journal. Haw- 
 thorne was not carried off his feet by the ex- 
 citement of the time, but looked calmly on 
 while others expended their patriotism in hur- 
 rahing for the Union. What he remarks con- 
 cerning the volunteers was perfectly true 
 Men cannot change their profession in a day, 
 and soldiers are not to be made out of farmers' 
 boys and store clerks simply by clothing them 
 in uniform, no matter how much courage they 
 may have. War is a profession like other 
 professions, and requires the severest training of 
 them all.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 IN the autumn of 1862 there was great excite- 
 ment in Massachusetts. President Lincoln had 
 issued his premonitory proclamation of emanci- 
 pation, and Harvard College was stirred to its 
 academic depths. Professor Joel Parker, of 
 the Law School, pronounced Lincoln's action 
 unconstitutional, subversive of the rights of 
 property, and a most dangerous precedent. With 
 Charles Eliot Norton and other American Tories, 
 Parker headed a movement for the organization 
 of a People's Party, which had for its immediate 
 object the defeat of Andrew for Governor and 
 the relegation of Sumner to private life. The 
 first they could hardly expect to accomplish, 
 but it was hoped that a sufficient number of 
 conservative representatives would be elected 
 to the Legislature to replace Sumner by a 
 Republican, who would be more to their own 
 minds; and they would be willing to compro- 
 mise on such a candidate as Honorable E. R. 
 Hoar, although Judge Hoar was innocent of 
 this himself and was quite as strongly anti- 
 slavery as Sumner. The movement came to 
 nothing, as commonly happens with political 
 movements that originate in universities, but 
 for the time being it caused a great commotion 
 and nowhere more so than in the town of Con- 
 403
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 cord. Emerson was never more emphatic than 
 in demanding the re-election of Andrew and 
 Sumner. 
 
 How Hawthorne felt about this and how he 
 voted in November, can only be conjectured 
 by certain indications, slight, it is true, but all 
 pointing in one direction. As long since ex- 
 plained, he entertained no very friendly feeling 
 toward the Cotton Whigs; his letter to his 
 daughter concerning Gen. McClellan, who set 
 himself against the proclamation and was re- 
 moved in consequence, should be taken into 
 consideration; and still more significant is the 
 letter to Horatio Bridge, in which Hawthorne 
 proposed the enlistment of negro soldiers. 
 Doctor George B. Loring, of Salem, always a 
 loyal friend to the Hawthorne family, came to 
 Concord in September to deliver an address at 
 the annual cattle-show, and visited at the Way- 
 side. He had left the Democratic party and 
 become a member of the Bird Club, which was 
 then the centre of political influence in the State. 
 As a matter of course he explained his new 
 position to Hawthorne. He had long felt 
 attracted to the Republican party, and but for 
 his influential position among his fellow-Demo- 
 crats, he would have joined it sooner. Parties 
 were being reconstructed. Half the Democrats 
 had become Republicans; and a considerable 
 portion of the Whigs had joined the Democratic 
 party. The interests of the Republic were 
 in the hands of the Republican party and 
 it ought to be supported. We can believe that 
 404
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hawthorne listened to him with close atten- 
 tion. 
 
 It was in the spring of 1862 that I first became 
 well acquainted with the Hawthorne family, 
 which seemed to exist in an atmosphere of 
 purity and refinement derived from the man's 
 own genius. Julian visited me at our house in 
 Medford during the early summer, where he 
 made great havoc among the small fruits of the 
 season. We boxed, fenced, skated, played 
 cricket and studied Cicero together. As my 
 father was one of the most revolutionary of the 
 Free-Soilers, this may have amused Hawthorne 
 as an instance of the Montagues and Capulets; 
 but I found much sympathy with my political 
 notions in his household. When the first of 
 January came there was a grand celebration of 
 the Emancipation in Boston Music Hall. Mrs. 
 Hawthorne and Una were very desirous to 
 attend it, and I believe they both did so Miss 
 Una at all events. If Mrs. Hawthorne's opinions 
 could be taken in any sense as a reflection of 
 her husband's mind, he was certainly drifting 
 away from his old associations. 
 
 In October, 1862, Hawthorne published the 
 first of a series of studies from English life and 
 scenery, taken chiefly from his Note-book, and 
 he continued this at intervals until the following 
 summer, when Ticknor & Fields brought them 
 out with some additions in book form as "Our 
 Old Home;" a volume which has already been 
 considered in these pages. It was not a favorable 
 time for the publication of classic literature, 
 405
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 for the whole population of the United States 
 was in a ferment; and moreover the unfriendly 
 attitude of the English educated classes toward 
 the cause of the Union, was beginning to have 
 its effect with us. In truth it seemed rather 
 inconsistent that the philanthropic Gladstone, 
 who had always professed himself the friend of 
 freedom, should glorify Jefferson Davis as the 
 founder of a new nation a republic of slave- 
 holders. In addition to this, Hawthorne insisted 
 on dedicating the volume to President Pierce, and 
 when his publishers protested that this would 
 tend to make the book unpopular, he replied in a 
 spirited manner, that if that was the case it was 
 all the more reason why Pierce 's friends should 
 signify their continued confidence in him. This 
 may have made little difference, however, for 
 comparatively few readers notice the dedication 
 of a book until after they have purchased it; 
 and we like Hawthorne for his firmness in this 
 instance. 
 
 In England the book produced a sensation of 
 the unfavorable sort. Hawthorne's attack on 
 the rotundity of the English ladies, whatever 
 may have been his reason for it, was, to speak 
 reservedly, somewhat lacking in delicacy. It 
 stirred up a swarm of newspaper enemies against 
 him; and proved a severe strain to the attach- 
 ment of his friends there. Henry Bright wrote 
 to him: 
 
 "It really was too bad, some of the things you say. You 
 talk like a cannibal. Mrs. Heywood says to my mother, 
 'I really believe you and I were the only ladies he knew 
 406
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 in Liverpool, and we are not like beefsteaks. ' So all the 
 ladies are furious."* 
 
 But Hawthorne was no longer what he had been, 
 and allowance should be made for this. 
 
 Hawthorne's chief interest at this time, 
 however, lay in the preparation of his son for 
 Harvard College. Julian was sixteen in August 
 and, considering the itinerant life he had lived, 
 well advanced in his studies. He was the best- 
 behaved boy in Concord, in school or out, and an 
 industrious though not ambitious scholar. He 
 was strong, vigorous and manly ; and his parents 
 had sufficient reason to be proud of him. To 
 expect him, however, to enter Harvard College 
 at the age of seventeen was somewhat unreason- 
 able. His father had entered Bowdoin at that 
 age, but the requirements at Harvard were 
 much more severe than at Bowdoin; enough to 
 make a difference of at least one year in the age 
 of the applicant. For a boy to enter college 
 in a half-fitted condition is simply to make a 
 false start in life, for he is only too likely to 
 become discouraged, and either to drag along 
 at the foot of the class or to lose his place in it 
 altogether. Hawthorne may have felt that 
 the end of earthly affairs was close upon him, 
 and wished to see his son started on the right 
 road before that came; but Emerson also had 
 an interest in having Julian go to college at 
 exactly this time; namely, to obtain him as a 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 280. Good Mrs. Alcott also objected 
 stoutly to the reflections on her sex. 
 407
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 chum for his wife's nephew, with the advantage 
 of a tutor's room thrown in as an extra induce- 
 ment. He advised Hawthorne to place Julian 
 in charge of a Harvard professor who was 
 supposed to have a sleight-of-hand faculty 
 for getting his pupils through the examinations. 
 Julian worked bravely, and succeeded in entering 
 Harvard the following July; but he was nine 
 months (or a good school year), younger than 
 the average of his class. 
 
 Hawthorne did not leave home this summer 
 (1863), and the only letter we have of his was 
 the one to James T. Fields concerning the 
 dedication of "Our Old Home," which was 
 published in the autumn. Julian states that his 
 father spent much of his time standing or walking 
 in his narrow garden before the house, and look- 
 ing wistfully across the meadows to Walden 
 woods. His strength was evidently failing him, 
 yet he could not explain why nor has it ever 
 been explained. 
 
 One bright day in November two of us walked 
 up from Cambridge with Julian and lunched at 
 his father's. Mr. Hawthorne received us cordially, 
 but in a tremulous manner that betrayed the 
 weakness of his nerves. As soon as Julian had 
 left the room, he said to us, "I suppose it would 
 be of little use to ask you young gentlemen 
 
 what sort of a scholar Julian is." H 
 
 replied to this, that we were neither of us in 
 the division with him, but that he had heard 
 nothing unfavorable in regard to his recitations; 
 and I told him that Julian went to the gym- 
 408
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 nasium with me every evening, and appeared 
 to live a very regular kind of life. This seemed 
 to please Mr. Hawthorne very much, and he 
 soon produced a decanter of port, and, his son 
 having entered the room again, he said, "I 
 want to teach Julian the taste of good wine, 
 so that he will learn to avoid those horrible 
 punches, which I am told you have at Harvard." 
 We all laughed greatly at this, which was after- 
 ward increased by Julian's saying that the only 
 punches he had yet seen were those which the 
 sophomores gave us in the foot-ball fight, or 
 some such statement. It was a bright occasion 
 for all of us, and when Mrs. Hawthorne and her 
 daughters entered the room, such a beautiful 
 group as they all formed together! And Haw- 
 thorne himself seemed ten years younger than 
 when he first greeted us. 
 
 He was the most distinguished-looking man 
 that I ever beheld, and no sensible person could 
 meet him without instantly recognizing his 
 superior mental endowment. His features were 
 not only classic but grandly classic; and his 
 eyes large, dark, luminous, unfathomable 
 looking into them was like looking into a deep 
 well. His face seemed to give a pictorial re- 
 flection of whatever was taking place about 
 him; and again became like a transparency 
 through which one could see dim vistas of 
 beautiful objects. The changes of expression 
 on it were like the sunshine and clouds of a 
 summer day perhaps thunder clouds some- 
 times, with flashes of lightning, which his son 
 409
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 may still remember; for where there is a great 
 heart there will always be great heat. 
 
 "THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE" 
 
 According to James T. Fields, the ground- 
 plan of this work was laid the preceding winter, 
 but Hawthorne became dissatisfied with the 
 way in which the subject developed itself and 
 so set the manuscript aside until he could come 
 to it again with fresh inspiration. With the 
 more bracing weather of September he com- 
 menced on it again, and wrote during the next 
 two months that portion which we now have. 
 On December i he forwarded two chapters to 
 Ticknor & Fields, requesting to have them set 
 up so that he could see them in print and obtain 
 a retrospective view of his work before he 
 proceeded further. Yet on December 15 he 
 wrote again, saying that he had not yet found 
 courage to attack the proofs, and that all mental 
 exertion had become hateful to him.* He was 
 evidently feeling badly, and for the first time 
 Mrs. Hawthorne was seriously anxious for him. 
 Four days later she wrote to Una, who was 
 visiting in Beverly: 
 
 "Papa is comfortable to-day, but very thin and pale 
 and weak. I give him oysters now. Hitherto he has 
 had only toasted crackers and lamb and beef tea. I am 
 very impatient that he should see Dr. Vanderseude, but he 
 wants to go to him himself, and he cannot go till it be 
 good weather. . . . The splendor and pride of strength 
 in him have succumbed; but they can be restored, I am 
 
 * "Yesterdays with Authors," 115. 
 410
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 sure. Meanwhile he is very nervous and delicate; he cannot 
 bear anything, and he must be handled like the airiest 
 Venetian glass." * 
 
 He divided his time between lying on a sofa 
 and sitting in an arm-chair; and he did not 
 seem very comfortable in either position. It 
 was long since he had attended meetings of the 
 Saturday Club. 
 
 It is clear from this that Hawthorne had not 
 recently consulted a doctor concerning his 
 condition, and perhaps not at all. He may have 
 been right enough in supposing that no common 
 practitioner could give him help, but there was 
 at that time one of the finest of physiologists 
 in Boston, Dr. Edward H. Clark, who cured 
 hundreds of sick people every year, as quietly 
 and unostentatiously as Dame Nature herself. 
 He was a graduate of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania, and as such not generally looked upon 
 with favor by the Boston medical profession, 
 but when Agassiz's large brain gave way in 
 1868, Dr. Brown-Sequard telegraphed to him 
 from Europe to consult Edward Clark, and 
 Doctor Clark so improved his health that Agassiz 
 afterward enjoyed a number of years of useful 
 work. Perhaps he might have accomplished as 
 much for Hawthorne; but how was Hawthorne 
 in his retired and uncommunicative life to 
 know of him? There are decided advantages in 
 living in the great world, and in knowing what 
 goes on there, if one only can. 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, ii. 333. 
 411
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 It is doubtful if Hawthorne ever opened the 
 proof of "The Dolliver Romance." In Feb- 
 ruary he wrote to Fields that he could not 
 possibly go on with it, and as it had already 
 been advertised for the Atlantic Monthly, a 
 notification had to be published concerning the 
 matter, which startled Longfellow, Whittier and 
 other old friends of Hawthorne, who were not 
 in the way of knowing much about him. The 
 fragment that we now have of it was printed in 
 the Atlantic many years after his death. 
 
 It was the last expiring ember of Haw- 
 thorne's genius, blazing up fitfully and mo- 
 mentarily with the same brightness as of old, 
 and then disappearing like Hawthorne himself 
 into the unknown and the unknowable. It is 
 a fragment, and yet it seems complete, for it 
 is impossible to imagine how the story could 
 have been continued beyond its present limits; 
 and Hawthorne left no word from which we 
 can conjecture his further intentions in regard 
 to it. 
 
 There was an old apothecary in Concord, 
 named Reynolds, a similar man to, but not so 
 aged as, Hawthorne's Doctor Dolliver ; and he also 
 had a son, a bright enterprising boy, too bright 
 and spirited to suit Boston commercialism, 
 who went westward in 1858 to seek his fortune, 
 nor have I ever heard of his return. The child 
 Pansie, frisking with her kitten a more simple, 
 ingenuous, and self-centred, but also less sympa- 
 thetic nature than the Pearl of Hester Prynne 
 may have been studied from Hawthorne's 
 412
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 daughter Rose. There also lived at Concord in 
 Hawthorne's time a man with the title of Colonel, 
 a pretentious, self-satisfied person, who cor- 
 responded fairly to his description of Colonel 
 Dabney, in "The Dolliver Romance." Neither 
 is it singular that the apothecary's garden should 
 have bordered on a grave-yard, for there are two 
 old cemeteries in Concord in the very centre 
 of the town. 
 
 I know of no such portrait of an old man as 
 Doctor Dolliver in art or literature, except 
 perhaps Tintoretto's portrait of his aged self, 
 in the Louvre. We not only see the customary 
 marks of age upon him, but we feel them so 
 that it seems as if we grew old and stiff and 
 infirm as we read of him; and the internal life 
 of old age is revealed to us, not by confessions 
 of the man himself, but by every word he speaks 
 and every act he does as if the writer were a 
 skilful tragedian upon the stage. It seems as 
 if Hawthorne must have felt all this himself 
 during the last year of his life, to describe it so 
 vividly; but he ascends by these infirm steps 
 to loftier heights than ever before, and the 
 scene in which he represents Doctor Dolliver 
 seated at night before the fire in his chamber 
 after Pansie had been put to bed, is the noblest 
 passage in the whole cycle of Hawthorne's art; 
 one of those rare passages written in moments 
 of gifted insight, when it seems as if a higher 
 power guided the writer's hand. It is given here 
 entire, for to subtract a word from it would be 
 an irreparable injury. 
 
 413
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 "While that music lasted, the old man was 
 alive and happy. And there were seasons, it 
 might be, happier than even these, when Pansie 
 had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir 
 Dolliver sat by his fireside gazing in among 
 the massive coals, and absorbing their glow 
 into those cavernous abysses with which all 
 men communicate. Hence come angels or 
 fiends into our twilight musings, according 
 as we may have peopled them in by-gone years. 
 Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of 
 the fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and 
 perfect trust that made him as beautiful to 
 look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child 
 Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits 
 that were watching him beheld a calm surprise 
 draw slowly over his features and brighten 
 into joy, yet not so vividly as to break his even- 
 ing quietude. The gate of heaven had been 
 kindly left ajar, that this forlorn old creature 
 might catch a glimpse within. All the night 
 afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of an 
 intangible bliss diffused through the fitful 
 lapses of an old man's slumber, and would awake, 
 at early dawn, with a faint thrilling of the 
 heart-strings, as if there had been music just 
 now wandering over them." 
 
 So Jacob in the desert saw angels descending 
 and ascending on a ladder from Heaven. Dis- 
 couraged, depressed, the door closed upon his 
 earthly hopes, not only for himself, but for those 
 whom he loves much better than himself, sc 
 far as he could ever be a help and a provi- 
 414
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 dence to them, Hawthorne finds a purer joy 
 and a higher hope in the depths of his own 
 spirit. 
 
 In the second chapter, or fragment, of this 
 romance, Doctor Dolliver, followed by Pansie, 
 goes out into the garden one frosty October 
 morning, and while the apothecary is digging 
 at his herbs, the imitative child, with an in- 
 stinctive repulsion for everything strange and 
 morbid, pulls up the fatal plant from which the 
 elixir of life was distilled, and frightened at her 
 grandfather's chiding, runs with it into the 
 cemetery where it is lost among the graves and 
 never seen again. This account stands by 
 itself, having no direct connection with what 
 precedes or follows; but the delineation is so 
 vivid, the poetic element in it so strong, that it 
 may be said to stand without assistance, and 
 does not require the name of Hawthorne to give 
 it value. 
 
 In the conclusion, the elixir of life proves to 
 be an elixir of death; extremes meet and are 
 reconciled. As he says in "The Marble Faun," 
 joy changes to sorrow and sorrow is laughed 
 away; the experience of both being that which 
 is really valuable. Doctor Dolliver and Pansie 
 are figures for the end and the beginning of 
 life; the Old Year and the New. Such is the 
 sum of Hawthorne's philosophy the ultimate 
 goal of his thought. There could have been no 
 more fitting consummation of his work. The 
 cycle of his art is complete, and death binds 
 the laurel round his brow. 
 415
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 A HERO'S END 
 
 After Hawthorne's letter of February 25, 
 Fields felt that he ought to make an effort in his 
 behalf. Fields's partner, W. D. Ticknor, was 
 also ailing, and it was arranged that he and 
 Hawthorne should go on a journey southward 
 as soon as the weather permitted. Doctor 
 Holmes was consulted, and the last of March 
 Hawthorne came to Boston and met Holmes at 
 Fields's house. Holmes made an examination, 
 which was anything but satisfactory to his own 
 mind; in fact, he was appalled at the condition 
 in which he found his former companion of the 
 Saturday Club. "He was very gentle," Holmes 
 says; "very willing to answer questions, very 
 docile to such counsel as I offered him, but 
 evidently had no hope of recovering his health. 
 He spoke as if his work were done, and he should 
 write no more." * The doctor, however, must 
 have been mistaken in supposing that Haw- 
 thorne was suffering from the same malady 
 that carried off General Grant, for no human 
 being could die in that manner without suffering 
 greater pain than Hawthorne gave any indica- 
 tion of; and the sedatives which Holmes pre- 
 scribed for him could only have resulted in a 
 weakening of the nerves. He even warned Haw- 
 thorne against the use of alcoholic stimulants, 
 to which for some time he had been more or 
 less accustomed. 
 
 * Atlantic Monthly, July, 1864. 
 416
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hawthorne and Ticknor went to New York, 
 and two days later Ticknor was able to write 
 to Mrs. Hawthorne that her husband appeared 
 to be much improved. How cruelly disappoint- 
 ing to meet him at their own door four days 
 later, haggard, weary and more dispirited than 
 when he had left the Wayside on March 26! 
 He had proceeded to Philadelphia with Ticknor, 
 and there at the Continental Hotel Ticknor 
 was suddenly seized with a mortal malady and 
 died almost in Hawthorne's arms, before the 
 latter could notify his family in Boston that he 
 was ill. What a severe ordeal for a man who 
 was strong and well, but to a person in Haw- 
 thorne's condition it was like a thunderbolt. 
 Ticknor's son came to him at once, and together 
 they performed the necessary duties of the 
 occasion, and made their melancholy way home- 
 ward. Nothing, perhaps, except a death in 
 his own family, could have had so unfavorable 
 an effect upon Hawthorne's condition. 
 
 Some good angel now notified Franklin Pierce 
 of the serious posture of affairs, and he came at 
 once to Concord to offer his services in Haw- 
 thorne's behalf. However, he could propose 
 nothing more hopeful than a journey in the 
 uplands of New Hampshire, and for this it would 
 be necessary to wait for settled weather. So 
 Hawthorne remained at home for the next 
 month without his condition becoming appar- 
 ently either better or worse. At length, on 
 May 13, the ex-President returned and they 
 went together the following day. 
 27 417
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 We will not linger over that leave-taking on 
 the porch of the Wayside; so pathetic, so full 
 of tenderness, even of despair, and yet with a 
 slender ray of hope beneath the leaden cloud of 
 anxiety. To Hawthorne it must have seemed 
 even more discouraging than to his wife and 
 children, though none of them could have sus- 
 pected that the end would be so soon. 
 
 On the morning of May 20, I had just returned 
 from my first recitation when Julian Hawthorne 
 appeared at my room in the Massachusetts 
 dormitory, and said, like a man gasping for 
 breath, "My father is dead, and I want you to 
 come with me." Fields had sent him word 
 through Professor Gurney, who knew how to 
 deliver such a message in the kindliest manner. 
 We went at once to Fields's house on Charles 
 Street, where Mrs. Fields gave Julian the little 
 information already known to them through a 
 dispatch from Franklin Pierce, that his father 
 died during his sleep in the night of May 18, 
 at the Pemmigewasset House, Plymouth, New 
 Hampshire. After this we wandered about 
 Boston, silent and aimless, until the afternoon 
 train carried him to Concord. He greatly 
 dreaded meeting the gaze of his fellow-towns- 
 men, and confessed that he wanted to hide 
 himself in the woods like a wounded deer.* 
 
 * The passage in "A Fool of Nature," in which he de- 
 scribes Murgatroyd's discovery of his father's death, must 
 have been a reminiscence of this time a passage of the 
 finest genius. 
 
 418
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 On Wednesday, May 18, Hawthorne and 
 Pierce drove from Centre Harbor to Plymouth, 
 a long and rather rough journey to be taken in 
 a carriage. Hawthorne, however, did not make 
 much complaint of this, nor did he seem to be 
 unusually fatigued. He retired to his room 
 soon after nine o'clock, and was sleeping com- 
 fortably an hour later. Pierce was evidently 
 nervous about him, for he went in to look at 
 him at two in the morning, and again at four; 
 and the last time he discovered that life was 
 extinct. Hawthorne had died in his sleep as 
 quietly and peacefully as he had lived. There 
 is the same mystery in his death that there was 
 in his life, and it is difficult to assign either an 
 immediate or a proximate cause for it. With 
 such a physique, and his simple, regular habits 
 of life, he ought to have reached the age of 
 ninety. General Pierce believed that he died of 
 paralysis, and that is the most probable ex- 
 planation; but it was not like the usual cases 
 of paralysis at Hawthorne's age ; for, as we have 
 seen, the process of disintegration and failure 
 of his powers had been going on for years. Nor 
 did this follow, as commonly happens, a pro- 
 tracted period of adversity, but it came upon 
 him during the most prosperous portion of his 
 life. The first ten years following upon his 
 marriage were years of anxiety, self-denial and 
 even hardship ; but other men, Alcott, for example, 
 have suffered as much and yet lived to a good 
 old age. It may have been "the old dull pain" 
 which Longfellow associated with him, filing 
 419
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 perpetually on the vital cord. It was part of 
 the enigmatic side of his nature. 
 
 The last ceremonies of respect to the earthly 
 remains of Hawthorne were performed at Con- 
 cord on May 23, 1864, in the Unitarian Church, 
 a commodious building,* well adapted to the 
 great concourse of mourners who gathered 
 there on this occasion. Reverend James Freeman 
 Clarke, who had united Hawthorne and Sophia 
 Peabody in marriage twenty -two years before, 
 was now called upon to preside over the last act 
 in their married life. The simple eloquence of 
 his address penetrated to the heart of every 
 person present. "Hawthorne had achieved a 
 twofold immortality, and his immortality on 
 earth would be a comforting presence to all who 
 mourned him. The noblest men of the age had 
 gathered there, to testify to his worth as a man 
 as well as to his genius as a writer." Faces were 
 to be seen in that assembly that were never 
 beheld in Concord before. Among these was the 
 soldierly figure and flashing eye of the poet 
 Whittier. Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, 
 Alcott and Hillard were present; and ex- 
 President Pierce shook hands with Judge Hoar 
 over Hawthorne's bier. After the services the 
 assembly of mourners proceeded to Sleepy 
 Hollow cemetery, and there the mortal remains 
 of Hawthorne were buried under the pine trees 
 on the same hill-side where he and Emerson 
 
 * In 1899 this building was burned to the ground, and 
 new church has been erected on the same spot. 
 420
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 and Margaret Fuller conversed together on the 
 summer afternoon twenty years before. He 
 needs no monument, for he has found a place in 
 the universal pantheon of art and literature. 
 
 It would seem advisable at this parting of 
 the ways to say something of Hawthorne's 
 religious convictions. He went as a boy with his 
 mother and sisters to the East Church in Salem, 
 a society of liberal tendencies and then on the 
 verge of Unitarianism. All the Manning family 
 attended service there, but at a later time 
 Robert Manning separated from it and joined 
 an orthodox society. Hawthorne's mother and 
 his sister Louisa became Unitarians, and at 
 Madam Hawthorne's death in 1848 the funeral 
 services were conducted by Reverend Thomas 
 T. Stone, of the First Salem Church. It is 
 presumable that Nathaniel Hawthorne also 
 became a Unitarian, so far as he can be con- 
 sidered a sectarian at all; but certain elements 
 of the older faith still remained in his mental 
 composition. It cannot be questioned that the 
 strong optimism in Emerson's philosophy was 
 derived from Doctor Channing's instruction, and 
 it is equally certain that Hawthorne could 
 never agree to this. Whatever might be the 
 origin of evil or its abstract value, he found it 
 too potent an element in human affairs to be 
 quietly reasoned out of existence. Whatever 
 might be the ultimate purpose of Divine Provi- 
 dence, the witchcraft prosecutions were an 
 awful calamity to those who were concerned in 
 421
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 them. In this respect he resembled David A. 
 Wasson, one of the most devout religious minds, 
 who left the church of Calvin (as it was in his 
 time), without ever becoming a Unitarian or a 
 radical. Miss Rebecca Manning says : 
 
 "I never knew of Hawthorne's going to church at all, 
 after I remember about him, and do not think he was ever in 
 the habit of going. I think he may have gone sometimes 
 when he was in England, but I do not know about it. 
 Somewhere in Julian or Rose Hawthorne's reminiscences, 
 there is mention made of his reading family prayers, when 
 he was in England. He, as also his mother and sisters were 
 people of deeply religious natures, though not always show- 
 ing it by outward observances." 
 
 A Concord judge and an old Free-Soil politician 
 once attended a religious convention, and after 
 the business of the day was over they went to 
 walk together. The politician confessed to the 
 judge that he had no very definite religious 
 belief, for which the judge thought he did him- 
 self great injustice; but is not that the most 
 advanced and intelligent condition of a man's 
 religious faith? How can we possess clear and 
 definite ideas of the grand mystery of Creation? 
 Consider only this simple metaphysical fact, 
 that space has no limit, and that we can neither 
 conceive a beginning of time nor imagine time 
 without a beginning. What is there outside of 
 the universe? The brain reels as we think of it. 
 The time has gone by when a man can say to 
 himself definitely, I believe this or I believe that ; 
 but we know at least that we, "the creature of 
 a day," cannot be the highest form of intelli- 
 gence in this wonderful world. We thought that 
 422
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 we lived in solid bodies, but electric rays have 
 been discovered by which the skeletons inside 
 of us become visible. The correlation and con- 
 servation of forces brings us very close to the 
 origin of all force; and yet in another sense we 
 are as far off as ever from the perception of it. 
 This would seem to have been also Hawthorne's 
 position in regard to religious faith. What do 
 we know of the religious belief of Michel Angelo, 
 of Shakespeare, or of Beethoven? We cannot 
 doubt that they were sincerely and purely 
 religious men; but neither of them made any 
 confession of their faith. Vittoria Colonna may 
 have known something of Michel Angelo 's 
 belief, but Vasari does not mention it; and 
 Beethoven confessed it was a subject that he 
 did not like to talk about. The deeper a man's 
 sense of the awe and mystery which underlies 
 Nature, the less he feels inclined to expose it to 
 the public gaze. Hawthorne's own family did 
 not know what his religious opinions were 
 only that he was religious. One may imagine 
 that the reticent man would be more reticent on 
 this subject than on any other ; but we can feel 
 confident that at least he was not a sceptic, for 
 the confirmed sceptic inevitably becomes a 
 chatterer. He walks to Walden Pond with 
 Hillard and Emerson on Sunday, and confesses 
 his doubts as to the utility of the Church (in 
 its condition at that time), for spiritual enlight- 
 enment ; but in regard to the great omnipresent 
 fact of spirituality he has no doubt. In "The 
 Snow Image" he makes a statue come to life, 
 423
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 and says in conclusion that if a new miracle is 
 ever wrought in this world it will be in some 
 such simple manner as he has described. 
 
 To the poetic mind, which is after all the 
 highest form of intellect, the grand fact of 
 existence is a sufficient miracle. The rising of 
 the sun, the changes of the seasons, the blooming 
 of flowers and the ripening of the grain, were 
 all miracles to Hawthorne, and none the less so 
 because they are continually being repeated. 
 The scientists tell us that all these happen accord- 
 ing to natural laws: perfectly true, but WHO 
 was it that made those laws? WHO is it that 
 keeps the universe running? Laws made for 
 the regulation of human affairs by the wisest of 
 men often prove ineffective, and inadequate 
 to the purpose for which they were intended; 
 but the laws of Nature work with unfailing 
 accuracy. The boy solves his problem in 
 algebra, finding out the unknown quantity by 
 those values which are given him; and can we 
 not also infer something of the unknown from 
 the great panorama that passes unceasingly 
 before us? The one thing that Hawthorne 
 could not have understood was, how gifted 
 minds like Lucretius and Auguste Comte could 
 recognize only the evidence of their senses, and 
 deliberately blind themselves to the evidence of 
 their intellects. He who denies the existence of 
 mind as a reality resembles a person looking for 
 his spectacles when they are on his nose; but 
 it is the imagination of the poet that leads 
 civilization onward to its goal. 
 424
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 College life is rather generally followed by a 
 period of scepticism, partly owing in former times 
 to the enforced attendance at morning prayers, 
 and still more perhaps to the study of Greek 
 and Latin authors. During what might be 
 called Hawthorne's period of despair, he could 
 not very well have obtained consolation from 
 the traditional forms of divine worship; at 
 least, such has been the experience of all those 
 who have passed through the Wertherian stage, 
 so far as we know of them. It is a time when 
 every man has to strike the fountain of spiritual 
 life out of the hard rock of his own existence; 
 and those are fortunate who, like Moses and 
 Hawthorne, strike forcibly enough to accomplish 
 this. It is the "new birth from above," in the 
 light of which religious forms seem of least 
 importance. 
 
 One effect of matrimony is commonly a deep- 
 ening of religious feeling, but it is not surprising 
 that Hawthorne should not have attended 
 church after his marriage. His wife had not been 
 accustomed to church-going, on account of the 
 uncertainty of her health; the Old Manse was 
 a long distance from the Concord tabernacle; 
 Hawthorne's associates in Concord, with the 
 exception of Judge Keyes, were not in the habit 
 of going to church; and the officiating minister, 
 both at that time and during his later sojourn, 
 was not a person who could have been intel- 
 lectually attractive to him. Somewhat similar 
 reasons may have interfered with his attendance 
 after his return to Salem; and during the last 
 425
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 fifteen years of his life, he was too much of a 
 wanderer to take a serious interest in the local 
 affairs of the various places he inhabited ; but he 
 was desirous that his children should go to church 
 and should be brought up in honest Christian 
 ways. 
 
 Little more need to be said concerning Haw- 
 thorne's character as a man. It was not so 
 perfect as Longfellow's, to whom all other 
 American authors should bow the head in this 
 respect the Washington of poets; and yet it 
 was a rare example of purity, refinement, and 
 patient endurance. His faults were insignificant 
 in comparison with his virtues, and the most 
 conspicuous of them, his tendency to revenge 
 himself for real or fancied injuries, is but a part 
 of the natural instinct in us to return the blows 
 we receive in self-defence. Wantonly, and of 
 his own accord, he never injured human being. 
 His domestic life was as pure and innocent as 
 that which appeared before the world; and 
 Mrs. Hawthorne once said of him in my presence 
 that she did not believe he ever committed an 
 act that could properly be considered wrong. 
 It was like his writing, and his " wells of English 
 undefiled" were but as a synonym for the clear 
 current of his daily existence. 
 
 The ideality in Hawthorne's face was so 
 conspicuous that it is recognizable in every 
 portrait of him. It was not the cold visionary 
 expression of the abstract thinker, but a 
 human poetic intelligence, which resolved all 
 things into a spiritual alembic of its own. 
 426
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 It is this which elevates him above all writers 
 who only deal with the outer world as they find 
 it, and add nothing to it from their own natures. 
 
 George Brandes, the Danish critic and essayist, 
 speaks of Hawthorne somewhere as "the baby 
 poet;" but we suspect that if he had ever met 
 the living Hawthorne, he would have stood 
 very much in awe of him. It would not have 
 been like meeting Ernest Re*nan or John Stuart 
 Mill. Although Hawthorne was not splenetic or 
 rash, there was an occasional look in his eye 
 which a prudent person might beware of. He 
 was emphatically a man of courage. 
 
 The wide and liberal interest which German 
 scholars and writers have so long taken in the 
 literature of other nations, has resulted in found- 
 ing an informal literary tribunal in Germany, 
 to which the rest of the world is accustomed to 
 appeal. A. E. Schonbach, one of the most 
 recent German writers on universal literature, 
 gives his impression of Hawthorne in the follow- 
 ing statement: 
 
 " I find the distinguishing excellence of Haw- 
 thorne's imaginative writings in the union 
 of profound, keen, psychological development of 
 characters and problems with the most lucid 
 objectivity and a joyous modern realism. Oc- 
 casionally there appears a light and delicate 
 humor, sometimes hidden in a mere adjective, 
 or little phrase which lights up the gloomiest 
 situation with a gentle ray of hope. Far from 
 unimportant do I rate the charm of his language, 
 its purity, its melody, its graceful flexibility, 
 427
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 the wealth of vocabulary, the polish which 
 rarely betrays the touch of the file. After, or 
 with George Eliot, Hawthorne is the first English 
 prose writer of our century. At the same time 
 he sacrifices nothing of his peculiar American 
 quality. Not only does he penetrate into the 
 most secret inner movements of the old colonial 
 life, as no one else has done, and reproduces 
 the spirit of his forefathers with a power of 
 intuition which no historical work could equal; 
 but in all his other works, from the biography 
 of General Pierce, to the 'Marble Faun,' Haw- 
 thorne shows the freshness and keenness, the 
 precision and lucidity, and other qualities not 
 easy to describe, which belong to American 
 literature. He is its chief representative. " * 
 
 Hawthorne has always been accorded a high 
 position in literature, and as time goes on I 
 believe this will be increased rather than dimin- 
 ished. In beauty of diction he is the first of 
 American writers, and there are few that equal 
 him in this respect in other languages. It is 
 a pleasure to read him, simply for his form of 
 expression, and apart from the meaning which 
 he conveys in his sentences. It is like the grace 
 of the Latin races, like Dante and Chateau- 
 briand; and the adaptation of his words is so 
 perfect that we never have to think twice for 
 his meaning. In those editions called the 
 Elzevirs, which are so much prized by book 
 collectors, the clearness and legibility of the 
 
 * "Gesammelte Aufsatze zur neueren Litteratur, " p. 346. 
 428
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 type result from such a fine proportion of space 
 and line that no other printer has succeeded in 
 imitating it; and there is something similar 
 to this in the construction of Hawthorne's 
 sentences. 
 
 He is the romance writer of the English 
 language; and there is no form of literature 
 which the human race prizes more. How many 
 translations there have been of "The Vicar of 
 Wakefield," and of "The Sorrows of Werther"! 
 The latter is not one of Goethe's best, and yet 
 it made him famous at the age of twenty -eight. 
 The novel deals with what is new and surprising ; 
 the romance with what is old and universal. 
 In "The Vicar of Wakefield" we have the old 
 story of virtue outwitted by evil, which is in 
 its turn outwitted by wisdom. There is nothing 
 new in it except the charming exposition which 
 Goldsmith's genius has given to the subject. 
 Thackeray ridiculed "The Sorrows of Werther," 
 and in the light of matured judgment the tale 
 appears ridiculous; but it strikes home to the 
 heart, because we all learn wisdom through such 
 experiences, of which young Werther's is an 
 extreme instance. It was only another example 
 of the close relation that subsists between 
 comedy and tragedy. 
 
 It cannot be questioned that "The Scarlet 
 Letter" ranks above "The Sorrows of Werther;" 
 nor is it less evident that "The Marble Faun" 
 falls short of "Wilhelm Meister" and "Don 
 Quixote."* Hawthorne's position, therefore, 
 
 * See "Cervantes" in North American Review, May, 1905 
 429
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 lies between these two nearer perhaps to 
 "Werther" than to "Wilhelm Meister." In 
 certain respects he is surpassed by the great 
 English novelists: Fielding, Scott, Thackeray, 
 Dickens and Marian Evans; but he in turn 
 surpasses them all in the perfection and poetic 
 quality of his art. There is much poetry in 
 Scott and Dickens, a little also in Thackeray 
 and Miss Evans, but Hawthorne's poetic vein 
 has a more penetrating tone, and appeals more 
 deeply than Scott's verses. If power and 
 versatility of characterization were to be the 
 test of imaginative writing, Dickens would 
 push closely on to Shakespeare; but we do not 
 go to Shakespeare to read about Hamlet or 
 Falstaff, or for the sake of the story, or even for 
 his wisdom, but for the tout ensemble to read 
 Shakespeare. Raphael painted a dozen or more 
 pictures on the same subject, but they are all 
 original, interesting and valuable, because 
 Raphael painted them. If it were not for the 
 odd characters and variety of incident in Dick- 
 ens's novels they would hardly be worth reading. 
 Hawthorne's dramatis persona is not a long one, 
 for his plots do not admit of it, but his characters 
 are finely drawn, and the fact that they have not 
 become popular types is rather in their favor. 
 There are Dombeys and Shylocks in plenty, 
 but who has ever met a Hamlet or a Rosalind in 
 real life? 
 
 A certain English writer promulgated a List 
 of the hundred superior authors of all times and 
 countries. There were no Americans in his 
 430
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 catalogue, but he admitted that if the number 
 was increased to one hundred and eighteen 
 Hawthorne and Emerson might be included in 
 it. Doubtless he had not heard of Webster or 
 Alexander Hamilton, and many of his country- 
 men would be inclined to place Longfellow 
 before Emerson. 
 
 I have myself frequently counted over the 
 great writers of all times and languages, weighing 
 their respective values carefully in my mind, 
 but I have never been able to discover more 
 than thirty-five authors who seem to me de- 
 cidedly superior to Hawthorne, nor above forty 
 others who might be placed on an equality 
 with him.* This, of course, is only an individual 
 opinion, and should be accepted for what it is 
 worth; but there are many ancient writers, 
 like Hesiod, Xenophon, and Catullus, whose 
 chief value resides in their antiquity, and a 
 much larger number of modern authors, 
 such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, Freytag, and 
 Ruskin, who have been over-estimated in their 
 own time. Petrarch, and the author of "Gil 
 Bias," might be placed on a level with Haw- 
 thorne, but certainly not above him. Those 
 whom he most closely resembles in style and 
 subject matter are Goldsmith, Manzoni, and 
 Auerbach. 
 
 Yet Hawthorne is essentially a domestic 
 writer, a poetizer of the hearth-stone. Social 
 life is always the proper subject for works of 
 
 * Appendix C. 
 431
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 fiction, and political life should never enter 
 into them, except as a subordinate element; 
 but there is a border-land between the two, in 
 which politics and society act and react on 
 each other, and it is from this field that the 
 great subjects for epic and dramatic poetry 
 have always been reaped. Hawthorne only 
 knew of this by hearsay. Of the strenuous 
 conflict that continually goes on in political 
 centres like London and New York, a struggle 
 for wealth, for honor, and precedence ; of plots 
 and counterplots, of foiled ambition and ruined 
 reputations, with all this Hawthorne had but 
 slight acquaintance. We miss in him the 
 masculine vigor of Fielding, the humanity of 
 Dickens, and the trenchant criticism of Thack- 
 eray; but he knew that the true poetry of life 
 (at the present time) was to be found in quiet 
 nooks and in places far off from the turbulent 
 maelstrom of humanity, and in his own line 
 he remains unrivalled. 
 
 432
 
 Portraits of Hawthorne 
 
 HAWTHORNE had no more vanity in his na- 
 ture than is requisite to preserve a good appear- 
 ance in public, but he always sat for his portrait 
 when asked to do so, and this was undoubtedly 
 the most sensible way. He was first painted 
 by Charles Osgood in 1840, a portrait which 
 has at least the merit of a fine poetic expression. 
 He was afterward painted by Thompson, Healy, 
 and Emanuel Leutze, and drawn in crayon 
 by Rowse and Eastman Johnson. Frances 
 Osborne also painted a portrait of him from 
 photographs in 1893, an excellent likeness, 
 and notable especially for its far-off gaze. Of 
 all these, Rowse 's portrait is the finest work of 
 art, for Rowse was a man of genius, but there 
 is a slight tendency to exaggeration in it, and 
 it does not afford so clear an idea of Hawthorne 
 as he was, as the Osborne portrait. Healy 
 was not very successful with Hawthorne, and 
 Miss Lander's bust has no merit whatever. The 
 following list contains most of the portraits and 
 photographs of Hawthorne now known to exist, 
 with their respective ownerships and locations. 
 
 Oil portrait painted by Charles Osgood, in 
 1840. Owned by Mrs. Richard C. Manning. 
 
 Crayon portrait drawn by Eastman H. Johnson, 
 in 1846. Owned by Miss Alice M. Longfellow. 
 
 28 433
 
 PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE 
 
 Oil portrait painted by George P. A. Healy, in 
 1850. Now in the possession of Kirk Pierce, Esq. 
 
 Oil portrait by Miss H. Frances Osborne, 
 after a photograph by Silsbee, Case & Co., 
 Boston. 
 
 Crayon portrait drawn by Samuel W. Rowse, 
 in 1866. Owned by Mrs. Annie Fields. 
 
 Engraving after the portrait painted in 1850 
 by Cephas G. Thompson. Owned by Hon. 
 Henry C. Leach. 
 
 The Grolier Club bronze medallion, made 
 in 1892, by Ringel d'lllzach. Owned by B. 
 W. Pierson. 
 
 Cabinet photograph, bust, by Elliott & Fry, 
 London. Owned by Mrs. Richard C. Manning. 
 
 Card photograph, full length, seated, with 
 book in right hand, by Black & Case, Boston. 
 
 Cabinet photograph, three-quarter length, 
 standing beside a pillar, copy by Mackintire of 
 the original photograph. 
 
 Card photograph, three-quarter length, 
 seated, from Warren's Photographic Studio, 
 Boston. 
 
 Card photograph, bust, by Brady, New York, 
 with autographic signature. Owned by Hon. 
 Henry C. Leach. 
 
 Bust in the Concord (Massachusetts) Public 
 Library, by Miss Louise Lander. 
 
 Card photograph, bust, from Warren's Photo- 
 graphic Studio, Boston. Owned by Mrs. Richard 
 C. Manning. 
 
 Oil portrait by Emanuel Leutze, painted in 
 April, 1852. Owned by Julian Hawthorne. 
 434
 
 PORTRAITS OF HAWTHORNE 
 
 Photograph by Mayall, London. The so- 
 called "Motley photograph." 
 
 Two photographs by Brady, full length; 
 one seated, the other standing. 
 
 Photograph showing Hawthorne, Ticknor 
 and Fields standing together. 
 
 435
 
 Editions of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Books 
 published under his own Direction 
 
 Fanshawe : A Tale, Boston, 1828. 
 
 Twice-Told Tales, Boston, 1837. 
 
 Another edition, Boston, 1842. 
 
 Peter Parley's Universal History, Boston, 1837. 
 
 The Gentle Boy : A Thrice-Told Tale, Boston, 1839. 
 
 Grandfather's Chair : A History for Youth, Boston, 1841. 
 
 Famous Old People : or Grandfather's Chair II, Boston, 
 1841. 
 
 Liberty Tree : The Last Words of Grandfather's Chair, 
 Boston, 1841. 
 
 Biographical Stories for Children, Boston, 1842. 
 
 Historical Tales for Youth, Boston, 1842. 
 
 The Celestial Railroad, Boston, 1843. 
 
 Mosses from an Old Manse, New York, 1846, 1851. 
 
 The Scarlet Letter, Boston, 1850. 
 
 True Stories from History and Biography, Boston, 1851. 
 
 The House of the Seven Gables, Boston, 1852. 
 
 A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, Boston, 1851. 
 
 Another edition, Boston, 1857. 
 
 The Snow-Image and Other Tales, Boston, 1852. 
 
 Another edition, Boston, 1857. 
 
 The Blithedale Kornance, Boston, 1852. 
 
 Life of Franklin Pierce, Boston, 1852. 
 
 Tanglewood Tales for Girls and Boys, Boston, 1853. 
 436
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 Transformation, or the Romance of Monte Beni, Smith & 
 Elder, London, 1860. 
 
 The Marble Faun, or the Romance of Monte Beni, Bos- 
 ton, 1860. 
 
 Our Old Home, Boston, 1863. 
 
 A complete list of Hawthorne's contributions to American 
 magazines will be found in the appendix to Gonway's "Life of 
 Hawthorne. " 
 
 437
 
 Mrs. Emerson and Mrs. Hawthorne^ 
 
 IN 1892, when I was constructing the volume 
 known as "Sketches from Concord and Apple- 
 dore," I said in comparing Emerson with Haw- 
 thorne that one was like day, and the other 
 like night. I was not aware that four years 
 earlier M. D. Conway had made a similar state- 
 ment in his Life of Hawthorne, which was 
 published in London. Miss Rebecca Manning, 
 Hawthorne's own cousin, still living at the age 
 of eighty and an admirable old lady, distinctly 
 confirms my statement, that " wherever Haw- 
 thorne went he carried twilight with him." 
 Emerson, on the contrary, was of a sanguine 
 temperament and an essentially sunny nature. 
 His writings are full of good cheer, and the 
 opening of his Divinity School Address is as 
 full of summer sunshine as the finest July day. 
 It was only necessary to see him look at the 
 sunshine from his own porch to recognize how 
 it penetrated into the depths of his nature. 
 
 It would seem consistent with the rational 
 order of things, that day should be supplemented 
 by night, and night again by day; and here we 
 are almost startled by the completeness of our 
 allegory. We sometimes come across faces in 
 the streets of a large city, which show by their 
 
 * Read at the Emerson Club, at Boston, January 2, 1906. 
 438
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 expression that they are more accustomed to 
 artificial light than to the light of the sun. 
 Mrs. Emerson was one of these. She never 
 seemed to be fully herself, until the lamps 
 were lighted. Her pale face seemed to give 
 forth moonlight, and its habitual expression 
 was much like that of a Sister of Charity. It 
 was said of her that she was the last in the 
 house to retire at night, always reading or 
 busying herself with household affairs, until 
 twelve or one o'clock; but this mode of life 
 would appear to have been suited to her organi- 
 zation, for in spite of her colorless look she 
 lived to be over ninety. 
 
 So far I can tread upon firm earth, without 
 drawing upon my imagination, but in regard 
 to Mrs. Hawthorne I cannot speak with the 
 same assurance, for I only became acquainted 
 with her after her husband's health had begun 
 to fail, and the anxiety in her face was strongly 
 marked ; yet I have reason to believe that her 
 temperament was originally sanguine and 
 optimistic, and that she alternated from dreamy, 
 pensive moods to bright vivacious ones. She 
 certainly was very different from her husband. 
 Her sister, Elizabeth Peabody, was the most 
 sanguine person of her time, and her introduc- 
 tion of the kindergarten into America was 
 accomplished through her unbounded hope- 
 fulness. The Wayside, where Mrs. Hawthorne 
 lived, has an extended southern exposure. The 
 house was always full of light, which is not 
 often the case with New England country 
 439
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 houses ; and when she lived at Liverpool, where 
 sunshine is a rare commodity, she became un- 
 well, so that Mr. Hawthorne was obliged to 
 send her to Madeira in order to avert a dan- 
 gerous illness. 
 
 These two estimable ladies were alike in the 
 excellence of their housekeeping, the purity 
 of their manners, their universal kindliness, 
 and their devotion to the welfare of their hus- 
 bands and children. It was a pleasure to pass 
 them on the road-side ; the fare at their tables 
 was always of the nicest, even if it happened 
 to be frugal; and people of all classes could 
 have testified to their helpful liberality. In 
 these respects they might almost have served 
 as models, but otherwise they were as different 
 as possible. Mrs. Emerson was of a tall, slender, 
 and somewhat angular figure (like her hus- 
 band), but she presided at table with a grace 
 and dignity that quite justified his favorite 
 epithet of "Queenie." There was even more 
 of the Puritan left in her than there was in him, 
 and although she encouraged the liberal move- 
 ments and tendencies of her time, one always 
 felt in her mental attitude the inflexibility of 
 the moral law. To her mind there was no shady 
 border-land between right and wrong, but the 
 two were separated by a sharply defined line, 
 which was never to be crossed, and she lived 
 up to this herself, and, in theory at least, 
 she had but little mercy for sinners. On 
 one occasion I was telling Mr. Emerson of 
 a fraudulent manufacturing company, which 
 440
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 had failed, as it deserved to, and which was 
 found on investigation to have kept two sets 
 of books, one for themselves, and another for 
 their creditors. Mrs. Emerson listened to this 
 narrative with evident impatience, and at the 
 close of it she exclaimed, "This world has be- 
 come so wicked that if I were the maker of it, 
 I should blow it up at once." Emerson him- 
 self did not like such stories; and although 
 he once said that "all deaf children ought to 
 be put in the water with their faces down- 
 ward," he was not always willing to accept 
 human nature for what it really is. 
 
 Mrs. Emerson did not agree with her hus- 
 band's religious views; neither did she adopt 
 the transcendental faith, that the idea of God 
 is innate in the human mind, so that we can- 
 not be dispossessed of it. She belonged to the 
 conservative branch of the Unitarian Church, 
 which was represented by Reverend James 
 Freeman Clarke and Doctor Andrew P. Pea- 
 body. The subject was one which was permitted 
 to remain in abeyance between them, but Mrs. 
 Emerson was naturally suspicious of those 
 reverend gentlemen who called upon her hus- 
 band, and this may have been the reason why 
 he did not encourage the visits of clergymen 
 like Samuel Johnson, Samuel Longfellow, and 
 Professor Hedge, whom he greatly respected, 
 and who should have been by good rights his 
 chosen companions. I suppose all husbands are 
 obliged to make these domestic compromises. 
 
 Mrs. Emerson had also something of the 
 441
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 spirit-militant in her. When David A. Wasson 
 came to dine at Mr. Emerson's invitation, 
 she said to him, by way of grace before meat: 
 "I see you have been carrying on a controversy 
 with Reverend Mr. Sears, of Wayland, and you 
 will excuse me for expressing my opinion that 
 Mr. Sears had the best of it." But after sound- 
 ing this little flourish of trumpets, she was as 
 kindly and hospitable as any one could desire. 
 She was one of the earliest recruits to the anti- 
 slavery cause, not only a volunteer, but a 
 recruiting officer as well, and she made this 
 decision entirely of her own mind, without any 
 special encouragement from her husband or rel- 
 atives. At the time of John Brown's execution 
 she wanted to have the bells tolled in Concord, 
 and urged her husband energetically to see that 
 it was done. Mrs. Emerson was always thor- 
 oughly herself. There never was the shadow 
 of an affectation upon her; nor more than a 
 shadow of self-consciousness very rare among 
 conscientious persons. One of her fine traits 
 was her fondness for flowers, which she culti- 
 vated in the little garden between her house 
 and the mill-brook, with a loving assiduity. 
 She is supposed to have inspired Emerson's 
 poem, beginning: 
 
 " O fair and stately maid, whose eyes 
 Were kindled in the upper skies 
 
 At the same torch that lighted mine: 
 For so I must interpret still 
 Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, 
 
 A sympathy divine." 
 
 442
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 There are other references to her in his pub- 
 lished writings, which only those who were 
 personally acquainted with her would recognize. 
 
 Mrs. Hawthorne belonged to the class of 
 womankind which Shakespeare has typified 
 in Ophelia, a tender-hearted, affectionate na- 
 ture, too sensitive for the rough strains of life, 
 and too innocent to recognize the guile in others. 
 This was at once her strength and her weakness ; 
 but it was united, as often happens, with a 
 fine artistic nature, and superior intelligence. 
 Her face and manners both gave the impres- 
 sion of a wide and elevated culture. One could 
 see that although she lived by the wayside, 
 she had been accustomed to enter palaces. 
 Her long residence in England, her Italian 
 experience, her visit to the Court of Portugal, 
 her enjoyment of fine pictures, poetry, and 
 architecture, the acquaintance of distinguished 
 men and women in different countries, had all 
 left their impress upon her, combined in a 
 quiet and lady-like harmony. Her conversa- 
 tion was cosmopolitan, and though she did not 
 quite possess the narrative gift of her sister 
 Elizabeth, it was often exceedingly interesting. 
 
 Hawthorne has been looked upon as the 
 necrologist of the Puritans, and yet a certain 
 coloring of Puritanism adhered to him to the 
 last. It was his wife who had entirely escaped 
 from the old New England conventicle. Se- 
 verity was at the opposite pole from her moral 
 nature. Tolerant and charitable to the faults 
 443
 
 MRS. EMERSON AND MRS. HAWTHORNE 
 
 of others, her only fault was the lack of severity. 
 She believed in the law of love, and when kind 
 words did not serve her purpose she let matters 
 take what course they would, trusting that 
 good might fall, "At last far off at last to all." 
 I suspect her pathway was by no means a 
 flowery one. Mrs. Emerson's life had to be as 
 stoical as her husband's, and Mrs. Hawthorne's, 
 previous to the Liverpool consulate, the con- 
 sulship of Hawthorne, was even more diffi- 
 cult. No one knew better than she the meaning 
 of that heroism which each day requires. A 
 writer in the Atlantic Monthly, reviewing 
 Julian Hawthorne's biography of his father, 
 emphasizes, "the dual selfishness of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Hawthorne." Insensate words! There 
 was no room for selfishness in the lives 
 they led. In a certain sense they lived almost 
 wholly for one another and for their children; 
 but Hawthorne himself lived for all time and 
 for all mankind, and his wife lived through 
 him to the same purpose. The especial form 
 of their material life was as essential to its 
 spiritual outgrowth as the rose-bush is to the 
 rose; and it would be a cankered selfishness 
 to complain of them for it.
 
 Appendices 
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 THERE is at least one error in the Symmes 
 diary, which is however explainable, and need 
 not vitiate the whole of it. It has been ascer- 
 tained that the drowning of Henry Jackson 
 in Songo River by being kicked in the mouth 
 by another boy while swimming, took place 
 in 1828, so that the statement to that effect in 
 the diary, must have been interpolated. As it 
 happened, however, another Henry Jackson 
 was drowned in the Songo River, so Mr. Pick- 
 ard says, more than twenty years before that, 
 and it is quite possible that young Hawthorne 
 overheard some talk about that catastrophe, 
 and mistook it for a recent event; and that 
 Symmes afterwards confounding the two Jack- 
 sons and the difference in time, amended Haw- 
 thorne's statement as we now have it. Mr. 
 Pickard says in a recent letter: 
 
 " This item alone led me to doubt. But I cannot doubt, 
 the more I reflect upon it, that H. himself had a hand in 
 most, if not all, the other items. Who but his uncle could 
 have written that inscription ? The negro Symmes could not 
 have composed that only a man of culture." . . "The 
 sketch of the sail on Sebago Lake surely was written by 
 some one who was in that party. Symmes might have been 
 there, but he was a genius deserving the fame of a Chat- 
 terton if he really did this. Three of that party I personally 
 
 445
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 knew one (Sawyer) was a cousin of my grandfather. His 
 sleight of hand, his skill with rifle, his being a ' votary of 
 chance,' are traditions in my family." 
 
 This does not differ essentially from the 
 opinion I have already expressed in Chapter II. 
 F. B. Sanborn, who is one of the best-informed 
 of living men in regard to Hawthorne, takes 
 a similar view. 
 
 446
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 In February, 1883, a review of "Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne and his Wife" was published in 
 the Atlantic Monthly, evidently written by a 
 person with no good- will toward the family. 
 Editors ought to beware of such reviews, for 
 their character is easily recognized, and the 
 effect they produce often reacts upon the pub- 
 lication that contains them. In the present 
 instance, the ill-humor of the writer had evi- 
 dently been bottled up for many years. 
 
 To place typographical errors to the debit 
 of an author's account not very numerous 
 for a work of eight hundred pages suggests 
 either an inexperienced or a strongly preju- 
 diced critic. This is what the Atlantic writer 
 begins with, and he (or she) next proceeds to 
 complain that the book does not contain a 
 complete bibliography of Hawthorne's works; 
 although many excellent biographies have been 
 published without this, and it is quite possible 
 that Hawthorne's son preferred not to insert 
 it. No notice is taken of the many fine passages 
 in the book, like the apostrophe upon Haw- 
 thorne's marriage,* and that excellent de- 
 scription of the performances of a trance medium 
 at Florence, but continues in an ascending 
 climax of fault-finding until he (or she) reaches 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 242. 
 447
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 the passage from Hawthorne's Roman diary 
 concerning Margaret Fuller.* 
 
 If public opinion has any value, this passage 
 concerning Margaret Fuller's marriage ought 
 not to have been published; but what can 
 Margaret Fuller's friends and admirers expect? 
 Do they think that a young American woman 
 can go to a foreign country, and live with a 
 foreign gentleman, in defiance of the customs 
 of modern society, without subjecting herself 
 to the severest criticism? It is true that she 
 married Count d'Ossoli before her child was 
 born, and her friends, who were certainly an 
 enlightened class, always believed that she 
 acted throughout from the most honorable 
 motives (my own opinion is, that she acted in 
 imitation of Goethe), but how can they expect 
 the great mass of mankind to think so? Haw- 
 thorne had a right to his opinion, as well as 
 Emerson and Channing, and although it was 
 certainly not a very charitable opinion, we can- 
 not doubt that it was an honest one. In regard 
 to the marriage tie, Hawthorne was always 
 strict and conservative. 
 
 This is the climax of the Atlantic critique, 
 and its anti-climax is an excoriation of Haw- 
 thorne's son for neglecting to do equal and 
 exact justice to James T. Fields. This truly 
 is a grievous accusation. Fields was Haw- 
 thorne's publisher and would seem to have 
 taken a personal and friendly interest in him 
 
 * J. Hawthorne, i. 30-35. 
 448
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 besides, but we cannot look on it as a wholly 
 unselfish interest. It was not like Hillard's, 
 Pierce's, and Bridge's interest in Hawthorne. 
 If Fields had not been his publisher, it is not 
 probable that Hawthorne would have made 
 his acquaintance; and if his son has not 
 enlarged on Fields 's good offices in bringing 
 " The Scarlet Letter" before the public, there 
 is an excellent reason for it, in the fact that 
 Fields had already done so for himself in his 
 "Yesterdays with Authors." That Fields's 
 name should have been omitted in the index 
 to "Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife," may 
 have been an oversight; but, at all events, 
 it is too microscopic a matter to deserve con- 
 sideration in a first-class review. 
 
 Are we become such babies, that it is no 
 longer possible for a writer to tell the plain, 
 ostensible truth concerning human nature, with- 
 out having a storm raised about his head for 
 it? George P. Bradford and Martin F. Tupper 
 are similar instances, and like Boswell have 
 suffered the penalty which accrues to men of 
 small stature for associating with giants. 
 
 449
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 The great poets and other writers of all na- 
 tions whom I conceive to be superior to Haw- 
 thorne, may be found in the following list : 
 Homer, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pin- 
 dar, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, 
 Theocritus, Plutarch; Horace, Virgil, Cicero, 
 Tacitus; Dante, Tasso, Petrarch; Cervantes, 
 Calderon, Camoens; Moliere, Racine, Descartes, 
 Voltaire; Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant; 
 Swedenborg; Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 Milton, and perhaps Burns and Byron; Alex- 
 ander Hamilton, Napoleon. 
 
 These also may be placed more on an equality 
 with Hawthorne, although there will of course 
 always be wide differences of opinion on that 
 point: Hesiod, Herodotus, Menander, Aristo- 
 phases; Livy, Caesar, Lucretius, Juvenal; Ari- 
 osto, Macchiavelli, Manzoni, Lope de Vega, 
 Buthas Pato; Corneille, Pascal, Rousseau; 
 Wieland, Klopstock, Heine, Auerbach; Spen- 
 ser, Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Fielding, Pope, Scott, 
 Wordsworth, Shelley, Carlyle, Browning, Ten- 
 nyson, Froude; Webster, Emerson, Wasson. 
 Sappho, Bion, Moschus, and Cleanthes were 
 certainly poets of a high order, but only some 
 fragments of their poetry have survived. Gott- 
 fried of Strassburg, the Minnesinger, might 
 be included, and some of the finest English 
 poetry was written by unknown geniuses of 
 4So
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ballads 
 like "Chevy Chace" and the "Child of Elle" 
 deserve a high place in the rank of poetry; 
 and the German "Reineke Fuchs" is in its way 
 without a rival. There may be other French, 
 German, and Spanish writers of exceptional 
 excellence with whom I am unacquainted, 
 but I do not feel that any French or German 
 novelists of the last century ought to be placed 
 on a level with Hawthorne only excepting 
 Auerbach. Victor Hugo is grandiloquent, and 
 the others all have some serious fault or limita- 
 tion. I suppose that not one in ten of Emer- 
 son's readers has ever heard of Wasson, but he 
 was the better prose writer of the two, and 
 little inferior as a poet. More elevated he could 
 not be, but more profound, just, logical and 
 humane that is, more like Hawthorne. Emerson 
 could not have filled his place on the Atlantic 
 Monthly and the North American Review.
 
 Index 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Adams, John Quincy 75 
 
 After-dinner speeches 283 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson 169, 193, 256, 387 
 
 " Ambitious Guest, The," in 
 
 " Ancestral Footstep, The," 395 
 
 Antinous of the villa Ludovisi 332 
 
 "Arabella," the ship 17 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 279 
 
 " Artist of the Beautiful, The," 190 
 
 Athenaean Society 65 
 
 Atlantic Club 381 
 
 Aurelius, Marcus 108 
 
 Bacon's, Miss, volume published 301 
 
 Balzac 431 
 
 Bancroft, George 135 
 
 Beethoven 423 
 
 Bennoch, Francis 305, 353 
 
 " Blithedale Romance " 128, 146, 247, 368 
 
 Blodgett's boarding-house 291 
 
 "Bloody Footstep " 390 
 
 " Birth Mark, The," 181 
 
 " Bosom Serpent, The," 184 
 
 Bradford, George P 143, 151, 449 
 
 Brandes, Danish critic 106, 427 
 
 Bridge, Horatio, 
 
 63, 66, 86, 91, 94, 125, 175, 202, 272, 285, 396 
 
 Bright, Henry A 353, 397, 406 
 
 Brook Farm 148, 195, 248 
 
 Brown, John 442 
 
 Browning and Carlyle 109 
 
 Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett 277 
 
 Browning, Robert 321 
 
 Buchanan, President 286, 292 
 
 453
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Carlyle and Hawthorne 86 
 
 Castor and Pollux, statues of 310 
 
 " Celestial Railroad, The," - - i.,u 
 
 Cenci, Beatrice, portrait of 337, 363 
 
 Channing, Ellery 164, 170 
 
 Channing, William H 421 
 
 Cilley and Graves duel 100 
 
 Cilley, Jonathan 63, 83, 88 
 
 description of 98 
 
 Clarke, Edward H 411 
 
 Clarke, Rev. Dr. James F 154, 420 
 
 " Code of Honor," the 101 
 
 College skepticism 425 
 
 Columbia, statue of 330 
 
 Concord River 157 
 
 Conway, Rev. M. D 124, 166, 366, 438 
 
 Crab spider, the 391 
 
 Crawford, sculptor 363, 340 
 
 " Critique of Pure Reason, The," 194 
 
 Curtis, George William 163 
 
 Dallas, George M 292 
 
 Dante's Inferno 134 
 
 Dickens 124, 432 
 
 " Doctor Grimshawe's Secret " 389 
 
 Dolliver, Dr 412 
 
 " Dolliver Romance, The," 410, 412 
 
 Donatello's crime 370 
 
 Dwight, John S., musical critic 150 
 
 Elgin marbles 335 
 
 Eliot, George 224, 357 
 
 Emerson 147, 149, 161, 165 
 
 essays 168, 239, 438 
 
 Emerson, Mrs. R. W 439 
 
 her figure 439 
 
 religious views 441 
 
 English lakes 288 
 
 " English Note-book," 304 
 
 454
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 English scenery 280 
 
 Essex County people 3 
 
 Evans, Marian 357 
 
 " Fancy's Show Box " 198 
 
 " Fanshawe " 80, 172 
 
 " Faun of Praxiteles " 323, 364 
 
 " Felton, Septimius," 394 
 
 Fielding 432 
 
 Fields, James T 219, 448 
 
 Florentine art 321 
 
 Fourier 139, 148 
 
 Fuller, Margaret 161, 193, 194 
 
 as Zenobia 250, 251 
 
 her marriage 351, 448 
 
 Gardner, E. A., Prof 334 
 
 Genius, its growth 77 
 
 " Gentle Boy, The," 118 
 
 Ghosts 161 
 
 Gibson, sculptor 312 
 
 his tinted Eves and Venuses 343 
 
 Gladstone, William E., on transcendentalism 192, 406 
 
 Godkin, E. L 34 
 
 Goethe ~ 189, 375 
 
 Golden Age, A 371 
 
 Goodrich, S. G., editor 88, 90, 95 
 
 " Great Carbuncle, The," _ 112 
 
 " Great Stone Face, The," .. 242 
 
 Guilty glimpses at hired models 342 
 
 Gurney, Prof. E. W 418 
 
 " Hall of Fantasy, The," 189 
 
 Harris, Dr. William T 193 
 
 Harvard Law School 403 
 
 Hathorne, Daniel 28 
 
 Hathorne, John 23 
 
 witches' j udge 26 
 
 his last will 26 
 
 his gravestone 27 
 
 455
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hathorne, Joseph 28 
 
 Hathorne, Nathaniel 30 
 
 Hathorne, William 20 
 
 Letter to British Ministry 22 
 
 Hawthorne, Elizabeth 87 
 
 Hawthorne, Julian 120, 205, 215, 257, 405, 407, 418 
 
 Hawthorne, Louisa 43 
 
 her death 262 
 
 Hawthorne, Mrs. Sophia Peabody 120 
 
 becomes engaged to Hawthorne. 132 
 
 writes to her mother 210 
 
 encourages her husband 216 
 
 praises her husband 232 
 
 is out of health 283 
 
 goes to Madeira 289 
 
 is presented at court 290 
 
 the original of Hilda 366 
 
 at Concord 383 
 
 her opinions 405 
 
 character and style 443 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 
 
 his English ancestors 19 
 
 family name 32 
 
 birthplace S 
 
 his lameness 40 
 
 early poetry 42 
 
 life at Sebago 44 
 
 his first diary 48 
 
 the budding of his genius 51 
 
 fits for college 54 
 
 " Pin Society " 55 
 
 religious instruction 57 
 
 decides on his vocation. 58 
 
 has the measles 61 
 
 his life at Bowdoin 65 
 
 outdoor sports 70 
 
 is fined for gambling 72 
 
 graduates at Bowdoin 76 
 
 decides his profession 79 
 
 456
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, continued. 
 
 publishes " Fanshawe " 80 
 
 changes his name 82 
 
 despondency 84 
 
 goes to Lake Champlain 89 
 
 wins his bet with Cilley 93 
 
 commences his diary 97 
 
 his supposed challenge 102 
 
 thanks Longfellow 115 
 
 goes to Berkshire Hills 127 
 
 character of his diary 129 
 
 his engagement 132 
 
 enters Custom House 135 
 
 goes to Brook Farm 141 
 
 his marriage 154 
 
 his true Arcadia 160 
 
 his skating 164 
 
 opinion of Emerson 167 
 
 birth of a daughter 174 
 
 his indolence 175 
 
 style as an author 189 
 
 returns to Robert Manning's house 203 
 
 is appointed Surveyor of the Port 203 
 
 son Julian is born 205 
 
 occupies house on Mall street 209 
 
 is removed from office 213 
 
 publishes " Scarlet Letter " 219 
 
 method of development 227 
 
 sits for his portrait ; goes to Lenox 230 
 
 publishes " House of Seven Gables " 239 
 
 birth of his daughter Rose 240 
 
 leaves Lenox for Newton 254 
 
 returns to Concord 257 
 
 writes the " Life of Pierce " 258 
 
 the Liverpool consulate 266 
 
 sails for England 267 
 
 as an office-holder 271 
 
 his life in England 276 
 
 makes a speech 283 
 
 457
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, continued. 
 
 kindness to Delia Bacon 300 
 
 resigns the Consulate 302 
 
 as a law writer 303 
 
 goes to Paris 308 
 
 arrives at Rome 308 
 
 journeys to Florence 314 
 
 goes to the Vatican 333 
 
 on modern sculpture 341 
 
 returns to Rome 345 
 
 visits Geneva 353 
 
 summer at Redcar 354 
 
 publishes the " Marble Faun " 356 
 
 Hawthorne the famous 376 
 
 begins to dislike writing 377 
 
 returns to Concord 378 
 
 method of writing 384 
 
 patriotism 385 
 
 proposes to arm negroes 386 
 
 preparatory sketches 388 
 
 sojourns at Beverly Farms 392 
 
 last entry in his journal 402 
 
 dedicates book to President Pierce 406 
 
 at home 408 
 
 personal appearance 409 
 
 seriously ill 410 
 
 Hawthorne's philosophy 415 
 
 his death 418 
 
 his funeral 420 
 
 religious convictions 421, 426 
 
 his position in literature 428 
 
 Hawthorne, Rose, her birth 240 
 
 her memoirs 315 
 
 Hawthorne's mother 30 
 
 her character 37, 38 
 
 her death 217 
 
 Hawthorne, Una, her birth 174 
 
 severe illness of 346, 394 
 
 Hilda, character of 373 
 
 458
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Hilda, continued. 
 
 her tower 37 5 
 
 Hillard, George S 133, 172, 217, 218 
 
 Hoar, Miss Elizabeth 161, 165 
 
 Holiday epauletes 260 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 133, 416 
 
 Hosmer, Harriet 350 
 
 Houghton, Lord 41 1 
 
 " House of the Seven Gables, The," 233, 368 
 
 Howe, Dr. Samuel G 163 
 
 Hunt, suicide of Miss 169 
 
 Italian Note-book 330 
 
 Jackson, Andrew 75, 100 
 
 James, Henry, Jr 382 
 
 James, Henry, Sr 382 
 
 Jameson, Mrs. Anna 314, 329 
 
 Jerrold, Douglas 295 
 
 Kansas-Nebraska Bill 273 
 
 Kant, Immanuel 191 
 
 Kemble, Frances 231, 244 
 
 Kitridge, Doctor 41 
 
 " Lady Eleanor's Mantle" in 
 
 Laocoon 334 
 
 Lathrop, George P 48, 389 
 
 Leamington 288 
 
 Lincoln, President 397 
 
 Liverpool Consulate 269 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W 46, 64, 83 
 
 reviews Hawthorne 104, 362 
 
 Loring, Frederick W 229 
 
 Loring, Dr. George B 207, 404 
 
 Lowell, James Russell 196 
 
 Mann, Horace 246, 255 
 
 Mann, Mrs. Horace 1 18 
 
 Manning family 31
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Manning, Rebecca 38, 205 
 
 Manning, Richard 44 
 
 Manning, Robert 37, 43, 53 
 
 " Marble Faun, The," English reviews of 359 
 
 analysis of 362 
 
 its original 368 
 
 McClellan, General George B 396 
 
 McMichael, Morton 293 
 
 Melville, Hermann 245 
 
 Mexican War 176, 21 1 
 
 Michel Angelo 318, 320 
 
 his Last Judgment and Moses 336 
 
 " Miroir, Monsieur du " 174, 180 
 
 " Mosses from an Old Manse " 173 
 
 Motley's opinions 359, 391 
 
 " Mrs. Bullfrog " 174, 180 
 
 Niagara Falls, visit to in 
 
 North American Review 104 
 
 Nurse, Rebecca, a witch 25 
 
 Offensive partisanship 214 
 
 " Old Manse," the 156, 158 
 
 " Ontario Steamboat, The," 112 
 
 O'Sullivan, an editor 203, 282 
 
 " Our Old Home " 405 
 
 Parker, Theodore 258 
 
 Peabody, Elizabeth 39, 117, H9, M 1 , 212 
 
 Peabody, Sophia Amelia 120 
 
 Philadelphia Hock Club 293 
 
 Pickard, Samuel T 49, 445 
 
 Pierce, Franklin 62, 68, 83 
 
 elected Senator 93, 202 
 
 goes to the war 208 
 
 nominated for President 257, 259 
 
 his father 259 
 
 various 275, 292, 302, 349, 417 
 
 Pike, William B 207 
 
 460
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Poetic mind, the 424 
 
 Politicians, opinion of 139 
 
 Portraits of Hawthorne by Osgood, Healy, Rowse, and 
 
 others 433 
 
 Positivists 197 
 
 Powers, Hiram 316, 317 
 
 his America 327, 350 
 
 Prescott, George L 161 
 
 Prince of Wales 348 
 
 Pyncheon, Clifford 235 
 
 Quakers, persecution of 21 
 
 Raphael's Transfiguration 331 
 
 " Rappacini's Daughter " 183 
 
 Reform Club of London 295 
 
 Ripley, George 140, 145, 148, 152, 248 
 
 Rock Ferry 269 
 
 Roman Carnival 348 
 
 Runnel, Mary, sweetheart of Daniel Hathorne 326 
 
 Ruskin 328 
 
 Sailors maltreated 287 
 
 Salem architecture 12 
 
 Salem, situation of 1 1 
 
 Salem society 209 
 
 Salem's sea-captains 14 
 
 Sanborn, Frank B., attempt to kidnap 378, 446 
 
 " Scarlet Letter, The," 204, 218, 220, 368 
 
 Schonbach, A. E., German critic 427 
 
 " Select Party, The," 185, 198 
 
 Shakespeare, authorship of 300 
 
 Epitaph 302 
 
 Shaw, Chief Justice 15 
 
 Shelley 189 
 
 Sheridan's Ride 312 
 
 " Sights from a Steeple " 114 
 
 Silsbee, Edward 306, 311 
 
 Sistine Chapel 336 
 
 461
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Skepticism of evil 106 
 
 Slavery Question 260 
 
 " Snow Image " 240 
 
 Spartan discipline 137 
 
 Story, William W 310 
 
 St. Petersburg Venus 352 
 
 Sumner and Motley 349 
 
 Sumner, Charles 200, 354 
 
 Swartwout's defalcation 131 
 
 Symms, William, a mulatto. 47, 445 
 
 " Tanglewood Tales " 266 
 
 Taylor, President 211 
 
 Thoreau 163 
 
 of marriage 169, 193 
 
 Ticknor, W. D., death of 41? 
 
 Tituba, the Aztec 25 
 
 Tragedy, character of 367 
 
 Trance medium, a 325 
 
 Transcendentalism 191 
 
 essence of 198 
 
 Tupper, Martin Farquhar 280 
 
 Turner, J. M. W 285 
 
 " Twice Told Tales " 96, 108 
 
 "Unpardonable Sin, The," 243 
 
 Upham, the historian 20, 236 
 
 Vanity of Women 171 
 
 Vasari 332 
 
 Venus de Medici 318 
 
 " Vicar of Wakefield " 223 
 
 Victor Hugo 431 
 
 Villa Manteiito 316 
 
 " Virtuoso's Collection, The," 188 
 
 " Vision at the Fountain, The," 198 
 
 Ward's Tavern - .. 71 
 
 Warwick Castle 356 
 
 462
 
 INDEX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Wasson, David A 193, 422 
 
 Waters, Henry F., researches of 18 
 
 Wayside, The 256 
 
 Webster, Daniel 135, 206 
 
 West Roxbury commune 152 
 
 Whittier, the poet 17 
 
 Wig Castle in Wigton 18 
 
 Witchcraft persecution 15, 24 
 
 Wood, Warrington 341 
 
 Worcester, Doctor, the lexicographer 54 
 
 " Young Goodman Brown " 181 
 
 463
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 BEC'D 10-URl 
 
 31994 WKJUN 07 1995 
 
 MAR 1 3 1997 
 
 4WKNOV25 
 1 
 
 LD-UKL 
 
 MAY 1 9 
 f 
 
 
 OLUB 
 
 E IVED JL/ N 1 6 2005 
 
 315
 
 THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF 
 
 art critic, and then everything depends of course 
 upon the genius of the individual. It has hap- 
 pened more than once that a wealthy American, 
 with a certain kind of enthusiasm for art, has 
 prepared himself at a German university, has 
 studied the science of connoisseurship, and has 
 become associate member of a number of for- 
 eign societies, only to discover at length that he 
 had no talent for the profession. Hawthorne 
 enjoyed no such advantages, nor did he even 
 think of becoming a connoisseur. His whole 
 experience in the art of design might be 
 included within twelve months, and his origi- 
 nal basis was nothing better than his wife's 
 water-color painting and the mediocre pictures 
 in the Boston Athenaeum; but he brought to 
 his subject an eye that was trained to the closest 
 observation of Nature and a mind experienced 
 beyond all others * in the mysteries of human 
 life. He begins tentatively, and as might be ex- 
 pected makes a number of errors, but quite as 
 often he hits the nail, where others have missed 
 it. He learns by his mistakes, and steadily 
 improves in critical faculty. Hawthorne's Ital- 
 ian Note-book is a unique record, in which the 
 development of a highly organized mind has 
 advanced from small beginnings to exceptional 
 skill in a fresh department of activity. 
 
 Hawthorne brought with him to Italy the 
 Yankee preference for newness and nicety, 
 which our forefathers themselves derived from 
 
 * At least at that time. 
 330
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 their residence in Holland, and there is no city 
 in Europe where this sentiment could have 
 troubled him so much as in Rome. He dis- 
 liked the dingy picture-frames, the uncleanly 
 canvases, the earth-stains and broken noses 
 of the antique statues, the smoked-up walls of 
 the Sistine Chapel, and the cracks in Raphael's 
 frescos. He condemns everything as rubbish 
 which has not an external perfection; forget- 
 ting that, as in human nature, the most precious 
 treasures are sometimes allied with an ungainly 
 exterior. Yet in this he only echoes the impres- 
 sions of thousands of others who have gone to 
 the Vatican and returned disconsolate, because 
 amid a perplexing multitude of objects they 
 knew not where to look for consummate art. 
 One can imagine if an experienced friend had 
 accompanied Hawthorne to the Raphael stanza, 
 and had pointed out the figures of the Pope, the 
 cardinal, and the angelic boys in the "Mass at 
 Bolsena," he would have admired them without 
 limitation. He quickly discovered Raphael's 
 * 'Transfiguration," and considered it the greatest 
 painting that the world contains. 
 
 The paintings in the princely collections in 
 Rome are, with the exception of those in the 
 Borghese gallery, far removed from princely. 
 A large proportion of their best paintings had 
 long since been sold to the royal collections of 
 northern Europe, and had been replaced either 
 by copies or by works of inferior masters. In 
 the Barberini palace there are not more than 
 three or four paintings such as might reasonably 
 331