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THE 
 
 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 AT THE WAYSIDE 
 

 
 
THE 
 
 HAWTHORKE CENTENARY 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 AT 
 
 THE WAYSIDE 
 CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 JULY 4-7, 1904 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 ftitoerfi&c pres 
 1905 
 
COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February, 
 
THE WAYSIDE, Concord, Massachusetts, was the 
 only home ever owned by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
 who gave it that name when he purchased it, in 
 1852, from Amos Bronson Alcott. It passed, in 
 1883, from the possession of George Parsons 
 Lathrop and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, his wife, 
 into the ownership of Daniel Lothrop, the pub 
 lisher, whose family residence it became. 
 
 It seemed, therefore, to be of logical fitness with 
 the spirit observed by the present owners through 
 all these later years of residence, in which the 
 estate has been safeguarded and perpetuated by 
 Mr. Lothrop, and afterward by his widow, as Haw 
 thorne left it, that an observance of the one hun 
 dredth anniversary of his birth should here be 
 celebrated. 
 
 The Centenary exercises, as planned and ar 
 ranged by Mrs. Lothrop, were memorial addresses 
 and reminiscences, with the unveiling of the bronze 
 tablet set in a boulder on the path leading to the 
 
vi 
 
 hill, where Hawthorne daily paced to and fro in 
 solitary communion with his work ; these exercises 
 to take place on the birthday, July 4 ; to be fol 
 lowed on the mornings of July 5, 6, and 7, by 
 addresses at the Hillside Chapel (the chapel of 
 the Concord School of Philosophy, next The Way 
 side) ; these addresses to be given by eminent men 
 and women peculiarly fitted to bring tribute to the 
 great Romancer. 
 
 Acknowledgment is made to Mr. Thomas Went- 
 worth Higginson for his kindness in editing and 
 preparing this volume for the press. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FIRST DAY, JULY FOURTH 
 
 Address of Thomas Wentworth Hig-ginson 3 
 
 Unveiling of the Tablet 12 
 
 Letter from Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 14 
 
 From Concord to Concord in Hawthorne s Life, by 
 
 Charles T. Copeland 15 
 
 Letter from Edmund Clarence Stedman 21 
 
 SECOND DAY, JULY FIFTH 
 
 The World in which Hawthorne lived, by Mrs. Julia 
 
 Ward Howe 30 
 
 Hawthorne s Place in Literature, by Charles Francis Adams 42 
 
 THIRD DAY, JULY SIXTH 
 
 Hawthorne in Italy, by Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott .... 80 
 Hawthorne s Last Years, by Julian Hawthorne .... 105 
 The World set in Hawthorne s Heart, by Moncure D. 
 
 Conway 118 
 
 Letter from Dr. Richard Garnett 134 
 
 FOURTH DAY, JULY SEVENTH 
 
 Reminiscences, by Hon. John S. Keyes 139 
 
 Letter from Mrs. Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 146 
 
 Hawthorne and Transcendentalism, by Frank Preston 
 
 Stearns 150 
 
 The Friendships of Hawthorne, by F. B. Sanborn . . .158 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 Letters from Miss Beatrix Hawthorne 199 
 
 Hon. John D. Long 200 
 
 Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge 201 
 
 Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford 201 
 
 Hon. Robert S. Rantoul 202 
 
 Judge Robert Grant 203 
 
 Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward 204 
 
 Dr. Edward Everett Hale 205 
 
 Hon. John Hay 206 
 
 Mrs. James T. Fields . . 207 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE Frontispiece 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 HAWTHORNE S PATH 2 
 
 From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason. 
 
 UNVEILING OF THE TABLET BY MISS BEATRIX 
 
 HAWTHORNE 12 
 
 From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason. 
 
 THE MEMORIAL TABLET 26 
 
 From a photograph by James Tolman. 
 
 THE WAYSIDE 38 
 
 From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason. 
 
 HAWTHORNE S STUDY IN THE TOWER . . . .112 
 From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason. 
 
 HAWTHORNE S PATH (ON THE HILLTOP) ... 148 
 From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason. 
 
FIRST DAY 
 JULY FOURTH 
 
HAWTHORNE S PATH 
 (Showing The Wayside and the Boulder) 
 
FIRST DAY 
 JULY FOURTH 
 
 THE exercises were held at The Wayside, in the 
 pine grove and on the terraces. The large audience 
 sat facing Hawthorne s favorite path, where had 
 been placed, between two pines, a granite boulder, 
 rough-hewn and massive, as it came from Concord s 
 soil. The bronze tablet inserted in its face was 
 veiled by a large flag hung from the two trees, 
 completely enveloping the boulder, the folds of the 
 national emblem being caught up with branches of 
 laurel and pine. 
 
 The presiding officer of the day was Mr. Thomas 
 Wentworth Higginson, of Cambridge. 
 
 ADDKESS OF THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : I am desired to intro 
 duce this meeting, the object of which is a further 
 commemoration of one of our two great American 
 authors. It is for the citizens of Concord, in the 
 first place, to rejoice over the memory of Haw 
 thorne and of Emerson ; while those born elsewhere 
 in Middlesex County among whom I myself am 
 happy to be classed may also rejoice as neigh 
 bors. I learned from Worcester s Geography in 
 
4 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 my youth, and was much impressed by the discov 
 ery, that in Middlesex County in Massachusetts 
 there were two half shire towns, and those two 
 towns were Concord and Cambridge. Let me 
 speak for that other half shire town. 
 
 No o.ue can tell how it is that great authors come 
 in pairs come in doublets : we speak of Shake 
 speare and Milton, Homer and Virgil ; but it is a 
 great thing if they are willing to come at all, and 
 if they can come in pairs, so much the better for 
 us ! Even the little time that has passed since the 
 birth of these two great men, Emerson and Haw 
 thorne, has so tested the traditions and the claims 
 of the other leading authors of the country that 
 we can already admit, without a blush, wherever 
 they came from, the leadership that is commem 
 orated in Concord by these two memorial meetings 
 coming at so short an interval. While they were 
 writing, what multitudes of other men seemed great, 
 sometimes as great as they ; now that they have writ 
 ten, what multitudes of those other men seem small, 
 or are forgotten ! And we who live and live to write 
 
 O 
 
 write because we cannot help it must go on 
 writing because we cannot get our bread and but 
 ter without it, or perhaps even because we cannot 
 quite get that provision with it. 
 
 Such gatherings as these are for those who can 
 claim something more than that. I forget what 
 English noblemen it was Mr. Con way is here 
 
THE WAYSIDE 6 
 
 and can tell us by and by, and if lie cannot give us 
 the right names, he can give us the wrong ones, 
 which is the next best thing to it I forget 
 what two it was in the East Indies who went out 
 shooting with a native or whatever they call him 
 to guide them. They came home at last without 
 any especially visible result from their afternoon s 
 sport, and the basha bora or basha pasha, or what 
 ever it was this man who went with them said 
 in his gracious Eastern way that the two English 
 noblemen shot to admiration, but it pleased the 
 Almighty to be very gracious that day to the birds ! 
 We who shoot after fame have to accept that as 
 our probable result, and it is fortunate that, as it 
 is so, there stand here before us two permanent 
 names, and we are to pay our tribute to those. 
 
 The more serious part of my little tribute I have 
 written down, it is always the worst part, but 
 if you saw, as I do, hands going up behind ears, 
 and saw what a dreadful position this really is to 
 speak from, to have to speak against the wind, 
 not only of coming fame, but of actual Concord, 
 you would have more sympathy with me than you 
 probably do. 
 
 Perhaps it always appears to men, as they grow 
 older, that there was rather more of positive force 
 and vitality in their own generation and among their 
 immediate predecessors than among those left on 
 
6 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 the stage. I do not know when I have been more 
 surprised, for instance, than on being once asked 
 whether Hawthorne was not physically very small. 
 It seemed at the moment utterly inconceivable that 
 he should have been anything less than the sombre 
 and commanding personage he was. Ellery Chan- 
 ning well describes him as a 
 
 " Tall, compacted figure, ably strung, 
 To urge the Indian chase or point the way." 
 
 One can imagine any amount of visible energy 
 that of Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance as in 
 cluded within a small physical frame. But the self- 
 contained purpose of Hawthorne, the large resources, 
 the waiting power, these seem to the imagination 
 to imply an ample basis of physical life ; and cer 
 tainly his stately and noble port is inseparable in 
 my memory from these characteristics. 
 
 The actual Hawthorne was five feet ten and one 
 half inches high, broad, but of light athletic build, 
 weighing one hundred and fifty pounds. His eyes 
 were large, dark, and brilliant, as his son tells us. 
 Bayard Taylor said that they were the only ones 
 he had seen that really flashed fire. Charles Keade 
 said he never saw such in human head. People in 
 London compared him to Burns, while in college an 
 old gypsy woman asked him, " Are you a man or 
 an angel ? " 
 
 Vivid as this impression is, I yet saw him but 
 twice, and never spoke to him. I first met him on 
 
THE WAYSIDE 7 
 
 a summer morning in Concord, as he was walking 
 along the road near the Old Manse, with his wife 
 by his side, and a noble-looking baby-boy in a little 
 wagon which the father was pushing. I remember 
 him as tall, firm, and strong in bearing ; his wife 
 looked pensive and dreamy, as she indeed was, then 
 and always ; the child Julian, then known among 
 the neighbors as "the Prince." When I passed, 
 Hawthorne lifted upon me his great gray eyes, with 
 a look too keen to seem indifferent, too shy to be 
 sympathetic and that was all. But it comes back 
 to memory like that one glimpse of Shelley which 
 Browning describes, and which he likens to the day 
 when he found an eagle s feather. 
 
 Again I met Hawthorne at one of the sessions 
 of a short-lived literary club ; and I recall the im 
 perturbable dignity and patience with which he sat 
 through a vexatious discussion, whose details seemed 
 as much dwarfed by his presence as if he had been 
 a statue of Olympian Zeus. After his death I had 
 a brief but intimate acquaintance with that rare 
 person, Mrs. Hawthorne ; and with one still more 
 finely organized, and born to a destiny of sadness, 
 their elder daughter. I have stayed at "The 
 Wayside," occupying a room in the small tower built 
 by Hawthorne, and containing his lofty and then 
 deserted study, which still bore upon its wall the 
 Tennysonian motto, " There is no joy but calm," 
 this having been inscribed, however, not by him- 
 
8 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 self, but by his son. But I do not want to dwell 
 upon these things. Hawthorne had what Emerson 
 once described as " the still living merit of the old 
 est New-England families ; " he had, moreover, the 
 unexhausted wealth of the Puritan traditions, 
 a wealth to which only he and Whittier have as 
 yet done any justice. The value of the material to 
 be found in contemporary American life he did 
 not always recognize ; but he was the first person 
 to see that we truly have, for romantic purposes, 
 a past; those hundred years being really quite 
 enough to constitute antiquity. This was what his 
 " environment " gave him, and this was much. 
 
 But, after all, his artistic standard was his own ; 
 there was nobody except Irving to teach him any 
 thing in that way ; and Irving s work lay rather on 
 the surface, and could be no model for Hawthorne s. 
 Yet from the time when the latter began to write 
 for " The Token," at twenty-three, his powers of 
 execution, as of thought, appear to have been full 
 grown. The quiet ease is there, the pellucid lan 
 guage, the haunting quality : these gifts were born 
 in him ; we cannot trace them back to any period 
 of formation. And when we consider the degree to 
 which they were developed, how utterly unfilled 
 remains his peculiar throne ; how powerless would 
 be the accumulated literary forces of London, for 
 instance, at this day, to produce a single page that 
 could possibly be taken for Hawthorne s ; we see 
 
THE WAYSIDE 9 
 
 that there must, after all, be such a thing as lit 
 erary art, and that he must represent one of the 
 very highest types of artist. 
 
 Through Hawthorne s journals we trace the 
 mental impulses by which he first obtained his 
 themes. Then in his unfinished " Septimius Fel- 
 ton " fortunately unfinished for this purpose we 
 see his plastic imagination at work in shaping the 
 romance ; we watch him trying one mode of treat 
 ment, then modifying it by another ; always aim 
 ing at the main point, but sometimes pausing to 
 elaborate the details, and at other times dismissing 
 them to be worked out at leisure. There hangs 
 before me, in my study, a photograph of one of 
 Raphael s rough sketches, drawn on the back of 
 a letter : there is a group of heads, then another 
 group drawn on a very different scale ; you follow 
 the shifting mood of the artist s mind ; and so it is 
 in reading " Septimius Felton." But in all Haw 
 thorne s completed works, the penciling is rubbed 
 out, and every trace of the preliminary labor has 
 disappeared. 
 
 One of the most characteristic of Hawthorne s 
 literary methods is his habitual use of guarded 
 under-statements and veiled hints. It is not a sign 
 of weakness, but of conscious strength, when he 
 surrounds each delineation with a sort of penum 
 bra, takes you into his counsels, offers hypotheses, 
 as, " May it not have been ? " or, " Shall we not 
 
10 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 rather say ? " and sometimes, like a conjurer, urges 
 particularly upon you the card he does not intend 
 you to accept. He seems not quite to know whether 
 Arthur Dimmesdale really had a fiery scar on his 
 breast, or what finally became of Miriam and her 
 lover. He will gladly share with you any informa 
 tion he possesses (nothing mean about him ! he 
 would not keep back anything for the world!), 
 and, indeed, he has several valuable hints to offer ; 
 but that is all. The result is, that you place your 
 self by his side to look with him at his characters, 
 and gradually share with him the conviction that 
 they must be real. Then, when he has you thus 
 in possession, he calls your attention to the pro 
 found ethics involved in the tale, and yet does it so 
 gently that you never think of the moral as being 
 obtrusive. 
 
 All this involved a trait which was always su 
 preme in him, a marvelous self-control. He had 
 by nature that gift which the musical composer 
 Jomelli went to a teacher to seek, " the art of 
 not being embarrassed by his own ideas." Mrs. 
 Hawthorne told me that her husband grappled 
 alone all winter with " The Scarlet Letter," and 
 came daily from his study with a knot in his fore 
 head ; and yet his self-mastery was so complete 
 that every sentence would seem to have crystallized 
 in an atmosphere of perfect calm. We see the value 
 of this element in his literary execution, when we 
 
THE WAYSIDE 11 
 
 turn from it to that of an author so great as Lowell, 
 for instance, and see him often entangled and 
 weighed down by his own rich thoughts, his style 
 being overcrowded by the very wealth it bears. 
 Hawthorne never needed italic letters to distribute 
 his emphasis, never a footnote for assistance. There 
 was no conception so daring that he shrank from 
 attempting it ; and none that he could not so mas 
 ter as to state it, if he pleased, in terms of mono 
 syllables. 
 
 Having so much, why should we ask for more ? 
 An immediate popularity might possibly have added 
 a little more sunshine to his thought, a few drops 
 of redder blood to his style ; thus averting the only 
 criticism that can ever be justly made on either. 
 Yet this very privation has made him a nobler and 
 tenderer figure in literary history ; and a source of 
 more tonic influence for young writers, through all 
 coming time. The popular impression of Hawthorne 
 as a shy and lonely man gives but a part of the 
 truth. When we think of him as reading "The 
 Scarlet Letter " to his sympathetic wife, until she 
 pressed her hands to her ears, and could bear no 
 more ; or when we imagine him as playing with his 
 children so gayly that his elder daughter told me 
 " there never was such a playmate in all the world," 
 we may feel that he had, after all, the very best 
 that earth can give, and all our regrets seem only 
 an honest impertinence. 
 
12 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 MR. HIGGINSON : The original plan of the meet 
 ing was that the whole proceedings of the meeting 
 should take place this afternoon out here. It has 
 now grown so very breezy, however, that it would 
 be well, after the unveiling of the stone, to have 
 the later proceedings take place in the chapel, 
 where the other meetings are to be. 
 
 I have here a copy of the inscription on the tablet, 
 and I will say that we are honored in having the 
 first look at it. What is dearest and best for a 
 man s memory is always unveiled, if possible, by 
 his personal posterity, and so it is fitting that this 
 tablet should be unveiled by Hawthorne s grand 
 child. If she will kindly do this, I will read the 
 inscription. 
 
 (Miss Beatrix Hawthorne then unveiled the 
 tablet.) 
 
 THIS TABLET PLACED 
 AT THE CENTENNIAL EXERCISES 
 
 JULY 4, 1904 
 
 COMMEMORATES NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 HE TROD DAILY THIS PATH TO THE HILL 
 TO FORMULATE 
 
 AS HE PACED TO AND FRO 
 
 UPON ITS SUMMIT 
 HIS MARVELOUS ROMANCES 
 
UNVEILING OF THE TABLET BY MISS BEATRIX HAWTHORNE 
 
THE WAYSIDE 13 
 
 ME. HiGGiNSON: It is proposed that the meet 
 ing should now adjourn to the Hillside Chapel, 
 which is so well known in Concord that you merely 
 have to shut your eyes and your feet will take 
 you to it! An opportunity will be given to ex 
 amine the inscription first, as you go along, if 
 you wish. 
 
 (The company gathered about the Tablet and 
 then passed on to Hillside Chapel.) 
 
 MK. HIGGINSON : We will now resume our pro 
 ceedings, and as we last saw the charming spectacle 
 of one of Hawthorne s race removing the veil 
 which covered the inscription, I cannot bear not to 
 introduce a further suggestion of that race, in an 
 earlier generation. I have not with me the paper I 
 published this week in the "Outlook," upon my 
 dear friend, Una Hawthorne, the oldest, and per 
 haps most gifted, of the daughters; but I will 
 bring before you the absent image of the younger 
 daughter, who has shown herself able to lead 
 where few women could have equaled her ; and I 
 will ask that the letter of Mrs. Rose Hawthorne 
 Lathrop be read by the daughter of our hostess of 
 this afternoon, 
 
 (Miss Margaret Lothrop then read the letter.) 
 
14 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 LETTER FROM MRS. ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP 
 ROSARY HILL HOME, HAWTHORNE, N. Y., 
 
 June 9tli. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : Your most inter 
 esting letter and kind invitation have just reached 
 me, in our country home for cancerous poor. I am 
 so glad that you are all to gather together to give 
 my father so much honor. But I have no prospect 
 whatever of being able to be present. I have tried 
 very hard for a couple of years to leave my work 
 among the poor, to go to Concord, or its neighbor 
 hood, but have been prevented very imperatively. 
 This is usually because taking care of the dying, 
 and few of our patients living beyond expectation 
 for some months or years, we are constantly thrown 
 into extremely arduous situations, when every one 
 must join in watching, laying out the dead, and 
 seeing to the last rites ; and, too, new patients are 
 to be received, which entails much preliminary 
 work, until they are refreshed and settled. We do 
 all our housework as well. When I have more 
 members of our band of women for both Homes, 
 I shall expect to get away occasionally for jour 
 neys in several directions. I am so glad that my 
 brother will be present, and I wish with all my 
 heart that I could be, and could add any words 
 of interest to the commemoration. That, however, 
 I could not do, as I am not used to addresses, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 15 
 
 such as will be given. But I am, I think, a good 
 listener, and grieve that I must lose the interesting 
 experience. 
 
 Gratefully and cordially your servant, 
 
 M. ALPHONSA LATHROP, O. S. D. 
 
 MR. HIGGINSON : I shall now have the honor of 
 introducing to you as the next speaker of the after 
 noon a gentleman who, although comparatively 
 young in years, has achieved for himself the high 
 position of being one of the recognized leaders in 
 the teaching of English literature among the col 
 leges of America. So far as Harvard College sus 
 tains the high position which it has long maintained, 
 it has never, I think, had a tone of more judicial 
 and critical authority on all matters of pure litera 
 ture than it now possesses, and the fact that this 
 inspires a profound interest among the students 
 is a thing to which I, living in Cambridge, can 
 testify. I have the pleasure of introducing as one 
 of the special sources of that peculiar interest, Mr. 
 Charles T. Copeland, instructor in English litera 
 ture in Harvard University. 
 
 ADDRESS OF CHARLES T. COPELAND 
 
 I am very much ashamed to have made you move 
 from that grove, but it was, after all, a whispering 
 gallery, and when you had no longer an orator to 
 listen to, as in Colonel Higginson, and only a teacher 
 
16 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 and a speaker not used to distinguished occasions 
 indoors or out, it seemed to me you might not be 
 listening to me, but rather to the pine-trees ; so I 
 asked Mrs. Lothrop to arrange the move. 
 
 If, in this spare summary of a part of Haw 
 thorne s career, which by the way might be 
 called, " From Concord to Concord in Hawthorne s 
 Life," the student of biography misses much of 
 what seems to him important, it is because my sole 
 endeavor has been to point the relation between 
 the author s experience and his work. In the case 
 of this particular author, the difficulty of seeing 
 the man is only less than that of seeing the artist. 
 Yet from the little really known of this New Eng- 
 lander of genius, a few illuminating facts easily dis 
 engage themselves. No one now thinks of the appar 
 ent connection between the campaign life of Pierce 
 and the Liverpool consulship as leaving the slight 
 est stain upon Hawthorne s unblemished honor and 
 manliness. He wrote the book without thought of 
 the consulship, to do his best for his friend. And 
 it is due to Pierce although not one of the most 
 disinterested persons in history to say that he 
 would have done his best for Hawthorne if the 
 book had never been written. A few words in the 
 " Italian Note-Books," more touching than dithy 
 rambs for print or from a more self-expressing 
 man, sufficiently exhibit the tenderness of Haw 
 thorne s life-long affection for Pierce. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 17 
 
 A devoted son, he was the most admirable of 
 fathers, and the rare sort of husband who remains 
 a lover. Democratic, though conservative, he was 
 far enough from the thorough-paced reformer, who 
 too often takes for his motto that whatever is, 
 is wrong. And this ingrained habit of mind con 
 spired with loyalty to early training to keep a son 
 of the Puritans from ranging himself with all 
 other American writers of note, " on the side of 
 the angels," in the burning question of his later 
 years. Hawthorne s way of sticking to a political 
 position, in which it is hard to visualize a Northern 
 man of his intellect, is subtly explained, it may 
 be, by Emerson s constant impression of a strong 
 feminine element in his friend, and by Curtis s 
 word that talking to Hawthorne was like talking to 
 a woman. Neither it says itself doubted for a 
 day his essential manliness : both, we may hazard, 
 perceived some mingled trait of mind and temper 
 ament on which Francisque Sarcey has since put 
 his finger in the delphic saying, " Every artist is a 
 woman." But being an artist did not keep Haw 
 thorne from being an exemplar of his own fine re 
 mark, apropos of Burns and Scottish scenery, that 
 " a man is better than a mountain." People made 
 way in a crowd for the gentle Titan, without his 
 lifting hand or voice. Fields, a genius among pub 
 lishers, and an especially good genius to Haw 
 thorne, tells of him: " I happened to be in London 
 
18 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 with Hawthorne during his consular residence in 
 England, and was always greatly delighted at the 
 rustle of admiration his personal appearance ex 
 cited when he entered a room. His bearing was 
 modestly grand, and his voice touched the ear like 
 a melody." Charles Eeade said of him, using 
 almost exactly Sir Walter s words about Burns, 
 that he had never seen such an eye in any human 
 head. And here is an anecdote communicated to 
 Mr. Con way by Dr. Loring: "Placid, peaceful, 
 calm, and retiring as he was in all the ordinary 
 events of life, he was tempestuous and irresist 
 ible when roused. An attempt on the part of a 
 rough and overbearing sea captain to interfere 
 with his business as an inspector of customs in 
 charge of his ship, was met with such a terrific 
 uprising of spiritual and physical wrath, that 
 the dismayed captain fled up the wharf and took 
 refuge in the office, inquiring, What in God s 
 name have you sent on board my ship as an in 
 spector ? " 
 
 In truth, neither as a servant of the public nor 
 as master of himself, did Hawthorne know the 
 name of fear. He loved beauty everywhere in Na 
 ture only less than he loved it in fair women. He 
 loved books in youth, particularly Spenser and 
 Bunyan, the English masters of allegory ; the Bible 
 throughout his life. He was a lover of flowers, 
 pets, the sea, friends, family ; yet, whatever else 
 
THE WAYSIDE 19 
 
 he loved, with the stern probity of all his forbears 
 he loved honor more. Churches, parsons, dinner 
 parties, literary men (as a class), and his " equals " 
 (as a rule) appear not to have pleased him ; but 
 he was at his ease with sea captains, cabin boys, 
 longshoremen, children, and other beings who come 
 to close quarters with Nature or deal with her at 
 first hand. Most persons who encountered Haw 
 thorne had poor Mr. Howells s " half hour of si 
 lence " with him. With a friend or two, however, 
 especially with a sole friend, he talked beguil- 
 ingly and much. When public speaking was forced 
 upon him, he could, though often shy unto death 
 before no more than three fellow creatures, wring 
 triumph from the occasion ; and there are memo 
 rable records extant of these successes in talk with 
 the few and in speech to the many. What Haw 
 thorne got from his life may be known from what 
 he wrote in the last year of it to Mr. R. H. Stod- 
 dard, on receipt of that writer s verses, entitled 
 " The King s Bell : " "I sincerely thank you for 
 your beautiful poem, which I have read with a 
 great deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had 
 a right to expect from what you gave us in years 
 gone by ; only I wish the idea had not been so sad. 
 I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his 
 lifetime, and again at the moment of death. Yet 
 you may be right. I have been a happy man, and 
 yet I do not remember any one moment of such 
 
20 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 happy conspiring circumstances that I could have 
 rung a joy-bell for it." 
 
 Here is a fairly complete description. Let any 
 painter who is skilled at deriving likenesses from 
 passports evoke a speaking likeness of the person 
 designated. Or let some magician who has what the 
 stage calls a " practicable " cauldron, set it over 
 the fire of his imagination, stir together in it these 
 diverse elements of identity, and bid an apparition 
 rise. The shadow is as likely to be Banquo as to be 
 Hawthorne, and however good the charm, will be 
 no more keenly limned than the remembrance of a 
 dream of one whom we have never known. Haw 
 thorne unconsciously mystified all but a very few 
 of those who thought they understood him best ; 
 and even in the case of those few such were his 
 honest evasions, so undesignedly elusive was he 
 we cannot be sure that they perceived more than 
 a certain phasis of the man who charmed them, or 
 that they really knew more of him than Kenyon 
 knew of Donatello. He had the strangest and, on 
 the whole, I think, the most original imagination 
 of his day, in any language. That the possessor 
 or the possessed of such an imagination could 
 harness himself to his heavy load in custom house 
 and consulate, is only a heightening of the recur 
 rent miracle which binds artist and man in one 
 body. It would have been a more wonderful mir 
 acle than ever yet was worked, if Hawthorne s 
 
THE WAYSIDE 21 
 
 creating mind had not often strayed, even from 
 those close at hand and heart, to the phantoms 
 that " startle and waylay " his readers. Like every 
 rare being that walks this earth awhile, he seemed 
 to keep step to a march very different indeed from 
 the treadmill measure that sets the pace for poor 
 humanity. And when the baser rhythm broke in 
 upon the airy music to which his feet kept time, 
 he lost the beat, and, perforce, fell out. Consule 
 Hawthorne, there were no romances. 
 
 MR. HIGGINSON : After this charming tribute by 
 a critic we should like, I think, a little direct testi 
 monial from a contemporary of Hawthorne s, or a 
 younger contemporary in the world of poetry, and 
 I will ask one of the young gentlemen who have 
 kindly offered to assist us, when our own voices 
 gave out, if he will read a letter received from 
 Mr. Stedman, the well-known New York poet and 
 critic as well. 
 
 (Mr. Charles Everett then read the following 
 letter.) 
 
 LETTER FROM MR. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 
 
 LAWRENCE PARK, BRONXVILLE, N. Y., 
 June 26, 1904. 
 
 MRS. H. M. LOTHROP, The Wayside, Concord. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAM: When your letter of the 
 20th came, I was ill with a fever, and I am to-day 
 
22 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 for the first time able to write you. Meanwhile, I 
 now have received your second letter, and very much 
 regret that it will be impossible for me in my 
 rather helpless state to go to grand old Concord 
 and reverently listen to the tributes paid to the 
 memory of New England s great romancer and 
 literary artist, at the spot where he wrote " The 
 Blithedale Romance," and where he rode so well, 
 as Emerson said, his " horse of the night." None 
 of the Concord Pleiad was more distinctive than 
 he, for he was among them, yet not wholly of 
 them. Yet, like each of them, though following 
 the line of mystery and beauty, he was a moralist 
 ingrained. I am glad to be remembered at Con 
 cord, where my personal associations were so brief 
 that the memory of them is all the more precious. 
 There I lived for a day and night at " The Yfay- 
 side," the guest of Hawthorne s daughter and her 
 husband. There, I know, Sanborn piously still 
 keeps burning the sacred lamp faithful to the 
 manes of the departed bards and seers. And Hig- 
 ginson, too, is left, to lead your exercises and my 
 picture of the Hillside Chapel, now before me as I 
 write, is not so vivid as that which my mind con 
 ceives of the little platform as it will appear on In 
 dependence Day. I hoped to write this note before 
 you would receive the little volume with the Haw 
 thorne poem. It was mailed to you to show that I 
 had already paid the fullest metrical tribute within 
 
THE WAYSIDE 23 
 
 my power to the genius of Hawthorne, and that I 
 could not write another poein upon its theme 
 even if you had given me more than ten days no 
 tice. For the same reason, a month ago, I received 
 similar requests from Salem and from Bowdoin. 
 But if I had had my choice where to go, as one of 
 a reverent gathering, it would have been to Con 
 cord, and it is a deprivation that I cannot be with 
 you on the Fourth. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 
 
 MR. HIGGINSON : I think it is only just to Mr. 
 Stedman and to Mr. Hawthorne to call your atten 
 tion to a poem by the one upon the other, which 
 Mr. Stedman read before the Society of the Phi 
 Beta Kappa, at Harvard University, in 1877, and 
 some of his touches seem to me so singularly fine 
 that I am sure you will pardon me if I read you two 
 or three stanzas from that. He says of Hawthorne : 
 
 " Two natures in him strove 
 Like day with night, his sunshine and his gloom. 
 
 To him the stern forefathers creed descended, 
 The weight of some inexorable Jove 
 Prejudging from the cradle to the tomb; 
 
 But therewithal the lightsome laughter blended 
 Of that Arcadian sweetness undismayed 
 
 Which finds in Love its law, and graces still 
 The rood, the penitential symbol worn, 
 Which sees, beyond the shade, 
 
24 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 The Naiad nymph of every rippling rill, 
 And hears quick Fancy wind her willful horn. 
 
 " What if he brooded long 
 On Time and Fate, the ominous progression 
 
 Of years that with Man s retributions frown, 
 The destinies which round his footsteps throng, 
 Justice, that heeds not Mercy s intercession, 
 
 Crime, on its own head calling vengeance down, 
 Deaf Chance and blind, that, like the mountain-slide, 
 
 Puts out Youth s heart of fire and all is dark ! 
 What though the blemish which, in aught of earth, 
 The maker s hand defied, 
 
 Was plain to him, the one evasive mark 
 
 Wherewith Death stamps us for his own at birth ! 
 
 " Ah, none the less we know 
 He felt the imperceptible fine thrill 
 
 With which the waves of being palpitate, 
 Whether in ecstasy of joy or woe, 
 And saw the strong divinity of Will 
 
 Bringing to halt the stolid tramp of Fate; 
 Nor from his work was ever absent quite 
 
 The presence which, o ercast it as we may, 
 Things far beyond our reason can suggest: 
 There was a drifting light 
 
 In Donatello s cell, a fitful ray 
 
 Of sunshine came to hapless Clifford s breast." 
 
 It is a pleasure to feel that while Hawthorne him 
 self used the vehicle of prose to bring his deep 
 rich thought to so high a point of utterance, it also 
 was echoed in a manner by a contemporary, and 
 
THE WAYSIDE 25 
 
 by one of the highest, certainly among the younger 
 contemporaries, and to give strains so rich and 
 delicate as those. 
 
 Friends, we have had a pleasant afternoon. 
 There are some things about it, at any rate, that 
 have been pleasant. My sympathy still goes out to 
 those hapless beings whom I saw converting the 
 human hand into an ear-trumpet, in the grove, and 
 I know that it will gratify you if I say we have 
 no further literary tribute this afternoon, whatever 
 to-morrow may bring forth, you need not think 
 you have got through with us. I am authorized by 
 our kind hostess [Mrs. Daniel Lothrop] of to-day 
 to say what she herself would gladly have said be 
 fore we left the Hawthorne house, but I am glad 
 she did not, for if she had we should have wished 
 to accept her invitation, that she would be very 
 glad if there are any here who have never happened 
 before to be in the neighborhood of that historic 
 mansion, and would like to go over it and through 
 it ; if any of the company would like to do that this 
 afternoon, and will take the trouble to walk the 
 short distance back, that opportunity will now be 
 given. 
 
 For the meeting to-morrow I have only to say 
 it will be held here at ten o clock. There will be 
 morning meetings only, but they will turn our morn 
 ings into such pleasure that it will seem always 
 afternoon. I will mention the speakers for to- 
 
26 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 morrow. A paper by Mr. Julian Hawthorne will 
 be read, he having been prevented by circumstances 
 from attending. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe will 
 speak, and Hon. Charles Francis Adams will also 
 speak, and such a combination as that I think will 
 draw us all here. 
 
 This meeting is adjourned. 
 
THE MEMORIAL TABLET 
 
SECOND DAY 
 
 JULY FIFTH 
 
SECOND DAY 
 
 JULY FIFTH 
 
 THE exercises of the second day were held at 
 Hillside Chapel, Mr. Moncure D. Con way presiding. 
 His opening remarks were as follows : 
 
 LADIES AND GENTLEMEN : The eventualities of 
 life have brought wonderful changes. Fifty years 
 ago he who was a crude young Virginian, born 
 down on a farm adjacent to the Washington one, 
 and who had spent his early life devouring all the 
 cherries on the Washington farm that Washing 
 ton had spared, was brought here, summoned by the 
 literature of Concord, awakened from his slumber 
 in old Virginia, and now has the honor of presid 
 ing at a meeting and in the presence of literary 
 people who are classic to all of us. 
 
 You may be sure that I do not intend to take 
 up your time by any remarks of mine, and shall 
 during this fitful fete, which the generosity, tact, 
 and exquisite taste of Mrs. Lothrop have enabled 
 us to enjoy on this centennial I shall have my 
 chance to say my say to-morrow, and at present 
 shall only have the very grateful privilege of in 
 troducing my friend, Mrs. Howe. I have known 
 her, I may say, all my life that is, I may say all 
 
30 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 my spiritual and intellectual life; I have known 
 her as you have known her, as the guide and in- 
 spirer of our earnestness in days of storm and 
 stress. I therefore shall simply for the present try 
 to efface myself as chairman, and introduce to you 
 our beloved and noble JULIA WARD HOWE, who 
 will address us on "The World in which Haw 
 thorne lived." 
 
 ADDRESS OF MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT AND DEAR FRIENDS : I will say 
 what I can to-day about the world in which Haw 
 thorne lived. I shall ask your permission to remain 
 seated. 
 
 Much has been written, and mostly mis-written, 
 regarding Hawthorne s social surroundings. Mr. 
 Henry James, who supposed Salem to have been 
 for such a man " the abomination of desolation," 
 was evidently not well versed in the history of the 
 ancient town, the town of the Devereux and Crown- 
 inshields, Silsbees and Peabodys, very prosperous 
 before the day when Old Billy Gray quarreled 
 with its selectmen, and carried its business to 
 Boston. 
 
 Captain Hathorne, the father of the great ro 
 mancer, died of fever in a foreign land. His widow, 
 unable to withstand the weight of her sorrow, se 
 cluded herself even from her family, and ate her 
 bread in the solitude of her own room. Her home 
 
THE WAYSIDE 31 
 
 then afforded but a sombre background for the 
 life picture of her young son and daughters. It 
 is said that Hawthorne once, speaking of him 
 self and his sister, said, " We have been frozen 
 together." 
 
 The Salem of that time had society enough of 
 the usual sort, youths and maidens, lordly seniors 
 and stately dames. But it was not among this 
 goodly company that Nathaniel Hawthorne lived 
 and moved. In a weird atmosphere of his own, 
 his imagination shaped and draped the companions 
 of his early manhood. 
 
 In the heart of Boston he erects a pillory, 
 whereon, in the blazing heat of the summer after 
 noon, stands Hester Prynne, with her babe on her 
 arm, a living monument of shame and disgrace. 
 There, at a corner of the street, suddenly appears 
 her husband, spellbound with horror, a prey to 
 heat more fierce than that of the summer sun. 
 Hidden on the breast of the saintly young minister 
 burns the red letter which matches that fastened 
 upon the partner of his offense. 
 
 How palpitating with life are the personages of 
 this romance ! Even the young minister s youthful 
 catechumen, who, encountering him in a moment of 
 unconcealed discomfort, fancies that she has done 
 him some offense, her conscience being, like her 
 workbag, full of harmless little articles. Even the 
 ancient dame who openly cherishes her familiar 
 
32 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 spirits, and dreams of whirling in the dance with 
 a wizard from Lapland. It all hangs together, is a 
 region of imagination all compact, and those who 
 people it walk logically to the crisis of their fate ; 
 the head criminal to agonized confession, the inno 
 cent child to a calm and happy career, the dis 
 credited mother to who shall say what lonely and 
 unconsoling penitence ? 
 
 And out of all Salem s stately mansions he shows 
 the one he can best fill with the nebulous luminous 
 atmosphere which seemed to be his true element. 
 Here crime and cruelty have the upper hand, but 
 the weird touch also is present. Alice s posies 
 blossom on the housetop, while she, the hapless 
 maiden, comes and goes in unwilling obedience to 
 a force which she cannot understand, the compell 
 ing will of the man whose suit she has rejected 
 and who thenceforth hunts her after this fashion. 
 
 " Ooelum non animum mutant qui trans mare 
 currunt" Hawthorne goes to Italy, and sojourns 
 there long enough to become penetrated with the 
 charm of that lovely land. But even there he is so 
 far master of the situation as to make the sculptor 
 of ancient Greece his tributary, and endue the 
 fame of Praxiteles with a life of his own. 
 
 Art criticism is not his forte. He contemns 
 Crawford and admires without stint Miss Hosmer 
 and Mr. Story. But what a throne does his fancy 
 build for us ! Fair Hilda with her doves is his ideal 
 
THE WAYSIDE 33 
 
 of maiden innocence. Miriam is the glorious guilty 
 woman of passion and impulse who also belongs to 
 his artistic family. Here, as elsewhere, crime goes 
 to its bitter end. From this Hawthorne saw no 
 escape. But what a wonderful light has he thrown 
 upon the details of the eternal city ! The grim, 
 gloomy catacombs, the Capuchin Convent, the mag 
 nificent church itself, a world wonder, all come into 
 position at his bidding, and form a life picture 
 never to be forgotten. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the time in which Hawthorne pro 
 duced his most important works was one of deep 
 moral and religious questioning. The cast-iron 
 Puritan rule involved so much that was not in ac 
 cordance with man s noblest nature, that a rebellion 
 and readjustment of moral values was imperatively 
 called for. With the doubt of religious dogma came 
 to many minds doubts regarding the true interpre 
 tation of the moral law. With the polemic contro 
 versies of the hour Hawthorne gave himself little 
 concern. Were there not Parker, Phillips, Gar 
 rison to fight the real battle of ethics? Yet our 
 friend in his opaline mirror made show of the evils 
 which could lurk beneath the cloak of outward 
 sanctity, of the dire temptation which could even 
 assail a man of saintly disposition. The deep 
 pathos and instruction of this portrayal are beyond 
 words. 
 
 The bud of the new order did indeed have a 
 
34 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 bitter taste. The tides in opposition ran high, and 
 wrecked much casual fellowship, perhaps some 
 friendships which had been accounted real. Bro 
 ther lifted up his voice against brother. The fa 
 thers of the church were unfatherly to its younger 
 sons. Parker was Anathema Maranatha ; the 
 same bitterness may have been felt when Haw 
 thorne wrote a life of Frank Pierce. But the bud 
 had to unfold. I think that it fulfilled Cowper s 
 prophecy, 
 
 " The bud may have a bitter taste, 
 But sweet will be the flower." 
 
 I remember my own first knowledge of this great 
 author. I was not out of my teens when an admiring 
 elder read me the strange story of the minister s 
 black veil. Although I honored the fine reserve of 
 the lady who declined to withdraw the veil from 
 the face after death, I could not help wishing that 
 she had withdrawn it, so strong is curiosity in the 
 daughters of Eve. In those days I heard that a 
 Miss Peabody had made a drawing illustrating 
 Hawthorne s story of the Gentle Boy. When, 
 years afterwards, I heard that Hawthorne had 
 married this same Miss Peabody, it did not seem 
 strange. 
 
 Allow me one more glimpse of the Hawthorne 
 family. On a Fourth of July in the late forties, I 
 had gone with Dr. Howe and a lady friend to see 
 the display of fireworks on Boston Common. The 
 
THE WAYSIDE 35 
 
 lady friend fainted, and Dr. Howe carried her into 
 the historic West Street house where the Peabodys 
 still abode. The grandmother received us, holding 
 in her arms a beautiful boy baby, perhaps eighteen 
 months of age. He was struggling and crying vo 
 ciferously. The grandame explained that the young 
 people had gone to see the fireworks, and that she 
 was doing her best to quiet their son. And this 
 baby was Julian Hawthorne. 
 
 Hawthorne does much to redeem our literature 
 from the charge brought against it in recent days, 
 namely, that it mostly follows the trend of old world 
 culture, and contributes to the world s knowledge 
 little which may be called distinctively American. 
 Our critics on the other side perhaps forget that 
 the great inheritance of the English tongue natu 
 rally brings with it many of the traditions handed 
 down in its literature. And yet, methinks, the 
 criticism just cited has little foundation. To go as 
 far back as Washington Irving s Knickerbocker, 
 we have a work which could hardly have been 
 produced elsewhere than in New York. His tales 
 of Kip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow are full of 
 the atmosphere of the region to which they are 
 assigned. Time would fail me to follow this vein 
 further, but I cannot but remember Tom Apple- 
 ton s saying that in Mr. Emerson s pages you have 
 the music of the pines. Cooper has preserved for 
 us the romance of the early hunters and pioneers, 
 
36 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Bret Harte has given to us pictures of California 
 life which will live. But Hawthorne in his writ 
 ings shows himself above all a child of the new 
 world. The thrill of the tales that fascinated his 
 childhood follows him in his mature manhood. He 
 makes us believe what he himself believed in his 
 nursery. 
 
 In my own youth I was well acquainted with 
 one who called Hawthorne friend. This was John 
 Lewis O Sullivan, a figure well known in the New 
 York of his time. The two men were akin in poli 
 tics in so far as Hawthorne had any. O Sullivan 
 was a man of partly Irish descent, of much, over 
 much sentiment, and an ardent humanitarian. 
 Some sixty years ago he took up the topic of cap 
 ital punishment, and published an arraignment of 
 it which called forth bitter condemnation from 
 orthodox divines. These personages then held that 
 the sentence " Whoso sheddeth man s blood, by 
 man shall his blood be shed," was a divine sentence, 
 binding for all time. 
 
 O Sullivan once called upon me after visiting 
 Hawthorne at Brook Farm. He brought back the 
 impression that the ways of the rural community 
 were little to the liking of his friend. O Sullivan 
 was at the time editor of the " Democratic Review," 
 for which Hawthorne had already written several 
 stories. He seems to have relied somewhat upon 
 his engagement with this magazine for lasting 
 
THE WAYSIDE 37 
 
 employment. But the periodical, if I remember 
 rightly, turned out to be little more than a cam 
 paign document, and its immediate end being ac 
 complished, it ceased to appear. 
 
 Some personal remembrance must add whatever 
 it can to this very fragmentary tribute. More than 
 fifty years ago, Dr. Howe and I drove out to Con 
 cord to visit Horace Mann and his wife, who had 
 found a summer boarding place next door to the 
 Manse, where the Hawthornes were installed. We 
 brought with us our little daughter of about the 
 same age as Una Hawthorne. In the course of 
 the day, we found our way into the Hawthorne 
 residence, where Mrs. Hawthorne received us very 
 graciously. She promised that we should see 
 her husband. Just then a male figure descended 
 the stairs. " My husband," she cried, " here are 
 Dr. and Mrs. Howe." What we did see was a 
 broad hat pulled down over a hidden face, and 
 a figure that quickly vanished through an opposite 
 door. 
 
 I think that Mrs. Hawthorne made some excuse 
 about an appointment which called her husband to 
 go upon the river with Thoreau. 
 
 The Mann couple had a son of the age of Una 
 and my Julia. The three little creatures prattled 
 and played together under the trees in front of 
 the house, while Mrs. Hawthorne kindly showed 
 me the bedroom furniture which she had adorned 
 
38 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 with pen and ink outline. At the head and foot 
 of her bedstead were Thorwaldsen s Night and 
 Morning. On the washstand was outlined Venus 
 rising from the Sea, from Flaxman s Illustrations 
 of Homer. 
 
 Those three dear children, Una, Horace, and 
 Julia, all lived to attain maturity, and all left the 
 world too soon. The memory of the one last named 
 binds me ever to Concord with a debt of gratitude, 
 for she, my dearest child, fed upon its philosophy, 
 and grew radiant in its atmosphere. 
 
 So, the first time that I saw Hawthorne, I did 
 not see him, but I was yet to have that pleasure. 
 Years after the time already named, Mrs. Mann, 
 who was residing in Concord, invited me to spend 
 a day or two with her, and also invited some friends 
 for the evening. Among these were the Hawthornes, 
 who were at that time domiciled at Wayside. After 
 a while, Mrs. Mann told me that she wished to 
 make me acquainted with Mr. Hawthorne. I re 
 plied, " Oh, no ! I know too well how he hates to 
 meet strangers." She insisted, saying that since his 
 residence abroad he had changed much in this re 
 spect. Accordingly, we met, and I encountered the 
 beauty of those eyes, which I could compare to no 
 thing but tremulous sapphires. The next day I had 
 his company on the train, returning to Boston. We 
 talked a little of " Blithedale Romance," and I 
 said, " Mr. Hawthorne, you were cruel to say that 
 
THE WAYSIDE 39 
 
 Zenobia would never have drowned herself if she 
 had known how unsightly her appearance would 
 have been when found." 
 
 " Was it not true ? " he asked, with some mis 
 chief in his look, presently adding, " I had to go 
 out in my boat to look for her." 
 
 We met once again at a familiar dinner at James 
 T. Fields s house, where Anthony Trollope, Edwin 
 Whipple were, with myself, the other guests. Of 
 this occasion I can only remember that it was most 
 delightful, and that Hawthorne seemed at ease and 
 well pleased. 
 
 Hawthorne s use of the supernatural in his tales 
 has truly a historic value. It preserves for us the 
 fantastic melancholy of the Puritan imagination. 
 Those forbears of ours everywhere perceived the 
 influence of the bodily devil. He was as real to 
 them as flesh and blood are to us. Their belief 
 in witchcraft and demoniac possession was the logi 
 cal outcome of their merciless theory of religion. 
 Theirs was the terrible Jehovah of the Hebrews ; 
 to the Christian revelation of a God of love and 
 pity, they had not attained. 
 
 The works which show most of this element were 
 written in the author s unsocial days. We must 
 deem the isolation fortunate in which these seeds of 
 terror ripened into blossoms of power and beauty. 
 Would Hawthorne have accomplished things more 
 marvelous if he had had the run of the London 
 
40 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 clubs, or the entree into the fashionable world of 
 the world s metropolis ? Truly, he needed them 
 not. 
 
 What, then, was Hawthorne s world ? I answer 
 that he lived in a palatial region all his own. No 
 occasion had he for page or butler, for tricksy spir 
 its, fine as Ariel, served him at will. With a magi 
 cian s power, he stood at the entrance of his airy 
 abode, where all who entered must see and believe 
 as he willed. He was not of Salem, nor of Boston, 
 nor even of Concord : 
 
 " Instead of any upon earth, 
 The civic heavens receive him." 
 
 MR. CONWAY : It is a sweet and pleasant thing, 
 in the joy of closing years, for some of us, that we 
 have lived long enough to listen to and appreciate 
 these words of Mrs. Howe concerning her best 
 contemporary, or at least the one to whom she 
 looked up in her youth, and I can congratulate 
 the young people here that they will be able to 
 carry through their lives this sweet and charming 
 souvenir. 
 
 I shall now have the pleasure of presenting a 
 study of Hawthorne s place in literature from the 
 Hon. Charles Francis Adams, who has looked into 
 the study of history with broad and critical acumen, 
 and made discoveries in the most interesting eras 
 of this country. I might speak particularly of the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 41 
 
 great analytical power with which he has treated 
 the characters and figures who have determined 
 the history of this country. Partly Mr. Adams s 
 excellence in all these matters is hereditary. For 
 my part, having been brought up in the Jeffersonian 
 region, in the region of the Randolphs and of the 
 triumphant democracy, who regarded federalism as 
 wearing horns of a peculiarly sharp and ugly char 
 acter, and a great number of cloven hoofs, namely, 
 old John Adams, my first impression I think in 
 history was when I discovered in a happy moment 
 that it was old John Adams, the man I had been 
 trained to hate down in Virginia, who saved us from 
 a war with France, which would have been the worst 
 and ugliest in all the ugly history of our wars ; and 
 when I first got to love and venerate old John Adams 
 for sending that commission, confronting in the mat 
 ter even George Washington, who was prepared 
 to draw his sword again when I found that 
 all my old theory of John Adams was an effigy 
 and a mistake, then all sorts of impressions in 
 historical matters came. I found I was deceived 
 in regard to that President, and might be with 
 regard to other things ; and I have been assisted 
 in subsequent studies, like many other students 
 of history, by the gentleman I have now the plea 
 sure of introducing, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, 
 who will speak to us on " Hawthorne s Place in 
 Literature." 
 
42 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 ADDRESS OF CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 
 
 The audience need not be disturbed. The bundle 
 of material I am laying on the table is not to be 
 inflicted upon you in its entirety. It contains matter 
 for brief reference only. But Mrs. Howe, in the 
 course of the charming paper she has just read, in 
 a voice and with intonations more charming even 
 than the paper s contents, interjected the remark 
 that she understood discursiveness was on this 
 occasion permissible. At the very beginning let me 
 say that discursiveness will in what I am about to 
 say, be, not the exception, but the rule. 
 
 In the first place, however, let me explain my 
 being here at all, the how and why of it ; for I 
 chance not to be a transcendentalist, neither, for 
 that matter, was Hawthorne ! nor do I belong to 
 what is known as the Concord school of thought. 
 Mrs. Lothrop will bear me out to the letter when I 
 tell you that, some time ago, she wrote asking me 
 to contribute to this occasion, and I at once re 
 plied that so doing was quite out of the question. 
 Hawthorne I knew merely as that writer of fiction 
 who, in my estimation, stood distinctly first among 
 purely literary men by America yet produced; 
 and were I to comply with her request, a thing 
 not convenient in itself, I could only say as 
 much, repeating, in words slightly varied, perhaps, 
 what had been often said before. Not satisfied with 
 
THE WAYSIDE 43 
 
 this reply, Mrs. Lothrop again addressed me, press 
 ing her request even more urgently, and on the 
 ground that the preeminence I assigned to Haw 
 thorne as a literary artist was in itself enough, and 
 eminently fitting to be set forth on this, the cen 
 tennial of his birth. And so she begged me to 
 reconsider my decision. 
 
 There were reasons why I felt it to a degree 
 obligatory on me not to persist in my refusal. I do 
 most unfeignedly dislike to talk when I feel that I 
 am in no way peculiarly qualified to throw light on 
 the topic under discussion, and am also conscious 
 that, generally speaking, I have nothing in partic 
 ular to say. The talking-in-public habit I hold to 
 be an objectionable habit. But it so chances that, 
 so far as Concord is concerned, I am a very near 
 neighbor. Indeed, I might say a resident ; for 
 while my house is in Lincoln, the line between 
 Lincoln and Concord runs across " the old Baker 
 farm " on which the house stands. Thus in closest 
 way a neighbor, I feel myself under obligation to 
 perform neighborly acts ; and if there is one act 
 more neighborly than another, altruism, I might 
 almost put it, in its most etherealized form, it is 
 to contribute freely whatever one may be thought 
 able to contribute on an occasion such as this. 
 Hence my being here. It recalls to me in a certain 
 way the familiar reply made by Dr. Holmes to the 
 anxious mother s inquiry as to the proper time for 
 
44 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 a child s education to begin. He answered, you 
 remember, that the proper time for a child s educa 
 tion to begin was about one hundred and fifty years 
 before it was born. So with this address of mine. 
 Lincoln, you may remember, was part of Concord 
 until the 23d day of April, 1754; and with a 
 proper sense of obligation, we of Lincoln acknow 
 ledge the maternity. On behalf of Lincoln I am 
 here ; and accordingly an address for to-day may 
 be said to have been foreordained for me eighty 
 and odd years before I was born. 
 
 On the other hand, I have come with nothing 
 prepared. What I may say will accordingly be said 
 in a purely conversational way ; it is a talk about 
 Hawthorne. As such, it will be largely made up 
 of the utterance of thoughts which suggest them 
 selves as I, so to speak, meander on from point to 
 point. 
 
 Personally, and as a living entity, I know nothing 
 of Nathaniel Hawthorne. I say this with a distinct 
 sense of mortification at finding myself compelled 
 to confess such remissness. But all through life 
 I have failed to avail myself of my opportunities. I 
 never exchanged a word with Emerson ! After all, 
 however, I was, perhaps, in the case of Hawthorne, 
 not so very remiss. How could I have met him ? 
 He, a morbidly shy and very retiring man, lived 
 here at Concord, then a remote country town, 
 rarely visiting the city ; and in the summer of 
 
THE WAYSIDE 45 
 
 1853, he went to Europe, not returning until 1860. 
 In that same summer of 1853 I entered Harvard 
 College ; and shortly after the famous writer s 
 return to America, a wave of the great Civil War 
 swept me into the army. Never again were he and 
 I in the same neighborhood even ; and so, had I 
 so much as laid eyes on him, it would have been by 
 chance. In his later years he was a member of the 
 somewhat famous Boston Saturday Club, one 
 of the few forms of social entertainment he seems 
 to have really enjoyed. But when my own time 
 came to be chosen into that circle, though many 
 of his famous contemporaries still gathered about 
 the table in the familiar room at the Parker House, 
 hardly one of them is now left ! Hawthorne 
 had long since passed away. 
 
 But in connection with that club and Haw 
 thorne s membership, there is one anecdote pleasant 
 to recall, which has furnished me food for reflection. 
 There were giants in those days! The Saturday 
 Club met once a month, its last Saturday always, 
 dining at two o clock. Three of its members lived 
 here in Concord, Mr. Emerson, its central figure, 
 to meet whom, indeed, on his Saturday comings to 
 Boston the club was originally formed ; Judge Rock- 
 wood Hoar, and, after his return from Europe, 
 Mr. Hawthorne. Talking of the olden time and 
 former gatherings, Judge Hoar afterwards told me 
 that in those days there was no convenient even- 
 
46 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 ing train to Concord ; so if they sat a little late at 
 table, it was not easy to get there betimes. They 
 did not like to cut the dinners short ; consequently 
 it was his custom, on those monthly occasions, to 
 have his son drive to Waltham, there to meet the 
 later suburban train, and take home the Concord 
 contingent. As he described those winter drives, 
 he dwelt on the fact of Emerson and Hawthorne, 
 side by side, on the back seat of that modest carry 
 all, and wondered where and how another such 
 seat-load could have been obtained. As he told me, 
 I could not in my own thoughts help including the 
 judge himself. What an extraordinary freight it 
 was for a one-horse country carriage, Emerson, 
 Hawthorne, and Rockwood Hoar ! As I just now 
 remarked, There were giants in those days ! 
 None of us here will live long enough again to see 
 three men so well worth knowing so memorable 
 in our country s annals, so replete with philosophy, 
 fancy, shrewdness, and wit as were those three, 
 packed together in one small vehicle, driving in the 
 winter evening darkness from Waltham to their 
 homes in Concord. 
 
 I have said that I never met Hawthorne. If my 
 recollection is correct, he died on the 19th of May, 
 1864. When he died, and, indeed, for some years 
 before, I was far away, living in a different environ 
 ment. The gentleman who introduced me spoke of 
 Virginia. The 19th of May, 1864, came about in the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 47 
 
 midst of the carnage of that awful march of the 
 army of the Potomac from the Rappahannock to 
 the James. Losing thousands of men each day, 
 Grant was gradually grinding away the Confeder 
 ate force before him. The 19th of May fell be 
 tween Spottsylvania and Cold Harbor halfway 
 between the two ; and looking back, I find that the 
 day Hawthorne died was one of the gloomiest of 
 that gloomy period. On the 18th Grant s plan 
 of campaign had been roughly shattered ; Sigel 
 had been badly worsted in the valley of the Shen- 
 andoah ; Butler had been defeated on the James ; 
 Banks had met with reverses in Louisiana ; and 
 now, on the 19th, there was heavy fighting in the 
 army of the Potomac s front. Lee had taken the 
 aggressive. I well remember at that time read 
 ing in the papers of Hawthorne s sudden death; 
 but we in Virginia were then taking part in too 
 rich a harvest of death to take much note of the 
 passing of any individual. It was merely one more 
 gone, when many daily went. 
 
 Knowing Hawthorne individually not at all, I 
 have further no grounds upon which to base the 
 claim of any particular insight in respect to him as 
 an author. Indeed, it is years since I have read his 
 writings ; and of them I must needs speak from the 
 recollection and impressions of long ago. I am, 
 also, naturally inclined to be otherwise minded, 
 and a bit iconoclastic ; and in what I am about 
 
48 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 to say there may be opinions expressed in which 
 some of those here will not be inclined to concur. 
 In such case, permit me to suggest it would add 
 greatly to my own interest in the occasion, and 
 might to the general interest, were I to elicit a 
 spirit of contradiction, some impulse to set me 
 right. 
 
 What then do I know of Nathaniel Hawthorne ? 
 I have told you what I do not know. Curiously 
 enough, Nathaniel Hawthorne was the subject of 
 the first production of mine I ever saw in print. 
 Seeing one s self for the first time in type marks 
 an epoch in life ; that epoch is with me inseparably 
 associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne. Possibly my 
 friend Mr. Sanborn here may recollect something 
 about it, for he and I were in college together ; 
 and, if my memory serves me right, he was one of 
 the editors of the " Harvard Magazine," as the 
 undergraduate periodical of that day was called. 
 Indeed, I vaguely seem to remember him as one of 
 the originators thereof. 
 
 MR. SANBORN : Don t press the question, please. 
 
 MR. ADAMS: The first paper I ever wrote for 
 print was one for that college magazine, and the 
 title of it was "Hawthorne." It was forty-nine 
 years ago ; I was a youth on the verge of twenty, 
 still in my teens ! and the other evening, be 
 thinking myself of it in this connection, I hunted 
 up the copy of that paper I had chanced to pre- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 49 
 
 serve, and read it. I doubt if I had read it before 
 since it appeared, in July, 1855. I found it dread 
 fully funny 
 
 MR. SANBORN : It was at the time. 
 
 MR. ADAMS : So you also, alone with me prob 
 ably among those now living, actually recall that 
 utterance ! As I just now said, I found my paper 
 of forty-nine years back awfully funny reading; 
 but none the less, in it was one sentence applicable 
 to the present occasion, indeed, it might serve 
 me as a text. It is this : "Among American writers 
 of fiction, with us at least, Hawthorne stands forth 
 preeminent." And that conclusion at least is one 
 I have since seen no occasion to revise ! Otherwise, 
 my paper was delightful; the editorial "Us" and 
 " We " rang out in every line. I began with a quo 
 tation from "A distinguished British essayist," 
 through which form of speech I made reference to 
 the late lamented and much bequoted T. B. Ma- 
 caulay ; and, with a gravity truly comical, I seated 
 myself in the Harvard tribunal of the period when, 
 as Thackeray would have put it, that particular 
 Plancus known in history as " Frank " Pierce was 
 consul, and proceeded to pass judgment on Nathan 
 iel Hawthorne, indicating my approval of this, as 
 my condemnation of that. None the less, on what 
 I may refer to as the nub of the matter, I was even 
 then right. I will not disturb the oblivion which 
 covers my other utterances ; but in 1904, as in 
 
50 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 1855, I hold Nathaniel Hawthorne easily first 
 among American writers, preeminent in what 
 has since become a lengthened roll. Looking back 
 through half a century of ever-shifting conclusions, 
 that judgment I to-day confirm. 
 
 A week or so since, I chanced in some literary 
 paper across a reproduced list of Lord Avery s 
 one hundred books in all languages, not, as he 
 takes care to say, " the best," but " of the best ; " 
 and as such recommended to readers. Recently 
 revised, the famous list had been brought out 
 afresh. I have just given it as my judgment that 
 Hawthorne is preeminent among American writers ; 
 and yet in that list of a hundred best books, I do not 
 find the name of one of Hawthorne s. But I do 
 find here several to which, I fancy, no well-qualified 
 critic would assign a preference to Hawthorne s 
 masterpieces. For instance, here is Bulwer Lyt- 
 ton s " Last Days of Pompeii ; " Kingsley s " West 
 ward Ho ; " the " Self Help " of Samuel Smiles ; 
 George Eliot s "Adam Bede;" Cook s "Voy 
 ages ; " Lewes s " History of Philosophy ; " Greene s 
 "Short History;" all good books, nearly all 
 classics. But surely, making no mention of the 
 " Scarlet Letter," the " Marble Faun " is, even as a 
 tourist s guide, much more as a work of art and 
 literary masterpiece, scarcely to be omitted from 
 a list in which "The Last Days of Pompeii" is 
 admitted to a place ! 
 
THE WAYSIDE 51 
 
 Now, undeterred by the authority of Lord Avery, 
 I propose here to demonstrate, if so doing is in 
 my power, that Hawthorne ranks far and away 
 first among American literary men ; and, further, 
 that he alone among them is worthy to be included 
 in that memorable body of luminaries of whom 
 Shakespeare, De Foe, Addison, Swift, Fielding, 
 Goldsmith, Scott, Dickens, and Thackeray are the 
 shining lights. 
 
 So far, all I have said is preliminary. Let me 
 now address myself to my task. In the first place, 
 analyze we must distinguish the elements. Haw 
 thorne was essentially a writer of stories and of 
 works of fancy, in other words, a literary artist. 
 He pictured with the pen. Looking over that con 
 stellation, just enumerated, of those who also so 
 pictured, what are the elements which constitute 
 recognized greatness therein? Subjected to a rough 
 analysis, those elements reduce themselves, I sub 
 mit, to five: first, delineation of character, 
 portraiture ; secondly, story-framing, sequence 
 of the tale, and the skillful development of its 
 plot ; thirdly, the philosophy of life and passion ; 
 fourthly, style, skill in clothing thought in lan 
 guage ; and, fifthly, that fancy which decorates nar 
 rative and thought. This premised, let us take up 
 Hawthorne s work, assigning him in each respect 
 his proper place among the immortals grouped in 
 Fame s Temple. 
 
52 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 First, as respects delineation of character, 
 pen portraiture. In that respect I feel disposed 
 to say that Dickens is supreme, first among all 
 artists in English speech, even Shakespeare not 
 excepted. This may sound like exaggeration, 
 heterodox, if not paradox. Yet after briefly re 
 viewing our list of literary Titians, Velasquezes, 
 and Rembrandts, the Holbeins, Van Dykes, and 
 Reynoldses of letters, perhaps you may come to 
 think in this respect with me. 
 
 Begin with Shakespeare ! Until the time of 
 Shakespeare, I question whether any writer since 
 Homer had developed distinct and universally ac 
 cepted types of men. It is a little strange, but in 
 the gallery of portraiture we do have to jump from 
 Ulysses and Ajax and Hector and Helen across 
 twenty-five centuries of utter barrenness to Panta- 
 gruel, Don Quixote, and Sancho Panza ; Hamlet, 
 Othello, and Falstaff. During the whole interme 
 diate period I cannot recall a single delineation of 
 a type, of which you would say, as you might say 
 of any living man, that he was a regular Don 
 Quixote or Touchstone ; and, when you said it, 
 any moderately well-informed person would at once 
 know exactly what you meant, the resemblance 
 would be recognized, or denied. It is the same 
 power of pen-delineation which Rembrandt and 
 Franz Hals had with the brush ; and of it there 
 have been perhaps a dozen great natural masters. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 53 
 
 In power Shakespeare is probably, among these, 
 supreme, with his Hamlet, his Lear, and, above 
 all, his Falstaff ; but in ease and wealth of produc 
 tion, the lavishness of outpouring, Dickens 
 indisputably ranks first. These two apart, as you 
 run the list over, how few they are, and how little 
 each of those few has contributed ! Who is there 
 after Rabelais, Cervantes, and Shakespeare, until 
 you come to De Foe, with his one creation, 
 " Robinson Crusoe " ? Swift introduced into the 
 world Captain Lemuel Gulliver, that famous, as 
 well as veracious, voyager. Moliere I leave out of 
 the account. Next, in English, comes Addison, 
 with Sir Roger de Coverley, his portrait is ever 
 before our eyes. After him came Fielding, with 
 Tom Jones, Blifil, and Parson Adams. Richardson 
 at the same time invented Sir Charles Grand ison. 
 Is Sheridan entitled to mention because of Mrs. 
 Malaprop with her immortal "allegory on the 
 banks of the Nile? " or Mrs. Shelley, for Franken 
 stein, scarcely a bit of portraiture, but certainly 
 a name suggestive? Sir Walter Scott would, I 
 hold, as respects productiveness of types, rank 
 third, after Dickens and Shakespeare. Captain 
 Dalgetty, Dominie Sampson, Edie Ochiltree, An 
 drew Fairservice, and Caleb Balderstone are crea 
 tions not made to die. Yet when we think how 
 universally Scott is read, it is rather surprising 
 how few characters he developed which have passed 
 
54 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 into familiar speech, embodying types. Thackeray 
 I should say created seven, Becky Sharp, Major 
 Pendennis, and Morgan, masterpieces all, with 
 Colonel Newcomb, Captain Costigan, Barry Lyn 
 don, and Esmond, in the second rank. 
 
 But finally, Dickens how he did outdo them 
 all ! A very Rubens among literary artists, what 
 prodigality in production ! Take the first four or 
 five of his stories. They teem with types. Pick 
 wick, for example every one of us has our Pick 
 wicks in actual life ; and Tracy Tupman ; and the 
 two Wellers, " Mr. Tony " and " Sam ; " Jingle, 
 the Rev. Stiggins, Potts, of the " Eatonswill Ga 
 zette," Serjeant Buzfuz, Mr. Justice Stareleigh, 
 and Mrs. Leo Hunter. Do we not meet Mrs. Leo 
 in every society all our lives, and at once classify 
 her, and place her, and mentally address her as 
 Mrs. Hunter? Next came " Oliver Twist." There 
 are Bumble, of Beadledom, the " Artful Dodger," 
 Noah Claypole, Bill Sykes, and Fagin. " Nicholas 
 Nickleby " follows. Who does not know Wackford 
 Squeers, of Dotheboy s Hall ? and little Wack 
 ford ? Smike also is a tolerably well-known type. 
 Immediately afterwards, the " Old Curiosity Shop " 
 produced its array of portraits : Richard Swivel- 
 ler, Little Nell, Sampson and Sally Brass, Quilp 
 and Mrs. Jarle}^. Finally, " Martin Chuzzlewit." 
 Here we have Pecksniff and Mark Tapley, and 
 both names are to-day in conventional use. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 55 
 
 " What a regular Pecksniff the man is ! " or, " He 
 is a veritable Mark Tapley ! " convey just as clear 
 an idea of two types of men as to say of one that 
 he is an out-and-out Shylock, or of another that he 
 is Dogberry to the life ! As for Betsey Prig and 
 Sarah Gamp, I most confidently asseverate that 
 Jack Falstaff and Dame Quickly themselves are 
 not greater creations, nor more true to nature. 
 You may never have seen the originals, but you re 
 cognize them at once. They are old acquaintances. 
 Why ! not two days ago I chanced to be read 
 ing my morning paper, this copy now in my 
 hand of the Boston " Herald," the " Herald " of 
 July 2, and in the lowest right-hand corner of the 
 editorial page my eye caught the name "Sairey 
 Gamp." It headed the following familiar words, 
 utilized as an advertisement : 
 
 " If it was n t for the nerve a little sip of Sandf ord s 
 Ginger gives me I never could go through with what 
 I sometimes has to do. Mrs. Harris, I says, leave the 
 bottle on the chimney-piece, and don t ask me to take 
 none, but let me put my lips to it when I am dispoged, 
 and then I will do what I am engaged to do according 
 to the best of my ability." 
 
 Now that, I submit, is enduring fame ; if it is 
 not in itself immortality, it foreshadows immortal 
 ity. The current acceptance of a book or character 
 for half a century after its publication or appear- 
 
56 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 ance makes a classic of it. It has won its permanent 
 place in literature or speech. It is just sixty years 
 since Dickens brought Sarah Gamp and Mark 
 Tapley before the world ; and to-day I turn the 
 editorial page of the Boston " Herald," and in one 
 place I see a certain gentleman referred to as " the 
 Mark Tapley of political candidates," while in 
 another place I find " Sairey Gamp " figuring as 
 the head of an advertisement for a beverage, 
 though not exactly that to an indulgence in which 
 the immortal Sarah was so prone ! 
 
 And now, before considering Hawthorne as a 
 delineator of character, the originator of accepted 
 types, I will so far digress again as to put a 
 question to this Concord audience. How many 
 types in all, accepted as such and current in speech 
 and writing, has our American literature contrib 
 uted to the collection? 
 
 I have referred to Shakespeare, Walter Scott, 
 Thackeray, and Dickens as prolific creators of such. 
 Dickens, I have shown, threw them off with an 
 ease and profusion, an accuracy of insight and 
 expression, the attributes of true genius. His 
 fecundity was like that of Rubens among artists. 
 In all, since Shakespeare wrote, there may have 
 been some fifty or perhaps seventy-five such por 
 trait types produced ; and to-day they hang there, 
 in the gallery of English speech, each with its name 
 a proverb, Shylock, Falstaff, Sir Charles Grandi- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 57 
 
 son, and Sir Roger de Coverley ; Major Pendennis 
 and Sarah Gamp. Which, and how many, of them, 
 are of American origin? Since I agreed to take 
 part on this occasion I have been meditating that 
 problem, trying to formulate an answer to the 
 query. Hawthorne I am sure has not contrib 
 uted ; but I will come to that presently. Mean 
 while, what American has contributed? In all, 
 after best reflection, I can think of but three crea 
 tions the mere mention of which by name calls up 
 a figure and a thought, and those three even 
 would be more or less open to criticism. So far as 
 I can summarize it, our contribution is at best 
 meagre. " Rip Van Winkle " comes first, the one 
 creation of Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle 
 has certainly passed into speech ; and, as personi 
 fied by Jefferson on the stage, the mention of the 
 name calls up a familiar figure representative of 
 a situation and a thought. But, after all, is Rip a 
 character delineation like Falstaff and Sir Roger, 
 except as interpreted by Jefferson ? Giving Irving 
 the advantage of the doubt, we will, however, ac 
 cept his portrait, and disallow the criticism. Next, 
 we have Mrs. Stowe s creation of Topsy, in " Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin." Topsy is unquestionably a type, 
 not a type of the first class, perhaps, but still a 
 type. Apply the test ! If at this moment a little 
 negro girl in rags, and with unconscious freedom of 
 act and speech, were to pass before that door, and 
 
58 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 some one were to exclaim, " What a regular 
 Topsy ! " every other person here would know at 
 once what was meant, and mentally compare the 
 actual with the ideal. My third instance is of more 
 recent origin, the famous and familiar Colonel 
 Starbottle, the creation and contribution of Bret 
 Harte. Like the Heathen Chinee, Colonel Star- 
 bottle, I am inclined to think, has come to stay ; 
 he is recognized, and as such accepted. We have 
 all seen him; some of us have had the pleasure 
 of a personal acquaintance with him. Indeed, Sir 
 Roger de Coverley is by Americans far less generally 
 known, stands scarcely less in need of an intro 
 duction. Beyond these three who here can aid me 
 to a name ? 
 
 Coming back to Hawthorne, no one will claim, 
 as I have already said, that as a delineator of char 
 acter Hawthorne has contributed to the gallery 
 any universally accepted bit of portraiture. Hester 
 Prynne, Aunt Hepzibah, Phoabe, Judge Pyncheon, 
 and Hilda are all distinct and well drawn ; but 
 it can hardly be asserted that any one of them 
 has passed typically into familiar speech. On this 
 point, however, something yet remains to be said. 
 In character delineation absolute truth to nature is 
 not always, nor even generally, either the surest or 
 the quickest passport to success or fame. Even in 
 work of the highest genius a certain touch of ex 
 aggeration a skillful heightening of light and 
 
THE WAYSIDE 59 
 
 shade adds to the result, leading to a quicker 
 and even more lasting recognition. Take, for in 
 stance, the masterpieces of Shakespeare and Dick 
 ens, Falstaff and Dogberry in the one case, and 
 Sam Weller and Sarah Gamp in the other. In all 
 these creations there is a very agreeable, but none 
 the less apparent, element of the grotesque, some 
 thing remotely suggestive of Thomas Nast and the 
 best cartoons in " Punch." Nature is slightly im 
 proved upon ; its complexion is artistically height 
 ened, so to speak. On the other hand, Sir Roger 
 de Coverley and Major Pendennis I hold to be 
 higher as works of art, because absolutely true. 
 Yet they are not so popular as those first named, 
 nor so immediately recognized. To Sir Roger and 
 the Major, however, recognized places are conceded 
 in the gallery of accepted portraiture, while no 
 such general recognition and acceptance have been 
 extended to any creation of Hawthorne s. Yet his 
 work is in this respect of a very high order, 
 higher, I think, by far than that of any other 
 American. He belongs artistically to the class of 
 Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot, 
 all character painters of the first class, and yet 
 not one of the three has contributed a type uni 
 versally accepted, as, for instance, Dogberry and 
 Mark Tapley are accepted. Perhaps, though, in 
 Trollope s case a claim might be put in for Mrs. 
 Proudie. And so I am inclined to think that, as a 
 
60 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 skillful portrait painter is entitled to artistic prefer 
 ence over a cartoonist even the most ingenious, 
 prolific, and generally accepted as a delineator 
 of character, taken at his absolute best, as in " The 
 House of the Seven Gables" and "The Scarlet 
 Letter," truth to nature, real power, and delicacy 
 of touch being the tests, I am inclined, I say, to 
 believe the world is likely to see another Dickens 
 before it sees another Hawthorne. 
 
 The next element in the analysis was story-fram 
 ing, the skill with which the work is put together 
 and developed to a moral or an end. Again, my 
 judgment may excite surprise ; not improbably, 
 dissent. In this respect I do not consider Walter 
 Scott or Dickens as entitled to rank particularly 
 high. Their imaginations were prolific, they were 
 great as story tellers ; but as craftsmen they were 
 careless, and not unseldom clumsy. The best gen 
 eral workman in this field I know of, the most 
 skillful framer of a story in all its mechanical and 
 imaginative parts, was one I have not as yet men 
 tioned, Wilkie Collins. Trollope also, as a 
 sketcher of English life, while careless in his plots, 
 put his material together with marvelous instinc 
 tive skill. This you will remember excited the no 
 tice and admiration of Hawthorne, who thereon 
 expressed himself in words and similes which the 
 brother artist did not receive in a spirit of unquali 
 fied delight. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 61 
 
 But taking these two, Anthony Trollope with 
 his " Barchester Towers " and " Small House at 
 Allington," and Wilkie Collins with his "No 
 Name," " Woman in White," and " Moonstone," - 
 I am again inclined to think that taking Hawthorne 
 at his best, throwing out for purpose of this com 
 parison the " Blithedale Romance," " The Marble 
 Faun," and the " House of the Seven Gables," and 
 confining ourselves to his climax in story-framing, 
 "The Scarlet Letter," I am inclined to think 
 that nothing done in that line by Trollope or Col 
 lins much less by Scott or Dickens indicated 
 a higher order of skill in workmanship than what 
 Hawthorne developed as he dreamed in the port- 
 surveyor s chair at the Salem Custom House. Com 
 pare this effort with the " Legend of Montrose " 
 or the " Fortunes of Nigel." In all three the 
 atmosphere and personages of a remote historical 
 period were worked into a romance ; and there 
 can, I think, be no sort of question that in the con 
 ception and framing of the story what Hawthorne 
 did was far and away superior to the work of 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 Next, philosophy ; and by philosophy I mean the 
 study of the passions, and of the problem of life ; 
 so to speak, the tearing out the heart of the mys 
 tery. Here again, I am confident Hawthorne will 
 find his rank in the first class. We no longer com 
 pare him with Trollope or Collins, or with Dickens 
 
62 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 and Thackeray ; we ascend at once to the supreme, 
 the pride and ample pinion that the Theban 
 eagle bear, sailing with supreme dominion through 
 the azure deep of air. Goethe produced one great 
 drama ; so doing seemed to exhaust him. " Faust " 
 turns on one of the passions ; and the poet devel 
 oped his plot and philosophy over the ruin of a 
 girl. Shakespeare poured out half a dozen Fausts, 
 and, having done so, had enough left for a world 
 of other creations. Running the whole gamut of 
 the passions, he exhausted the philosophy of life. 
 In " Macbeth " he struck the chord of earthly 
 ambition ; in " Lear," paternal affection and filial 
 ingratitude ; in " Othello," conjugal love ; in " Ham 
 let," filial devotion. Having premised thus much, 
 what can be claimed for Hawthorne? Again, we 
 must take him at his best, and by his highest 
 judge and classify him. So doing, and speaking 
 from the mental impression surviving the passage 
 of years, I should venture to assert that as respects 
 imagination, insight, passion, and power, the un 
 veiling of a human soul amid the temptations and 
 trials of earth, " The Scarlet Letter " is worthy to 
 be named with the masterpieces of even Goethe 
 and Shakespeare. At his loftiest flight Hawthorne 
 also touched the zenith ; he too soared in those 
 azure depths of air ! 
 
 Pass on to the next element, style. We have 
 noted delineation of character, the mechanism of 
 
THE WAYSIDE 63 
 
 the tale, and the study of life and nature involved 
 in it ; now consider the medium through which the 
 narrative is revealed, and in which the philosophy 
 is clad. Let us take, for purpose of example and 
 contrast, some half dozen or so of those to whom 
 a natural mastery in English is conceded. Shake 
 speare, when he gets fairly down to prose, as, 
 for instance, in " Hamlet," is supreme. Shake 
 speare is always supreme ! Next, Addison Ad- 
 dison as he appears, not in his robes of critical 
 state, where he acts as a sort of Mrs. Jarley to 
 Milton, but in those " Spectator " papers where, 
 in dressing-gown and slippers, he tells us of Sir 
 Roger s visits to the theatre and Westminster Hall. 
 It is the perfection of English ! Then Swift, with 
 his clean-cut, trenchant expression, as sharp and 
 tempered, and about as hard, as a butcher s cleaver. 
 Goldsmith, who made the commonplace forever fas 
 cinating by the mere play of fancy and control of 
 words. Both Dickens and Scott are careless writ 
 ers, saying what they have to say in the words 
 and way which suggest themselves, and letting it 
 go at that. Great natural masters, they were not 
 conscientious workmen. Not so Thackeray; natu 
 rally great, he was also labored. His English seems 
 to me perfection, as perfect as that of Addison ; 
 and yet I do not prefer it to Hawthorne s. Again, 
 take Hawthorne at his ripest and his best, in 
 the " Transformation " and "Our Old Home;" 
 
64 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 take, for instance, in the last that exquisite de 
 scription of Warwick Castle, or his trip down the 
 Thames, and I do not believe skill in expression 
 and use of language ever did or ever can go fur 
 ther. It will bear comparison with the best English 
 literature affords. 
 
 And here let me again digress, for I have come 
 to the last element in my analysis, fancy. There 
 is one thing in Hawthorne I am unable to explain : 
 in the course of his work he never sought or 
 found expression in verse. In this respect I take 
 him to have been somewhat peculiar among im 
 aginative writers of the first class. We know what 
 Scott did in that line, not only in his longer poems, 
 but in his romances, such lyrics as the " Song of 
 Rebecca," and jingles still as popular as the "Health 
 to King Charles." Dickens not only wrote a vol 
 ume or so of verse, but among his early indiscre 
 tions he gave us the " Long Ballad of Lord Bate- 
 man," and in " Pickwick " he broke forth in the 
 "Ivy Green." Thackeray not only indited that 
 familiar " Chronicle of the Drum," but his ballads 
 of " Bouillabaise," the " Cane-Bottom d Chair," and 
 the " Age of Wisdom " were fifty years ago in the 
 mouths of every college student, and I sincerely 
 hope they are also in the mouths of their succes 
 sors still. But I am not aware that Hawthorne 
 ever turned a couplet. If anything of the kind is 
 to be found in his writings I fail to recall it. I 
 
THE WAYSIDE 65 
 
 wish I could recall it, for the absence thereof is 
 suggestive of a limitation. 
 
 Yet while verse and Hawthorne do not seem to 
 go together, Hawthorne was in no way devoid of 
 fancy. Swift, for instance, with abundance of im 
 agination in a way, bear witness Gulliver, had 
 no delicacy of fancy, and yet he turned off endless 
 verses, though no poetry. Hawthorne apparently 
 never felt any call that way. Yet Hawthorne s 
 fancy was delightful, finding its expression even 
 among the realistic New England surroundings, 
 and actually burgeoning into life in an English or 
 Italian environment. In Rome and at Warwick it 
 is as delicate in its expression as the tracery of 
 December s frost-work on a window-pane. 
 
 I have now passed in review those elements which 
 to my mind most enter into what constitutes emi 
 nence in literature as art. Now let me speak of 
 recognition. As respects general recognition, how 
 does Hawthorne stand ? Let me premise ; recog 
 nition and popularity are two very different things. 
 Hawthorne never was, nor is he now, a popular 
 author. And this suggests one more discursion. 
 A good many years ago, at a dinner of one of 
 those clubs in which Boston abounds, not this 
 time the Saturday Club, a gentleman startled 
 the company and it was a company of prominent 
 literati, lawyers, physicians, and clergymen by 
 suddenly asking if any of those present thought 
 
66 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 he could name any one of the three most popular 
 writers of the day, as judged by the test of demand 
 at the desk of the Boston Public Library. The 
 guessing at once began, and every well-known 
 name in English literature was suggested from 
 Shakespeare to Scott, Dickens, Cooper, and Long 
 fellow to Tupper. The mention of each was met 
 by a negative, and a call to guess again. Finally 
 the conundrum was given up in despair, and its 
 solution demanded. Its propounder then proceeded 
 to inform the astonished company that the English 
 writers far and away the most in demand in Bos 
 ton in comparison with whom Shakespeare and 
 Walter Scott, Dickens, George Eliot, and Wilkie 
 Collins simply " were not in it " were Mary Jane 
 Holmes, Caroline Lee Hentz, and Mrs. E. D. E. N. 
 Southworth ! names not one of which had any 
 member of that company ever heard before. Now, 
 in matters of art, taste, and literature many rules 
 and canons have, first and last, been laid down, and 
 some of them have stood the test of time while 
 others have not ; but one of those rules I take to be 
 indisputable, and as such eternal : it is that in mat 
 ters of literature, taste, and art the majority is always 
 wrong ! In this democratic vox populi, vox Dei 
 community of ours this may sound at first somewhat 
 heterodoxical, to apply to it no harsher epithet ; 
 but none the less it must in the nature of things 
 be so, and not otherwise. Hawthorne is a case in 
 
THE WAYSIDE 67 
 
 point. He represents probably in a more complete 
 degree than any other American writer the most 
 perfect art in literature. That he is popular, in the 
 usual sense of the term, no one will claim ; he is, 
 however, more and more appreciated among those 
 whose judgment counts most on questions aesthetic, 
 those whom Shakespeare denominates "the judi 
 cious," the applause of one of which should out 
 weigh the censure of a whole theatre of others. As 
 I have already said, fifty years acceptance consti 
 tutes the classic s test. " The Scarlet Letter " was 
 published four and fifty years ago. Passing the 
 limit, it has borne the test. It is forty years since 
 Hawthorne died. No one, I think, will be likely to 
 say me nay when I assert that Hawthorne s fame, 
 perhaps even his vogue, has risen with the passage 
 of every year since he ceased to be. 
 
 Victor Hugo, it is said, was once remonstrated 
 with for writing so much. There was in his reply 
 a certain force. " My business," he is reported to 
 have said, " is to write ; it will be the business of 
 posterity to decide what of my writings is worth 
 preserving." The great difficulty I now find with 
 authors is the amount of literary rubbish they thus 
 dump, so to speak, at the feet of posterity. How 
 does Hawthorne stand in this regard ? Let us look 
 at the others. We will pass Shakespeare and the 
 classics, including Voltaire, bowed under the weight 
 of his hundred volumes, and come at once to the 
 
68 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 moderns, the nineteenth century culprits. The 
 situation, bad at best, is sorely aggravated by what 
 may not unfairly be described as the scavenger 
 publication methods now in vogue, the "only 
 Complete Edition" mania. The periodical and 
 magazine chiffonier permits no pot-boiling rag to 
 escape his hook ! Take, for instance, Byron. Could 
 Byron be consulted, I have little doubt he would, 
 in his better advised conditions, pray that nine 
 tenths of all he ever wrote might, on the ground of 
 quality alone, be permitted to lapse into a merciful 
 oblivion. It is turgid stuff mere melodramatic 
 mouthing. Yet to-day they are with infinite edi 
 torial research and skill bringing out a new and 
 enlarged edition of Byron in which everything he 
 ever penned is unburied, and put in type. Only the 
 other day I came across an elaborate review of 
 this last publishing disinterment, and at its close 
 I read this summary: "Whatever our individual 
 tastes and proclivities may be, to ignore the pre 
 eminence of Byron in the literature of last century 
 is to write ourselves down well, we need not 
 say what." I am sorry to so write myself down in 
 the opinion of the " Athenaeum s " critic ; but after 
 a somewhat careful recent reading of Byron s mas 
 terpiece, " Childe Harold," and that fresh from 
 Greece, I must confess to having felt amazed as 
 well as disgusted at the small residuum of true 
 poetry I found in it. Of its five hundred stanzas not 
 
THE WAYSIDE 69 
 
 fifty were free from empty posing for effect. The 
 world would, I concluded, sustain no appreciable 
 loss were the poet s dozen volumes reduced to one. 
 
 So of Wordsworth the Showman of Nature. 
 I recently read the " Excursion " while journeying 
 in the Westmoreland country. It was Wordsworth, 
 not Byron, who in my judgment was in influence 
 preeminent in the last century s literature. But I 
 also with confidence assert, life is not long enough 
 for the full reading of Wordsworth now. But 
 could I do so, I would allot to him two volumes for 
 Byron s one. 
 
 And Walter Scott! Do you realize how the 
 world s stock of "classics" is accumulating? I 
 will not ask if any person here has ever read 
 through that famous novel, " Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son," for I know in advance no one has ; how can 
 such a book become other than a name ? The other 
 day I set a familiar spirit of mine at work to ap 
 proximate the amount of certain writers works, 
 and to estimate in some degree the proportions they 
 bore to each other. The result was little short of 
 appalling. Cooper, I found, was responsible for 
 some seven millions of words ; Scott was a good 
 second with six and a half millions ; and Dickens, 
 Thackeray, and Irving followed with some four to 
 five millions each. Five familiar authors represent 
 ing some five and twenty millions of words ! The 
 existence of that familiar and often referred to 
 
70 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 personage usually known as " every well-read man 
 or woman "is in the future undeniably disheart 
 ening ! 
 
 I will not enter into any computation as to the 
 proportion of the enormous output of the five au 
 thors just named the world could well afford to 
 spare ; but I can hardly imagine any one of the five 
 contemplating, as life closed, such an unwieldy bulk 
 of baggage without infinite sadness. For example, 
 take Thackeray, a man who had a full sense, I 
 believe, of the responsibility of authorship. They 
 have recently been industriously disinterring what 
 may best be described as his early pot-boilers, 
 matter he wrote in his immature period in order to 
 get the wherewithal to sustain life. Gladly would 
 he forget it, as he believed it forgotten ! The so- 
 called " Biographical Edition " of his writings is in 
 thirteen very solid volumes, edited by members 
 of his family ; yet when Thackeray laid down his 
 pen at the last line of " Henry Esmond," he had 
 delivered his full message to mankind. In " Barry 
 Lyndon," " Vanity Fair," " Pendennis," and " Es 
 mond " he had told all he had to say ; the rest is 
 hardly more than repetition, in words slightly 
 varied. The thirteen volumes had better have been 
 five. Dickens might almost equally well have died 
 when he finished " David Copperfield." He after 
 wards added much to his works, but little to his 
 fame. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 71 
 
 In this respect, it is otherwise with Hawthorne. 
 His work is in bulk less than half that of any of 
 the others I have named; nor did he ever write 
 himself out. Passing away betimes, I think the 
 world would sustain a distinct loss were any mate 
 rial portion of what he wrote obliterated. Of course, 
 " Fanshawe," the " Life of Franklin Pierce," and 
 the two incomplete romances published after his 
 death, I do not include. " Our Old Home " was 
 practically his last production ; as also it was that 
 one of his productions which the world would least 
 willingly let die. 
 
 And speaking of " Our Old Home " reminds me 
 of two little incidents connected with its publica 
 tion which, at the time, afforded me amusement and 
 gratification, and which I have since recalled with 
 unusual distinctness. They occurred in London. 
 " Our Old Home " was, you will remember, pub 
 lished in the summer of 1863, in the midst of our 
 Civil War, and when the British Philistine main 
 tained towards the American especially of the 
 North an attitude of superiority, and an aspect 
 of sanctimonious arrogance which would, to use a 
 strong simile borrowed from my friend the late 
 Sir Leslie Stephen, have been offensive if assumed 
 by God Almighty to a black beetle. I chanced 
 shortly after to be in England, an army inter 
 lude of mine. Simultaneously with the publication 
 of " Our Old Home " an English writer of much 
 
72 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 vogue at the time, Mr. George Augustus Sala, was 
 bringing out through the columns of the " Tele 
 graph " a series of letters from America, which he 
 a few months later published in permanent form 
 under the title, " My Diary in America in the Midst 
 of War." 1 The letters, certainly nothing to be 
 proud of, were of course very severe on America, 
 and all things American. The commotion excited 
 in Great Britain by " Our Old Home " when first 
 it came out is not yet forgotten ; it still faintly 
 echoes from the past. The British female was espe 
 cially incensed at certain references to her own 
 physical attributes. One day I was discussing the 
 matter with the first Duchess of Argyll, an excel 
 lent friend of America, and expressed my sur 
 prise at the sensitiveness her country people seemed 
 to show under Hawthorne s bantering criticism; 
 and, in doing so, I referred to what we had to un- 
 
 1 In this book there is a passage (vol. ii, pp. 23-25) referring 
 to Hawthorne. Sala says : " In one of my earlier letters home I 
 had animadverted somewhat strongly (but with a loving admira 
 tion of the man s genius and character) on the curious strictures 
 he had passed on English women." He adds : " He was certainly 
 a very eccentric person. Nobody ever saw him read ; no one knew 
 where he had studied his characters or gathered his incidents ; yet 
 he could scarcely have evolved the Blithedale Romance or The 
 House of Seven Gables from his own internal consciousness, 
 as the German critics evolved the camel. A friend who knew him 
 well told me that on his shelves Hawthorne had not twenty vol 
 umes, and that these even were of the most ordinary kind. Yet 
 was he as great a writer of pure and sounding and nervous English 
 as Dryden, and Swift, and Tillotson." 
 
THE WAYSIDE 73 
 
 dergo in that line, specifying a peculiarly offensive 
 letter of Sala s which had appeared in that very 
 morning s "Telegraph." But, I said, we bore it 
 all with equanimity ; perhaps because we were used 
 to it ! Never shall I forget the keen sense of satis 
 faction I derived from her Grace s reply; it was 
 so simple, so evidently expressing what she really 
 felt : " Yes," she said, " but really, in considering 
 our feelings, you ought to take into some account 
 the very different calibre of the two men ! " That 
 difference was indeed very much in evidence, 
 more so now than then ; but at the time, and under 
 the circumstances, this outspoken admission that 
 the weight of metal was obviously on despised 
 America s side was as balm to my sorely lacerated 
 soul. I saw Hawthorne in a new and very sur 
 prising light, as our champion bruiser in the inter 
 national literary prize ring ! And to him the belt 
 was conceded ! 
 
 The other incident, also in connection with " Our 
 Old Home," was characteristic, as well as amusing. 
 I was again talking with an elderly lady of rank 
 and prominence, and certain French authors con 
 stituted our theme. Suddenly I was paralyzed by 
 the remark that, " You in America have one de 
 lightful author who seems to me very French 
 your Mr. Hawthorne ! " I simply gasped, as I si 
 lently pondered. What my British matron had in 
 mind was plain enough. The remark was strictly 
 
74 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 insular. What was not English, was foreign ; and 
 what was foreign, must needs be French. But that 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, of all men on earth native 
 to New England, and of the soil racy, should be 
 characterized as " French " did overcome me as 
 a summer cloud, exciting silent as well as special 
 wonder. 
 
 There is a comparison possible to be made be 
 tween two men, which I do not remember ever to 
 have seen drawn both New Englanders, both 
 artists, the one of the brush, the other of the pen, 
 and each the most eminent in his field America has 
 even yet produced. Hawthorne was of course one ; 
 the other was John Singleton Copley. Both were 
 born and grew up amid New England surround 
 ings, its thin, sharp air, its inartistic, conven 
 tional life. For either literature or art the atmos 
 phere was arid ; it lacked the nutritious element. 
 Copley went from Boston to Europe in 1774, at 
 the age of thirty-seven ; Hawthorne in 1853, at 
 forty-nine. It is most suggestive to note the effect 
 of the new and older environment on each. Every 
 one is familiar with the difference between Copley s 
 earlier and his later style. His American portraits 
 were stiff, formal, and almost wooden. They re 
 flected the conditions in which he was born, had 
 grown up, and wherein he wrought. In Europe he 
 burgeoned out, and his great canvases representing 
 the Death of Major Pier son, the Eepulse of the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 75 
 
 Spanish at Gibraltar, and the Attempted Arrest of 
 the Five Members, were the result. He worked un 
 der more stimulating, more sympathetic conditions. 
 It was exactly the same with Hawthorne ; and I 
 know of few records of deeper significance than 
 this passage from the preface to " The Marble 
 Faun : " " No author, without a trial, can conceive 
 of the difficulty of writing a romance about a coun 
 try where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mys 
 tery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything 
 but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and sim 
 ple daylight, as is happily the case with my own 
 dear native land. . . . Romance and poetry, ivy, 
 lichens, and wall-flowers need ruin to make them 
 grow." 
 
 And now for my resume. The most magnificent 
 compliment ever to my knowledge paid to a writer 
 of fiction was that familiar one paid by Gibbon to 
 Fielding, by the historian of the " Decline and 
 Fall " to the author of " Tom Jones." " Our im 
 mortal Fielding," he wrote, " was of the younger 
 branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who drew their 
 origin from the Counts of Hapsburg. The suc 
 cessors of Charles V may disdain their brethren 
 of England, but the romance of Tom Jones, that 
 exquisite picture of humor and manners, will out 
 live the Palace of the Escurial and the Imperial 
 Eagle of Austria." 
 
 So in closing my contribution here at this cen- 
 
76 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 tenary, I say of Nathaniel Hawthorne what I said 
 forty-nine years ago, and at my beginning to-day, 
 that in my judgment he stands preeminent among 
 American literary artists ; and his name may well 
 challenge enrollment in that galaxy of great lu 
 minaries in which are included Shakespeare and 
 Addison, Defoe, Fielding and Goldsmith, Scott, 
 Thackeray and Dickens. Thinking this, I also 
 think that what Edward Gibbon wrote of Henry 
 Fielding might more truly be changed, and thus 
 applied to Hawthorne : The legend of the Scarlet 
 Letter, that exquisite picture of an earlier time with 
 its manners and morals, will, even more than the 
 romance of " Tom Jones," " outlive the Palace of 
 the Escurial and the Imperial Eagle of Austria." 
 
THIRD DAY 
 JULY SIXTH 
 
THIRD DAY 
 
 JULY SIXTH 
 
 MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE presided over the 
 exercises of the third day, which also were held in 
 the Hillside Chapel. 
 
 MRS. HOWE : I am very glad to have the 
 honor and pleasure of presiding over the exercises 
 of to-day, and when I came here to the chapel yes 
 terday my first thought was, " What can I say here 
 that will be as eloquent as this chapel is to me," 
 remembering those delightful days of the Sum 
 mer School of Philosophy, remembering the august 
 faces that we saw then and shall see no more, and 
 remembering the words of wisdom that we heard, 
 some of which, I dare say, abide with us still. 
 Traveling all over this United States, I have found 
 in very distant places people, particularly women, 
 who had attended a meeting or meetings of that 
 school of philosophy, and who were harking back to 
 it as a great source of inspiration and instruction. 
 And I trust that the people of Concord will al 
 ways keep this as a sort of sacred temple. Having 
 once been consecrated by the presence of Emer 
 son, Alcott, and so many others, it ought never to 
 
80 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 be allowed to fall either into decay or disuse. That 
 is what I have to say about this place. Mr. Haw 
 thorne never saw this temple, but I am sure he 
 would have been pleased to be spoken of here as 
 he has been, as you all remember Mr. Adams spoke 
 of him yesterday. 
 
 I now have the pleasure of introducing to you 
 Mrs. Maud Howe Elliott, who will give you some 
 account of " Hawthorne in Italy." 
 
 ADDKESS OF MKS. MAUD HOWE ELLIOTT 
 
 When Hawthorne arrived in Koine in January of 
 the year 1858, "the French soldiers were prominent 
 objects everywhere about the city." He tells us in 
 his journal that " they make up more of the sight 
 and sound of the city than anything else that lives." 
 Hawthorne s first impressions of Rome were unplea 
 sant. The weather was detestable, one of those cold 
 wet winters the Romans sometimes have to endure. 
 To the stranger who cannot guess how short a time, 
 compared to most other places, the bad weather 
 lasts, such a season is particularly depressing. The 
 Hawthornes arrived at midnight on the 24th of 
 January, and were uncomfortably housed at Spill- 
 man s, the only hotel where they could gain admit 
 tance. Here they stayed until they found their 
 apartment at the Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pin- 
 ciana, not far from the Villa Malta. If Hawthorne 
 could have looked forward a few months to the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 81 
 
 third week of April, when the great wall of the Villa 
 Malta, rising high above the street, is one splendid 
 blushing precipice of roses, he might have been 
 somewhat comforted, but he had not yet made 
 friends with the genial Roman Americans, of whom 
 he later became so fond, any one of whom might have 
 cheered him with prophecies of " the good time 
 coming." He sat in the corner by the fireside with 
 more clothes on than he had ever worn before, his 
 thickest great-coat over all, getting what comfort 
 he could out of the tiny blaze coaxed from the 
 penny fagots swallowed up in the vast chimney of 
 the Palazzo Larazani. No wonder he sighed for 
 the great logs of New England to feed the fire ! 
 
 Nobody who has not experienced what Haw 
 thorne went through in those first Roman weeks 
 can quite understand the feeling of distaste, almost 
 of despair, that Rome aroused in him. It is im 
 possible for a person who feels the motion of the 
 steamer which is carrying him over the heaving 
 ocean to appreciate the immense splendor of water 
 and sky spread before his dizzy eyes. It is just as 
 impossible to feel the golden charm of Rome while 
 one is pinched by the cruel cold of a first winter 
 here. The poor pampered American body, accus 
 tomed to furnace-heated houses, is tortured with 
 cold and chill ; for a time it masters the most 
 valiant spirit. When one s chief occupation is 
 stoking a sulky fire with green fagots, and one s 
 
82 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 chief preoccupation how to warm feet chilled by 
 marble or tiled floors without raising chilblains 
 upon them, it is useless to try to lift one s soul to 
 better and higher things. 
 
 Side by side with the Giant Cold stood the Giant 
 Dirt. Cold and Dirt, the two giants who seemed 
 to bar the path of the new arrivals, to keep them 
 from the rich enjoyment that all the time was wait 
 ing for them Cold and Dirt, two hard things for 
 a Puritan to accept, all through Hawthorne s 
 Italian journals and letters we find constant pro 
 tests against them. 
 
 Soon, very soon, things began to improve. On 
 the 7th of February he writes, " I have been four 
 or five times to St. Peter s, and always with plea 
 sure, because there is such a delightful, summer- 
 like warmth the moment we pass beneath the heavy 
 padded leather curtains." 
 
 On the 12th of February Hawthorne makes a 
 note of having called " at the Palazzo Barberini, 
 where William Story has established himself and 
 family for the next seven years or more in apart 
 ments that afford a fine outlook over Rome and 
 have the sun in them most of the day. Mrs. Story 
 invited us to her fancy ball, but we declined." 
 
 A few months before, the Storys had moved into 
 their splendid apartment in the Palazzo Barberini, 
 of which Mr. Story wrote to Mr. Norton, " The 
 Principe (Barberini) has shown very good will to 
 
THE WAYSIDE 83 
 
 have us come, and will put the whole apartment in 
 complete order and let it to us for two hundred and 
 fifty dollars less than the rent we receive for our 
 little house in Bussey Place. I never saw anything 
 more rambling than the upper rooms above the 
 apartment, which are included in the lease. They 
 are legion in number, and crop out at every new 
 visit. I should think there were some twenty at 
 least, of every kind and shape going oddly about, 
 up little stairs, through curious holes, into strange 
 lumber rooms, and then suddenly opening into largo 
 and admirable chambers." 
 
 In these large and admirable chambers, Haw 
 thorne was to gather materials for one phase of that 
 man3^-sided book, " The Marble Faun." If the fancy 
 ball was declined, many other invitations were ac 
 cepted. All through the Italian journals constant 
 reference is made to William Story, at that time the 
 most prominent figure of the American colony at 
 Rome. The Hawthornes came to Rome at a tre 
 mendously interesting moment, veritably in the 
 golden age of the American colony, then almost 
 exclusively made up of artists, men and women who 
 were a real power in the place, and whose influence 
 on things Italian and American has yet to be fully 
 recognized. The Palazzo Barberini was one of the 
 favorite meeting grounds of the English and Amer 
 ican artists and of the travelers of the same na 
 tionalities, who in those days came to Rome to spend 
 
84 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 the winter, who made friends with the artists, and 
 few of whom left Rome without ordering a statue 
 or buying a picture from their countrymen. Haw 
 thorne notices in his diary, on the staircase leading 
 to the Barberini, " the ancient Greek bas-relief of a 
 lion from whence Canova is supposed to have taken 
 the idea of his lions on the monument in St. Peter s." 
 It is of this bas-relief that the familiar witticism 
 was made, that it was the only lion in Rome that had 
 never gone up Mrs. Story s staircase. 
 
 Hawthorne meets Mr. C. G. Thompson, the 
 painter whom he had known in Boston, and takes 
 more pleasure in his pictures than in the old masters, 
 in whose work he was at first bitterly disappointed. 
 He goes to the Villa Negroni, then a sad place to 
 visit, for Crawford had lately died; and though 
 Hawthorne did not like him, and did not do justice 
 to his talent, he is touched at seeing the unfinished 
 work. He says, " It is rather sad to think that 
 Crawford died before he could see his ideas in the 
 marble, where they gleam with so pure and celes 
 tial a light as compared to the plaster. There is 
 almost as much difference as between flesh and 
 spirit/ 
 
 He dines with Mr. T. B. Read, the poet and art 
 ist, with a party composed of painters and sculptors, 
 the only exception being the American banker, Mr. 
 Hooker, and an American tourist who had given 
 Read a commission. Hawthorne sat next to Gibson, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 85 
 
 the English sculptor, who he supposes " stands 
 foremost in his profession at this day." Later on, 
 when he has the opportunity of judging, Hawthorne 
 seems to disagree with this popular verdict, as he 
 more than once inveighs against Mr. Gibson s nu 
 dities and his habit of tinting his statues, which 
 Gibson held was the custom of the Greeks. We now 
 know that he was right, but at that time most con 
 noisseurs hooted at his theory. Hawthorne speaks 
 of Gibson s dislike to any reference to his age. 
 When the old sculptor, who had then been in Rome 
 thirty-seven years, went to England, he was invited 
 to dine with the Queen at Windsor. Stories of that 
 royal dinner are still told in Rome among the Eng 
 lish painters. Gibson, an inveterate old bachelor, 
 and used to the manners of the Roman trattoria, 
 when he was seated at the Queen s table, absently 
 took up his napkin and polished his glass, spoon, 
 and knife, running the tines of his fork through the 
 royal damask napkin. The Queen, who had heard 
 of his extreme sensitiveness on the matter of his age, 
 had made a wager that she would find how old he 
 was ; so she bluntly asked him. The canny old fel 
 low made a deep bow and answered, " That, marm, 
 is something that I have never told any lady." 
 
 Hawthorne meets Hamilton Wilde, di memoria 
 benedetta^of. blessed memory, as the Italians say, and 
 waxes enthusiastic about his paintings and about 
 those of another American, George L. Brown. He 
 
86 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 visits the studio of one Miiller, a Swiss painter, and 
 frankly confesses to preferring the pictures by this 
 trio of moderns to any of the old masters, and we 
 like him all the better for saying so. " I suppose," 
 Hawthorne writes, " Claude was a greater painter 
 than Brown, but I should prefer one of the latter s 
 pictures. Mr. Brown showed us some drawings from 
 nature done with incredible care and minuteness. 
 We complimented him on his patience, but he said, 
 4 Oh, it s not patience, it s only just love. " 
 
 In the room where I write these words hangs a 
 drawing of two stone pines on an Italian road 
 side, with a glimpse of the sea beyond, suggesting 
 the neighborhood of Porta d Anzio. It is signed 
 G. L. Brown, Home, 1852. Perhaps it is one of 
 the drawings Hawthorne saw and admired. It has 
 stood the test of time, and deserves to-day all that 
 Hawthorne said about Brown s work. On the 25th 
 of March Hawthorne has breakfast with Story, 
 and writes him down as " one of the most agree 
 able men I know in society." April 22 they make 
 their first visit to the Capitol. "We afterwards 
 went into the sculpture gallery, where I looked 
 at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a 
 peculiar charm in it ; a sylvan beauty and homeli 
 ness, friendly and wild at once. The lengthened 
 but not preposterous ears, and the little tail which 
 we infer, has an exquisite effect, and makes the 
 spectator smile in his very heart. The race of fauns 
 
THE WAYSIDE 87 
 
 was the most delightful of all that antiquity im 
 agined. It seems to me that a story, with all sorts 
 of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the 
 idea of their having intermingled with the human 
 race, . . . 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 with 
 out detriment to the human interest of the story." 
 This is the first hint that we have of the advent of 
 Donatello, the last descendant of the Monte Benes, 
 and one of the most insistent of the ghosts of 
 Home. 
 
 They have tea with Miss Bremer, " the funniest 
 little old fairy you can imagine." April 27 they 
 visit Castellane, the jeweler, and see his won 
 derful treasures, both the reproductions and the 
 originals of ancient Etruscan and Roman jewels. 
 On the 8th of May Hawthorne again lunches with 
 the Story s to meet Mrs. Jameson ; but that lady 
 being absent on account of a headache, he goes in 
 the course of the afternoon to call upon her, in 
 company with his wife and Mrs. Story, and finds 
 her "on the first piano of an old palazzo in the 
 Via di Ripetta, nearly opposite to the ferry-way 
 across the Tiber, and affording a pleasant view of 
 the yellow river and the green bank and fields on 
 the other side." " She began to talk with us with 
 affectionate familiarity, and was particularly kind 
 
88 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 towards myself, who on my part was equally gra 
 cious towards her. In truth, I have found great 
 pleasure and profit in her works, and was glad to 
 hear her say that she liked mine." On the 9th of 
 May, Hawthorne goes for a long drive, apparently 
 alone with Mrs. Jameson, whom he finds a sensi 
 ble old lady. They drive past the tomb of Cecilia 
 Metella and along the Appian Way. " We drove 
 homeward, looking at the distant dome of St. 
 Peter s, and talking of many things, painting, 
 sculpture, America, England, spiritualism, and 
 whatever else came up." 
 
 As the journal goes on day by day, its tone 
 softens, Hawthorne finds more and more to admire 
 and enjoy, less to criticise and condemn. Rome, 
 the old enchantress, is getting him in her toils as 
 she has us all sooner or later. We feel the amelio 
 ration of his opinions, the broadening of his view, 
 a tremendous growth and unfolding of the social 
 side of his nature. He speaks of one conversation 
 where the talk has been rarely free and intimate 
 for him, and says, " I have never really talked with 
 anybody six times in my life." So the sunshine 
 creeps into the journal, as it crept into the cold 
 rooms of the Palazzo Larazani ; and it is only when 
 the miracle has been accomplished that Hawthorne 
 begins to suspect the truth, that he is the last and 
 one of the most passionate lovers of the old en 
 chantress, Rome. One day he goes to Story s studio 
 
THE WAYSIDE 89 
 
 aud finds him " at work on a sitting statue of Cleo 
 patra now only fourteen days advanced in the clay, 
 a grand subject, and he is conceiving it with depth 
 and power, and working it out with adequate 
 skill." 
 
 There are many references to the Cleopatra in 
 the journal, but it is most fully described in " The 
 Marble Faun," that chapter when Miriam goes 
 to Kenyon s studio. " What a woman is this ! 
 Miriam exclaimed, after a long pause. Tell me, 
 did she ever try, even while you were creating her, 
 to overcome you with her fury or with her love ? 
 Were you not afraid to touch her as she grew more 
 and more towards hot life beneath your hand ? 
 My dear friend, it is a great work ! How have you 
 learned to do it ? 
 
 " 4 It is the concentration of a good deal of thought 
 and emotion, and toil of brain and hand, said 
 Kenyon, not without a perception that his work 
 was good. 4 But I know not how it came about at 
 last. I kindled a great fire in my mind, and threw 
 in material and as Aaron threw the gold of the 
 Israelites into the furnace and in the midmost 
 heat up rose Cleopatra as you see her ! 
 
 The thing that Hawthorne felt in Story s work, 
 and by which he was profoundly moved, was really 
 there, the quest of the ideal. In the large build 
 ing Story erected in the Macao, where his son, 
 Waldo, now has a large and prosperous studio, one 
 
90 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 wing or gallery is still sacred to the statues of the 
 elder Story. There they stand, rows and rows of 
 marble men and women. You can find the very 
 statues that Robert Browning admired so intensely 
 that, as judge of the sculpture at the first world s 
 fair, held at the Crystal Palace in the year 1854, 
 he awarded to Story, not only the first, but the 
 second medal for sculpture. From that time Story s 
 success in England was established. Lingering 
 among these statues, it is not difficult to realize 
 what it was in them that so impressed not only 
 Browning, but Hawthorne, Motley, Lowell, Sumner, 
 and other strong men of that generation as well, 
 it was their ideality. 
 
 To-day the pendulum of taste has swung far in 
 the other direction. Technique is the god the con 
 noisseurs set up, and accordingly the technicians 
 are to the fore, their names are in every mouth ; 
 but there are already symptoms of a change. In 
 the future we must look for both the ideal of beauty 
 and the technical skill to produce it. It is only 
 when that union takes place that we have the great 
 moments of art, and the things are produced which 
 mankind cannot afford to lose. " One accent of the 
 Holy Ghost the heedless world hath never lost." 
 Hawthorne always had a deep sympathy for pio 
 neers. No nobler picture of them survives than the 
 description in the Main Street of the early settlers 
 of Salem. In Rome he found a group of pioneers 
 
THE WAYSIDE 91 
 
 of art, and his imagination responded to the ideal 
 that had brought them across the seas. 
 
 If to-day we have the beginnings of an American 
 school of art, we have to thank these pioneer artists 
 for it. At a time when questions of expediency ab 
 sorbed the public mind and conscience, a few men 
 who believed in the high mission of art devoted 
 themselves to it. In many cases it seemed to the 
 friends at home nothing short of madness for the 
 young neophyte to turn his back upon the bread 
 and butter of business that lay ready to his hand, 
 and depart on a wild-goose chase after the golden 
 honey of art. Rome was at that time the Mecca of 
 the American artists ; and when Hawthorne arrived 
 there they had already overcome the first difficulties 
 of the pioneers, and formed a compact and delight 
 ful group, from whose interesting lives Hawthorne 
 was to find the material for his great romance. 
 I spent an hour, the other day, among the works of 
 some of those pioneer artists in the entrance hall 
 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, 
 where a collection of the works of the early Ameri 
 can sculptors has been arranged. Some of the 
 statues, and nearly all of the sculptors who made 
 them, are mentioned by Hawthorne. While we 
 cannot feel as he and some of his contemporaries 
 felt about our pioneers, they freely compared 
 their work to the masterpieces of Greek sculp 
 ture, often to the detriment of the Greeks, it is 
 
92 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 impossible to look at the marbles of an outworn 
 taste without a certain emotional understanding 
 if for no other reason, on account of all they stood 
 for to the older generation. 
 
 On the 24th of May the Hawthornes left Rome 
 and started on their memorable drive to Florence. 
 People nowadays make the trip by train and give 
 six hours to it. The Hawthornes drove over the 
 fine route, giving ten days to the journey, which 
 cost them one hundred dollars, food and lodging 
 included. Hawthorne notes in his journal something 
 of his feelings on driving out through the Porta 
 del Popolo and along the Via Flammiuia, after his 
 four months stay in Rome. " I begin to find," he 
 says, " that I have a strange affection for it. It is 
 very singular, the sad embrace with which Rome 
 takes possession of your soul." They stopped at 
 the chief points of interest on the way, all of which 
 are described with more of humor and affection 
 and less of conscience and labor than in the first 
 weary notes made in Rome, where we feel fatigue 
 and impatience in the accounts of the sights so con 
 scientiously studied. They see Perugia and Assisi, 
 Foligno and Spoleto. The visit to Arezzo, where 
 they saw the house of Petrarch, was one of the most 
 enjoyable. 
 
 " Right opposite Petrarch s birth-house," Haw 
 thorne says, " and it must have been the well 
 whence the water was drawn that first bathed him, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 93 
 
 is a well that Boccaccio has introduced into one of 
 his stories. This well whence Petrarch had drunk, 
 around which he had played in his boyhood, and 
 which Boccaccio has made famous, really interested 
 me more than the cathedral. As I lingered round it, I 
 thought of my own town pump in Salem, and won 
 dered whether my townspeople would ever point it 
 out to strangers, and whether the stranger would 
 gaze on it with any degree of such interest as I felt 
 in Boccaccio s well. Oh, certainly not, but yet I made 
 that town pump the most celebrated structure in 
 the good town. A thousand and a thousand people 
 had pumped there merely to water oxen, or fill their 
 tea-kettles ; but when once I grasped the handle, a 
 rill gushed forth that meandered as far as England, 
 as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every 
 town and village of our own country. I like to 
 think of this so long after I did it, and so far from 
 home, and am not without hope of some kindly 
 local remembrance on that score." 
 
 On arriving at Florence, he writes, " This jour 
 ney from Home has been one of the brightest and 
 most uncareful interludes of my life. We have all 
 enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am happy that our 
 children have it to look back upon." 
 
 June and July were passed at the Casa del Bello 
 in Florence. It seems to have been a time of great 
 pleasure. They worked hard at sight-seeing, and 
 for diversion consorted with the English and Ameri- 
 
94 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 cans then settled in Florence. Hiram Powers, the 
 sculptor, takes the place of William Story, and we 
 find many records of conversations with him. Haw 
 thorne fell in love with the Venus di Medici at first 
 sight, as he would not have done if he had not had 
 those four months in Rome. Having fallen in love, 
 he naturally proceeds to fall out with the lady, alter 
 nately praising and blaming her ; there are charm 
 ing little reconciliations between them all through 
 the Florentine journals. On the 8th of June, as 
 " we were at dinner, our servant brought in a card. 
 It was Mr. Robert Browning s; he came in and 
 shook hands with all of us. He was very vivacious 
 and agreeable ; he looked younger and handsomer 
 than when I saw him in London. He talked a 
 wonderful quantity in a little time ; he must be an 
 exceedingly likable man. They are to leave Flor 
 ence very soon and are going to Normandy, I think 
 he said, for the rest of the summer. The Venus 
 di Medici has a dimple in her chin ! " 
 
 Browning s visit was returned next day. They had 
 some difficulty in finding the Casa Guidi, but the 
 visit was worth all the trouble. Mrs. Browning met 
 them at the door of the drawing-room "a pale, 
 small person, scarcely embodied at all. She is a 
 good, kind fairy, and sweetly disposed towards the 
 human race, although only remotely akin to it. It 
 is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her 
 cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not 
 
THE WAYSIDE 05 
 
 such another figure in the world. Mr. Browning 
 seemed to be in all parts of the room, and in every 
 group at the same moment ; a most vivid and quick- 
 thoughted person, logical and common sensible, as 
 I presume poets generally are in their daily talk. 
 We had some tea and strawberries, and passed a 
 very pleasant evening." 
 
 On the 2d of August the Hawthornes moved to 
 the Villa Montauto, the original of the home of 
 Donatello at Monte Beni. Here they stayed for 
 exactly two months, and here was woven the second 
 background of " The Marble Faun." The notes are 
 so fascinating at this point that I do not dare to 
 begin to quote from them lest I should never stop. 
 They remind me of the experience I once had in 
 a manufactory of tapestries, standing beside the 
 weaver who sits behind the tapestry, with the pat 
 tern of his work before him, weaving from behind. 
 All that we saw was a rich medley of color, with 
 the shapes of men and animals vaguely looming 
 through, just such an atmosphere of " golden 
 gloom " as Motley says pervades " The Marble 
 Faun." Every now and again the weaver stepped 
 to the front of his tapestry to observe the effect he 
 was producing, and then returned to his high stool 
 and worked on at his rich umbrage of color. The 
 description of Una s chamber in the tower, to the 
 very "undraped little boy in wax, very prettily 
 modeled and holding up a heart that looks like a bit 
 
96 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 of red ceiling-wax," foreshadows Donatello s room, 
 already a-building ! In the oratory connected with 
 Una s chamber he finds a skull the size of life or 
 death, a wonderful piece of modeling the very 
 skull which Kenyon finds in Donatello s bedroom. 
 
 There is no greater pleasure for those who love 
 Hawthorne than to linger with him during those 
 two happy months of villeggiatura in Monte Beni. 
 At last he has found Arcadia, the country where 
 he is most happily at home, the country through 
 which his kind hand has led still leads whole 
 generations of children. You can still find Arcadia 
 in rural Italy, if you have the heart to look for 
 it, the eyes to see it. Only step out of the beaten 
 track, forget about germs and microbes, and you 
 will find the land of Theocritus, you will find the 
 golden age of Magna Grecia. 
 
 Hawthorne learns to like figs fancy that being 
 necessary, but we must remember that he was fifty- 
 four years old when he went to Italy. He finds 
 something in the golden juice of the Tuscan grapes 
 that is not in the harsher juice of the New Eng 
 land apple, as he at first inclines to think. His 
 description of Sunshine, the wine of Monte Beni 
 vineyards, wipes out the offense of the many slurs 
 he casts on the Italian vintages. And all the time 
 there is growing in his mind the character of Dona- 
 tello. Only his own words- can express the process 
 that went on in Hawthorne s brain during those 
 
THE WAYSIDE 97 
 
 weeks at Bellosquardo. " I kindled a great fire 
 within my mind, and in the midmost heat up rose 
 Donatello," he might have said. 
 
 The Hawthornes left their villa on the 2d of 
 October, took the train for Siena, where they re 
 mained for a fortnight. Writing of their depar 
 ture Hawthorne says : " Yesterday morning at six 
 o clock we left our ancient tower and threw a part 
 ing glance, and a rather sad one, over the misty 
 Val d Arno. This summer will look like a happy 
 one to our children s retrospect, and in truth I have 
 found it a peaceful and not uncheerful one." From 
 Siena they drove to Rome, stopping at Viterbo, 
 one of the most enchanting of the towns of central 
 Italy. They reached Rome on the 17th of October. 
 " I had," says Hawthorne, " a quiet, gentle, com- 
 fortable pleasure, as if after my wanderings I was 
 drawing near home ; for now that I have known it, 
 Rome certainly does draw unto itself my heart, as 
 I think even London, or even little Concord itself, 
 or sleepy old Salem never did and never will." 
 
 The Hawthornes second Roman winter opened 
 brilliantly. Mr. Thompson had found them a com 
 fortable apartment in the Piazza Poli, " with seven 
 rooms and a stair carpet, a civilized comfort the 
 proudest palace of the Eternal City cannot boast. 
 Narrowness indoors strikes rather ludicrously, but 
 not unpleasantly, after being accustomed to the 
 wastes and deserts of the Montauto villa. It is well 
 
98 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 to put us in training for the over snugness of our 
 cottage in Concord." The day of their arrival 
 Hawthorne walks with Eosebud in the Medici Gar 
 dens. They go to the Pincio, and look over into the 
 Borghese grounds, " which methought were more 
 beautiful than ever. The same was true of the sky, 
 and of every object beneath it, and as we came 
 homeward along the Corso I wondered at the 
 stateliness and palatial magnificence of that noble 
 street. Once I remember I thought it narrow and 
 far unworthy of its fame." 
 
 On the 2d of November, Hawthorne notes the 
 beginning of Una s dreadful illness. During the 
 four months of anguish and anxiety that followed 
 he makes no record, but we know from his son 
 Julian what Hawthorne suffered. From the first 
 he took the dark point of view that his adored 
 daughter would not recover. 
 
 The 27th of February, 1859, he takes up his 
 journal again. The next three months in some de 
 gree made up for the dreadful suffering of the win 
 ter. Hawthorne enjoyed many things, among others 
 the carnival, which fell late that season. On the 
 8th of March they went to Mr. Motley s balcony 
 on the Corso. We find notes which served for the 
 carnival scenes in " The Marble Faun." At the end 
 of May, Una being sufficiently recovered to make 
 the journey, the Hawthornes left Rome for Civita 
 Vecchia, where they took ship for Marseilles. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 99 
 
 Of their last day in Kome Hawthorne says, " I 
 walked to the Pincian, and saw the garden and the 
 city, the Borghese grounds, and St. Peter s, in an 
 earlier sunlight than ever before. Methought they 
 never looked so beautiful, nor the sky so bright and 
 blue. I saw Soracte on the horizon, and I looked 
 at everything for the last time ; nor do I wish ever 
 to see any of these objects again, though no place 
 ever took so strong a hold of my being as Rome, 
 nor ever seemed so close to me or so strangely 
 familiar. I seem to know it better than my birth 
 place, and to have known it longer ; and though I 
 have been very miserable here, and languid with 
 the effects of the atmosphere, and disgusted with 
 a thousand things in daily life, still I cannot 
 say I hate it, perhaps, might fairly own a love 
 for it." 
 
 Writing from Florence to a friend, Hawthorne 
 says, " I find this Italian air not favorable to the 
 close toil of composition, although it is very good 
 air to dream in. I must breathe the fogs of old 
 England, or the east wind of Massachusetts, in 
 order to put me in working trim." 
 
 Mr. Lathrop speaks of "The Marble Faun" 
 being not beyond the stage of an elaborate sketch 
 when Hawthorne sought the fogs of old England. 
 At Redcar in Yorkshire, in four months of close toil, 
 he embodied the dreams and the experiences of those 
 sixteen months in Italy. Then came " The Marble 
 
100 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Faun." Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon himself are indeed 
 all more or less part of the place, but above all 
 others Donatello haunts the memory, even as he 
 haunted the mind of the magician who summoned 
 him from the mists of the arcadian age. The inter 
 est in " The Marble Faun " is twofold, because here 
 more than in any of his other romances we see the 
 man Hawthorne as well as the artist. It is as if he 
 lost something of his native reserve in his distance 
 from the home and friends of his youth, and was 
 more frank and free in telling us directly his own 
 impressions. Every English reading person who 
 visits Rome reads " The Marble Faun." The poor 
 little library of the Piazza di Spagna is rich in 
 copies of the Romance of Monte Beni, and yet it 
 is not easy to get one of them during the tourist 
 season, for they are always " out." In this novel 
 Hawthorne alternately rails against Rome, and 
 praises her with his imperishable words. Certain 
 of his phrases have become almost by-words as 
 applied to different parts of the city. To read " The 
 Marble Faun " to-day, or even to re-read it after 
 many years, reminds one of the lady who, on seeing 
 "Hamlet" for the first time, said that "the thing 
 that struck her most was the number of quotations 
 in the play." Hawthorne has stamped his own 
 personality ineffaceably upon Rome. Every writer 
 who has since described Rome has consciously or 
 unconsciously plagiarized from the rich mine of 
 
THE WAYSIDE 101 
 
 his incomparable romance! In talking t>r writing 
 about Rome, we all use phrases stamped with the 
 Hawthorne hall-mark. Just as we quote the Bible, 
 Shakespeare, and Emerson every day without know 
 ing it, when we speak or write of Rome we talk 
 Hawthorne ! 
 
 Mr. Lathrop tells us that " The Marble Faun," 
 as Hawthorne preferred to call the many-titled 
 novel, was in the opinion of its author his best ro 
 mance. I am among those who do not agree with 
 him. As a work of art I do not find the book the 
 equal of " The House of the Seven Gables," " The 
 Blithedale Romance," or "The Scarlet Letter," 
 but as a human document it is of far greater inter 
 est to the lover of Hawthorne than anything that 
 went before. The very things he did not know, 
 the very limitations of character and knowledge 
 it betrays, make it infinitely intimate and fascinat 
 ing. Nothing is more interesting in " The Marble 
 Faun " than the struggle that goes on between the 
 artist and the Puritan, as Hawthorne comes up 
 against the mighty fact of the Church of Rome. 
 He is outraged at the same time that he is fasci 
 nated by it. The Puritan is outraged, the artist is 
 touched. Again, in the matter of art the Puritan 
 overcomes the artist, and Hawthorne is chiefly 
 troubled by the nude figures painted or sculp 
 tured, that he sees in church or gallery until the 
 Venus of Medici overcomes him with her dimple ! 
 
102 c t . HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Hawthorne- chastises the Italian with one hand and 
 crowns him with the other, but it is the right hand 
 that lays the crown upon the head of Donatello, 
 and makes him for us the type of his race, a soul 
 awakened to responsibility and to manhood. At 
 that time the cause of Italian Unity seemed to the 
 outsiders who stood nearest to her a lost cause. 
 But all the time the great scheme was slowly ripen 
 ing, and England, the mighty ally, the silent friend, 
 was working as perhaps no country has ever worked 
 for the liberation of another: so silently, indeed, that 
 the golden peace of Rome seemed to Hawthorne 
 unlikely to be ever broken. He likes the merry 
 French soldiers, with their bugles and their loose 
 red trousers, and is rather grateful to them than 
 otherwise " for serving as an efficient police, mak 
 ing Rome as safe as London, whereas without them 
 it would very likely be a den of banditti." There 
 he was wrong, for during the brief and glorious 
 year of the Roman Republic, when Mazzini was 
 Dictator, and my old friend and master, Michaele 
 Costa, the painter, was one of the three of the 
 provincial government, Rome was quite as peaceful 
 and orderly as it ever was before or since. The 
 Romans are not a turbulent people ; whatever out 
 breaks and emeutes take place in Italy are in 
 Milan to the northward, where the hot blood of 
 the Longbeards still lends itself to strife and re 
 bellion. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 103 
 
 Hawthorne took the presence of the French sol 
 diers at Rome very simply, and has only good things 
 to say of Louis Napoleon. He alternately praises 
 and denounces the Church of Rome, as he is struck 
 either by its good or its bad features, but nowhere 
 does he suggest that the government of the Church 
 may at some day be supplanted. He accepts things 
 as he finds them, as the purely artistic nature usu 
 ally does, a fine love of order inducing a dislike 
 of any violent change or overturning of things es 
 tablished. He knew the Brownings, he must have 
 read their poems, he could not have been uncon 
 scious of the passion of patriotism that burned in 
 the breast of the Italian patriots, and of those 
 who prayed and waited with them. Mrs. Brown 
 ing s death, a few months after Hawthorne saw 
 her in Florence, was hastened by her despair on 
 hearing of an Italian defeat which at the time 
 seemed irreparable. Browning s Italian in Eng 
 land says, 
 
 " So, with a sullen All s for best, 
 The land seems settling to its rest." 
 
 Beneath this apparent calm smouldered the hid 
 den fire of revolution. If Hawthorne was conscious 
 of this, he does not mention it. But all the time in 
 his mind the idea was mellowing which best typifies 
 the awakening of the Italian nation to a sense of 
 responsibility. 
 
 Donatello, the light-hearted, irresponsible, faun- 
 
104 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 like creature, through suffering and sin is lifted to 
 a higher humanity, is perfected by pain and suffer 
 ing, till in the end he takes his place with thinking, 
 
 MKS. HOWE : Mr. Julian Hawthorne, unable to 
 be present, has sent a paper, which, although it is 
 to be published elsewhere, is an appropriate tribute 
 to this Concord celebration, as it concerns his fa 
 ther s last years at The Wayside. The paper will 
 now be read by Miss Margaret Lothrop. 
 
 [In a letter written by Mr. Julian Hawthorne 
 under date of July 27, 1904, to Mrs. Lothrop, he 
 says : 
 
 "I am sorry not to have been present, during 
 the recent ceremonies, in the beautiful old town 
 where I passed several very happy and, to me, 
 memorable years. Though my father was not born 
 there, the period of his life which he always best 
 loved to look back upon was spent there ; there he 
 built his home, and there he was buried. In the 
 subjoined paper I have given an outline of the 
 concluding circumstances of his life, as they remain 
 in my recollection ; and I am glad that this little 
 record should be associated with the valuable and 
 thoughtful words with which his friends and lovers 
 honored the anniversary of his birth."] 
 
THE WAYSIDE 105 
 
 HAWTHORNE S LAST TEAKS 
 
 BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE 
 
 From green, showery England and the cool Atlan 
 tic, my father returned to Concord to find it parch 
 ing under the unmitigated heat of the New Eng 
 land summer. A few friends met him at the dock, 
 but he took the afternoon train out of Boston and 
 reached The Wayside before supper time. Little 
 Benjie, the youngest son of Uncle Horace Mann, 
 attended us on our way from the railway station, 
 and entertained us by his Yankee " guessing " and 
 smart ways. And my father, who during the voy 
 age had cast many a thoughtful glance back to 
 ward the east, now beheld the buff-colored old 
 dwelling in which he was to pass the four closing 
 years of his life. No doubt he may have said to 
 himself that there were villas in Italy, and country- 
 seats in England, which would better have suited 
 him. Doubtless, too, but for his children s sake, 
 he would have settled somewhere in Europe ; he 
 had lived in Europe so long, and it had become 
 endeared to him by so many associations, sad as 
 well as pleasant, and the quiet and old-fashioned 
 ways there so well suited his age and temperament, 
 that he could no longer feel anything homelike in 
 America. Yet he was patriotic, and loved his coun 
 try. The truth may have been, that he could have 
 
106 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 been content neither in the Old World nor in the 
 New ; whichever he had chosen, he would have re 
 gretted the other. Be that as it may, it was Amer 
 ica that lie chose ; he wished his son to go to an 
 American college, and his daughters to grow up 
 under American conditions. There are indications 
 that he may have entertained a hope that, after 
 some years, circumstances would permit him to 
 revisit the Old Home. But, if so, the hope was 
 soon abandoned. Meanwhile he maintained a 
 cheerful demeanor, and contemplated The Wayside 
 with a humorous expression, half pleased, half 
 rueful. He was still boy enough to feel something 
 of those pleasurable thrills which shook the hearts 
 of his children at their home-coming. Perhaps he 
 would find it possible to take up the old life with 
 fresh zest, and to do work which should have in it 
 the spirit of the western continent, enriched and 
 deepened by his experience of the East. America 
 was the nobler choice. 
 
 Concord, in those days, was after all a homely 
 old place, and the folks were hospitable. Here were 
 the cordial Manns, and Aunt Lizzie Peabody, and 
 Mr. Bull, the grape-grower, and the benign light of 
 Emerson s countenance, and white-locked, orphic 
 Mr. Alcott, blinking as though dazzled by the light 
 of his own inspiration ; and hook-nosed, bearded, 
 stealthy Thoreau, and Ellery Channing, stalking in, 
 downcast and elusive, but with a substantial man 
 
* THE WAYSIDE 107 
 
 inside, could you but catch him ; and Judge Eben- 
 ezer Rockwood Hoar, with his lovely, spiritual 
 sister ; and other kindly people. There was none 
 of the storied richness and automatic method of 
 English society, which takes the individual into its 
 comfortable current, and sweeps him along through 
 agreeable eddies and leisurely stretches with the 
 least possible exertion on his own part; yet it was 
 in its way the best of society, intelligent, simple, 
 natural, self-respecting, and quietly independent. 
 Its members knew how to be social, and also how 
 to let one another alone. They were mutually help 
 ful, but not intrusive. If they happened to know 
 that Concord was the best place in the world, they 
 did not think it necessary to proclaim the fact in 
 and out of season. There stood the stout little 
 town ; let it speak for itself. Down by the river, 
 where had stood the rude bridge that arched the 
 flood, was a little gray stone obelisk, marking the 
 spot where the British soldiers fell with the sound 
 of the shot that was heard round the world ringing 
 in their dying ears. A mile away was the four 
 square white wooden home of Emerson, toward 
 which were turned the trusting eyes of all emanci 
 pated optimists the world over, though his fellow 
 townsmen knew him to be, really, simply a good 
 neighbor and useful citizen, who had as much to 
 thank Concord for as Concord him, and whose 
 transcendental vagaries they regarded with kindly 
 
108 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 indulgence. Thoreau had his amiable foibles too ; 
 and Concord had fought it out with him, and 
 overcome him, in the matter of tax-paying ; but 
 he could bear witness that in Concord grew all 
 the flowers and sang all the birds worth men 
 tioning in the world, and he could cause Indian 
 arrow-heads to sprout out of the earth merely by 
 casting his eyes downward. Judge Hoar, again, 
 was the best judge in New England, and his ven 
 erable father, who was still living (a memorable 
 figure, gentlemanly, mild, slender, with a rusty 
 black body-coat and high stock, and a tall, dusty 
 stove-pipe hat set on his pale, serene brows), would 
 have been better than he, had he not already lived 
 his active life in a former generation. Where in 
 the world could you buy better groceries than at 
 Walcott and Holden s, or finer shoes than those 
 that Jonas Hastings made in his little back shop, 
 or a more commodious assortment of general goods 
 than were to be found in Mr. Stacy s store (indeed, 
 he was afterward appointed postmaster, and his 
 place became a social club during the two half 
 hours before and after mail deliveries). If you 
 spoke of farming, there were Mr. Moore s broad 
 acres, with their thriving crops of asparagus, 
 brought up according to the latest scientific meth 
 ods, and rhubarb, and corn, and tomatoes, and 
 other vegetables ; not to speak of his many pros 
 perous rivals. In the way of a hostelry, there was 
 
THE WAYSIDE 109 
 
 the time-honored Middlesex Hotel, with its veranda 
 and sheds and easy-going bar-room ; and on the 
 other side of the village square was the brick town 
 hall, where, every week in the season, one or other 
 of the lights of the New England lecture platform 
 held forth to attentive and appreciative audiences ; 
 or where balls and receptions were given upon 
 occasion, or political meetings held as important 
 as any in Faneuil Hall ; or if you wanted medica.1 
 treatment, who was better than old Dr. Bartlett ? 
 or if a school, Master Sanborn, over to the west 
 yonder, was second to no pedagogue in the world 
 in his ability to turn country boys and girls into 
 accomplished men and women. It was not neces 
 sary to draw attention to these excellences ; they 
 were visible and undeniable to the most careless 
 eye. And it was no wonder, therefore, that Na 
 thaniel Hawthorne, after his tour of the world, 
 should return at last to old Concord as to the most 
 desirable place on this planet to live and die in. 
 
 So my father, clad in an old hat and coat and 
 village-made shoes, strolled about his estate and 
 meditated over Concord and the less notable places 
 that he had known. He did not much affect Bos 
 ton or even local society. He did not care to take 
 a longer walk than to Walden Pond and back, 
 or up the old turnpike along which the British 
 had retreated a hundred years before ; he confined 
 himself for the most part to his own fields and 
 
110 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 hillside. The level meadow on the south of the 
 road was laid out partly in young fruit trees, and 
 partly in corn and beans ; a straight path to the 
 brook was made, and larches were set out on both 
 sides of it. A few old apple-trees grew to the west 
 of the area divided by the path ; and there was 
 one Porter apple-tree that stood close to the fence, 
 on which early and delicious fruit appeared in 
 profusion every year. The house inclosure was pro 
 tected from the street by a hedge, and by tall 
 spruces ; there was likewise an ancient mulberry- 
 tree, spreading its boughs over the tiny lawn in 
 front of the library windows, and scattering it, 
 in the season, with its crimson and purple berries. 
 Against its low trunk a rustic seat was put up, on 
 which my father and mother often sat in the after 
 noons, talking over their domestic and agricultural 
 plans. On the hillside, terraced out years before 
 by Alcott, more apple-trees grew ; and abundant 
 laburnums, their branches heavy with pendulous 
 golden blossoms; and higher up, on the summit, 
 white pines and pitch pines, and a mingled, irreg 
 ular array of birch, oak, elm, and hickory, all of 
 recent growth ; a tangled little wood, with none 
 of the grandeur and spaciousness of the forests of 
 Walden. But there was a pleasant, quiet view 
 from the western brow of the hill, and a seat was 
 made there, in the Alcott style, of twisted boughs ; 
 and eastward from it, along the crest of the ac- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 111 
 
 clivity, my father was wont to pace to and fro by 
 himself, mornings and afternoons, until at length 
 a footpath was worn into the rooty substance of 
 the hill, a distance of some two hundred yards to 
 the fence which inclosed Mr. Bull s estate. Many 
 a meditative mile did he pace there ; and the track 
 formed by his recurrent footsteps remained distinct 
 long after he had passed farther on his way, whither 
 none might overtake him. 
 
 But the family needed more elbow-room than in 
 the early days, and it was necessary to make The 
 Wayside bigger. My father had long contemplated 
 these additions, and he now called the village car 
 penters into consultation ; and after much debate, 
 Mr. Wetherbee and Mr. Watts submitted their 
 plans. They thought that the requisite enlarge 
 ment could be done for about five hundred dollars. 
 Upon this basis they set to work and labored with 
 more or less diligence for a year or thereabouts, 
 and the bill gradually and inevitably grew until at 
 the end it amounted to thrice the sum originally 
 named. My father watched the operations with his 
 hands folded behind him and his soft felt hat 
 pulled down on his forehead ; or he ascended the 
 hill, to escape the hammering and sawing ; but 
 during that year there could be no studious repose 
 for him in which to evolve literary imaginings. 
 A room was added over the library ; another in the 
 rear of the dining-room ; another above that, and 
 
112 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 above that still one more, the three constituting the 
 tower, and the top room being my father s study. 
 Besides these a large room was placed over the 
 kitchen, with its outlook on the terraces of the hill ; 
 it had an arched roof, devised to please my mother ; 
 and the walls were painted with a color which the 
 painter described as * a kind of blue pink." Orna 
 mental eaves and gables were added here and there ; 
 in the place of the main entrance, which had been 
 under the gable in the centre of the house-front, 
 a bow window was devised, and the entrance was 
 put to the west, and covered with a pretty gabled 
 porch. To me and to my younger sister the racket, 
 the clutter, and the construction were delightful, a 
 continuous vaudeville ; and my mother was always 
 an interested and hopeful spectator and counselor ; 
 but my father s bearing denoted humorous resigna 
 tion oftener than any other emotion. He attempted 
 no writing, but in the evenings, after the uproar 
 was done for the day, we would gather in the 
 library, and he would read aloud to us ; the greater 
 part of that year was occupied with the Waverley 
 Novels, taken up one after another from beginning 
 to end of the series. I cannot overestimate either 
 the enjoyment or the profit that I got from those 
 readings. My sisters sat large-eyed and rapt ; my 
 mother sewed and listened with that sympathy and 
 apprehension which made her face always beautiful. 
 I doubt not that the reader, too, was happy in these 
 
HAWTHORNE S STUDY IN THE TOWER 
 
THE WAYSIDE 113 
 
 evenings. The tall astral lamp gave out its soft 
 light, which glistened on the backs of the books 
 in the surrounding bookcases ; outdoors there was 
 peace, save for the song of insects in summer, and 
 in winter the cracklings of the frost. The two splen 
 did hours over, I would go to bed, with a heart and 
 mind full of adventure, chivalry, and romance. 
 
 Before the building was done another and deeper 
 kind of disturbance came to keep my father from 
 his work. The first great breakers of our national 
 storm had been rolling in heavily upon the shore, 
 and the ills which they foreboded robbed him of 
 tranquillity. It was in vain that he placed the 
 period of his " Komance of Immortality " a cen 
 tury ago ; the guns of Sumter and of Bull Eun 
 sounded in his ears none the less distinct for the im 
 aginative remoteness in which he strove to seclude 
 himself. And then, unexpectedly, and with what 
 seemed some abruptness, his health and strength 
 began to fail. He lost weight, his cheeks grew hol 
 low, his hair whitened, his once firm and elastic 
 step grew slow and uncertain. He still climbed his 
 hill, though slowly, and paced to and fro on its 
 summit, or sat for long periods gazing out over the 
 meadows, or listening to the music of the pines. 
 He would also shut himself up in his tower study 
 for hours each day, and the manuscripts he left 
 behind him showed that he worked hard ; his gen 
 eral mood in quiescence became grave, though in 
 
114 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 family intercourse he still maintained the playful 
 ness and humor that had always marked him in 
 my knowledge. He possibly realized better than 
 any of us what his illness portended. " There was 
 nothing the matter " with him ; and that indefinite- 
 ness of ailment was the serious feature. He was 
 approaching the end, and was silently adjusting 
 himself to the prospect of death, while his mind 
 was consciously richer both in the acquisitions of 
 experience and in the treasures of wisdom than 
 ever before, and when he feared that the wife and 
 children whom he loved would be left inadequately 
 provided for. My father was a wise man, too 
 wise to delude himself into accepting as true happi 
 ness the spiritual self-mutilation of the ascetic or 
 self-denier ; happiness, to him, meant the full free 
 dom and energy of every faculty, employed on a 
 stage unimpeded by unfavorable conditions either 
 public or private. There had never been and there 
 could never be such happiness for him in this 
 world. He had deep and reverent religious faith, 
 though of what precise purport I am unable to say. 
 But when a man of great soul finds himself face 
 to face with the end of all things earthly, he must 
 admit that he knows nothing, and that the un 
 searchable ways of the Almighty may prove widely 
 divergent from those which theory and hope have 
 forecast. Dramatic natures, fanatics and enthusi 
 asts, the dull and the defiant, may meet death with 
 
THE WAYSIDE 115 
 
 indifference, or with a smile or a scoff ; but a man 
 of sincerity so organic as my father could not resort 
 to these subterfuges. He went on his way, not com- 
 plainingly or grudgingly, not fearfully or fantas 
 tically, but with a grave simplicity that was impres 
 sive. In this, as in all his other manifestations, he 
 showed courage and self-respect and a noble mod 
 esty. He had been a happy man, as this world 
 goes ; yet when at the close of his career he glanced 
 back over its former stages, he was unable, as he 
 wrote to Stoddard, to recall a moment when he 
 would have commanded the fatal joy-bell of King 
 Felix to be rung. Happiness would be a foolish 
 word did we not believe that a life is to come in 
 which the word will represent a reality and not a 
 dream. 
 
 He took a cordial interest in his son s college 
 experiment ; and I have always been glad that he 
 did not witness its somewhat unstimulating termi 
 nation. When anxiety as to his physical condition 
 increased, he submitted to expedients devised to 
 restore his vigor ; he made occasional visits to Bos 
 ton, chatting in the old Corner Bookstore, or din 
 ing with Fields and his wife, whose hospitality and 
 good humor refreshed him. Later he undertook 
 little journeys away from home ; to Washington and 
 the seat of war, or, with his son, to some near-by 
 seaside place ; but he did this to please others, not 
 with the hope in himself of any lasting benefit. 
 
116 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 In the last but one of these trips, the sudden death 
 of Ticknor, his companion, had a disastrous effect 
 upon him. I remember the description my mother 
 gave of his dismayed and anguished appearance. 
 After some weeks he was induced to make another 
 trial of change of scene with Franklin Pierce ; and 
 I need not recount the last days, which are well 
 known. The news came to me, in Harvard, in the 
 forenoon of the 19th of May ; I went to speak with 
 Professor Gurney, who had been my especial friend 
 and counselor in college, and he said : " It is only 
 a few months since Thackeray, one of the best men 
 in England, died, and now we have lost by far the 
 best man in America." It was beautiful spring 
 weather; but the sunlight, and the blue, and the 
 green looked strange, like a phantasmagory thrown 
 upon the dark. 
 
 It was during these last Concord years that I 
 had begun to form relations with my father beyond 
 the instinctive, unreasoning affection of childhood. 
 He had begun to speak with me of other than 
 childish things. He encouraged me to enter into 
 the society of the young folks in Concord, the 
 dances and picnics and masqued balls and rowing 
 and bathing parties ; he got me good clothes to 
 wear, and quietly stimulated my rather lagging 
 interest in the social amenities of my companions. 
 No doubt he was contemplating the future of us all 
 with some solicitude. But I think he especially de- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 117 
 
 sired to steer me away from the lonely experiences 
 of his own young manhood ; and as I have said 
 before, he explicitly advised me against adopting 
 the literary calling. I can hardly infer that, modest 
 as was his estimate of his own literary achieve 
 ments, he actually regretted having devoted himself 
 to writing ; but it may be that he believed it would 
 have been better for him and his had he more cul 
 tivated intercourse with his fellow creatures, at the 
 age when such intercourse affects a man. He did 
 not wish " the cursed habit of solitude " to hamper 
 his descendant. Not only in this, but in many other 
 ways, did his loving and wise forethought seek to 
 guard and make easy the path of his children in 
 the world ; much of this care we did not recognize 
 till afterward. Certainly there was no duty of hus 
 band and father that he did not fulfill, giving good 
 measure, pressed down and running over, and yet 
 giving it so unobtrusively and naturally as to make 
 it appear, if possible, a mere matter of course and 
 of routine. But, in truth, it was the love that went 
 with the gift that with its lovely splendor dazzled 
 out of sight all thought or consciousness of duty, 
 and made the memory of the husband and father a 
 more precious heritage and protector than his own 
 wise counsel even could be. Forty years contem 
 plation of what he was has served to render him 
 only brighter and loftier in my memory. I have 
 known many good men since he died, and not a few 
 
118 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 men of genius ; but my father s figure still stands 
 high and apart. The world regards him as one of 
 the great lights of American literature ; a handful 
 of surviving friends remember him as a man dis 
 tinguished in their love and honor; but in my 
 thought of him he has a quality not to be described ; 
 that is associated with the early impressions which 
 make the name of home beautiful ; with a child s 
 delight in the glory of nature ; with a boy s aspira 
 tions toward a pure and generous career ; with in 
 timate conceptions of truth, bravery, and simplicity. 
 He did not speak much ; but his presence was the 
 finest conversation ; and the few words that he ut 
 tered came pointed with a meaning and aimed with 
 a relevance that have held them in my mind after 
 more than half a lifetime. 
 
 MRS. HOWE then introduced Mr. Moncure D. 
 Conway, who gave the following address on " The 
 World set in Hawthorne s Heart." 
 
 ADDRESS OF MONCURE D. CONWAY 
 
 Fifteen years ago, during the centennial of Presi 
 dent Washington, I met an American historian who 
 exclaimed : " Good God ! how much nonsense has 
 been written about that man ! " But now we have 
 come to a centennial not likely to elicit nonsense. 
 Confucius said: "When the fame of Hea Hooi 
 is heard of, the mean man becomes liberal, and the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 119 
 
 miserly becomes generous." I have noticed that in 
 talking of Hawthorne even dull people often be 
 come intelligent. That, by the way, may encourage 
 you at the present moment. Helen Hunt, many 
 years before she began to write under the name 
 of H. H., being the young wife of an army 
 officer, had to entertain officers in her house, and 
 she told me that she found it a good criterion of 
 what was in them to give each new guest a story 
 of Hawthorne to read and find what he thought 
 of it. " I gave Captain Blank k The Snow Image, 
 and he thought it a mere fairy tale for a child. 
 So I adapted my conversation to a polite block 
 head." 
 
 It has sometimes appeared to me a pity that 
 Hawthorne and Emerson were not both born here 
 in Concord. Some Frenchman said that Madame 
 de Pompadour had but one fault, that was being 
 born. It seems a little inconsiderate in Hawthorne 
 that he was not born in Concord. However, as he 
 seems to have regarded himself as not really born 
 until he was married, we may to-day think of the 
 Old Manse as in a sense his birth-house. 
 
 It impresses me as a phenomenal thing that this 
 small town should have contained at one and the 
 same time two men of representative genius. On 
 the first day that I ever set foot in Concord just 
 fifty-one years ago I went first to take a look at 
 the Old Manse. While I was looking at it from 
 
120 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 the road, Hawthorne, who had been making a call 
 there before leaving for Liverpool, stepped out ; I 
 followed, unobserved, as far as the house of Emer 
 son, to meet whom I had come. I was then twenty- 
 one. Now, an old man, I see those houses as houses 
 of the two Interpreters in life s pilgrimage, In 
 terpreters antipodally related, as Oversoul to 
 Worldsoul, poles of one sphere. 
 
 It was a long pilgrimage, for those brought up 
 in a fictitious religious universe, to the Emerson 
 House ; and then a long pilgrimage to the Haw 
 thorne House. Even Wentworth Higginson s essay 
 on " Saints and their Bodies," with all its wit and 
 wisdom, could not quite laugh us out of the heredi 
 tary notion that our body is a coarse and vulgar 
 thing compared with the soul. You sometimes hear 
 a handsome preacher, robust, clear-eyed, dis 
 coursing medieval and morbid dogmas and super 
 stitions : if that preacher s soul could only attain 
 the perfection of his body, what a splendid sermon 
 you would hear ! In that body ten thousand valves 
 are opening and closing with perfect precision ; 
 harp-strings of the ear, lenses of the eye, exquisite 
 network of vibrant nerves, are all fulfilling their 
 functions of the living hour, while the poor preach 
 er s soul is tossed about in the deserts of unrea 
 son, because it is not his own nor any soul, but 
 the ghost of something transmitted from other 
 minds. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 121 
 
 There was an ancient wise man called Solomon, 
 
 that is, the Man of Salem, or peace, to whom 
 were ascribed the words : " God hath made every 
 thing beautiful in its time; also he hath set the 
 world in (man s) heart, so that he cannot discover 
 God s work from first to last." 
 
 Those words "he hath set the world in man s 
 heart," given as the reason for giving up the prob 
 lem of the universe, recurred to me when reading 
 a letter of our later Salem man to a lady of Salem, 
 
 the year before their marriage, concerning some 
 mediumistic performances. He says : " If we would 
 know what heaven is, before we come thither, let 
 us retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we 
 shall find it there among holy thoughts and feel 
 ings. . . . The view which I take of this matter is 
 caused by no want of faith in mysteries, but by 
 a deep reverence of the soul, and of the mysteries 
 which it knows within itself, but never transmits to 
 the earthly eye or ear. Keep the imagination sane, 
 
 that is one of the truest conditions of communion 
 with heaven." 
 
 The world set in Hawthorne s heart was one that 
 no worldly man can discover, nor even a man of 
 the world. It was known to Emerson, who said, 
 "An actually existent fly is more important than 
 a possibly existent angel." It was known to Mar 
 garet Fuller, who said : " The stars tell all their 
 secrets to the flowers, and if we only knew how to 
 
122 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 look around us we should not need to look above." 
 No heavenly deity was ever more jealous than the 
 World-soul. That genius which would really know 
 the world as it is cannot mingle with its mire, 
 its vulgarity, its commonplace crowds, whether in 
 churches or in political parties ; it is an " art and 
 mystery " to be mastered in silence and solitude ; 
 for it is a world in the heart, explored by the most 
 delicate susceptibilities, tenderest sympathies, finest 
 intuitions, but most easily contaminated. Nor can 
 the genius developed to interpret the world in its 
 heart fulfill that trust if it is absorbed in thoughts 
 of some other world. Many of us have passed some 
 of our best years dreaming of a past paradise and 
 a paradise to be regained, only to sympathize at 
 last with Alice in the Looking-glass, who says to 
 her hosts, " Jam yesterday, jam to-morrow, but 
 never jam to-day ! " 
 
 As Hawthorne felt the horror of the witch ex 
 ecutions in Salem as if he had witnessed them, and 
 dreaded a church, albeit not skeptical, so he could 
 not unite in societies for reforming the world, 
 while not hostile to them, and able to see their pic 
 turesque side. He did not see the roseate character 
 of the new world aimed at. As Miles Coverdale at 
 Brook Farm, he has no doubt that their dreams 
 will be realized, but there was no ideal charm in 
 the dreams. He says : " Of course, when the reality 
 comes it will wear the every-day, commonplace, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 123 
 
 and rather homely garb that reality always does 
 put on." In "The Journal of an African Cruiser," 
 edited by Hawthorne in 1845, he says : " It is re 
 markable that De Foe, a man of the most severe 
 and delicate conscience, should have made his hero 
 a slave-dealer, and should display a perfect insen 
 sibility to anything culpable in the traffic. Moral 
 ity has taken a great step hi advance since that 
 day, or, at least, it has thrown a strong light upon 
 one spot, with perhaps a corresponding shadow 
 upon some other. The next age may shift the illu 
 mination, and show us sins as great as that of the 
 slave trade, but which now enter into the daily 
 practice of men claiming to be just and wise." 
 
 When the anti-slavery agitation was going on 
 Hawthorne did not unite in it, because he did not 
 see with us the millennial America which was to 
 blossom like a rose so soon as slavery was cleared 
 away. And perhaps he did see beyond that light 
 cast upon slavery a corresponding shadow of war 
 darkening the whole land. However that may be, 
 the world set in Hawthorne s heart was the world 
 as it existed, a world all-inclusive, with heights 
 and depths, like the earth as seen by Socrates. 
 " The pure earth is situated in the pure heavens," 
 said Socrates. " The soul which has passed through 
 life with purity and moderation obtains the gods 
 for fellow travelers and guides, and rests in the 
 abode suited to it. There are in truth many and 
 
124 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 worshipful places in the earth, and it is neither of 
 such a kind nor of such a magnitude as is supposed 
 by those who are accustomed to speak of the earth." 
 
 One of his friends cried out : " Oh, Socrates, it 
 is a sufficient end of life to listen to those dis 
 courses of thine." And in reading the tales of 
 Hawthorne I sometimes feel inclined to admit that 
 the world into which his imagination guides us, 
 even with that nethermost realm where Hester 
 Prynne sits with her scarlet letter, even where the 
 Blithedale Utopia vanishes away, arenas of the 
 eternal conflict between Ormuzd and Ahriman, giv 
 ing play to the finest and most heroic qualities 
 of human nature, even that world has its ideal 
 charm. It is a sufficient raison d etre even for 
 witch-and-quaker-persecuting Puritanism that it 
 produced at last a genius able to show its grandest 
 soul in the woman it tortured and branded. Ah, 
 how deep Hawthorne went into this world, how 
 far beyond its conventionalism ! 
 
 The American artist in London, George Bough- 
 ton, once painted a picture of Hester Prynne, and 
 invited his friends to see it. It was a masterpiece. 
 There stood the woman with her marvelous beauty, 
 the old English letter broidered on her breast, 
 calm in her fortitude and sincerity. The company 
 stood entranced before it. On a table lay the em 
 broidered letter which the artist had designed, and 
 some of us were examining it. In the company was 
 
THE WAYSIDE 125 
 
 a lady of high position, cultivated and refined, a 
 devoted reader of Hawthorne. Most of us had 
 turned away and were chatting with Mrs. Bough- 
 ton about her approaching fancy ball ; but that 
 lady still stood before the picture. She presently 
 snatched up the scarlet letter and said to the artist, 
 " Lend me this letter ! I will wear it at your fancy 
 ball ! I will come as Hester Prynne ! " She was 
 speedily surrounded by the other ladies, and told 
 it would never do. " Surely," she said, " nobody 
 can see anything but nobleness in Hester Prynne." 
 But she was reminded that some would be present 
 who had never read " The Scarlet Letter," and 
 that it would require the genius of Hawthorne to 
 create anew for Mrs. Grundy the woman as she and 
 Boughton saw her. 
 
 After what I have quoted from Hawthorne about 
 seeing heaven reflected in the depths of his own spirit, 
 and what I have said of all the Utopias already real 
 ized in that world in his heart, it should be added 
 that he did in one direction impose a lien upon the 
 future, just one. That was with regard to the 
 position of woman. I do not believe that there is 
 a sweeter page in literature than that at the close of 
 " The Scarlet Letter," where Hester is seen, her 
 troubles past, the letter no longer a stigma, bring 
 ing to her women with wasted and burdened hearts. 
 " Hester comforted and counseled them as best she 
 might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief 
 
12C HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 that, at some brighter period, when the world 
 should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven s own 
 time, a new truth would be revealed in order to 
 establish the whole relation between man and wo 
 man on a surer ground of mutual happiness." The 
 angel and apostle is to be a woman. That is in 
 1850. Two years later " The Blithedale Romance " 
 brings evidence that Hawthorne has thought out 
 all that matter maturely. " I will give you leave, 
 Zenobia, to fling your utmost scorn upon me, if you 
 ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to the 
 widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of. 
 I would give her all she asks, and add a great 
 deal more, which she will not be the party to de 
 mand, but which men, if they were generous and 
 wise, would grant of their own free motion." He 
 will go to church often enough when women are 
 the preachers. He envies the Catholics their Ma 
 donna. 
 
 But even here Hawthorne was too much of an 
 artist to try and shape a scheme or a system. The 
 nature in which he was interested was human na 
 ture. Not the mountains, but the human profile on 
 one of them, inspired " The Great Stone Face," 
 the matchless allegory. " Going to the village yes 
 terday afternoon " this is at Lenox "I saw 
 the face of a beautiful woman gazing at me from 
 a cloud. It was the full face, not the bust. It had a 
 sort of mantle on the head, and a pleasant expres- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 127 
 
 sion of countenance. The vision lasted while I took 
 a few steps, and then vanished. I never before saw 
 near by so distinct a cloud-picture." 
 
 Hawthorne framed no cosmos, nor formulated 
 any philosophical or sociological system. For his 
 world was not academic; it was not mirrored in 
 his intellect, but in his heart ; and his intellect was 
 the artist which created and gave life to the forms 
 which he saw in that heart-world and which ex 
 cited his sentiment and imagination. 
 
 And as life goes on, and so many aims to which 
 we devoted years of labor and sorrow turn to illu 
 sions, cloud-pictures that vanished after we had 
 taken further steps, do we not find that, after all, 
 Hawthorne s method is the only way in which the 
 world can be truly reported ? 
 
 No one who ever saw Hawthorne can forget his 
 wonderful eyes. They were search-lights, but soft 
 ones, the look not that of curiosity, but of inter 
 est and attentiveness. The heart looked through 
 them and saw into the heart of what was before 
 him. This makes his " Note-Books " a romance of 
 the author himself equal to those he published. 
 The art critics wonder at his estimates of pictures 
 and statues in Italy, because he sees what the dil 
 ettanti cannot see. The great are sometimes laid 
 low and the lowly exalted by his strange touchstone. 
 He turns away from Michael Angelo s " Last Judg 
 ment " because he finds himself taking sides with 
 
128 HAWTHOKNE CENTENARY 
 
 the wicked against the fierce, pitiless Christ con 
 demning them ; and the great name of Guido does 
 not prevent his seeing that the Archangel chaining 
 up Satan is altogether too dainty ; not a loose 
 string of his sandal, not a ruffled feather of his 
 wing, to indicate that there has been any conflict 
 at all. If it is simply Omnipotence at work to 
 crush Satan, why need the Archangel be there at 
 all, and why bear a spear? The angel seems pos 
 ing. But wherever Hawthorne sees a heart he re 
 cognizes it, even if the artist be unknown and the 
 picture such as others pass by. " Occasionally to 
 day, I was sensible of a certain degree of emotion 
 in looking at an old picture ; as, for example, by 
 a large, dark, ugly picture of Christ bearing the 
 cross and sinking beneath it, when, somehow or 
 other, a sense of his agony, and the fearful wrong 
 that mankind did (and does) its Redeemer, and the 
 scorn of His enemies, and the sorrow of those who 
 loved Him, came knocking at my heart and got 
 entrance there. Once more I deem it a pity that 
 Protestanism should have entirely laid aside this 
 mode of appealing to the religious sentiment." 
 When I stood before that same picture Hawthorne s 
 note upon it came knocking at my heart, so plain 
 tive, this unchurched man of fifty-four, returning 
 like Mignon to her father s hall, where 
 
 " Marble statues stand and say each one, 
 What s this, poor child, to thee they ve done ? " 
 
THE WAYSIDE 129 
 
 I found it a wonderful experience, when writing 
 the " Life of Hawthorne," to go through all those 
 places in Rome and Florence with his " Note-Books " 
 and " The Marble Faun " in my hand. In previous 
 years I had gone through the galleries repeatedly, 
 with admiration, but with appreciation more or 
 less determined by my special studies. But Haw 
 thorne transfused with his blood some I had idly 
 passed by ; they became alive. And so it was with 
 the houses associated with Hawthorne. The Pa 
 lazzo della Scimmia has lost its ancient name and 
 legend : it is now Hilda s Tower, and the Countess 
 Marone, lady of the house, has decorated the tower 
 with a fresco of the alighting dove. In Florence, 
 Lady Hobart, who occupied Montauto Villa, told 
 me of an old servant who declared that Signer 
 Hawthorne used to sit long all alone on top of 
 the tower, drawing up the last ladder after him. 
 Lower down in the tower was the small oratory 
 which Una had to herself. It had apparently been 
 an oratory long before the Hawthornes lived 
 there, and the artificial flowers and little waxen 
 angels were so darkened by dust that Lady Hobart 
 feared they would have to be cleared away. I was 
 sometimes reminded of Balzac s story of the Sara 
 cen sorceress burned at Tours, whose demoniac 
 nature was recognized by a laborer, who declared 
 that wherever she walked roses budded in winter 
 time. When the antiquaries and scientific explorers 
 
130 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 of Rome heard that an American was there follow 
 ing the author s tracks, they demanded a lecture on 
 Hawthorne in Rome, and then they helped me to 
 write it ; and in the end I am ready to testify, on 
 their authority, that where Hawthorne had passed 
 things budded ; new species of mosses or moss-roses 
 were found on old ruins, and the stones of Rome 
 revealed new inscriptions. 
 
 Ah, how beloved was that man ! He lamented 
 that he could not write a sunshiny book, but wher 
 ever he moved he carried sunshine. You had only 
 to mention the name of Hawthorne in houses he 
 had entered throughout Europe, and every face 
 beamed with sunshine. If you asked old Hiram 
 Powers, or Villarys, or the Buffering, or Storys, 
 just what Hawthorne said to them, they remem 
 bered mainly his questions. He was inclined to 
 learn rather than teach, but there was a preter 
 natural something about him, he was a beautiful 
 incarnation of beautiful visions ; like the self -mul 
 tiplying young god Krishna, piping to the shepherd 
 esses, w ho each had him for a partner in the 
 dance, he had touched the secret in every breast, 
 he had evoked the deeper self, and these awakened 
 spirits sped to him like the doves nestling in Hilda s 
 tower, each also a carrier of his or her confidences, 
 however infinitesimal, as a grateful tribute to the 
 genius who held the world in his heart and lifted 
 it to his height. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 131 
 
 Just now when my friend Mrs. Elliott was talk 
 ing to us of Italy, I thought of a wonderful picture 
 at Siena of St. Francis with the corpse whispering 
 in his ear. Sent for by a woman in mental anguish 
 who desired to confess, St. Francis found her dead, 
 but calls her back into just enough consciousness to 
 unburden her heart. I think of Hawthorne as hav 
 ing summoned into life the extinct Puritanism of 
 persecution, the Puritanism hard and cruel, 
 just long enough to unburden its heart and make 
 its confession. So he summoned defunct Brook 
 Farm, and even ancient Rome. 
 
 In a recent article it is said that Emerson dis 
 suaded people from reading Hawthorne. I feel 
 certain that is not true. I was entirely in his hands, 
 sitting at his feet, during the entire summer of 1853, 
 when I resided on Ponkatasset Hill ; he advised 
 the books I read when a crude youth from Virginia ; 
 he gave me information and his opinions of writers. 
 He said of Robert Browning s " Paracelsus " that 
 it was " the wail of the nineteenth century." If 
 he were warning people against Hawthorne I must 
 have heard it. I remember once talking to Emerson 
 of some writer I feel pretty sure it was Hawthorne 
 and saying that although he seemed to see the 
 sombre and dark in life, he wrote at times like a tran- 
 scendentalist ; and Emerson said (I remember this 
 perfectly) : " A transcendentalist is one who has 
 caught a glimpse of that terrible thing that we are." 
 
132 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Emerson was very much charmed with the ac 
 count that Hawthorne gave of his friend Delia 
 Bacon, in the " Kecollections of a Gifted Woman." 
 And I may say during that long time Hawthorne 
 was at Liverpool, and when he seemed so silent, he 
 was himself personally passing through a drama 
 almost as wonderful and romantic and thrilling as 
 any he ever wrote. 
 
 Delia Bacon came over there with her strange 
 new theory of Shakespeare not being written by 
 Shakespeare now a familiar theory, but at that 
 time all in that poor woman s brain. Hawthorne 
 found her in a poor London lodging and in ob 
 scurity; he gave her money, and he helped her 
 during all the time she was on the verge of insanity. 
 Francis Bennoch, his very particular friend, and 
 Charles Flower, mayor of Str at ford-on- A von, told 
 me they never had seen a more beautiful and tender 
 solicitude than that of Hawthorne for that lady. 
 For she was a most refined and elegant woman ; 
 she was fair to look upon, she was thoroughly cul 
 tivated, she had been one of the most cultured 
 teachers in Boston, belonging to a high and learned 
 family, and was in every respect a most attractive 
 person. Carlyle said he was most impressed by 
 her gracious dignity and modesty in the discussion 
 of her paradoxical views. Bennoch told me that 
 Hawthorne, though not then pecunious, gave Delia 
 Bacon over a thousand dollars out of his own 
 
THE WAYSIDE 133 
 
 pocket, and so delicately, with such tact, that she 
 should not be under obligations ; and when at last 
 her book was to be published, he wrote the intro 
 duction, although there was nothing in the world 
 likely to give him more trouble than to be asso 
 ciated with her theory of Shakespeare, which ap 
 peared to him to be perfectly wild. 
 
 And so it was until the time when she stayed up 
 all night at the grave of Shakespeare, where that 
 famous inscription was, the sexton all the time 
 watching her to see that no violence was done the 
 grave, and when in the darkness her mind en 
 tirely gave way. Here, then, in that apparently 
 silent time, when no novel was written, a very 
 thrilling one was lived, in which Hawthorne was 
 the main figure. 
 
 In the last year of his life, too, this strange sen 
 sitive man was moving in a tragical succession of 
 events. His beloved daughter Una was hovering 
 between life and death. When Una was better it 
 could be told by Hawthorne s cheerier look and step 
 on the street. When her life and mind flickered 
 up, he flickered up ; when Una sank, he sank ; in 
 my belief he perished by the loss of that daughter. 
 Una, in some strange, mystical way, seemed to 
 represent the soul and spirit of Hawthorne. 
 
 There has been discovered by my friend Went- 
 worth Higginson a portraiture of that girl by her 
 father, which I consider one of the most exquisite 
 
134 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 things ever written. It is complete, and Miss Mar 
 garet Lothrop will read it to us. The extract was 
 then read by Miss Lothrop. Letters from Dr. 
 Richard Garnett of London and Mrs. Annie Fields 
 were also read. 
 
 LETTER FROM DR. RICHARD GARNETT 
 
 27 TANZA ROAD, HAMPSTEAD, 
 LONDON, June 25, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MADAM : I receive with great satisfac 
 tion, but with no surprise, the information commu 
 nicated to me in a letter from Colonel T. W. Hig- 
 ginson that the centennial anniversary of Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne s birth is to be celebrated at his home 
 in Concord, now in your occupation. Of all Amer 
 ican writers of imaginative genius, I should think 
 there was none so secure of centennial, and of re 
 peated centennial, celebration as Hawthorne, be 
 cause there is no other whose work has so little 
 dependence upon merely temporary and accidental 
 elements. The finest and most characteristic of his 
 ideas and emotions lie, like Poe s " wild weird 
 world out of space, out of time," but even when 
 describing ordinary men and manners he seems to 
 have the instinct of selecting what in them is per 
 manently interesting and therefore permanently 
 readable. The scenes of common life in " The 
 Blithedale Romance " and " The Marble Faun " 
 are as fresh as ever. I can see no reason why any 
 
THE WAYSIDE 135 
 
 part of Hawthorne s imaginative work should be 
 less interesting now than on the day when it was 
 written, or why it should be less attractive on 
 future centennials than on this. 
 
 This being a centennial occasion, I have confined 
 my remarks to the durability of Hawthorne s writ 
 ings, which I need not say implies other qualities 
 of the highest order. 
 
 With sincere wishes for the success of your fete, 
 and congratulating you upon the president you have 
 secured in Colonel Higginson, I remain, dear 
 Madam, most truly yours, 
 
 EICHARD GARNETT. 
 
 MRS. HOWE: Before we separate, a tribute is 
 due to Mrs. Lothrop, the one who devised the 
 whole plan and who has been the spirit of the 
 occasion which brought us together, and as our 
 hostess has had us in her house. I know that this 
 is the feeling of you all, and you can express it in 
 the usual way. 
 
 The audience then passed a vote of thanks to 
 Mrs. Lothrop, and the meeting adjourned. 
 
FOURTH DAY 
 JULY SEVENTH 
 
FOUKTH DAY 
 JULY SEVENTH 
 
 THE exercises of the fourth and concluding day 
 were presided over by MR. CHARLES FRANCIS 
 ADAMS, who introduced, as the first speaker of the 
 morning, Judge Keyes of Concord. 
 
 ADDRESS OF HON. JOHN S. KEYES 
 
 It is very evident after what you have had from 
 these young men, whom I see about me, that Mrs. 
 Lothrop thought it desirable to show the differ 
 ence, and let you understand something of what 
 is so necessary, the garrulity of old age in regard 
 to things so long ago that nobody else remembers 
 them. 
 
 Now my recollections of Mr. Hawthorne go back, 
 I am afraid, something longer than those of any one 
 else in this room, or in this town of Concord, where 
 I have got to be somehow the oldest inhabitant, 
 and perhaps the only one who knew him when he 
 first brought his bride here, a charming lady, a 
 very beautiful and interesting married couple who 
 impressed themselves very strongly on myself and 
 Mrs. Keyes, as we were then contemplating enter 
 ing just that stage of human happiness, and were 
 
140 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 extremely interested as a neighbor of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Hawthorne in their settlement in the Old Manse. 
 It was a very beautiful settlement in itself, as per 
 haps many of you know. Mrs. Hawthorne had or 
 namented the set of furniture for their chamber with 
 Flaxman s illustrations beautifully done by her 
 own hand, and making, when we were permitted to 
 see them, one of the most artistic and delightful 
 new experiments to us certainly in the furnishing 
 of their home. That brought me somewhat into 
 connection with Mr. Hawthorne ; and a little later, 
 after they had got to feel at home in Concord, 
 there was a reading-room established in the old 
 building next the Tolman house, under the burying 
 hill, to which in some way, I have forgotten quite 
 how, I was the means of inducing, perhaps, Mr. 
 Hawthorne to become a member. It was furnished 
 with the newspapers of the day, of which there 
 were only two dailies then amounting to anything 
 in Boston, and he used to come there and read 
 those almost regularly. 
 
 Then he had quite an interest in the Democratic 
 politics of the day, which through the change in the 
 administration had lost him the custom house at 
 Salem, and so was to be found almost daily, as I 
 have said, reading his favorite Boston "Post," then 
 edited and very well edited by Nathaniel Greene, 
 who became quite famous in that capacity in those 
 days, which these younger men, I dare say, hardly 
 
THE WAYSIDE 141 
 
 recall. It was his usual time to come after our 
 dinner hour, which was then universally in Concord 
 twelve o clock. I went there to receive the news 
 and smoke a cigar, and found him, or he came about 
 the same time, usually. We had considerable talk 
 over the politics, as I was on the other side of the 
 question, and was very glad to get his view of the 
 Democracy of those days ; and then I would occa 
 sionally meet him on the river, where he had a boat, 
 as well as I, and we took our cruises, not together, 
 but usually in different directions, but with plea 
 sant salutations, and he was very charming in spite 
 of his shyness. No person, I think, ever spoke with 
 him that did n t feel that he had received something 
 of a blessing, if he had brought out even the trace 
 of a smile on his handsome face. I remember 
 hardly anything more distinctly of his first residence 
 here than I have told you, and perhaps I have 
 dwelt too long upon it. But of his second residence, 
 the one which came while the height of the presi 
 dential campaign was going on, I remember very 
 well the occasion in which, having his classmate and 
 friend a candidate for the presidency, Hon. Frank 
 lin Pierce, a visitor at his house, he invited all the 
 Democrats of Concord to come to the reception at 
 his house to meet the candidate ; and they came, I 
 rather think a very large portion of them, and it 
 was a very grand occasion to them to see an actual 
 live candidate for the presidency, as I doubt 
 
142 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 whether any one of them had ever seen one before. 
 This assemblage was a peculiar one. The demo 
 cracy of that time was not the Irish democracy of 
 to-day, but the rough, older, New England Demo 
 crats, who had held to their faith from the days of 
 the Revolution. The presentation of those men to 
 the candidate by Mr. Hawthorne, a scene that I 
 think those of you who have heard or read of him 
 can imagine, was an extremely interesting one. 
 Later than that I recall and this is the only one 
 I will trouble you with before giving you what will 
 be so much better for you to hear than anything 
 I can say. At the reception given to him by Mr. 
 Emerson on his return from Italy, he had changed so 
 much with his experience abroad, with his growth in 
 social matters certainly, that we were all surprised 
 at the ease and charm and pleasure of his manner 
 as the company gathered by Mr. Emerson received 
 him with open arms, and with a welcome that I 
 feel sure went to his heart and pleased him more 
 than many incidents of his life abroad. He was de 
 lightfully free from shyness, free from any special 
 embarrassment, and glad to be home again in his old 
 Concord and glad to greet his neighbors who came 
 to see him. 
 
 MR. ADAMS : Excuse me. That is interesting ; 
 so interesting that I want to interject a question. 
 Do you think the freedom from shyness you de- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 143 
 
 scribe was due to Hawthorne s life and experiences 
 abroad, especially his social experiences while in 
 Italy and on the continent ; or was it due to the 
 summer-like prosperity of his later period, and his 
 more congenial environment, as the result of which 
 care had been lifted from him, and so the man 
 emerged ? 
 
 MR. KEYES : I did not know him well enough to 
 answer that question, but think both had undoubt 
 edly their effect on him, because it was a surprise 
 to us all who were there ; we had never dreamed 
 hardly that there would be such a charm and in 
 terest in his manner, as he manifested on that oc 
 casion. Those who knew him best might tell (I do 
 not claim to have known him well enough to have 
 definite ideas as to what caused it). He was a very 
 different man from the shy recluse he was when he 
 began life here. 
 
 (Judge Keyes then read a paper with some 
 reminiscences of Hawthorne and appreciation of 
 his work by EDWARD W. EMERSON, but as the 
 paper was read first at the Salem celebration, and 
 is printed in the report of that occasion, it is not 
 given here.) 
 
 MR, ADAMS: It is one of the inconveniences 
 of impromptu deliverance that the speaker is apt 
 afterwards to be haunted with a consciousness of 
 
144 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 sins both of omission and commission. In my ex 
 perience the sins in question are apt to be pretty 
 equally divided ; they have proved so in this case. 
 When, two days ago, I undertook to set forth my 
 views as to Hawthorne s proper place in literature, 
 I spoke without preparation, giving utterance, as I 
 at the time said, to thoughts as they arose in me. 
 Listening to the interesting letter which has just 
 been read, when reference was made in it to Aunt 
 Hepzibah, in the " House of Seven Gables," it sug 
 gested to me, I know not why, one of my sins of 
 omission. Before calling on Mr. Sanborn, I crave 
 a single minute to make confession thereof. My so- 
 doing would, I am sure, be very grateful to Haw 
 thorne were he cognizant of it. In speaking, last 
 Tuesday, of the character delineations constituting 
 the great portrait world-gallery of recognized in 
 dividualities, I said that, so far as I was aware, or 
 could then recall, America had in all contributed 
 but three. Those three were Irving s Eip Van 
 Winkle, Mrs. Stowe s Topsy, and Bret Harte s 
 Colonel Starbottle. But, as Judge Keyes was speak 
 ing, suddenly one other occurred to me, the creation 
 of a contemporary of Hawthorne s, and associated 
 peculiarly with him. I refer to Longfellow ; he 
 also a graduate of Bowdoin, and a graduate with 
 Hawthorne. 
 
 Not long since, I remember, a gentleman, for 
 whose literary judgment I did not entertain so high 
 
THE WAYSIDE 145 
 
 an opinion as that I held for his personal character, 
 he being a somewhat matter-of-fact man, said 
 of Longfellow and his poetry : " Yes, Longfellow 
 was, doubtless, great as a poet, but he does not 
 appeal to me. He is so subtile ! " Without stop 
 ping to pass on the justice or depth of this criti 
 cism, I want to add one more, a fourth, to my list 
 of American character creations. That fourth is 
 Evangeline. Last month I had occasion to visit the 
 British Provinces, passing some days in Nova 
 Scotia, in attendance on the tercentenary cele 
 bration of the De Monts and Champlain settle 
 ment, which, as some here may not be aware, 
 was at what is now Annapolis-Royal, not far 
 from Grand Pre, and so in the very heart of the 
 " Evangeline country." I freely confess to a sense 
 of amazement as I was made to realize the extent 
 to which Longfellow, in that poem, written nearly 
 sixty years ago, did for a British Province what Sir 
 Walter Scott only a century back so magnificently 
 accomplished for Scotland. He threw over it an 
 abiding veil of romance. Wherever you there go 
 you are reminded of Grand Pre, you are con 
 scious you are in the land of Evangeline. So, 
 among those here assembled, 
 
 " Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is 
 
 patient, 
 
 Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman s 
 devotion," 
 
146 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 bear with me this single moment, while, in making 
 good an omission, I do but render justice in con 
 necting with the name of Hawthorne the name of 
 that one of Hawthorne s college associates whose 
 literary renown can alone bear comparison with his 
 own. Without danger of contradiction, I think I 
 may assert that those two contributed largely and 
 permanently to the most prolific period of New 
 England intellectual germination. 
 
 Mrs. Lothrop will read a letter from Mrs. Rose 
 Hawthorne Lathrop. 
 
 MRS. LOTHROP : I have a letter from Mrs. 
 Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, from her summer home, 
 at Hawthorne, New York, where she is ministering 
 to the incurable poor who are under her care. She 
 telegraphed me yesterday that she would send an 
 other letter of reminiscences of her father. This 
 last letter arrived last night. 
 
 ROSARY HILL HOME, HAWTHORNE, N. Y., July 5. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : The reason that I have 
 not sent a paper to be read, about my father s life 
 in Concord as I saw it, is that I am no longer free 
 to use my time if the sick need it as our patients 
 have done for a number of years now. The order 
 to which I belong, which especially combines the 
 active life with prayer, would sanction my going to 
 Concord for so important an occasion ; but as yet 
 the women tending the twenty-five cancer cases 
 
THE WAYSIDE 147 
 
 whom we harbor in the Country Home are too few 
 to allow any of us to fall out of line for a day. 
 
 Your last kind letter, however, gives me the op 
 portunity to express at least a few thoughts, to be 
 added perhaps to the bright and eloquent words 
 aroused upon the hillside which possesses so many 
 memories of great souls now unseen, whose very 
 presence spoke, so that we hardly needed to hear 
 words from their generous lips to know that they 
 had blessed us in their thought. 
 
 You believe that this Wayside echoed with un 
 spoken words as it traversed the homes of Haw 
 thorne, Alcott, Emerson, Channing, Hoar, and 
 others. However noble and brilliant their speech, 
 their vigor and frankness of insight called forth 
 the uninterrupted response of those who dwelt near 
 them. 
 
 The presence of my father filled my heart ; he 
 approached, and every nerve started to position. 
 But he also, though silent, filled my hearing with 
 suggestions of exalted sentiment far more vividly 
 than the printed pages of the princes of literature, 
 ready for their mastery of the imagination in the 
 library, or than the unerring lines and tones of 
 superlative sculpture and painting, recalled in the 
 decorations of our home. 
 
 Since my harsh contact with the roughest side of 
 the world, its anguish of pain and ugly disease, its 
 base cruelties and frightful lapses into evil, I keenly 
 
148 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 realize the beauty of the rarefied dignity of thought 
 and peacefulness of spirit which made the invisible 
 home of my parents here, of which the outward 
 reality was never permitted to be unworthy in its 
 humble sweetness of aspect, enriched with every 
 distinguished reminiscence and all faultless crite- 
 rions only, as it stood for them beside the highroad 
 of common things. But though the atmosphere of 
 our home was full of honor and art, and its refer 
 ences were only beautiful and inspiring, and all 
 disgust of every sort was eliminated from fancy and 
 motive, yet my father s personality, containing as it 
 did the analytical knowledge of the world s great 
 est monstrosities of evil, and wearing, in the latest 
 years, the never-relinquished black of one who had 
 stood beside the bier of human nature, yet this 
 personality was the most tranquil that The Wayside 
 held, the one which, to the end, gave greatest de 
 light of geniality and highest counsel of demeanor. 
 I do not understand whether it was by the magnet 
 ism of genius (that vividness of myriad faculties), 
 or whether it was by the sense brought to me, that 
 my father had mastered a wondrous condensation 
 of perceptions ; but I seemed to have a delicious 
 recognition of the results of art at its finest flower 
 ing, and the enchanting perfections of godlike char 
 acter, when we met. There were no regrets ; all was 
 joy and strength in these meetings, brief or extended, 
 even after his great mind and heart appeared to 
 
HAWTHORNE S PATH 
 
 (On the hilltop) 
 
THE WAYSIDE 149 
 
 have become, as I said, the unforgetting friend of 
 the self-slain race. 
 
 " Bab," as he then called me, with a low, cheery 
 note of the voice, breathed deep as he came near. 
 His full, sensitive but nobly strong lips were nearer 
 a smile than a sombre droop ; his eyes were chiefly 
 radiance, though often, in those years, full of the 
 long lights of revelation ; seldom sparkling with 
 the lesser beauty of frolicsome sympathy, as I had 
 seen them shining in England. " Bab " was silent 
 as the toad under the silent flowers beside the ter 
 race where we sometimes sat together, or as the pine 
 needles on the hill which rustled, but only in a whis 
 per, under his feet, as we walked there in brisker 
 autumn. But his silence kept me busily occupied. 
 
 Dear Mrs. Lothrop, the limit of time is reached 
 for me, and I find that I have said nothing definitely 
 descriptive of my father s life at the Wayside. 
 One thing I will add : The clearest picture in my 
 mind, always as I look back to that time between 
 1860 and 1864, is that of my father and mother 
 stepping side by side about the grounds, looking at 
 a branch here or a vine there. He talked then. Her 
 head was almost always lifted ; she was looking 
 straight forward or up at a height of summer love 
 liness. He was usually looking down, though not 
 without a ready willingness to follow her command, 
 and also look at some simple grace of the verdure 
 or sublimity of the sky. But he did not forget the 
 
150 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 grass-blade or the pebble of the mystery of our 
 earthly sojourn. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 M. ALPHONSA LATHROP, O. S. D. 
 
 The following paper was received from Mr. 
 FRANK PRESTON STEARNS, author of the " Life of 
 Bismarck," and a schoolmate of Hawthorne s son. 
 
 HAWTHORNE AND TRANSCENDENTALISM 
 
 In Hawthorne s diary, dated August 22, 1842, 
 we read the account of a memorable meeting be 
 tween Margaret Fuller, Emerson, and himself, 
 which took place that afternoon in Sleepy Hollow, 
 whither they all three went for rest and recrea 
 tion without previous consultation or arrangement. 
 Margaret Fuller was first on the ground, and Haw 
 thorne found her seated under the pine-trees read 
 ing a book, the name of which he " did not under 
 stand and could not afterward remember." 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 purely 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 dissec- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 151 
 
 tion 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 illustrat 
 ing 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 possessed of a strong 
 dislike for everything eccentric 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 transcen 
 dental movement and the anti-slavery cause, were 
 particularly objectionable to him. It has been 
 rightly affirmed 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 
 to 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 con 
 nection between such an idyllic, socialistic experi 
 ment and a belief in the direct perception of a 
 great first cause; but Brook Farm was popularly 
 
152 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 supposed at that time to be an emanation of tran 
 scendentalism, 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 fash 
 ion, which after all proved to be more fruitful than 
 theirs. Having exchanged his interest in the West 
 Roxbury association for the Old Manse at Concord, 
 truly a poetic bargain, he wrote the most keenly 
 humorous of his shorter sketches, his "Railroad 
 Journey to the Celestial City," and in it represented 
 the dismal cavern where Bunyan located the two 
 great enemies of true religion, the Pope and Pagan, 
 as now occupied by a German giant, the Transcen- 
 dentalist, who " makes it his business to seize upon 
 honest travelers and fat them for his table with 
 plentiful meals of smoke, mist, moonshine, raw 
 potatoes, and sawdust." 
 
 This may have been his gentle revenge for the 
 unnecessary discomforts and hardships of his West 
 Roxbury life ; but there could have been no malice 
 in his satire, for Mrs. Hawthorne s two sisters, 
 Mrs. Mann and Miss Peabody, were both transcen- 
 dentalists, and so was Horace Mann himself, as 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 and 
 Scotch mist a " chimera buzzing in a vacuum ? " 
 
THE WAYSIDE 153 
 
 James Russell Lowell similarly attacked Emer 
 son in his Class Day Poem, and afterward became 
 converted to Emerson s views through the influ 
 ence of Maria White. It is possible 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 bub 
 bles at the surface. He was emphatically an ideal 
 ist, as every truly great artist must be, and tran 
 scendentalism was the peculiar garb 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 inev 
 itable that he should feel and assimilate something 
 from the wave of German thought which was sweep 
 ing over England and America ; and if he did this 
 unconsciously it was so much the better for the 
 quality of his art. 
 
 There are evidences of this even among his ear 
 liest 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 
 
154 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 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. 
 
 He evidently trusted the validity of his conscious 
 ness. In that exquisite pastoral " The Vision of the 
 Fountain " he says : 
 
 " We were aware of each other s presence, not 
 by sight or sound or touch, but by an inward con 
 sciousness. 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 con 
 sciousness. That and similar gibes are common 
 among those persons of whom the Scriptures tell 
 us that they are in the habit of straining at gnats ; 
 but Hawthorne evidently believed consciousness to 
 be a trustworthy guide. Why should he not ? It 
 was the consciousness of self that raised man above 
 the level of the brute. It 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 perpe 
 trated 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 or corollary to the pre 
 ceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is 
 
THE WAYSIDE 155 
 
 certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first 
 American critic, if not the first of all critics, to 
 point out that Goethe in writing " Elective Affini 
 ties " designed to show that an evil thought may 
 have consequences as 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 the literary idols of the pre 
 sent time who may be expected to endure through 
 all time. Emerson makes the same prediction in 
 one of his poems. 
 
 The essence of transcendentalism is the assertion 
 of the indestructibility of spirit that mind is more 
 real than matter, and the unseen than the seen. 
 " Only the visible has value," said 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 chord stronger than steel, binds together the va 
 rious incidents 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 fictitious judge, is a 
 
156 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 genuine character, and may stand for a type of the 
 young New England liberal of 1850 : a free thinker, 
 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 representative of many compeers in his native 
 land." 
 
 This is a 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 love 
 liest young woman in American fiction. 
 
 Following similar lines, Hawthorne had antici 
 pated Darwin s "Origin of Species " in " The Marble 
 Faun." The character of Donatello is an evident 
 attempt to reconcile the evolution of the human race 
 from the lower orders, with the Oriental tradition 
 of a prehistoric state of universal peace and hap- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 157 
 
 piness, which was followed by what Alcott called a 
 " lapse." The faun of Greek mythology served Haw 
 thorne as the missing link, and even scientific 
 writers think there may be something in this. His 
 Donatello has no evil tendencies, but enjoys a happy 
 sensuous existence, and is as delightful a companion 
 as an innocent child. Yet, he falls into error, and 
 brings misfortune on himself and those he loves, 
 through this very innocence and inexperience of 
 evil. He has plucked the fruit of the tree of know 
 ledge, has been expelled from paradise, and has ac 
 quired the wisdom of experience at a fearful cost. 
 His fate is tragical ; but it is only through tragedy 
 that the world rises to a higher civilization and a 
 purer happiness. 
 
 " The Marble Faun " is an epic allegory, and the 
 truth in it may be more literal than is generally 
 supposed. Not only have we known Donatello in 
 real life, with his succession of tragical episodes, 
 but Captain Speke also discovered in Central 
 Africa a negro tribe, uncontaminated by European 
 traders, and 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. We remember 
 the Palmyra of Zenobia, and the awful fate of the 
 Albigenses ; later instances, cropping out like an 
 aftermath, similar though not the same. 
 
 The depth and height of Hawthorne s philosophy 
 
158 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 is not contained, however, in these few pages. 
 When we study the grammar of a language, we 
 are given a rule to learn, and an example to illus 
 trate it. Emerson contributed the rules, and Haw 
 thorne the examples. If the former wielded greater 
 influence over the generation in which he lived, the 
 latter will have a more extended influence over 
 generations to come ; for we remember the example 
 after the exact terms of the rule have passed from 
 our minds. Such was the purity and perfection of 
 Hawthorne s art, that I believe he will outlive 
 every writer of his time. 
 
 ME. ADAMS : My friend Mr. Sanborn will now 
 make the final contribution to the proceedings. 
 
 (The subject of Mr. Sanborn s address was " The 
 Friendships of Hawthorne.") 
 
 ADDKESS OF F. B. SANBOKN 
 
 I suppose the common impression of Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne is that he was a shy, unsocial man, 
 avoiding human intercourse, and with but few 
 friends. His wide sympathies with most forms of 
 human feeling and experience, as shown in his 
 books, would seem to negative this judgment of his 
 character, and entitle him to many friendships, and 
 much intimate intercourse with mankind. How 
 then are we to reconcile this apparent contradic 
 tion or inconsistency ? for there can be no doubt 
 
THE WAYSIDE 159 
 
 that he was shy, and often painfully embarrassed 
 in the presence of more than one person. He 
 avoided publicity more than any of his Concord 
 associates among our famous authors, and was 
 seldom seen here in any house but his own. Nor 
 did he often walk the streets; choosing for his 
 daily exercise some unfrequented pathway, or the 
 hour of twilight, when his presence would be less 
 observed. The latter was his habit in Salem, as 
 his sister Elizabeth told her nephew Julian. She 
 said, " Your father (in Salem) kept his very ex 
 istence a secret, as far as possible. In the evening, 
 after tea, he went out for about an hour, whatever 
 the weather was." In Bowdoin College, ten years 
 earlier, his greatest pleasure was to ramble alone 
 or with a single comrade, in the great stretch of 
 pine forest which then lay near the village of 
 Brunswick, as he says himself, in a letter to his 
 classmate, Horatio Bridge, " gathering blueber 
 ries in study hours under the tall academic pines, 
 or watching the great logs as they tumbled along 
 the current of the Androscoggin ; two idle lads, 
 doing a hundred things that the Faculty never 
 heard of." He afterwards ascribed his unsocial 
 ways to his long secluded life in the deeper forest 
 around Sebago Lake, where his uncles owned much 
 land, and where one of them, and often their sister, 
 his mother, long resided. The habits then formed 
 he declared that he could not shake off ; and all 
 
160 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 who knew him intimately will admit this as agree 
 ing with their knowledge of him. Yet Hawthorne 
 was a man of warm affections and lively imagina 
 tion, qualities that attract and retain friends ; 
 and had also a steadiness of character not always 
 granted to those who share with him the poet s gift 
 of sensibility. 
 
 We shall therefore find that he constantly at 
 tracted friends, and rather sparingly allowed in 
 timacies, with a few persons at a time, but with 
 many consecutively ; and that, when he had early 
 formed his purpose of authorship in the province 
 of fiction, the romance and the short story or 
 psychologic sketch being his forte, he took natu 
 rally to studies of human nature in all ranks of life. 
 This purpose forbade him to be generally unsocial ; 
 and his way of life in college, and during those 
 years, when he traveled about New England and 
 New York in stage-coaches and on canals, brought 
 him into daily contact with every sort and condi 
 tion of men, so far as the sparse population of the 
 country could then afford him opportunity. It 
 must be remembered that when the boy Hawthorne 
 was roaming in the Maine woods, and fishing in 
 the streams and lakes of Cumberland County, that 
 whole State contained less than 300,000 people, 
 and all New England had hardly two millions. 
 Boston, when Hawthorne first became an author, 
 had but 60,000 inhabitants, and Salem but 13,000 ; 
 
THE WAYSIDE 161 
 
 and when he was traversing the Berkshire hills and 
 valleys for days and weeks in 1838, there were 
 fewer people in the whole county than are now 
 resident in Adams, North Adams, and Williams- 
 town. His quick eye observed and his ready pen 
 noted down every variety of person seen in his wan 
 derings, and hardly a gesture or a glance of the 
 eye escaped him, as we may see in reading his 
 " American Note-Books." This was his treasury of 
 fact and impression, from w.hich he drew those 
 vivid portrayals of imaginary characters, so like, 
 and yet so unlike the persons we meet in every 
 day life. Each one is a type, yet all bear the Haw 
 thorne stamp, ineffaceable, on their special features ; 
 unless we choose to regard them as externalized 
 passions and emotions (arrayed in the costume of 
 the period allotted to them, but showing forth the 
 internal thoughts and sentiments of Hawthorne 
 himself), contending with each other and reflect 
 ing each its own light upon the others : an unreal 
 world, garbed in the habiliments of reality, but 
 shadowy and flitting, like the figures in a dream. 
 Yet he treats them honorably and friendly ; he 
 deals honestly by his characters, and takes no. mean 
 advantage even of the baser ones ; this shows him 
 to have the generosity a friend should have, while 
 yet his eyes are keen to spy faults. 
 
 Among the orators and essayists who have used 
 this centennial anniversary of Hawthorne s birth to 
 
162 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 pass judgment upon his genius and character, one of 
 the most suggestive Mr. Perry at Bowdoin Col 
 lege the other day has compared him to Shake 
 speare s Hamlet. Far-fetched as this may at first 
 appear, there is much in it worth considering. The 
 real novelist and the imaginary prince are both 
 mysterious natures ; we see what they may signify 
 in their reason and their unreason, their matter of 
 fact and their wild imaginings ; but we cannot 
 fathom them quite. The matter of Hamlet s life 
 is a tragedy ; he lives to no purpose but to utter 
 maxims, and dies by treacherous accident, along 
 with those his just wrath should have reached. But 
 he is generous and true in friendship, even while he 
 views the world with disgust, and longs to quit the 
 life which the world s distraction has made, to him, 
 valueless. Something of this life weariness attended 
 the final years of Hawthorne. The bloody contest 
 between the two warring halves of his once-united 
 land affected him deeply ; he used to say, as Tho- 
 reau did, that he could never be well while the 
 Civil War lasted. His final illness was long in 
 continuance, and nothing could relieve its attack ; 
 his death was sudden and mysterious, as so much 
 of his life had been. To Hawthorne, as to Hamlet, 
 the world was out of joint, and he despaired of set 
 ting it right. Nor did he ; the stuff of a reformer 
 was not in him. His work was to show his magic 
 pictures on the walls of our own life, for warning, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 163 
 
 for pity, for entertainment ; but little more than 
 that. His life was gentle, but pathetic ; so long in 
 coming to his well-earned fame ; so solitary and 
 so forward-looking ; and then a time comparatively 
 brief before inscrutable death summoned him away. 
 
 Yet all these incidents and traits made him the 
 more attractive in friendship. In that union, as in 
 the kindred passion of love, pity goes for much ; 
 and those who came within the sphere of Hawthorne 
 inevitably felt compassion for his dark and secluded 
 nature, fitfully illumined by flashes of charming 
 light, and ennobled by an elevation of sentiment 
 that dignified the plain realities of his daily exist 
 ence. He belonged, visibly, to that small order of 
 superior persons who stand forth from the common 
 level of society, simple in manners, if complex in 
 nature, and bearing the signet of power. 
 
 Too many who throng as friends around persons 
 of power are selfish in their friendliness ; they seek 
 benefit to themselves from the alliance or the depend 
 ence in which they place themselves. But the friends 
 of Hawthorne, from his first woodland companion 
 in Raymond, the half-breed William Symmes, who 
 found or invented, but most probably only garbled, 
 the boyish diary of Hawthorne, edited some years 
 since by Mr. Pickard, to the ex-President, his com 
 panion in that last journey towards the mountains of 
 New Hampshire, were, as the quaint old poet said, 
 " All for love and nothing for reward." 
 
164 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Poor Symmes, the son of a Maine gentleman and 
 a Virginia slave, born a year after Hawthorne, and 
 thrown with him on those terms of equality which 
 prevail among boys, was his comrade in fishing 
 excursions and forest rambles, as Horatio Bridge 
 was a few years later ; and both found in him a 
 steady and mindful friend. Writing to Mr. Pickard 
 the year before his death, Symmes, then an old 
 man, said : 
 
 " I have heard people say Hawthorne was cold 
 and distant; if he was so, there was one of his 
 youthful associates (as the world goes, not his equal 
 socially, certainly not intellectually) who was never 
 forgotten. I went to sea, and have ever since been 
 a wanderer, occasionally meeting Hawthorne by 
 chance. Once, after he graduated, he came on 
 board a vessel in Salem harbor, and stayed with 
 me two hours. I was then before the mast. The 
 last time I saw him, we were in Liverpool : he re 
 cognized me across the street, and hove me to. We 
 had a long talk, and he conversed in that easy, 
 bewitching style of which he was a perfect master 
 when he pleased." 
 
 According to the Georgetown " Courier " of No 
 vember, 1871, William Symmes, who professed to 
 own a boyish journal kept by Hawthorne between 
 June, 1816 and sometime in 1819, died in Florida, 
 October 28, 1871. His father, William Symmes 
 (descended from a line of Puritan ministers, one 
 
THE WAYSIDE 165 
 
 of whom came to New England in 1634 with Anne 
 Hutchinson, and was minister at Charlestown, with 
 John Harvard, who gave his name to the College, 
 as his temporary associate, and died in 1671), was 
 once a tutor in Virginia, and his mother was an 
 African. The child took his father s name, and 
 was adopted at the age of three by a Maine captain 
 named Britton, of a town near Raymond, where the 
 Hawthornes and Mannings lived for years. In 1826, 
 Symmes became a sailor, and visited all parts of 
 the globe. By 1852 he had reached California, 
 where he lived for eight years, and there became 
 known to Colonel L. C. Baker, who in the Civil War 
 had the charge of a force of detectives and spies at 
 Washington. At that time he employed Symmes 
 as a detective, under various names, mostly taken 
 from rural Maine. He declared to persons in and 
 around Washington that he had played as a boy 
 with Senator Fessenden (born in 1806) as well as 
 with Hawthorne ; and that they were the only two 
 white boys or men who never, by word or look, 
 offended him in the matter of his color. 
 
 Although the Hawthorne Diary, as described by 
 Symmes, and partly printed by Mr. Pickard, though 
 now suppressed, is doubtful as to its entire genu 
 ineness, there can be little doubt that Symmes 
 was Hawthorne s companion in those boyish years, 
 and perhaps his earliest friend, outside his own 
 family. 
 
166 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 With his college life a new era began in the 
 friendships of Hawthorne. He entered Bowdoin 
 College at the age of seventeen ; it was a small 
 school, and he was at the right age to form friend 
 ships. They were not many, it would seem, but very 
 important ones, both for his present enjoyment and 
 the shaping of his after life. They began almost acci 
 dentally, the most important (that with Frank 
 lin Pierce, afterwards senator and President) in a 
 stage-coach as he and Jonathan Cilley, afterwards 
 slain in a congressional duel, joined Hawthorne and 
 his first roommate Alfred Mason (a son of Web 
 ster s tall friend Jeremiah Mason), then of Ports 
 mouth, at that old seaport, on their way to enter 
 college at Brunswick in the summer of 1821. All 
 
 O 
 
 these youths except Hawthorne were from New 
 Hampshire : Pierce, a few months younger than 
 Hawthorne, was from Hillsboro ; Cilley, two years 
 older, from Nottingham ; and Mason, about Haw 
 thorne s own age, from Portsmouth. Pierce, who 
 had been carefully fitted for college, entered a 
 year before the rest, and through his course was 
 a leader in the small student community, com 
 manding a cadet company of collegians, of which 
 Hawthorne was a private. Cilley, the grandson of 
 a distinguished Revolutionary general, also served 
 in this company ; but in his class was a leader, from 
 his age and talents, and by the severer traits of his 
 nature, on which Hawthorne commented, a dozen 
 
THE WAYSIDE 167 
 
 years after, with much frankness in his note-book. 
 Mason was a studious youth, as devoted to science 
 as his chum was to literature and sauntering. In 
 the class he found his most world-renowned comrade, 
 Henry Longfellow, a slender youth of fourteen, 
 who, before graduating in 1825, was already a poet 
 of some note, and who became at one time the most 
 widely read of all contemporary poets who wrote 
 English. Another classmate was Horatio Bridge, 
 to whom, next to Pierce, Hawthorne was most at 
 tached, and who was one of the last survivors of 
 that college class of thirty-eight members. With 
 these four youths, of an age near his own, Haw 
 thorne continued intimate so long as he and they 
 lived ; and their friendship was one of the chief 
 delights of his life until he fell in love with Miss 
 Sophia Peabody, of a Salem family living near his 
 own, but with which, for years,, he had little com 
 munication. 
 
 The habits of young men in college, fourscore years 
 ago, were what is euphoniously termed " convivial;" 
 the temperance reformation had not set in, and 
 Madeira wine was still abundant along the coast 
 of New England, and in her chief seaports. Con 
 sequently there need be no surprise at the wager 
 made between Cilley and Hawthorne in November, 
 1824, after Pierce had left Brunswick, and gone 
 to study law with a more profound jurist, Wood- 
 bury, of Portsmouth, who had been judge and gov- 
 
168 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 era or in New Hampshire. The papers in the case 
 are singular, and were lodged in the hands of a 
 classmate, Horatio Bridge, of Augusta, the Maine 
 capital, then a small country village. Mr. Bridge, 
 who became a naval officer, and was promoted by 
 President Pierce, published them in 1892, and here 
 they are. They show, among other things, that Haw 
 thorne then, as his mother always did, signed the 
 name " Hathorne," only choosing the recent famil 
 iar form some years later. Mr. Bridge said : 
 
 " Although Hawthorne, while a collegian, rarely 
 sought or accepted the acquaintance of young ladies, 
 he had a high appreciation of the sex. An early 
 marriage, however, did not enter into his plans of 
 life. The evidence of this fact is among my papers, 
 
 and runs thus : 
 
 BOWDOIN COLLEGE, Nov. 14, 1824. 
 
 If Nathaniel Hathorne is neither a married man 
 nor a widower on the 14th day of November, 1836, 
 I bind myself upon my honor to pay the said Ha 
 thorne a barrel of the best old Madeira wine. 
 (J. C.) Witness my hand and seal. 
 
 JONATHAN CILLEY. 
 
 (The same date). If I am a married man or a 
 widower on the 14th day of November, 1836, 1 bind 
 myself upon my honor, to pay Jonathan Ciiley a 
 barrel of the best old Madeira wine. 
 
 Witness my hand and seal. 
 (N. H.) NATHANIEL HATHOBNE. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 169 
 
 This very formal agreement was inclosed in a 
 closely sealed package, indorsed in Hawthorne s 
 writing, thus : 
 
 " 4 Mr. Horatio Bridge is requested to take charge 
 of this paper, and not to open it until the 15th day 
 of November, 1836, unless by the joint request of 
 Cilley and Hathorne. 
 
 " On the designated day I broke the seals, and 
 notified Cilley that he had lost the wager. He ad 
 mitted the loss, and, after the delay of a year or more, 
 was making arrangements for its payment, and a 
 meeting to taste the wine, when his tragic death, 
 in a duel with Graves of Kentucky, settled the 
 account." 
 
 The next year after gaming this wager (July, 
 1837), Hawthorne went to Augusta to spend a 
 month with his friend Bridge, and his note-book in 
 that month records his opinion of the mature man, 
 with whom he had been corresponding for years 
 under the name of " Oberon." He, too, had not yet 
 married, and thus Hawthorne describes the friend 
 to whom the world owes the first volume of " The 
 Twice-Told Tales : " - 
 
 " Bridge, our host, combines more high and ad 
 mirable qualities, of that sort which makes up a 
 gentleman, than any other that I have met with : 
 polished, yet natural, frank, open, and straightfor 
 ward, yet with a delicate feeling for the sensitiveness 
 of his companions ; of excellent temper and warm 
 
170 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 heart ; well acquainted with the world ; with a keen 
 faculty of observation, which he has had many op 
 portunities of exercising ; and never varying from 
 a code of honor and principle which is really nice 
 and rigid in its way. He seems almost to have made 
 up his mind never to be married ; which I wonder 
 at, for he has strong affections, and is fond both 
 of women and children. . . . And here is myself, 
 who am a queer character in rny way, and have 
 come to spend a week or two with my friend of 
 half a lifetime. Fate seems to be preparing changes 
 for both. My circumstances cannot long continue 
 as they are and have been ; and Bridge, too, stands 
 between high prosperity and utter ruin." 
 
 It was ruin, of the financial sort, which fell on 
 Bridge. He had invested largely in a water-power 
 enterprise on the Kennebec, the building of a 
 milldam across the river, for mills and factories, 
 which the faithless stream destroyed. He says : 
 
 "A freshet, higher, of course, than was ever 
 before known, swept away the dam and the mills, 
 cut a new channel for the Kennebec, swallowed 
 up my paternal mansion on grounds near by, and 
 ruined me financially. I entered the navy as pay 
 master, and after sixteen years service was made 
 paymaster-general by President Pierce, which office 
 I held for fifteen years, including the whole period 
 of the Civil War." 
 
 Before this visit of Hawthorne at Augusta, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 171 
 
 Bridge had secured the publication of " Twice-Told 
 Tales " in a volume, by guaranteeing $250 to the 
 publisher " as an ultimate resort against loss." The 
 edition, which came out in 1837, was a thousand 
 copies ; they cost the publisher $450 or $500, and 
 brought the author only $100, until new editions 
 were issued. The publication depended solely upon 
 Bridge s guarantee of $250, which he was not re 
 quired to pay, because the book succeeded ; and of 
 it Bridge says : 
 
 " Its success was not pecuniarily great at first, 
 but in this country, and still more in England, 
 where Hawthorne was promptly and highly appre 
 ciated, the book established his right to a place 
 among living authors of recognized power. In Oc 
 tober, 1836, I had written for the Boston Post 
 this notice : 
 
 " It is a singular fact, that, of the few American 
 writers by profession, one of the very best is a 
 gentleman whose name has never yet been made 
 public, though his writings are extensively and favor 
 ably known. It is Nathaniel Hawthorne of Salem, 
 author of " The Gentle Boy," " The Gray Cham 
 pion," etc., all productions of high merit, which 
 have appeared in annuals and magazines the last 
 three or four years. Liberally educated, but bred to 
 no profession, he has devoted himself exclusively 
 to literary pursuits, with an ardor and success which 
 will ere long give him a high place among the 
 
172 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 scholars of this country. His style is classical and 
 pure, his imagination exceedingly delicate and fan 
 ciful, and through all his writings there runs a vein 
 of sweetest poetry. " 
 
 Probably Hawthorne s pride prevented this fore 
 taste of his fame from publication ; so that Park 
 Benjamin may have been the first publicly to 
 herald him as an author, by name. But he was 
 already finding in Salem another pair of friends, 
 who were to influence the current of his days for a 
 dozen years, more than Bridge or Pierce. These 
 were the two daughters of Dr. Nathaniel Peabody 
 of Salem, Elizabeth and Sophia, one a few 
 weeks older than Hawthorne, the other, five years 
 younger, and two years younger than the poet 
 Longfellow. They were descended, on the mother s 
 side, from General Palmer of the Revolution and 
 the Boston Langdons, from whom came President 
 Langdon of Harvard, and Dr. N. L. Frothingham. 
 Sophia had been mistakenly treated for illness 
 when a child, and became a sad nervous invalid, 
 suffering the worst of headaches, and coming at 
 last into the new medical treatment called homeo 
 pathy, after having for four years, in Boston, the 
 kind care of Dr. Walter Channing of the older 
 school, the father of Ellery Channing, who later 
 became an intimate friend of Hawthorne and his 
 wife. Moving about from town to town, as the 
 Hawthornes had done, the Peabody family, though 
 
THE WAYSIDE 173 
 
 not themselves recluse, except in case of this in 
 valid daughter, had never known the recluse Haw- 
 thornes until about 1838, though the children had 
 played together in early childhood. In that year, 
 when the fact that Hawthorne had written the 
 Tales was well known, he called, with his two sis 
 ters, on Elizabeth Peabody in her Salem parlor, 
 while the invalid Sophia was in her chamber. The 
 enthusiastic elder sister says : 
 
 " As soon as I could, I ran upstairs to her, and 
 said : O Sophia, you must get up and dress and 
 come down ! The Hawthornes are here, and you 
 never saw anything so splendid as he is; he is 
 handsomer than Lord Byron. She laughed, but 
 refused to come, remarking that since he had called 
 once, he would call again. . . . He did call again, 
 not long afterwards; and this time Sophia came 
 down in her simple white wrapper. As I said 4 My 
 sister Sophia, he rose and looked at her intently, 
 he did not realize how intently. As we went on 
 talking, she would frequently interpose a remark 
 in her sweet low voice. Every time she did so he 
 would look at her again with the same piercing 
 gaze. I was struck with it, and thought, 4 What if 
 he should fall in love with her? The thought 
 troubled me, for she had often told me that nothing 
 would ever tempt her to marry and inflict on a 
 husband the care of an invalid." 
 
 The acquaintance thus formed ripened fast, and 
 
174 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 the influence of the Peabodys and their circle, 
 which included Emerson, Alcott, and the Chan- 
 nings, with other disciples of the Newness which 
 had been christened Transcendentalism, brought 
 Hawthorne into a companionship for which little 
 in his past life, but much in his poetic nature, had 
 fitted him. George Bancroft, then collector of 
 Boston under Van Buren s administration, and a 
 member of the dominant Democratic party, as were 
 Pierce and Bridge, Cooper, Irving, Paulding, and 
 the Sedg wicks, had an inclination to Transcenden 
 talism, and appointed Hawthorne to a minor office 
 in the custom house, which gave him an assured 
 income, and seemed to promise matrimony in the 
 near distance. But the overthrow of Van Buren 
 and the Democrats in 1840 destroyed that support, 
 and then Hawthorne embarked as a small capi 
 talist in the community at Brook Farm, experi 
 mentally. He did not remain there long, and it 
 cost him something to withdraw his capital ; but 
 he was now, in the downfall of his political party, 
 fairly launched on the cerulean lake of Concord 
 philosophy and poesy, where Sophia Peabody had 
 been floating with Alcott, Emerson, and Margaret 
 Fuller, for some years. In the early summer of 
 1838, after her friendship with Hawthorne had so 
 singularly begun, she wrote in her journal at West 
 Newton : 
 
 " How natural it is for the mind to generalize. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 175 
 
 It seems to me sometimes as if every material 
 object and every earthly event were only signs of 
 something higher signified. Then I feel as if I 
 could read a minute portion of the universe. How 
 everything hurries into its place, the moment we 
 are high enough to catch the central light ! All 
 factitious distinctions hide their diminished heads ; 
 conventionalities disappear. I suppose Mr. Emer 
 son holds himself in that lofty region all the time. 
 I wonder not at the sublimity of his aspect, the 
 solemnity of his air. I think Mr. Emerson is the 
 greatest man that ever lived ; as a whole he is sat 
 isfactory. Everything has its due with him ; in all 
 relations he is noble. He is a unit. He is indeed a 
 Supernal Vision. ... I have read Carlyle s Mis 
 cellanies with deep delight. The complete manner 
 in which he presents a man is wonderful. He is 
 the most impartial of critics except Emerson. Such 
 a reach of thought produced no slight stir in me. 
 But I cannot help feeling that Emerson is diviner 
 than he. Mr. Emerson is Pure Tone." 
 
 This enthusiasm was natural at the time ; but 
 Hawthorne, though touched by it, never fully shared 
 it. In the introduction to the " Mosses," he says, 
 " I admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and 
 austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as 
 a philosopher ; " and he declared, a few years later, 
 that he needed a change "after living for three years 
 within the subtile influence of an intellect like Em- 
 
176 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 erson s, and indulging fantastic speculations, beside 
 our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing." 
 Indeed, at the very season in which his beloved 
 was writing her rhapsodies above quoted, Haw 
 thorne was arranging to disappear for some months 
 among the jockeys and tavern idlers and tramps 
 of western Massachusetts, from July 27 to Sep 
 tember 24, 1838. Sophia Peabody wrote, just before 
 this journey : 
 
 " He came for a take-leave call, looking radiant. 
 He said he was not going to tell anybody where he 
 should be for the next three months ; he thought 
 he should change his name, so that, if he died, no 
 one would be able to find his gravestone. He should 
 not tell even his mother where he could be found, 
 that he intended neither to write to any one, nor 
 to be written to. He seems determined to be let 
 alone. . . . Mary asked him to write a journal 
 while gone. He at first said no ; but finally con 
 cluded it would suit well for hints for future sto 
 ries." 
 
 Hawthorne carried out this suggestion, and the 
 journal of the next eight weeks covers nearly eighty 
 printed pages, and ranges in its mention of persons 
 from Dr. Channing s good friend, Jonathan Phil 
 lips of Boston, and the professors and students of 
 Williams and Amherst colleges, to caravan masters 
 and showmen, stage-drivers and jockeys, essence 
 peddlers from Ashfield, and the whole riffraff of 
 
THE WAYSIDE 177 
 
 Berkshire County and the country towns of Con 
 necticut. I conclude Hawthorne was traveling 
 about in the stage-coach line of his uncles, as a sort 
 of inspector, to see how the business was going on ; 
 but he was also, as he had been for years, laying 
 in a stock of human characters and experiences 
 for use in his profession of author. The pig-drover, 
 the soap-boiler, and the worn-out village drunkard 
 were all fish to his net. 
 
 Thirty months after this sally into the common 
 place world of the Berkshire hills and valleys, 
 Hawthorne, having passed through the crucible of 
 the Boston Custom House under George Bancroft 
 
 O 
 
 " the virtuous Republican " (as the Beacon Street 
 Whigs termed him for his theoretical democracy), 
 found himself at Brook Farm, in April, 1841, in 
 the midst of practical democrats, living in equality, 
 and all working with their hands. He soon made 
 the historic attempt to milk Margaret Fuller s 
 " transcendental heifer," but found her " very 
 fractious, and apt to kick over the milk-pail." He 
 complains in his journal that " she hooks the other 
 cows, and has made herself ruler of the herd, in a 
 very tyrannical manner." But she took a fancy to 
 Hawthorne, as persons of her sex were quite likely 
 to do, and he seems to get her somehow confounded 
 with Miss Fuller herself, towards whom Hawthorne 
 felt no attraction. He says of the heifer, " She is 
 not amiable, but has a very intelligent face, and 
 
178 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 seems to be of a reflective cast of character." Ef 
 fusive as Sophia Peabody s enthusiasms were, they 
 affected Hawthorne considerably, in spite of the 
 " reflective cast " of his own character. But others 
 of the Newness went far beyond his future wife in 
 the upward soaring of their figurative language. 
 One of these was Charles Newcomb of Providence 
 and Brook Farm, a friend of Hawthorne there, and 
 one of the many friends and admirers of Caroline 
 Sturgis, the lady who, as Mrs. Tappan, afterwards 
 had Hawthorne for her tenant in the small red cot 
 tage at Lenox. A letter from Newcomb to Caroline, 
 written while Hawthorne was at Brook Farm, has 
 long been in my possession, and I will quote it en 
 tire, as indicating the zenith to which the rhetoric 
 of the earlier Transcendentalists could soar, when 
 communing with each other. In transmitting it to 
 Ellery Channing, who gave it to me, Miss Sturgis 
 had written, on the only blank space of the well- 
 filled sheet, this character-sketch of the writer : 
 
 A More Careful Analysis 
 
 " No poetry, rhythm unknown. The genius 
 mystical, not creative. The person too light for 
 the thought ; he can never foretell his imagery. 
 It follows his thought, and becomes painful. No 
 seizure of his thought; it is worked out. His 
 name unrecorded will die." 
 
 No, dear Sibyl, not wholly, if this record can for 
 a moment recall it to the prosaic Present ! Here 
 is the Epistle : 
 
THE WAYSIDE 179 
 
 Charles to Caroline 
 
 PROVIDENCE, Nov. 2, 1841. 
 
 The moon has again got into bright silver canoe, 
 and pushed from the serene sun -land into the 
 ocean of the air : I first saw her an evening or two 
 ago, but turned toward the heaven-shore, as if 
 human, and congenially there ; partly drawn, partly 
 voluntarily, the state one is in when leaving a 
 glory and beauty ; when the humanity of the soul 
 gently and with fullness rises from its rest in the 
 arms of their Genii, and with full eye and a heav 
 ing sigh-earthen heart looks up, and in that looking 
 sees, as if the eyes were uncovered, not opened to 
 see ; and with heroic-tender aspiration goes its way 
 worldward to the council and camps of the Men- 
 Gods. When I saw her, after a momentary inward 
 absence of mind, something, perhaps the fresh 
 living murmur of human life around, recalling to 
 their actual, and my human soul receiving their 
 softest, religiousest, and humanest impulses, 
 brought before me the old superstition of wishing 
 over the right shoulder ; and I fell on my knees, 
 and in my being devoutly expressed faith and as 
 piration for life, the word of all others expressive 
 to me of what I feel and want ; uniting faith with 
 hope, yearning half -desires with full joy ; life as 
 eternal truth, goodness, greatness, wholeness. 
 
 Dear Caroline, how deep and fresh is humanity ! 
 I sometimes feel as if I could even cherish it ; that 
 we are blind and ungenial when we overlook it and 
 despise it, and are annoyed by it in those around 
 us ; that it will not last long ; only the gods are 
 immortal ; children rapidly grow up to menhood, 
 men will be perfect and omniscient and faultless 
 
180 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 enough in time. May there be some great Genius 
 before the world is lost, who will profoundly repro 
 duce humanity for us to read in our Olympian 
 palaces when we are Gods. How little do men 
 know themselves ! The mass ridicule the pietist 
 and transcendentalist, unconscious that itself holds 
 u superstitions " which have great power over their 
 humanity ; and that it constantly acts and illus 
 trates the metaphysics which they parodise ; and 
 in their deeper, inwarder moods how are we all 
 alike ! How they must move and please the hearts 
 of Angels ! 
 
 Look out for the moon, Caroline ; the surge is 
 wafting her gently already. She is coming on 
 through the starry islands of the night-sea : cover 
 ing them with the halo of her brightness and soft 
 ness, as the sunset sky mantles the water like it 
 self, and the boat expands itself over the sunset 
 stream at its side. How this earth must look to 
 her ! like some chaotic embryo of a heaven, some 
 kind of shadowy old ghost of Elysium. Since I 
 have seen her in her heaven-reflecting boat, I have 
 been blessed with much; and the song prayer 
 which I made before her, that in the inspiration 
 and stillness of her presence I might hear the voice 
 of one who had been with her, and had looked on 
 her as I had, has been fulfilled. 
 
 Winter is rising in good earnest, like Angelo s 
 Day. Gentle, genial-hearted Summer has gone 
 within from the woods and fields ; and we children 
 are hardly manly (if old) enough to be with the 
 brother as we were with the sister. He will act 
 towards us hero-wise indeed ; but does not, like 
 Summer, keep hold of our hands and sit down with 
 and by us, and Mother-like, have us around him, 
 
THE WAYSIDE 181 
 
 and bend over us as she does, her warm breath 
 softly falling on our faces. If we keep with him, 
 we must take care of ourselves, and be pleased with 
 vigorous, active action. He has bold work to do. 
 Summer has been out, and gone within ; and Win 
 ter comes out to perfect and use her work, and to 
 do his own. So the fisherman goes out in the chilly 
 autumn evening, after the fishing pleasure excur 
 sion has returned and retired ; and he wades into 
 the cold water to push the boat ashore and moor 
 it, and see to the fish. All the playful, curious 
 urchins who had been around all day to see the 
 party set off and return, have gone home to supper 
 and bed; and the hardy fisherman is alone, like 
 Winter. 
 
 Summer makes a rich gala for us just as she 
 leaves, it is over, and we are retired. Vespers 
 are over, and the rich, chanting procession has gone : 
 the great Cathedral in the dim light is quiet and 
 nobler and spiritualer than before. One living 
 form is silently kneeling before the altar, which, 
 with its cherubs overshadowing it with their wings, 
 is before him like a rock on which winged angels 
 have alighted, in the darkness and silence, before 
 the Monk engaged in a life developed and fully 
 revealed by the previous blessed service. The soul- 
 deep devotion opened his soul before the Eternal, 
 and face to face are they : and life and light will 
 be in him when the humanity comes between them, 
 and the Divinity goes in the Cloud as insensibly 
 as the twilight comes. Deep workings were going 
 on even while they faced ; and the sphere of Im 
 mortality, which knows (neither) night nor day, 
 work nor rest, is still around him ; and the soul is 
 alive in it, and mortality reflects divinity. 
 
182 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 Fanny Ellsler danced here last Friday, and bet 
 ter than ever. I hope you saw her. What shall 
 we say to each other about her ? 
 
 What letters we write! and yet they are real 
 letters, for they are genuine and un-letterical, and 
 we speak as we feel. It is something like sing 
 ing together, a kind of recitative, in which is 
 much expression, a relation towards the divine, 
 and each other too. After all, there is no such 
 thing as abstractedness; Nature is ever true to 
 itself. 
 
 I read Manzoni with much simple pleasure some 
 time ago, when Miss Fuller was living here. If I 
 could get it (the translation) I would like to read 
 it again, and feel like it now. I like those reposing 
 details, and Manzoni s pure, healthful spirit, the 
 genuineness and simplicity of his matter-of-factness. 
 
 Write soon, if you want to. How we have to 
 qualify our expressions ! it shows how false has 
 been the relation of men hitherto ; or perhaps how 
 imperfect is language. But the inference is the 
 same as if the other was the cause. 
 
 * Your friend, 
 
 C. K. N. 
 
 Miss C. STUBGIS, Care of Capt. Wm. Sturgis, Boston. 
 
 This unexampled letter, dated the 2d of Novem 
 ber, was not posted in Providence till the 23d ; and 
 in the interval the Moon had been navigating, and 
 Summer going indoors, and the urchins going to 
 supper, and the lone fisherman carrying home his 
 catch. What a medley, and what a style ! senti 
 ment and thought glimmering through a lace veil 
 
THE WAYSIDE 183 
 
 of words and punctuation most characteristic of 
 the period. 
 
 During his engagement to Miss Peabody, and 
 before his marriage, Hawthorne seems to have be 
 come acquainted with Ellery Channing, perhaps 
 even before Channing personally met Emerson, in 
 December, 1840. They met once at Brook Farm, 
 and by April, 1843, after Channing s own marriage, 
 were so good comrades that Channing, writing to 
 Emerson in his humorous vein, and disparaging 
 the vegetarian theories of Bronson Alcott, and his 
 English friends, Charles Lane and Henry Wright, 
 who had lately come across the ocean to help sow 
 their transcendental wild oats at Fruitlands in 
 Harvard, this eccentric poet, I say, thus rambled 
 on (April 6, 1843) : 
 
 " Alas for the unleavened bread ! alas for the 
 unleavened wit ! I relish that Yankee theorem, 
 4 Eat your victuals and go about your business ! 
 A magazine written by professed drunkards, 
 gentlemen who eat nothing but beefsteaks, and 
 believers in Original Sin, must be the thing for me. 
 What has transpired with the magazine papering 
 Hawthorne ? Has he too been floated by this great 
 rise of English wit? forsworn whiskey, abandoned 
 tobacco, and rejected fishing ? No, by the immortal 
 gods I swear that Hawthorne sticks like court- 
 plaister to all the old sinful nonsense, to strong 
 drinks and strong meats, and, above all, to the 
 
184 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 gentle art of angling, a true disciple of pimple- 
 cheeked Walton. Oh, never may that day of horrors 
 come, when the Twice-Told Tales of love and malice 
 shall be fused in the grim Behmenic melting-pot ! 
 Eather let the ingenious Hawthorne, demented, 
 wander over the ascetic Styx, tiger or wherryman 
 to Charon ! let him beard the Minos in his den, 
 do anything before he sells himself body and soul 
 for twelve volumes of the Greaves MSS., or some 
 book of metaphysical stuff, fit only to be sold at 
 the shops of second-hand booksellers, or enjoy their 
 existence as wrapping literature! I fancy I see 
 Hawthorne now, throwing his cork, kinglike, 
 ruler of the shades below water." 
 
 In these aquatic sports, which demanded some 
 thing stronger than water inside the angler, Chan- 
 ning was for years the companion of Hawthorne, 
 on Concord River and by the seaside, or wherever 
 the novelist went to fish. Hawthorne celebrated 
 their comradeship in his " Mosses," saying : 
 
 " It might be that Ellery Channing came up the 
 avenue, to join me in a fishing excursion on the 
 river. Strange and happy times were these, when 
 we cast aside all irksome forms and strait-laced 
 habitudes, and delivered ourselves up to the free 
 air, to live like the Indians, or any less conventional 
 race, during one bright semicircle of the sun. Had 
 the Assabet been a thought more wild, I could have 
 fancied that this river had strayed forth out of the 
 
THE WAYSIDE 185 
 
 ricli scenery of my companion s inner world ; only 
 the vegetation along its banks should then have had 
 an oriental character. . . . Our fire, red gleaming 
 among the trees, and we beside it, busied with cul 
 inary rites, and spreading out our meal on a moss- 
 grown log, all seemed in unison with the river 
 gliding by, and the foliage rustling over us. It was 
 the very spot in which to utter the extremest non 
 sense or the profoundest wisdom, or that ethereal 
 product of the mind which partakes of both. So, 
 amid sunshine and shadow, rustling leaves and 
 sighing waters, up gushed our talk like the babble 
 of a fountain. The evanescent spray was Ellery s, 
 and his, too, the lumps of golden thought that lay 
 glimmering in the fountain s bed, and brightened 
 both our faces by the reflection. Could he have 
 drawn out that virgin gold, and stamped it with the 
 mint mark which alone gives currency, the world 
 might have had the profit, and he the fame. My 
 mind was the richer merely by the knowledge that 
 it was there." 
 
 At this time Hawthorne was approaching forty, 
 and Channing was but twenty -five. Their intimacy 
 continued till Hawthorne s death in 1864, more 
 than twenty years, that is ; and, like Channing s 
 friendship with Thoreau, it was more complete than 
 most of Hawthorne s earlier or later friendships 
 could be. They came together at the psychologic 
 moment ; their natures were akin, and the free life 
 
186 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 they enjoyed with each other was a relief from the 
 bondage of social custom, which both disliked, and 
 renounced when they could. Both were poets by 
 nature, and took a poetic view of the persons they 
 fancied, with a humorous glance at the mass of 
 men and women they did not fancy, but were able 
 to tolerate and to aid, when it came in their way. 
 Altruism, as we have learned to call the mood of 
 the greatest souls, was not their specialty ; yet they 
 had it in abundance, when the conscience or the 
 whim of the moment did not interpose. Twice in 
 verse, and often to me in prose, did Channing con 
 vey his picture of Hawthorne ; here is one of them, 
 under the poetic name of " Count Julian " : 
 
 As in some stately grove of singing pines 
 One tree, more marked than all, decisive rears 
 Its grand, aspiring figure to the sky, 
 Remote from those beneath, and o er whose top 
 The first faint light of dawn familiar plays; 
 So in Count Julian s face there was the soul 
 Of something deeper than the general heart, 
 Some memory more near to other worlds, 
 Time s recollection, and the storied Past. 
 
 His pure, slight form had a true Grecian charm, 
 
 Soft as the willow o er the river swaying, 
 
 Yet sinewy, and capable of action; 
 
 Such grace as in Apollo s figure lay 
 
 When he was moving the still world with light. 
 
 About his forehead clustered rich black curls, 
 
 Medusa-like; they charmed the Student s eye. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 187 
 
 Those soft, still hazel orbs Count Julian had 
 Looked dream-like forth on the familiar day, 
 Yet eloquent, and full of luminous force 
 Sweetly humane, that had no harshness known; 
 Unbroken eyes, where love forever dwelt. 
 This art of Nature which surrounded him, 
 This made Count Julian what he was to me, 
 Which neither time nor place, nor poet s pen, 
 Nor sculptor s chisel, e er can mould again. 
 
 This indescribable something in Hawthorne s 
 aspect and nature, indicating depths which he 
 could not otherwise express, either with faltering 
 tongue or artistic pen, this air of distinction and 
 mystery, always attractive to women and to poets, 
 drew Emerson into relations with Hawthorne that 
 were always friendly, if never exactly intimate. 
 Politically, their opinions might be far asunder, 
 but socially and philosophically they were much 
 nearer together. Both had come forth unscathed 
 from the hard machine-shop of New England Cal 
 vinism, of which Hawthorne saw more of the dark 
 side, and Emerson of the brighter. Soon after re 
 ceiving Channing s humorous letter of April, 1843, 
 Emerson sat down to write a long epistle to his 
 young friend Wheeler of Lincoln, in Germany, 
 and gave him the current news of the Concord 
 authors, Hawthorne, Alcott, Thoreau, and Chan- 
 ning. Of Hawthorne he said : 
 
 " Nature is resolved to make a stand against the 
 Market, which has grown so usurping and omni- 
 
188 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 potent. Everything shall not go to market ; so 
 Nature makes shy men, cloistered maids, and angels 
 in lonely places. Brook Farm is an experiment 
 of another kind, where everything private is pub 
 lished, and carried to its extreme. A great deal 
 of action and courage has been shown there ; and 
 my friend Hawthorne almost regrets he had not 
 remained, to see the unfolding and issue of so much 
 bold life. He should have stayed to be its historian. 
 He remains in his seat here (the Old Manse), and 
 writes very actively for all the magazines." 
 
 Six weeks later (June 7), Emerson wrote to 
 Thoreau at Staten Island, " Hawthorne walked 
 with me yesterday afternoon, and not until after 
 our return did I read his Celestial Railroad, 
 which has a serene strength we cannot afford not 
 to praise, in this low life. I have letters from Miss 
 Fuller at Niagara." 
 
 It was at Emerson s house, in the summer of 
 1860, that I first met Hawthorne; a strawberry 
 party given in honor of his return from England 
 and Italy. There had been earlier meetings of the 
 two men there, along with Alcott and Thoreau, one 
 of which George Curtis humorously depicted in 
 his essay on Concord in the " Homes of American 
 Authors," thus : 
 
 " Towards the end of the autumn of 1845, Mr. 
 Emerson suggested that a circle of persons resi 
 dent in Concord, of various ages, and differing in 
 
THE WAYSIDE 189 
 
 everything but sympathies, should meet every Mon 
 day evening through the winter in his library. 
 Hawthorne, who then occupied the Old Manse ; 
 the inflexible Thoreau, then living among the 
 blackberry pastures of Walden Pond ; Alcott, then 
 sublimely meditating impossible summer-houses, in 
 a little house on the Boston Road [this very Way 
 side in its second entelechy, half a dozen years be 
 fore Hawthorne purchased it] ; George Bradford, 
 then an inmate of Emerson s house, who added the 
 genial cultivation of the scholar to the amenities of 
 the natural gentleman ; a sturdy farmer neighbor, 
 Edmund Hosmer; two city youths, George and 
 Burrill Curtis, and the host himself composed the 
 club. Ellery Channing, who had that winter har 
 nessed his Pegasus to the New York " Tribune," 
 was a kind of corresponding member. It was a 
 congress of oracles on the one hand, and of curious 
 listeners on the other. But the conversation be 
 came more and more staccato. Hawthorne, a statue 
 of night and silence, sat a little removed, under a 
 portrait of Dante, gazing imperturbably upon the 
 group ; and as he sat in the shadow, his dark hair 
 and eyes, and suit of sables, made him the black 
 thread of mystery which he weaves into his stories : 
 while the shifting presence of the Brook Farmer 
 (Bradford) played like heat lightning around the 
 room. Alcott was perpetually putting apples of 
 gold in pictures of silver, for such was the rich 
 
190 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 ore of his thought, coined by the deep melody of 
 his voice. Thoreau charmed us with the secrets 
 won from his interviews with Pan in the Walden 
 Woods, while Emerson sought to bind the wide- 
 flying embroidery of discourse into a web of clear 
 good sense." 
 
 I have shortened this description a little, and in 
 serted the actual names ; for all these persons were 
 known to me later. The time was two years later 
 than the letter of Emerson last quoted ; but here is 
 what Hawthorne himself said of Alcott, afterwards 
 his next-door neighbor, the first winter of his resi 
 dence in the Old Manse. I take it from the first 
 form of the "Hall of Fantasy," originally published 
 in Lowell s short-lived Cambridge magazine, the 
 " Pioneer," and there containing many more names 
 of living persons than afterwards came out in its 
 abridged form in the " Mosses." To show how 
 Hawthorne then viewed his contemporaries, I will 
 quote the omitted touches : 
 
 " There was a dear friend of mine among the 
 noted reformers of the day, who has striven with 
 all his might to wash away the blood stain from 
 the statute book ; and no philanthropist need blush 
 to stand on the same footing with O Sullivan. It 
 gladdened me to greet my old friends of Brook 
 Farm, with whom, though a recreant now, I had 
 borne the heat of many a summer s day, while we 
 labored together towards the perfect life. Mr. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 191 
 
 Emerson was likewise there, leaning against one 
 of the pillars, and surrounded by an admiring 
 crowd of writers and readers of the Dial. He 
 had come into the hall, I suppose, in search either 
 of a fact or a real man, both of which he was as 
 likely to find there as elsewhere. No more earnest 
 seeker after truth than he, and few more success 
 ful finders of it ; although sometimes the truth 
 assumes a mystic unreality and shadowness in his 
 grasp. In the same part of the hall Jones Very 
 stood alone, within a circle which no other of 
 mortal race could enter, nor himself escape from. 
 
 " Here also was Mr. Alcott, with two or three 
 friends [the Englishmen above mentioned] whom 
 his spirit had assimilated to itself, and drawn to 
 his New England home, though an ocean rolled 
 between. There was no man in the enchanted hall 
 whose mere presence, the language of whose look 
 and manner, wrought such an impression as that 
 of this great mystic innovator. 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 communicated with the infinite abyss 
 of Thought. . . . Doubtless there is the spirit of 
 a system in him, but not the body of it. I love to 
 contrast him with that acute and powerful Intellect 
 who stands not far off [O. A. Brownson]. 
 
 " Here were men whose faith had embodied itself 
 
192 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 in the form of a potato, and others whose long 
 beards had a deep spiritual significance. Here was 
 the abolitionist, brandishing his one idea like an 
 iron flail. In a word, there were a thousand shapes 
 of good and evil, faith and infidelity, wisdom and 
 nonsense, a most incongruous throng, among 
 whom I must not forget to mention Mrs. Abigail 
 Folsom, though by no means as a type of the whole. 
 
 " One or two perhaps (of the poets} stole a 
 glance at the bystanders, to watch if their poetic 
 absorption were observed. Others stood talking in 
 groups, with a liveliness of expression, a ready 
 smile, and a light, intellectual laughter, which 
 showed how rapidly the shafts of wit were glancing 
 to and fro among them. In the most vivacious of 
 these I recognized Holmes." 
 
 These personalities were omitted in the " Mosses," 
 from a wish to present his picture more ideally; 
 but what could be more ideal than these slight 
 sketches? In a ruder manner, the late Henry 
 James, a humorous rhetorician, over-frank in his 
 besprinkling of adjectives, which sometimes escaped 
 his syringe at random, and hit no mark, twenty 
 years later sketched, in a letter to Emerson, Haw 
 thorne at the Boston Saturday Club, a Hall of 
 Fantasy for the aged I may term it, which is 
 already quoted, as some of my other citations were, 
 in my " Memoir of Bronson Alcott," published by 
 Little, Brown and Company. Mr. James said : 
 
THE WAYSIDE 193 
 
 " I cannot forbear to say a word I want to say 
 about Hawthorne and Ellery Channing. Hawthorne 
 is n t a handsome man, nor an engaging one, per 
 sonally." [He was eminently handsome, and if not 
 " engaging," yet most interesting.] " He has the 
 look, all the time, to one who does n t know him, of 
 a rogue who suddenly finds himself in a company 
 of detectives. But, in spite of his rusticity, I felt 
 a sympathy for him, amounting to anguish, and 
 could n t take my eyes off him all the (Saturday 
 Club) dinner, nor my rapt attention, as that inde 
 cisive little X. Y. found, I am afraid, to his cost ; 
 for I hardly heard a word of what he kept on 
 saying to me, and felt at one time very much like 
 sending down to Parker to have him removed from 
 the room, as maliciously putting his little artificial 
 person between me and a profitable object of my 
 study. Yet I feel now no ill-will to X. Y., and could 
 recommend any one (but myself) to go and hear him 
 preach. Hawthorne, however, seemed to me to pos 
 sess human substance, and not to have dissipated 
 it all away, as the good, inoffensive, comforting 
 Longfellow. He seemed much nearer the human 
 being than any one at that end of the table, much 
 nearer. John Forbes and yourself kept up the bal 
 ance at the other end ; but ours was a desert, with 
 Hawthorne for its only oasis. It was so pathetic to 
 see him, contented, sprawling Concord owl that he 
 was, and always has been, brought into the bril- 
 
194 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 liant daylight, and expected to wink and be lively, 
 like any little dapper Tommy Titmouse or Jenny 
 Wren. How he buried his eyes in his plate, and ate 
 with a voracity ! that no one should dare to ask him 
 a question. 
 
 " The idea I got was, and it was very powerfully 
 impressed on me, that we are all monstrously cor 
 rupt, hopelessly bereft of human consciousness ; and 
 that it is the intention of Divine providence to over 
 run us, and obliterate us in a new Gothic and 
 Vandalic invasion ; of which this Concord specimen 
 is a first fruit. It was heavenly to see him persist 
 in ignoring X. Y., and shutting his eyes against his 
 spectral smiles ; eating his dinner, and doing abso 
 lutely nothing but that ; and then going home to his 
 Concord den, to fall on his knees and ask his Hea 
 venly Father why it was that an owl could n t remain 
 an owl, and not be forced into the diversions of a 
 canary. I have no doubt that all the tenderest an 
 gels saw to his case that night, and poured oil into 
 his wounds, more soothing than gentlemen ever 
 know. 
 
 "Ellery Channing, too, seemed so human and 
 good, sweet as sunshine, and fragrant as pine woods. 
 He is more sophisticated than the other, of course, 
 but still he was kin ; and I felt the world richer 
 by two men, who had not yet lost themselves in 
 mere members of society. The old world is break 
 ing up on all hands ; the glimpse of the everlasting 
 
THE WAYSIDE 195 
 
 granite I got in Hawthorne shows me that there is 
 stock enough for fifty better. Let the old impostor 
 go, bag and baggage ; for a very real and sub 
 stantial one is aching to come on, in which the 
 churl shall not be exalted to a place of dignity, 
 in which innocence shall never be tarnished nor 
 trafficked in, in which every man s freedom shall 
 be respected." 
 
 (Such is the new Heavens and the new Earth, 
 as I understand it, that the avoirdupois of Secretary 
 Taft has introduced in the Philippines.) 
 
 This flight of fancy must not be taken too liter 
 ally ; but it points to a wide separation between men 
 of high and deep imagination, like Hawthorne and 
 Chanuing (and Thoreau would have made a third), 
 and men of the Boston and Cambridge culture, like 
 most of those at this Club. Men and women of 
 quick perceptions will vary in their expression of 
 the point and degree of departure with Hawthorne 
 from the conventional standard ; but every one per 
 ceives it. Alcott, whom Hawthorne so felicitously 
 depicted, as I cited just now, had the insight to 
 fathom his neighbor, and has drawn his picture with 
 a few strokes, in that masterly series of portrait 
 sonnets which he wrote after the age of eighty, 
 prefixing to each one a motto that prefigured, sym 
 bolically, the friend depicted. 
 
 Alcott s explanation of the enigma of Hawthorne, 
 the chronicler of human imperfection and purga- 
 
196 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 tion, a New England Dante, may pass for what 
 it is, a poet s suggestion, vaguely illumining what 
 none of us see quite clearly. Hawthorne s best 
 friends were among the poets, and those frustrated 
 poets, the idealists, men or women, with whom he 
 had deep sympathies, and who felt his inexplicable 
 power. But he had many practical friends, who had 
 small knowledge of his ideal nature, but loved him 
 and sought to give him that station in the world 
 which his genius required to keep its light burning. 
 
 " To keep the lamp alive, 
 With oil we fill the bowl," 
 
 says the quaint hymn ; and Bridge and O Sullivan, 
 Atherton and Pierce, with other political and social 
 companions, not all of the choicest, but held by 
 Hawthorne as comrades of his lighter hours, did 
 much for his maintenance and encouragement dur 
 ing the weary years when his genius failed of just 
 appreciation. We may honor them for this, and 
 not dwell too censoriously on their opinions or habits. 
 Like Hamlet, and like a later and gayer prince Hal, 
 Hawthorne had associates for Saturdays as well as 
 for Sundays ; they loved him in their manner, and 
 he requited their love, more justly, I must say, 
 than Prince Hal dealt by his humble followers 
 when he came to the throne of his father. Like 
 them, he belonged to the party of the people, no 
 Tory, as a shallow writer has termed him, though 
 
THE WAYSIDE 197 
 
 inwardly conscious of the distinction which nature 
 and habit make among men, but a theoretical 
 and inclining to be a practical democrat. On the 
 question of human slavery, his sympathies drew him 
 one way, his party connections another ; but it does 
 not lie with those to censure him who are following 
 their party ringmasters to the renunciation of all 
 the principles they professed to hold. When the 
 blindness of Hawthorne s party brought on the 
 Civil War, his consciousness of the deep chasm 
 between two divergent forms of society led him to 
 anticipate national separation as the natural result. 
 On a Christmas Day during that war I dined with 
 him at The Wayside, and he expressed to me the 
 opinion which he had written to Mr. Bridge at the 
 opening of the armed conflict, that the North 
 and the South were never one people, in his view, 
 and that he felt this while an official at Salem and 
 at Liverpool. He added, however, to Mr. Bridge 
 what he had no occasion to say to me, knowing my 
 own attitude in the matter. 
 
 " If we are fighting for the annihilation of slav 
 ery, to be sure it may be a wise object, and the only 
 one which is consistent with a future reunion be 
 tween the North and South. We should then see 
 the expediency of preparing our black brethren for 
 future citizenship, by allowing them to fight for 
 their own liberties, and educating them through 
 heroic influences." 
 
198 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 In the first part of this statement, Hawthorne 
 agreed exactly with John Quincy Adams in 1820, 
 presupposing emancipation and reunion ; and in the 
 second part (arming the blacks) he agreed pre 
 cisely with my old friend John Brown. As nobody 
 has ever doubted their anti-slavery sentiments, so, 
 I submit, we have no reason to doubt Hawthorne s, 
 however late and sad may have been the facts that 
 converted him. Personal liberty was his theoretic 
 principle, and it became his practical choice for all 
 colors, when the crisis forced a choice upon him. 
 He thus became the friend of all the Afro- Ameri 
 cans, as in his boyhood he had been the comrade 
 and respecter of the colored lad Symmes ; and the 
 friendships of Hawthorne may well be brought to 
 this philanthropic close. 
 
 MR. ADAMS : In the course of his paper, Mr. 
 Sanborn made frequent reference and similar re 
 ferences have by others been made, in the course of 
 these proceedings to President Franklin Pierce. 
 Some of those here who have familiarized them 
 selves with London may have noticed a tablet 
 set in the wall facing the busy street in front of 
 where the old Holland House, as it was called, 
 stood, the home of the Foxes, and in her day of 
 the famous Lady Holland. In the tablet are cut 
 these lines, found in Lord Holland s desk after his 
 death : 
 
THE WAYSIDE 199 
 
 " Nephew of Fox and friend of Gray, 
 
 Be this nay deed of fame, 
 That those who knew me best can say 
 He sullied neither name." 
 
 Nearly forty years have elapsed since the deaths 
 of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce, 
 the two college friends at Bowdoin ; and at this 
 centennial of Hawthorne s birth, it is curious to 
 reflect that the chief claim to remembrance of the 
 thirteenth of our presidents will be as in the case 
 of Lord Holland. He rested his claim for remem 
 brance on being " nephew of Fox and friend of 
 Gray ; " and so with Pierce : his chief ground for 
 recollection hereafter will be that, a classmate of 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne sub 
 sequently wrote his biography; and it fell to 
 Franklin Pierce, as President of the United States, 
 to enable Nathaniel Hawthorne to emerge from 
 under that cloud of the res angusta domi which 
 had darkened his earlier life. 
 
 It only remains to read one or two short letters 
 before this series of meetings is brought to a close. 
 
 FROM MISS BEATRIX HAWTHORNE 
 
 18 HIGHLAND ST., CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : I cannot leave Bos 
 ton without trying in part to thank you for the 
 many delightful experiences of yesterday. I shall 
 never forget them your warm hospitality, the 
 
200 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 meeting so many charming and well-known people, 
 of whom I had so long heard ; the dear old house, 
 with its setting of dark pines, and last of all the 
 testimony of the great flag-draped rock with its 
 inscription. Added to these is the abiding memory 
 of the delightful addresses in honor of my grand 
 father, and you can see I have much to thank you 
 for. I shall be with you in spirit for the next few 
 days ! How I wish I were to hear Mrs. Howe, Mr. 
 Conway, Mrs. Elliott, Mr. Sanborn, and the others. 
 How deeply I shall value those beautiful photo 
 graphs. Please remind me most warmly to all my 
 friends of yesterday, and with warm thanks to you 
 and your daughter, 
 
 Cordially yours, 
 
 BEATRIX HAWTHORNE. 
 
 FROM HON. JOHN D. LONG 
 
 BOSTON, June 14, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : I very much appreciate 
 your kind invitation to me to be a guest at your 
 house July 4th and 7th, and to preside at one of the 
 Hawthorne memorial mornings. 
 
 Mrs. Long is now halfway over sea on a trip to 
 Europe, and is therefore unable to acknowledge 
 your courtesy, which I am sure she will very much 
 appreciate when I inform her of it. I cannot my 
 self accept your kind invitation, because I am 
 under engagements for that time. But I thank 
 
THE WAYSIDE 201 
 
 you very much for your courtesy, remembering as 
 I do a previous somewhat similar visit at your 
 home ; and with most cordial good wishes for the 
 occasion and regards for yourself, I am 
 Truly yours, 
 
 JOHN D. LONG. 
 
 FROM HON. HENRY CABOT LODGE 
 
 NAHANT, MASS., June 15, 1904. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAM : I am very much obliged 
 and complimented by your kind note and invitation 
 to deliver an address on Hawthorne at your meeting 
 in July, and I should like very much to accept, but, 
 I am sorry to say, it will be impossible for me to 
 be present, as I have made my plans to go away on 
 my vacation for the entire month of July, which 
 prevents my accepting any invitation for that 
 month. 
 
 With renewed regret that I cannot come, believe 
 me, Very truly yours, 
 
 H. C. LODGE. 
 
 MBS. H. M. LOTHKOP. 
 
 FROM MRS. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 
 
 DEAR MRS. LOTHROP: I wish I could go to 
 Concord for those delightful exercises, and to see 
 Wayside again, and to see you ! You are most 
 kind to ask me, but it is quite impossible. The sea 
 has used me very ill, as it always does nowadays, 
 
202 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 so that it takes me weeks to recover from its 
 cruelty, and I am still unable to get about. 
 
 So you see, of course, I cannot send any poem to 
 your festival. One would need a longer time and all 
 one s thought to do that fittingly, even if one could 
 do it at all, if, indeed, there were any poet born 
 who could imprison in his verse anything of the 
 delicate aura which was Hawthorne s personality. 
 How fortunate you are to be living in what was his 
 home ! I should expect to see him in any twilight, 
 between you and me, in any moonbeam ! 
 
 Hoping I may soon see you here, 
 
 Always affectionately, 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 DEER ISLAND, NEAR NEWBURYPORT, MASSACHUSETTS, 
 June twenty-ninth, 1904. 
 
 FROM HON. ROBERT S. RANTOUL 
 
 THE ESSEX INSTITUTE, SALEM, MASS., 
 July 2, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MADAM : I acknowledge with thanks the 
 receipt of your interesting programme for the Haw 
 thorne Centenary, together with a ticket and a cor 
 dial invitation to preside at the Thursday morning 
 session. I feel highly complimented to be thought 
 of in this connection, and so flatteringly as your 
 note implies. But I must deny myself this plea 
 sure. My official connection with the Institute will 
 have ceased before that day, and I suppose the in- 
 
THE WAYSIDE 203 
 
 vitation to be partially due to the position which I 
 have held there, and at the Hawthorne Centennial 
 observances at Salem on the twenty-third ultimo. 
 I should gladly have contributed more largely than I 
 have to honoring the memory of Hawthorne. I re 
 call him and his striking presence with a good deal 
 of interest, as a frequenter of my father s office in 
 Boston between the years 1845 and 1852. Prob 
 ably I saw him once or twice after that. I have no 
 reminiscences which could be made available for 
 your purpose, but I have enjoyed thoroughly the 
 opportunity which seemed to be open to me, as Presi 
 dent of the Essex Institute, to help in placing the 
 great American Romancer upon the pedestal where 
 he belongs, through the testimony of persons so 
 qualified to record their estimates of the man and 
 of his genius that what they have said must be 
 accepted by the reading public without reserve. 
 I am, very respectfully yours, 
 
 ROBERT S. RANTOUL. 
 
 FROM JUDGE ROBERT GRANT 
 
 MATANE, P. Q., June 24, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MADAM : Your letter has been forwarded 
 to me in Canada, where I am fishing. I return 
 home on the 28th, but my associate judge goes 
 away on the 1st, and I have binding court engage 
 ments for the 5th, 6th, and 7th, which forbid abso 
 lutely my attending the Hawthorne Centenary on 
 
204 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 those days. As to the 4th, if I can come, I will ; 
 but my young people have demands on me for that 
 day, and I doubt very much if I shall be permitted 
 to leave home. I am sorry that my response is 
 delayed ; but the cause is apparent. I have not 
 leisure to prepare an address at this late day, at 
 any rate, much as I should have liked to have joined 
 with you all in tribute to Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 But I am a wretched speaker, so no one will miss 
 anything. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 EGBERT GRANT. 
 
 FROM MRS. ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD 
 
 NEWTON CENTRE, MASS., 
 June 25, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : I have your letter ask 
 ing me to take part in the Concord observance of 
 the centenary of Hawthorne s birth. It is quite 
 impossible for me to do so, as I am not strong 
 enough to travel at all ; but I am very sorry, for 
 there is no American writer whom I should more 
 delight to honor, than Hawthorne. 
 
 He was great, he was grave, he was unique. In 
 these days of lightness, of flippancy, and of imita 
 tion, he is as much a rebuke to English literature 
 as he is an inspiration to it. 
 
 I am, very truly yours, 
 ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 205 
 
 FROM DR. EDWARD EVERETT HALE 
 
 39 HIGHLAND ST., ROXBUKY, MASS., 
 June 17, 1904. 
 
 DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : I find no memoranda 
 of the few occasions when I met Mr. Hawthorne in 
 1841 and 1842. The bookshop kept by Dr. Pea- 
 body and his daughter, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, 
 was then a favorite resort of young people, and old, 
 who were fond of reading and liked to avail them 
 selves of their French and German books. From 
 the occasional meeting of such people there grew up, 
 quite without method, a different series of evening 
 conversations in the parlor of the house. I remem 
 ber with most distinctness a certain gathering, I 
 think once a week, where it was arranged that Miss 
 Margaret Fuller should be present. I think these 
 were perhaps called a " class " of Miss Fuller s. 
 
 What was most interesting to me was the ease 
 with which she threw off all homage to herself, or 
 token of admiration, and kept the conversation on 
 the subject assigned for the evening, drawing out 
 the different people present with a skill which 
 seemed to me almost curious. 
 
 At one or other of such "conversations," I met 
 Mr. Hawthorne for the first time. He that very 
 year wrote one or more stories, among his best, for 
 my brother s magazine, the " Boston Miscellany." 
 The Peabodys were Salem people, and I suppose it 
 was in that way that he was one of the intimates of 
 
206 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 the house. He may have been engaged at that time to 
 Miss Sophia Peabody, who was the youngest of the 
 Misses Peabody, and a very beautiful young woman. 
 I was quite familiar at that time with Haw 
 thorne s early writings. I am quite sure I should 
 have noticed or recollected anything of importance 
 which he said, had he said anything. But I do 
 not believe that he ever contributed to the conversa 
 tion. I have a distinct feeling that we thought he 
 did not like to talk, and that he would not talk on 
 any such occasion. It is so that I cannot write you 
 anything but this in regard to him. We thought 
 him very handsome, and he certainly was. 
 Always truly yours, 
 
 EDW. E. HALE. 
 
 FROM HON. JOHN HAY 
 
 DEPARTMEKT OF STATE, 
 Washington, June 20, 1904. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAM : I have received your kind 
 letter of the 19th of June, inviting me to be present 
 at the ceremonies incident to the centenary of the 
 birth of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
 
 I have an engagement at Detroit, Michigan, on 
 the 5th of July, which makes it impossible to avail 
 myself of your courtesy. 
 
 I am, with many thanks, 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 JOHN HAY. 
 
 MRS. H. M. LOTHBOP, The Wayside, Concord, Mass. 
 
THE WAYSIDE 207 
 
 FROM MRS, JAMES T. FIELDS 
 MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SBA, MASS., June 29, 1904. 
 MY DEAR MRS. LOTHROP : An attack of pneu 
 monia six weeks ago makes it impossible for me 
 to think of going to Concord in response to your 
 kind invitation, nor do I at present think of any 
 thing to add in writing beyond what Mr. Fields 
 has given to the world in " Yesterdays with the 
 Authors," and I myself have done in the brief 
 life in the series of Beacon Biographies. Your gen 
 erous hospitality, my dear Mrs. Lothrop, would 
 make it easy indeed to respond to your call if it 
 were possible. 
 
 Believe me, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 ANNIE FIELDS. 
 
 MR. ADAMS : The programme has now been 
 brought to its close ; but before this audience dis 
 perses, while I do not think it necessary to ask for 
 any formal expression, from those here, of recogni 
 tion and appreciation of the labor Mrs. Lothrop has 
 so kindly assumed in the affair, I feel it is none the 
 less due to her ; she has carried it out, and I there 
 fore feel that I express the general sense of all who 
 are here when I say to her that we fully appreciate 
 the feeling of profound relief she must experience 
 that the Concord Hawthorne Centennial is here 
 brought to a successful termination. 
 
208 HAWTHORNE CENTENARY 
 
 MRS. LOTHROP: Permit me, in expressing my 
 thanks to the presiding officer and to you all for 
 this kind recognition and appreciation, to take this 
 opportunity to thank all these friends who have 
 addressed us. Their responses to my request to 
 take part in these proceedings have resulted in the 
 admirable presentations of Hawthorne s life and 
 work that have made this series of meetings a fit 
 ting observance of the centenary of his birth. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
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 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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