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The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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[Footnote: "Sketches from Concord and Appledore."]

While Emerson's mind was essentially analytic, Hawthorne's was
synthetic, and, as Conway says, he did not receive the world into his
intellect, but into his heart, or soul, where it was mirrored in a
magical completeness. The notion that the artist requires merely an
observing eye is a superficial delusion. Observation is worth little
without reflection, and everything depends on the manner in which the
observer deals with his facts. Emerson looked at life in order to
penetrate it; Hawthorne, in order to comprehend it, and assimilate it
to his own nature. The one talked heroism and the other lived it. Not
but that Emerson's life was a stoical one, but Hawthorne's was still
more so, and only his wife and children knew what a heart there was in
him.

The world will never know what these two great men thought of one
another. Hawthorne has left some fragmentary sentences concerning
Emerson, such as, "that everlasting rejecter of all that is, and seeker
for he knows not what," and "Emerson the mystic, stretching his hand
out of cloud-land in vain search for something real;" but he likes
Emerson's ingenuous way of interrogating people, "as if every man had
something to give him." However, he makes no attempt at a general
estimate; although this expression should also be remembered:
"Clergymen, whose creed had become like an iron band about their brows,
came to Emerson to obtain relief,"--a sincere recognition of his
spiritual influence.

Several witnesses have testified that Emerson had no high opinion of
Hawthorne's writing,--that he preferred Reade's "Christie Johnstone" to
"The Scarlet Letter," but Emerson never manifested much interest in
art, simply for its own sake. Like Bismarck, whom he also resembled in
his enormous self-confidence, he cared little for anything that had not
a practical value. He read Shakespeare and Goethe, not so much for the
poetry as for the "fine thoughts" he found in them. George Bradford
stated more than once that Emerson showed little interest in the
pictorial art; and after walking through the sculpture-gallery of the
Vatican, he remarked that the statues seemed to him like toys. His
essay on Michel Angelo is little more than a catalogue of great
achievements; he recognizes the moral impressiveness of the man, but
not the value of his sublime conceptions. Music, neither he nor
Hawthorne cared for, for it belongs to emotional natures.

In his "Society and Solitude" Emerson has drawn a picture of Hawthorne
as the lover of a hermitical life; a picture only representing that
side of his character, and developed after Emerson's fashion to an
artistic extreme. "Whilst he suffered at being seen where he was, he
consoled himself with the delicious thought of the inconceivable number
of places where he was not," and "He had a remorse running to despair,
of his social _gaucheries_, and walked miles and miles to get the
twitching out of his face, the starts and shrugs out of his shoulders."

[Footnote: "Society and Solitude," 4, 5.]

There is a touch of arrogance in this, and it merely marks the
difference between the modest author of the "Essays," and the proud,
censorious Emerson of 1870; but his love of absolute statements
ofttimes led him into strange contradictions, and the injustice which
results from judging our fellow-mortals by an inflexible standard was
the final outcome of his optimism. Hawthorne was more charitable when
he remarked that without Byron's faults we should not have had his
virtues; but the truth lies between the two.

There have been many instances of genius as sensitive as Hawthorne's in
various branches of art: Shelley and Southey, Schubert and Chopin,
Correggio and Corot. Southey not only blushed red but blushed blue--as
if the life were going out of him; and in Chopin and Correggio at least
we feel that they could not have been what they were without it.
Napoleon, whose nerves were like steel wires, suffered nevertheless
from a peculiar kind of physical sensitiveness. He could not take
medicines like other men,--a small dose had a terrible effect on him,--
and it was much the same with respect to changes of food, climate, and
the like.

What Hawthorne required was sympathetic company. Do not we all require
it? The hypercritical morality of the Emersonians, especially in
Concord, could not have been favorable to his mental ease and comfort.
How could a man in a happily married condition feel anything but
repugnance to Thoreau's idea of marriage as a necessary evil; or
Alcott's theory that eating animal food tended directly to the
commission of crime?

On the first anniversary of Hawthorne's wedding, a tragical drama was
enacted in Concord, in which he was called upon to perform a
subordinate part. One Miss Hunt, a school-teacher and the daughter of a
Concord farmer, drowned herself in the river nearly opposite the place
where Hawthorne was accustomed to bathe. The cause of her suicide has
never been adequately explained, but as she was a transcendentalist, or
considered herself so, there were those who believed that in some
occult way that was the occasion of it. However, as one of her sisters
afterward followed her example, it would seem more likely to have come
from the development of some family trait. She was seen walking upon
the bank for a long time, before she took the final plunge; but the
catastrophe was not discovered until near evening.

Ellery Channing came with a man named Buttrick to borrow Hawthorne's
boat for the search, and Hawthorne went with them. As it happened, they
were the ones who found the corpse, and Hawthorne's account in his
diary of its recovery is a terribly accurate description,--softened
down and poetized in the rewritten statement of "The Blithedale
Romance." There is in fact no description of a death in Homer or
Shakespeare so appalling as this literal transcript of the veritable
fact.

[Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 300.]

What concerns us here, however, are the comments he set down on the
dolorous event. Concerning her appearance, he says:

"If she could have foreseen while she stood, at five o'clock that
morning on the bank of the river, how her maiden corpse would have
looked eighteen hours afterwards, and how coarse men would strive with
hand and foot to reduce it to a decent aspect, and all in vain,--it
would surely have saved her from the deed."

And again:

"I suppose one friend would have saved her; but she died for want of
sympathy--a severe penalty for having cultivated and refined herself
out of the sphere of her natural connections."

The first remark has often been misunderstood. It is not the vanity of
women, which is after all only a reflection (or the reflective
consequence) of the admiration of man, which Hawthorne intends, but
that delicacy of feeling which Nature requires of woman for her own
protection; and he may not have been far wrong in supposing that if
Miss Hunt had foreseen the exact consequences of her fatal act she
would not have committed it. Hawthorne's remark that her death was a
consequence of having refined and cultivated herself beyond the reach
of her relatives, seems a rather hard judgment. The latter often
happens in American life, and although it commonly results in more or
less family discord, are we to condemn it for that reason? If she died
as Hawthorne imagines, from the lack of intellectual sympathy, we may
well inquire if there was no one in Concord who might have given aid
and encouragement to this young aspiring soul.

"Take her up tenderly;
Lift her with care,
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young and so fair."

And one is also tempted to add:

"Alas! for the rarity
Of Christian charity."

Hawthorne's earthly paradise only endured until the autumn of 1843.
When cool weather arrived, want and care came also. On November 26 he
wrote to George S. Hillard:

"I wish at some leisure moment you would give yourself the trouble to
call into Munroe's book-store and inquire about the state of my 'Twice-
told Tales.' At the last accounts (now about a year since) the sales
had not been enough to pay expenses; but it may be otherwise now--else
I shall be forced to consider myself a writer for posterity; or at all
events not for the present generation. Surely the book was puffed
enough to meet with a sale."

[Footnote: London Athenæum, August 10, 1889.]

The interpretation of this is that Longfellow, Hillard and Bridge could
appreciate Hawthorne's art, but the solid men of Boston (with some rare
exceptions) could not. Even Webster preferred the grotesque art of
Dickens to Hawthorne's "wells of English undefiled." Recently, one of
the few surviving original copies of "Fanshawe" was sold at auction for
six hundred dollars. Such is the difference between genius and
celebrity.

The trouble then and now is that wealthy Americans as a class feel no
genuine interest in art or literature. They do not form a true
aristocracy, but a plutocracy, and are for the most part very poorly
educated. It was formerly the brag of the Winthrops and Otises that
they could go through college and learn their lessons in the
recitation-room. Now they go to row, and play foot-ball, and after they
graduate, they leave the best portion of their lives behind them. Then
if they have a talent for business they become absorbed in commercial
affairs; or if not, they travel from one country to another, picking up
a smattering of everything, but not resting long enough in any one
place for their impressions to develop and bear good fruit. They are
not like the aristocratic classes of England, France and Germany, who
become cultivated men and women, and serve to maintain a high standard
of art and literature in those countries.

The captain of a Cunard steamship, who owned quite a library, said in
1869: "I have bought some very interesting books in New York,
especially by a writer named Hawthorne, but the type and paper are so
poor that they are not worth binding." The reason why American
publishers do not bring out books in such good form as foreign
publishers--is that there is no demand for a first-rate article. Thus
do the fine arts languish. When rich young Americans take as much
interest in painting and sculpture as they do in foot-ball and
yachting, we shall have our Vandycks and Murillos,--if nothing better.

Discouraged with the ill success of "Fanshawe," Hawthorne had limited
himself since then to the writing of short sketches, such as would be
acceptable to the magazine editors, and now that he had formed this
habit, he found it difficult to escape from it. He informs us in the
preface to "Mosses from an Old Manse" that he had hoped a more serious
and extended plot would come to him on the banks of Concord River, but
his imagination did not prove equal to the occasion. Most of the
stories in "Mosses" must have been composed at Concord, but "Mrs. Bull-
Frog'" and "Monsieur du Miroir" must have been written previously, for
he refers to them in a letter at Brook Farm. A few were published in
the _Democratic Review_, and others may have been elsewhere; but
the proceeds he derived from them would not have supported a day-
laborer, and toward the close of his second year at the Manse,
Hawthorne found himself running in debt for the necessaries of life. He
endured this with his usual stoical reticence, although there is
nothing like debt to sicken a man's heart,--unless he be a decidedly
light-minded man. Better fortune, however, was on its way to him in the
shape of a political revolution.

On March 3, 1844, a daughter was born to the Hawthornes, whom they
named Una, in spite of Hillard's objection that the name was too poetic
or too fanciful for the prosaic practicalities of real life. The name
was an excellent one for a poet's daughter, and did not seem out of
place in Arcadian Concord. Miss Una grew up into a graceful, fair and
poetic young lady,--in all respects worthy of her name. She had an
uncommonly fine figure, and, as often happens with first-born children,
resembled her father much more than her mother. Her name also suggests
the early influence of Spenser in her father's style and mode of
thought.

Soon after this fortunate event Hawthorne wrote a letter to Hillard, in
which he said:

"I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from
the birth of a child. It ought not come too early in a man's life--not
till he has fully enjoyed his youth--for methinks the spirit can never
be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain
infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless.
As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it
necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven
into the sombre texture of humanity."

It seems then that his conscience sometimes reproached him, but this
only proves that his moral nature was in a healthy normal condition.
There was a certain kind of indolence in him, a love of the _dolce
far niente_, and an inclination to general inactivity which he may
have inherited from his seafaring ancestors. Much better so, than to
suffer from the nervous restlessness, which is the rule rather than the
exception in New England life.

In the same letter he mentions having forwarded a story to _Graham's
Magazine_, which was accepted but not yet published after many
months. He also anticipates an amelioration of his affairs from a
Democratic victory in the fall elections.

Meanwhile, Horatio Bridge had been traversing the high seas in the
"Cyane," which was finally detailed to watch for slavers and to protect
American commerce on the African coast. He had kept a journal of his
various experiences and observations, which he sent to Hawthorne with a
rather diffident interrogation as to whether it might be worth
publishing. Hawthorne was decidedly of the opinion that it ought to be
published,--in which we cordially agree with him,--and was well pleased
to edit it for his friend; and, although it has now shared the fate of
most of the books of its class, it is excellent reading for those who
chance to find a copy of it. Bridge was a good observer, and a candid
writer.

The election of 1844 was the most momentous that had yet taken place in
American history. It decided the annexation of Texas, and the
acquisition of California, with a coast-line on the Pacific Ocean
nearly equal to that on the Atlantic; but it also brought with it an
unjust war of greed and spoliation, and other evil consequences of
which we are only now begining to reach the end. The slaveholders and
the Democratic leaders desired Texas in order to perpetuate their
control of the government, and it was precisely through this measure
that they lost it,--as happens so often in human affairs. It was the
gold discoveries in California that upset their calculations.
California would _not_ come into the Union as a slave state.
Enraged at this failure, the Southern politicians made a desperate
attempt to recover lost ground, by seizing on the fertile prairies in
the Northwest; but there they came into conflict with the industrial
classes of the North, who fought them on their own ground and abolished
slavery. Never had public injustice been followed by so swift and
terrible a retribution.

In regard to the candidates of 1844, it was hardly possible to compare
them. Polk possessed the ability to preside over the House of
Representatives, but he did not rise above this; while Clay could be
fairly compared on some points with Washington himself, and united with
this a persuasive eloquence second only to Webster's. He was
practically defeated by fifteen or twenty thousand abolitionists who
preferred to throw away their votes rather than to cast them for a
slave-holder.

Hawthorne, in the quiet seclusion of his country home, did not realize
this danger to the Republic. He only knew that his friends were
victorious, and was happy in the expectation of escaping from his
debts, and of providing more favorably for his little family.




CHAPTER IX

"MOSSES PROM AN OLD MANSE": 1845


There is no evidence in the Hawthorne documents or publications to show
exactly when the first edition of "Mosses from an Old Manse" made its
appearance, and copies of it are now exceedingly rare, but we find the
Hawthorne family in Salem reading the book in the autumn of 1845, so
that it was probably brought out at that time and helped to maintain
its author during his last days at Concord.

There must have been some magical influence in the Old Manse or in its
surrounding scenery, to have stimulated both Emerson's and Hawthorne's
love of Nature to such a degree. Emerson's eye dilates as he looks upon
the sunshine gilding the trunks of the balm of Gilead trees on his
avenue; and Hawthorne dwells with equal delight on the luxuriant squash
vines which spread over his vegetable garden. Discoursing on this he
says:

"Speaking of summer squashes, I must say a word of their beautiful and
varied forms. They presented an endless diversity of urns and vases,
shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, molded in patterns which a
sculptor would do well to copy, since art has never invented anything
more graceful."

And again:

"A cabbage, too--especially the early Dutch cabbage, which swells to a
monstrous circumference, until its ambitious heart often bursts
asunder--is a matter to be proud of when we can claim a share with the
earth and sky in producing it."

It would seem as if no one before Hawthorne had rightly observed these
common vegetables, whose external appearance is always before our eyes.
He not only humanizes whatever attracts his attention, but he looks
through a refining medium of his own personality. He has the gift of
Midas to bring back the Golden Age for us. Who besides Homer has been
able to describe a chariot-race, and who but Hawthorne could extract
such poetry from a farmer's garden?

If we compare this introductory chapter with such earlier sketches as
"The Vision at the Fountain" and "The Toll-Gatherer's Day," we
recognize the progress that Hawthorne has made since the first volume
of "Twice Told Tales." We are no longer reminded of the plain unpainted
house on Lake Sebago. His style is not only more graceful, but has
acquired greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in
a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression is still his
polar star, and his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has a warmer
tone, a deeper perspective, and an atmospheric quality which painters
call _chi-aroscuro_. He charms with pleasing fancies, while he
penetrates to the soul.

Hawthorne rarely repeats himself in details, and never in designs. Two
of Dickens's most interesting novels, "Oliver Twist" and "David
Copperfield," are constructed on the same theme, but each of the
studies in this collection has a distinct individuality which appeals
to the reader after a fashion of its own. Each has its moral, or rather
central, idea to which all its component parts are related, and teaches
a lesson of its own, so unobtrusively that we become possessed of it
almost unawares. Some are intensely, even tragically, serious; others
so light and airy that they seem as if woven out of gossamer.

There are a few, however, that do not harmonize with the general tone
and character of the rest,--especially "Mrs. Bull-Frog," which
Hawthorne himself confessed to having been an experiment, and which
strangely enough is much more in the style of his son Julian. "Monsieur
du Miroir" and "Sketches from Memory" are relics of his earlier
writings; perhaps also "Feather-Top" and "The Procession of Life." It
would have been better perhaps if "Young Goodman Brown" had been used
to light a fire at the Old Manse.

"Monsieur du Miroir" is chiefly interesting as an example of
Hawthorne's faculty for elaborating the most simple subject until every
possible phase of it has been exhausted. It may also throw some light
scientifically on the origin of consciousness. We see ourselves
reflected not only in the mirror, but on the blade of a knife, or a
puddle in the road; and, if we look sharply enough, in the eyes of
other men--even in the expression of their faces. In such manner does
Nature force upon us a recognition of our various personalities--the
nucleus of self-knowledge, and self-respect.

Whittier once spoke of "Young Goodman Brown" as indicating a mental
peculiarity in Hawthorne, which like the cuttle-fish rarely rises to
the surface. The plot is cynical, and largely enigmatical. The very
name of it (in the way Hawthorne develops the story) is a fearful
satire on human nature. He may have intended this for an exposure of
the inconsistency, and consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism; but the
name of Goodman Brown's wife is Faith, and this suggests that Brown may
have been himself intended for an incarnation of _doubt_, or
_disbelief_ carried to a logical extreme. Whatever may have been
Hawthorne's design, the effect is decidedly unpleasant.

Emerson talked in proverbs, and Hawthorne in parables. The finest
sketches in this collection are parables. "The Birth Mark,"
"Rappacini's Daughter," "A Select Party," "Egotism," and "The Artist of
the Beautiful." "The Celestial Railroad" is an allegory, a variation on
"Pilgrim's Progress."

"The Birth Mark" and "Rappacini's Daughter" are like divergent lines,
which originate at an single point; and that point is the radical
viciousness of trying experiments on human beings. It is bad enough,
although excusable, to vivisect dogs and rabbits; but why should we
attempt the same course of procedure with those that are nearest and
dearest to us? Such parables were not required in the time of Tiberius
Cæsar and men and women grew up in a natural, vigorous manner; but now
we have become so scientific that we continually attempt to improve on
Nature,--like the artist who left the rainbow out of his picture of
Niagara because its colors did not harmonize with the background.

The line of divergence in "The Birth Mark" is indicated by its name. We
all have our birth-marks,--traits of character, which may be
temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the background, but which
cannot be eradicated and are certain to reappear at unguarded moments,
or on exceptional occasions. Education and culture can do much to
soften and temper the disposition, but the original material remains
the same. The father who attempts to force his son into a mode of life
for which Nature did not intend him, or the mother who quarrels with
her daughter's friends, commits an error similar to that of Hawthorne's
alchemist, who endeavors to remove the birthmark from the otherwise
beautiful face of his wife, but only succeeds in effecting this
together with her death. The tragical termination of the alchemist's
experiments, the pathetic yielding up of life by his sweet "Clytie," is
described with an impressive tenderness. She sinks to her last sleep
without a murmur of reproach.

"Rappacini's Daughter" might serve as a protest against bringing up
children in an exceptional and abnormal manner. I once knew an
excellent lady, who, with the best possible intentions, brought up her
daughter to be different from all other girls. As a consequence, she
_was_ different,--could not assimilate herself to others. She had
no admirers, or young friends of her own sex, for there were few points
of contact between herself and general society. Her mother was her only
friend. She aged rapidly and died early. Similarly, a boy brought up in
a secluded condition of purity and ignorance, finally developed into
one of the most vicious of men.

Hawthorne has prefigured this by a bright colored flower which sparkles
like a gem, very attractive at a distance, but exhaling a deadly
perfume. He may not have been aware that the opium poppy has so
brilliant a flower that it can be seen at a distance from which all
other flowers are invisible. The scene of his story is placed in
Italy,--the land of beauty, but also the country of poisoners.
Rappacini, an old botanist and necromancer, has trained up his daughter
in the solitary companionship of this flower, from which she has
acquired its peculiar properties. A handsome young student is induced
to enter the garden, partly from curiosity and partly through the
legerdemain of Rappacini. The student soon falls under the daughter's
influence and finds himself being gradually poisoned. A watchful
apothecary, who has penetrated the necromancer's secret, provides the
young man with an antidote which saves him, but deprives the maiden of
life. She crosses the barrier which separated her from a healthy
existence, and the poison reacts upon her system and kills her. The old
apothecary looks out from his window, and cries, "O Rappacini! Is this
the consummation of your experiment?"

The underlying agreement between this story and "The Birth Mark"
becomes apparent when we observe that the termination of one is simply
a variation upon the last scene of the other. In one instance a
beautiful daughter is sacrificed by her father, and in the other a
lovely wife is victimized by her husband. There have been thousands, if
not millions, of such cases.

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