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The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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An event was soon to happen, well calculated to disenthrall him. The
Congress of 1854, after passing the Kansas-Nebraska bill, resolved, in
order to prove its democratic spirit, to economize in the
representation of our government to foreign powers. On April 14, the
good-hearted, theoretical O'Sullivan arrived in Liverpool, on his way
to be minister to Portugal, and warned Hawthorne that there was a bill
before Congress to reduce the consulate there to a salaried position.
This was a terrible damper on Hawthorne's great expectations, and on
April 17 he wrote again to Bridge, protesting against the change:
[Footnote: Bridge, 135, 136.]

"I trust, in Heaven's mercy, that no change will be made as regards the
emoluments of the Liverpool consulate--unless indeed a salary is to be
given in addition to the fees, in which case I should receive it very
thankfully. This, however, is not to be expected; and if Liverpool is
touched at all, it will be to limit its emoluments by a fixed salary--
which will render the office not worth any man's holding. It is
impossible (especially for a man with a family and keeping any kind of
an establishment) not to spend a vast deal of money here. The office,
unfortunately, is regarded as one of great dignity, and puts the holder
on a level with the highest society, and compels him to associate on
equal terms with men who spend more than my whole income on the mere
entertainments and other trimmings and embroidery of their lives. Then
I feel bound to exercise some hospitality towards my own countrymen. I
keep out of society as much as I decently can, and really practice as
stern an economy as I ever did in my life; but, nevertheless, I have
spent many thousands of dollars in the few months of my residence here,
and cannot reasonably hope to spend less than six thousand per annum,
even after all the expenditure of setting up an establishment is
defrayed."

In addition to this, he states that his predecessor in office, John J.
Crittenden, never received above fifteen thousand dollars in fees, of
which he saved less than half.

We can trust this to be the plain truth in regard to the Liverpool
consulate, and if twenty-five thousand a year was ever obtained from
it, there must have been some kind of deviltry in the business.
Congress proved inexorable,--as it might not have been, had Hawthorne
possessed the influence of a prominent politician like Crittenden. It
was a direct affront to the President from his own party, and Pierce
did not dare to veto the bill.

What O'Sullivan said to Hawthorne on other subjects may be readily
inferred from Hawthorne's next letter to Bridge, in which he begs him
to remain in Washington for Pierce's sake, and says:

"I feel a sorrowful sympathy for the poor fellow (for God's sake don't
show him this), and hate to have him left without one true friend, or
one man, who will speak a single honest word to him."

It is not very clear how Horatio Bridge could counteract the influence
of Jefferson Davis and Caleb Cushing, but this shows that Franklin
Pierce's weakness as an administrator was already painfully apparent to
his friends, and that even Hawthorne could no longer disguise it to
himself.




CHAPTER XIII

HAWTHORNE IN ENGLAND: 1854-1858


Hawthorne's life in England was too generally monotonous to afford many
salient points to his biographer. It was monotonous in his official
duties, in his pleasure-trips, and in his social experiences. He found
one good friend in Liverpool, Mr. Henry Bright, to whom he had already
been introduced in America, and he soon made another in Mr. Francis
Bennoch, who lived near the same city. They were both excellent men,
and belonged to that fine class of Englishmen who possess a comfortable
income, but live moderately, and prefer cultivating their minds and the
society of their friends, to clubs, yachting, horse-racing, and other
forms of external show. They were not distinguished, and were too
sensible to desire distinction. Henry Bright may have been the more
highly favored in Hawthorne's esteem, but they both possessed that tact
and delicacy of feeling which is rare among Englishmen, and by
accepting Hawthorne simply as a man like themselves, instead of as a
celebrity, they won that place in his confidence from which so many had
been excluded.

Otherwise, Hawthorne contracted no friendships among distinguished
Englishmen of letters, like that between Emerson and Carlyle; and from
first to last he saw little of them. He had no sooner landed than he
was greeted with a number of epistles from sentimental ladies, or
authors of a single publication, who claimed a spiritual kinship with
him, because of their admiration for his writings. One of them even
addressed him as "My dear brother." These he filed away with a mental
reservation to give the writers as wide a circuit as he possibly could.
He attended a respectable number of dinner parties in both Liverpool
and London, at which he remained for the most part a silent and
unobtrusive guest. He was not favored with an invitation to Holland
House, although he met Lady Holland on one occasion, and has left a
description of her, not more flattering than others that have been
preserved for us. He also met Macaulay and the Brownings at Lord
Houghton's; but for once Macaulay would not talk. Mrs. Browning
evidently pleased Hawthorne very much. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii.
129.]

The great lights of English literature besides these,--Tennyson,
Carlyle, Ruskin, Thackeray, Dickens,--he was never introduced to,
although he saw Tennyson in a picture-gallery at Manchester, and has
left a description of him, such as might endure to the end of time.
Neither did he make the acquaintance of those three luminaries, Froude,
Marian Evans, and Max Muller, who rose above the horizon, previous to
his return to America. That he was not presented at Court was a matter
of course. There was nothing which he could have cared for less.

After his return he published a volume of English sketches, which he
entitled "Our Old Home," but he seems to have felt actually less at
home in England than in any other country that he visited. In that
book, and also in his diary, the even tenor of his discourse is
interrupted here and there by fits of irritability which disclose
themselves in the use of epithets such as one would hardly expect from
the pen of Hawthorne. If we apply to him the well-known proverb with
respect to the Russians, we can imagine that under similar conditions
an inherited sailor-like tendency in him came to the surface. We only
remember one such instance in his American Note-book, that in which he
speaks of Thoreau's having a face "as homely as sin."

[Footnote: The general effect of Thoreau's face was by no means
unpleasant.]

Hawthorne did not carry with him to Europe that narrow provincialism,
which asserts itself in either condemning or ridiculing everything that
differs essentially from American ways and methods. On the contrary,
when he compares the old country with the new,--for instance, the
English scenery with that of New England,--Hawthorne is usually as
fair, discriminating, and dispassionate as any one could wish, and
perhaps more so than some would desire. His judgment cannot be
questioned in preferring the American elm, with its wine-glass shape,
to the rotund European species; but he admires the English lake country
above anything that he has seen like it in his own land. "Centuries of
cultivation have given the English oak a domestic character," while
American trees are still to be classed with the wild flowers which
bloom beneath their outstretched arms.

Matthew Arnold spoke of his commentaries on England as the writing of a
man chagrined; but what could have chagrined Hawthorne there? The
socially ambitious man may become chagrined, if he finds that doors are
closed to him, and so may an unappreciated would-be genius. But
Hawthorne's position as an author was already more firmly established
than Matthew Arnold's ever could be; and as for social ambition, no
writer since Shakespeare has been so free from it. It seems more
probable that the difficulty with Hawthorne in this respect was due to
his old position on the slavery question, which now began to bear
bitter fruit for him. All Englishmen at that time, with the exception
of Carlyle, Froude, and the nobility, were very strongly anti-slavery,
--the more so, as it cost them nothing to have other men's slaves
liberated,--and the English are particularly blunt, not to say
_gauche_, in introducing topics of conversation which are liable
to become a matter of controversy. At the first dinner-party I attended
in London some thirty-odd years ago, I had scarcely tasted the soup,
before a gentleman opposite asked me: "What progress are you making in
the United States toward free trade? Can you tell me, sir?" He might as
well have asked me what progress we were making in the direction of
monarchy. Fortunately for Hawthorne, his good taste prevented him from
introducing the slavery question in his publications, excepting in the
life of Pierce, but for this same reason his English acquaintances in
various places were obliged to discover his opinions at first hand, nor
is it very likely that they were slow to do this. Phillips and Garrison
had been to England and through England, and their dignified speeches
had made an excellent impression. Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell and
Whittier had spoken with no uncertain sound, protesting against what
they considered a great national evil. How did it happen that Hawthorne
was an exception?

Through his kind friend Mr. Bennoch, he fell in with a worthy whom it
would have been just as well to have avoided--the proverbial-philosophy
poet, Martin Farquhar Tupper; not a genuine poet, nor considered as
such by trustworthy critics, but such a good imitation, that he
persuaded himself and a large portion of the British public, including
Queen Victoria, that he was one. Hawthorne has given an account of his
visit to this man, [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 114.] second only in
value to his description of Tennyson; for it is quite as important for
us to recognize the deficiencies of the one, as it is to know the true
appearance of the other. It is an unsparing study of human nature, but
if a man places himself on a pedestal for all people to gaze at, it is
just this and nothing more that he has to expect. Hawthorne represents
him as a kindly, domestic, affectionate, bustling little man, who kept
on bustling with his hands and tongue, even while he was seated--a man
of no dignity of character or perception of his deficiency of it. This
all does well enough, but when Hawthorne says, "I liked him, and
laughed in my sleeve at him, and was utterly weary of him; for
certainly he is the ass of asses," we feel that he has gone too far,
and suspect that there was some unpleasantness connected with the
occasion, of which we are not informed. The word "ass," as applied to a
human being, is not current in good literature, unless low comedy be
entitled to that position, and coming from Hawthorne, of all writers,
it seems like an oath from the mouth of a woman. Tupper, who was quite
proud of his philanthropy, was also much of an abolitionist, and he may
have trodden on Hawthorne's metaphysical toes half a dozen times,
without being aware of what he was doing. Altogether, it seems like
rather an ill return for Tupper's hospitality; but Hawthorne himself
did not intend it for publication, and on the whole one does not regret
that it has been given to the public. We have been, however,
anticipating the order of events.

During the summer of 1854, the Hawthorne family made a number of
unimportant expeditions, visiting mediaeval abbeys and ruinous
castles,--especially one to Chester and Eton Hall, which was not quite
worth the fees they paid to the janitors. An ancient walled city is
much of a novelty to an American for the first time, but, having seen
one, you have seen them all, and Chester Cathedral does not stand high
in English architecture. On September 14, O'Sullivan appeared again,
and they all went into the Welsh mountains, where they examined the old
fortresses of Rhyl and Conway, which were built by Edward Longshanks to
hold the Welshmen in check. Those relics of the feudal system are very
impressive, not only on account of their solidity and the great human
forces which they represent, but from a peculiar beauty of their own,
which modern fortifications do not possess at all. They seem to belong
to the ground they stand on, and the people who live about them look
upon them as cherished landmarks. They are the monuments of an heroic
age, and Hawthorne's interest in them was characteristic of his nature.

O'Sullivan returned to Lisbon early in October, and on the 5th of that
month, Hawthorne found himself obliged to make a speech at an
entertainment on board a merchant vessel called the "James Barnes,"
which had been built in Boston for a Liverpool firm of ship-owners. He
considered this the most serious portion of his official duty,--the
necessity of making after-dinner speeches at the Mayor's or other
public tables. He writes several pages on the subject in a humorously
complainant tone, congratulating himself that on the present occasion
he has succeeded admirably, for he has really said nothing, and that is
precisely what he intended to do. After-dinner speeches are like soap-
bubbles: they are made of nothing, signify nothing, float for a moment
in the air, attract a momentary attention, and then disappear. But the
difficulty is, to make an apparent something out of nothing, to say
nothing that will offend anybody, and to say something that will be
different from what others say. It is truly a hard situation in which
to place even a very talented man, and, as Longfellow once remarked,
those were most fortunate who made their speeches first, and could then
enjoy their dinner, while their successors were writhing in agony.
However, there are those who like it, and having practised it to
perfection, can do it better than anything else. Hawthorne analyzes his
sensations, after finishing his speech, with rare self-perception.
"After sitting down, I was conscious of an enjoyment in speaking to a
public assembly, and felt as if I should like to rise again. It is
something like being under fire,--a sort of excitement, not exactly
pleasure, but more piquant than most pleasures." Was it President
Jackson, or Senator Benton, who said that fighting a duel was very much
like making one's maiden speech?

Mrs. Hawthorne thus describes the residence of the President of the
Chamber of Commerce at Liverpool: [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 238.] "We
were ushered into the drawing-room, which looked more like a brilliant
apartment in Versailles than what I had expected to see. The panels
were richly gilt, with mirrors in the centre, and hangings of gilded
paper; and the broad windows were hung with golden-colored damask; the
furniture was all of the same hue; with a carpet of superb flowers; and
vases of living flowers standing everywhere; and a chandelier of
diamonds (as to indefatigable and vivid shining), and candlesticks of
the same,--not the long prisms like those on Mary's astral, but a
network of crystals diamond-cut."

This was the coarse commercial taste of the time, previous to the
reforms of Ruskin and Eastlake. The same might be said of Versailles.
There is no true elegance in gilding and glass-work, including mirrors,
unless they be sparingly used.

The Hawthornes were equally overpowered by a dinner-party given by a
millionaire and country squire of Liscard Vale; "two enormous silver
dish-covers, with the gleam of Damascus blades, putting out all the
rest of the light;" and after the fish, these were replaced by two
other enormous dishes of equal brilliancy. The table was shortly
covered with an array of silver dishes, reflecting the lights above in
dazzling splendor. At one end of the table was a roast goose and at the
other a boiled turkey; while "cutlets, fricassees, ragouts, tongue,
chicken-pies," and much else, filled the intermediate spaces, and the
sideboard groaned under a round of beef "like the dome of St. Peter's."
It was fortunate that the American consul came to this Herculean repast
with an excellent appetite.

Henry Bright was their chief refuge from this flummery, as Hawthorne
called it; "an extremely interesting, sincere, earnest, independent,
warm and generous hearted man; not at all dogmatic; full of questions,
and with ready answers. He is highly cultivated, and writes for the
_Westminster_,"--a man who respected formalities and could
preserve decorum in his own household, but liked a simple,
unostentatious mode of living--in brief, he was a true English
gentleman. Mrs. Hawthorne has drawn his portrait with only less skill
than her husband:

"His eyes are large, bright, and prominent, rather indicating great
facility of language, which he has. He is an Oxford scholar, and has
decided literary tastes. He is delicately strung, and is as
transparent-minded and pure-hearted as a child, with great enthusiasm
and earnestness of character; and, though a Liberal, very loyal to his
Queen and very admiring of the aristocracy."

He appears to have been engaged in the Australian carrying trade, and
owned the largest sailing vessel afloat.

Hawthorne went to an exhibition of English landscape paintings, and he
remarked that Turner's seemed too ethereal to have been painted by
mortal hands,--the finest compliment that Turner could have received,
for in delicate effects of light and shade,--in painting the atmosphere
itself,--he has no rival.

In January, James Buchanan, who was then minister to England, came to
visit Hawthorne, and talked with him about the presidency,--for which
he considered himself altogether too old; but at the same time he did
not suggest the renomination of Franklin Pierce. This, of course,
disclosed his own ambition, and as Hawthorne's impartial pen-and-ink
sketch of him may not be recognized by many readers, on account of the
form in which it appears in the note-books, we append it here, with the
regret that Hawthorne could not have treated his friend Pierce in an
equally candid manner.

"I like Mr.--. He cannot exactly be called gentlemanly in his manners,
there being a sort of rusticity about him; moreover, he has a habit of
squinting one eye, and an awkward carriage of his head; but, withal, a
dignity in his large person, and a consciousness of high position and
importance, which give him ease and freedom. Very simple and frank in
his address, he may be as crafty as other diplomatists are said to be;
but I see only good sense and plainness of speech,--appreciative, too,
and genial enough to make himself conversable. He talked very freely of
himself and of other public people, and of American and English
affairs. He returns to America, he says, next October, and then retires
forever from public life."

A certain amount of rusticity would seem to have been essential to a
presidential candidate during the middle of the past century.

During this dismal winter Hawthorne was beset more than ever, by
nautical mendicants of all countries,--Hungarians, Poles, Cubans,
Spanish Americans, and French Republicans, who, unhappily for him, had
discovered that the American consul was a tender-hearted man. He had,
beside, to deal with a number of difficult cases of maltreated American
sailors,--the more difficult, because both parties to the suits were
greatly given to lying, even on occasions when it would have been more
expedient for them to tell the truth. He has recorded one such in his
diary, that deserves more than a superficial consideration.

An American bark was on the point of sailing, when the captain cast
ashore a bruised and battered-looking man, who made his way painfully
to the consulate, and begged Hawthorne for a permit to be placed in the
hospital. He called himself the son of a South Carolina farmer, and
stated that he had gone on board this vessel with a load of farm
products, but had been impressed by the captain for the voyage, and had
been so maltreated, that he thought he would die,--and so he did, not
long afterward, at the hospital. Letters were found upon him,
substantiating the statement concerning his father, but it was
discovered, from the same source, that he was a jail-bird, and the
tattooed figures upon his arms showed that he had been a sailor of many
years' standing, although he had denied this to the consul. Hawthorne
speaks of him as an innocent man, the victim of criminal brutality
little less than murder; it is certainly difficult to account for such
severe ill-treatment, but the man was clearly a bad character, and it
is also true that sea-captains do not interfere with their deck-hands
without some kind of provocation. The man clung desperately to life up
to the last moment, and the letters he carried with him indicated that
he was more intelligent than the average of the nautical fraternity.

In June, Hawthorne went with his family to Leamington, of which he
afterward published an account in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
criticised at the time for the manner in which he referred to English
ladies, as "covering a large area of Nature's foot-stool"; but this
element in Hawthorne's English writing has already been considered.
From Leamington he went, early in July, to the English lakes,
especially Windermere, and fortunately found time to thoroughly enjoy
them. He enjoyed them not only for their scenery, which he preferred to
that of New England, but also as illustrations to many descriptive
passages in Wordsworth's poetry, which serves the same purpose in the
guidebook of that region, as "Childe Harold" serves in the guidebooks
for Italy and Greece. Hawthorne also was interested in such places for
the sake of their associations. He describes Wordsworth's house, the
grounds about it, and the cemetery where he lies, with the accuracy of
a scientific report. He finds the grass growing too high about the
head-stone of Wordsworth's grave, and plucks it away with his own
hands, reflecting that it may have drawn its nourishment from his
mortal remains. We may suppose that he preserved this grass, and it is
only from such incidental circumstances that we discover who were
Hawthorne's favorites among poets and other distinguished writers. He
twice visited Wordsworth's grave.

Their first two winters in Liverpool had not proved favorable to Mrs.
Hawthorne's health She had contracted a disorder in her throat from the
prevailing dampness, which threatened to become chronic, and her
husband felt that it would not be prudent for her to remain there
another winter. He thought of resigning and returning to America. Then
he thought of exchanging his consulship for one in southern Europe,
although the salaries of the more southern consulates were hardly
sufficient to support a married man. Then he thought of exchanging
places with O'Sullivan, but he hardly knew languages well enough for an
ambassador. The doctors, however, had advised Mrs. Hawthorne to spend a
winter at Madeira, and she courageously solved the problem by proposing
to go there alone with her daughters, for which Lisbon and O'Sullivan
would serve as a stepping-stone by the way. There are wives who would
prefer such an expedition to spending a winter in England with their
husbands, but Mrs. Hawthorne was not of that mould, and in her case it
was a brave thing to do.

Accordingly, on the second Monday in October, Mrs. Hawthorne and her
two daughters sailed for Lisbon. She was presented at court there;
concerning which occasion she wrote a lengthy and very interesting
account to her husband, published in her son's biography. The King of
Portugal held a long conversation with her and Minister O'Sullivan, and
she describes him as dressed in a flamboyant manner,--a scarlet
uniform, lavishly ornamented with diamonds. With how much better taste
did the Empress of Austria receive the President of the French
Republic,--in a simple robe of black velvet, fastened at her throat
with a diamond brooch. One can envy Mrs. Hawthorne a winter at Madeira,
for there is no place in Europe pleasanter for that purpose, unless it
be Rome. Meanwhile, her husband spent the winter with his son (who was
now old enough to be trusted safely about the streets), at a sea-
captains' boarding-house in Liverpool. There, as in Salem, he felt
himself most companionable in such company, as he had been accustomed
to it from boyhood; and it appears that at this time he was in the
habit of composing fables for the entertainment of Julian, not unlike
the yarns which sailors often spin to beguile landsmen. [Footnote: J.
Hawthorne, ii. 75.]

Hawthorne found his third winter in Liverpool dismal enough without his
wife and the two little girls, and this feeling was considerably
increased by his dislike for the sea-captains' boarding-house keeper,
[Footnote: English Note-book, November 28, 1855.]with whom he was
living, and concerning whom he remarks, that a woman in England "is
either decidedly a lady or decidedly not." She would not have annoyed
him so much, had it not been for "her bustle, affectation, intensity,
and pretension of literary taste." The race of landladies contains
curious specimens, although we have met with some who were real ladies
nevertheless. Thackeray's description of a French boarding-house keeper
in "The Adventures of Philip" goes to every heart. Hawthorne writes
much in his diary, at this juncture, of his friend Francis Bennoch, who
clearly did the best he could, as a man and a brother, to make life
cheerful for his American friend; a true, sturdy, warm-hearted
Englishman.

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