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The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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So Jacob in the desert saw angels descending and ascending on a ladder
from Heaven. Discouraged, depressed, the door closed upon his earthly
hopes, not only for himself, but for those whom he loves much better
than himself, so far as he could ever be a help and a providence to
them, Hawthorne finds a purer joy and a higher hope in the depths of
his own spirit.

In the second chapter, or fragment, of this romance, Doctor Dolliver,
followed by Pansie, goes out into the garden one frosty October
morning, and while the apothecary is digging at his herbs, the
imitative child, with an instinctive repulsion for everything strange
and morbid, pulls up the fatal plant from which the elixir of life was
distilled, and frightened at her grandfather's chiding, runs with it
into the cemetery where it is lost among the graves and never seen
again. This account stands by itself, having no direct connection with
what precedes or follows; but the delineation is so vivid, the poetic
element in it so strong, that it may be said to stand without
assistance, and does not require the name of Hawthorne to give it
value.

In the conclusion, the elixir of life proves to be an elixir of death;
extremes meet and are reconciled. As he says in "The Marble Faun," joy
changes to sorrow and sorrow is laughed away; the experience of both
being that which is really valuable. Doctor Dolliver and Pansie are
figures for the end and the beginning of life; the Old Year and the
New. Such is the sum of Hawthorne's philosophy--the ultimate goal of
his thought. There could have been no more fitting consummation of his
work. The cycle of his art is complete, and death binds the laurel
round his brow.


A HERO'S END

After Hawthorne's letter of February 25, Fields felt that he ought to
make an effort in his behalf. Fields's partner, W. D. Ticknor, was also
ailing, and it was arranged that he and Hawthorne should go on a
journey southward as soon as the weather permitted. Doctor Holmes was
consulted, and the last of March Hawthorne came to Boston and met
Holmes at Fields's house. Holmes made an examination, which was
anything but satisfactory to his own mind; in fact, he was appalled at
the condition in which he found his former companion of the Saturday
Club. "He was very gentle," Holmes says; "very willing to answer
questions, very docile to such counsel as I offered him, but evidently
had no hope of recovering his health. He spoke as if his work were
done, and he should write no more." [Footnote: _Atlantic Monthly_,
July, 1864.] The doctor, however, must have been mistaken in supposing
that Hawthorne was suffering from the same malady that carried off
General Grant, for no human being could die in that manner without
suffering greater pain than Hawthorne gave any indication of; and the
sedatives which Holmes prescribed for him could only have resulted in a
weakening of the nerves. He even warned Hawthorne against the use of
alcoholic stimulants, to which for some time he had been more or less
accustomed.

Hawthorne and Ticknor went to New York, and two days later Ticknor was
able to write to Mrs. Hawthorne that her husband appeared to be much
improved. How cruelly disappointing to meet him at their own door four
days later, haggard, weary and more dispirited than when he had left
the Wayside on March 26! He had proceeded to Philadelphia with Ticknor,
and there at the Continental Hotel Ticknor was suddenly seized with a
mortal malady and died almost in Hawthorne's arms, before the latter
could notify his family in Boston that he was ill. What a severe ordeal
for a man who was strong and well, but to a person in Hawthorne's
condition it was like a thunderbolt. Ticknor's son came to him at once,
and together they performed the necessary duties of the occasion, and
made their melancholy way homeward. Nothing, perhaps, except a death in
his own family, could have had so unfavorable an effect upon
Hawthorne's condition.

Some good angel now notified Franklin Pierce of the serious posture of
affairs, and he came at once to Concord to offer his services in
Hawthorne's behalf. However, he could propose nothing more hopeful than
a journey in the uplands of New Hampshire, and for this it would be
necessary to wait for settled weather. So Hawthorne remained at home
for the next month without his condition becoming apparently either
better or worse. At length, on May 13, the ex-President returned and
they went together the following day.

We will not linger over that leave-taking on the porch of the Wayside;
so pathetic, so full of tenderness, even of despair, and yet with a
slender ray of hope beneath the leaden cloud of anxiety. To Hawthorne
it must have seemed even more discouraging than to his wife and
children, though none of them could have suspected that the end would
be so soon.

* * * * *

On the morning of May 20, I had just returned from my first recitation
when Julian Hawthorne appeared at my room in the Massachusetts
dormitory, and said, like a man gasping for breath, "My father is dead,
and I want you to come with me." Fields had sent him word through
Professor Gurney, who knew how to deliver such a message in the
kindliest manner. We went at once to Fields's house on Charles Street,
where Mrs. Fields gave Julian the little information already known to
them through a dispatch from Franklin Pierce,--that his father died
during his sleep in the night of May 18, at the Pemmigewasset House,
Plymouth, New Hampshire. After this we wandered about Boston, silent
and aimless, until the afternoon train carried him to Concord. He
greatly dreaded meeting the gaze of his fellow-townsmen, and confessed
that he wanted to hide himself in the woods like a wounded deer.
[Footnote: The passage in "A Fool of Nature," in which he describes
Murgatroyd's discovery of his father's death, must have been a
reminiscence of this time--a passage of the finest genius.]

On Wednesday, May 18, Hawthorne and Pierce drove from Centre Harbor to
Plymouth, a long and rather rough journey to be taken in a carriage.
Hawthorne, however, did not make much complaint of this, nor did he
seem to be unusually fatigued. He retired to his room soon after nine
o'clock, and was sleeping comfortably an hour later. Pierce was
evidently nervous about him, for he went in to look at him at two in
the morning, and again at four; and the last time he discovered that
life was extinct. Hawthorne had died in his sleep as quietly and
peacefully as he had lived. There is the same mystery in his death that
there was in his life, and it is difficult to assign either an
immediate or a proximate cause for it. With such a physique, and his
simple, regular habits of life, he ought to have reached the age of
ninety. General Pierce believed that he died of paralysis, and that is
the most probable explanation; but it was not like the usual cases of
paralysis at Hawthorne's age; for, as we have seen, the process of
disintegration and failure of his powers had been going on for years.
Nor did this follow, as commonly happens, a protracted period of
adversity, but it came upon him during the most prosperous portion of
his life. The first ten years following upon his marriage were years of
anxiety, self-denial and even hardship; but other men, Alcott, for
example, have suffered as much and yet lived to a good old age. It may
have been "the old dull pain" which Longfellow associated with him,
filing perpetually on the vital cord. It was part of the enigmatic side
of his nature.

The last ceremonies of respect to the earthly remains of Hawthorne were
performed at Concord on May 23, 1864, in the Unitarian Church, a
commodious building, [Footnote: In 1899 this building was burned to the
ground, and a new church has been erected on the same spot.] well
adapted to the great concourse of mourners who gathered there on this
occasion. Reverend James Freeman Clarke, who had united Hawthorne and
Sophia Peabody in marriage twenty-two years before, was now called upon
to preside over the last act in their married life. The simple
eloquence of his address penetrated to the heart of every person
present. "Hawthorne had achieved a twofold immortality,--and his
immortality on earth would be a comforting presence to all who mourned
him. The noblest men of the age had gathered there, to testify to his
worth as a man as well as to his genius as a writer." Faces were to be
seen in that assembly that were never beheld in Concord before. Among
these was the soldierly figure and flashing eye of the poet Whittier.
Longfellow, Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, Alcott and Hillard were present;
and ex-President Pierce shook hands with Judge Hoar over Hawthorne's
bier. After the services the assembly of mourners proceeded to Sleepy
Hollow cemetery, and there the mortal remains of Hawthorne were buried
under the pine trees on the same hill-side where he and Emerson and
Margaret Fuller conversed together on the summer afternoon twenty years
before. He needs no monument, for he has found a place in the universal
pantheon of art and literature.

* * * * *

It would seem advisable at this parting of the ways to say something of
Hawthorne's religious convictions. He went as a boy with his mother and
sisters to the East Church in Salem, a society of liberal tendencies
and then on the verge of Unitarianism. All the Manning family attended
service there, but at a later time Robert Manning separated from it and
joined an orthodox society. Hawthorne's mother and his sister Louisa
became Unitarians, and at Madam Hawthorne's death in 1848 the funeral
services were conducted by Reverend Thomas T. Stone, of the First Salem
Church. It is presumable that Nathaniel Hawthorne also became a
Unitarian, so far as he can be considered a sectarian at all; but
certain elements of the older faith still remained in his mental
composition. It cannot be questioned that the strong optimism in
Emerson's philosophy was derived from Doctor Channing's instruction,
and it is equally certain that Hawthorne could never agree to this.
Whatever might be the origin of evil or its abstract value, he found it
too potent an element in human affairs to be quietly reasoned out of
existence. Whatever might be the ultimate purpose of Divine Providence,
the witchcraft prosecutions were an awful calamity to those who were
concerned in them. In this respect he resembled David A. Wasson, one of
the most devout religious minds, who left the church of Calvin (as it
was in his time), without ever becoming a Unitarian or a radical. Miss
Rebecca Manning says:

"I never knew of Hawthorne's going to church at all, after I remember
about him, and do not think he was ever in the habit of going. I think
he may have gone sometimes when he was in England, but I do not know
about it. Somewhere in Julian or Rose Hawthorne's reminiscences, there
is mention made of his reading family prayers, when he was in England.
He, as also his mother and sisters were people of deeply religious
natures, though not always showing it by outward observances."

A Concord judge and an old Free-Soil politician once attended a
religious convention, and after the business of the day was over they
went to walk together. The politician confessed to the judge that he
had no very definite religious belief, for which the judge thought he
did himself great injustice; but is not that the most advanced and
intelligent condition of a man's religious faith? How can we possess
clear and definite ideas of the grand mystery of Creation? Consider
only this simple metaphysical fact, that space has no limit, and that
we can neither conceive a beginning of time nor imagine time without a
beginning. What is there outside of the universe? The brain reels as we
think of it. The time has gone by when a man can say to himself
definitely, I believe this or I believe that; but we know at least that
we, "the creature of a day," cannot be the highest form of intelligence
in this wonderful world. We thought that we lived in solid bodies, but
electric rays have been discovered by which the skeletons inside of us
become visible. The correlation and conservation of forces brings us
very close to the origin of all force; and yet in another sense we are
as far off as ever from the perception of it.

This would seem to have been also Hawthorne's position in regard to
religious faith. What do we know of the religious belief of Michel
Angelo, of Shakespeare, or of Beethoven? We cannot doubt that they were
sincerely and purely religious men; but neither of them made any
confession of their faith. Vittoria Colonna may have known something of
Michel Angelo's belief, but Vasari does not mention it; and Beethoven
confessed it was a subject that he did not like to talk about. The
deeper a man's sense of the awe and mystery which underlies Nature, the
less he feels inclined to expose it to the public gaze. Hawthorne's own
family did not know what his religious opinions were--only that he was
religious. One may imagine that the reticent man would be more reticent
on this subject than on any other; but we can feel confident that at
least he was not a sceptic, for the confirmed sceptic inevitably
becomes a chatterer. He walks to Walden Pond with Hillard and Emerson
on Sunday, and confesses his doubts as to the utility of the Church (in
its condition at that time), for spiritual enlightenment; but in regard
to the great omnipresent fact of spirituality he has no doubt. In "The
Snow Image" he makes a statue come to life, and says in conclusion that
if a new miracle is ever wrought in this world it will be in some such
simple manner as he has described.

To the poetic mind, which is after all the highest form of intellect,
the grand fact of existence is a sufficient miracle. The rising of the
sun, the changes of the seasons, the blooming of flowers and the
ripening of the grain, were all miracles to Hawthorne, and none the
less so because they are continually being repeated. The scientists
tell us that all these happen according to natural laws: perfectly
true, but WHO was it that made those laws? WHO is it that keeps the
universe running? Laws made for the regulation of human affairs by the
wisest of men often prove ineffective, and inadequate to the purpose
for which they were intended; but the laws of Nature work with
unfailing accuracy. The boy solves his problem in algebra, finding out
the unknown quantity by those values which are given him; and can we
not also infer something of the _unknown_ from the great panorama
that passes unceasingly before us? The one thing that Hawthorne could
not have understood was, how gifted minds like Lucretius and Auguste
Comte could recognize only the evidence of their senses, and
deliberately blind themselves to the evidence of their intellects. He
who denies the existence of mind as a reality resembles a person
looking for his spectacles when they are on his nose; but it is the
imagination of the poet that leads civilization onward to its goal.

College life is rather generally followed by a period of scepticism,
partly owing in former times to the enforced attendance at morning
prayers, and still more perhaps to the study of Greek and Latin
authors. During what might be called Hawthorne's period of despair, he
could not very well have obtained consolation from the traditional
forms of divine worship; at least, such has been the experience of all
those who have passed through the Wertherian stage, so far as we know
of them. It is a time when every man has to strike the fountain of
spiritual life out of the hard rock of his own existence; and those are
fortunate who, like Moses and Hawthorne, strike forcibly enough to
accomplish this. It is the "new birth from above," in the light of
which religious forms seem of least importance.

One effect of matrimony is commonly a deepening of religious feeling,
but it is not surprising that Hawthorne should not have attended church
after his marriage. His wife had not been accustomed to church-going,
on account of the uncertainty of her health; the Old Manse was a long
distance from the Concord tabernacle; Hawthorne's associates in
Concord, with the exception of Judge Keyes, were not in the habit of
going to church; and the officiating minister, both at that time and
during his later sojourn, was not a person who could have been
intellectually attractive to him. Somewhat similar reasons may have
interfered with his attendance after his return to Salem; and during
the last fifteen years of his life, he was too much of a wanderer to
take a serious interest in the local affairs of the various places he
inhabited; but he was desirous that his children should go to church
and should be brought up in honest Christian ways.

Little more need to be said concerning Hawthorne's character as a man.
It was not so perfect as Longfellow's, to whom all other American
authors should bow the head in this respect--the Washington of poets;
and yet it was a rare example of purity, refinement, and patient
endurance. His faults were insignificant in comparison with his
virtues, and the most conspicuous of them, his tendency to revenge
himself for real or fancied injuries, is but a part of the natural
instinct in us to return the blows we receive in self-defence.
Wantonly, and of his own accord, he never injured human being. His
domestic life was as pure and innocent as that which appeared before
the world; and Mrs. Hawthorne once said of him in my presence that she
did not believe he ever committed an act that could properly be
considered wrong. It was like his writing, and his "wells of English
undefiled" were but as a synonym for the clear current of his daily
existence.

The ideality in Hawthorne's face was so conspicuous that it is
recognizable in every portrait of him. It was not the cold visionary
expression of the abstract thinker, but a human poetic intelligence,
which resolved all things into a spiritual alembic of its own. It is
this which elevates him above all writers who only deal with the outer
world as they find it, and add nothing to it from their own natures.

George Brandes, the Danish critic and essayist, speaks of Hawthorne
somewhere as "the baby poet;" but we suspect that if he had ever met
the living Hawthorne, he would have stood very much in awe of him. It
would not have been like meeting Ernest Rénan or John Stuart Mill.
Although Hawthorne was not splenetic or rash, there was an occasional
look in his eye which a prudent person might beware of. He was
emphatically a man of courage.

The wide and liberal interest which German scholars and writers have so
long taken in the literature of other nations, has resulted in founding
an informal literary tribunal in Germany, to which the rest of the
world is accustomed to appeal. A. E. Schönbach, one of the most recent
German writers on universal literature, gives his impression of
Hawthorne in the following statement:

"I find the distinguishing excellence of Hawthorne's imaginative
writings in the union of profound, keen, psychological development of
characters and problems with the most lucid objectivity and a joyous
modern realism. Occasionally there appears a light and delicate humor,
sometimes hidden in a mere adjective, or little phrase which lights up
the gloomiest situation with a gentle ray of hope. Far from unimportant
do I rate the charm of his language, its purity, its melody, its
graceful flexibility, the wealth of vocabulary, the polish which rarely
betrays the touch of the file. After, or with George Eliot, Hawthorne
is the first English prose writer of our century. At the same time he
sacrifices nothing of his peculiar American quality. Not only does he
penetrate into the most secret inner movements of the old colonial
life, as no one else has done, and reproduces the spirit of his
forefathers with a power of intuition which no historical work could
equal; but in all his other works, from the biography of General
Pierce, to the 'Marble Faun,' Hawthorne shows the freshness and
keenness, the precision and lucidity, and other qualities not easy to
describe, which belong to American literature. He is its chief
representative." [Footnote: "Gesammelte Aufsatze zur neueren
Litteratur," p. 346.]

Hawthorne has always been accorded a high position in literature, and
as time goes on I believe this will be increased rather than
diminished. In beauty of diction he is the first of American writers,
and there are few that equal him in this respect in other languages. It
is a pleasure to read him, simply for his form of expression, and apart
from the meaning which he conveys in his sentences. It is like the
grace of the Latin races,--like Dante and Chateaubriand; and the
adaptation of his words is so perfect that we never have to think twice
for his meaning. In those editions called the Elzevirs, which are so
much prized by book collectors, the clearness and legibility of the
type result from such a fine proportion of space and line that no other
printer has succeeded in imitating it; and there is something similar
to this in the construction of Hawthorne's sentences.

He is the romance writer of the English language; and there is no form
of literature which the human race prizes more. How many translations
there have been of "The Vicar of Wakefield," and of "The Sorrows of
Werther"! The latter is not one of Goethe's best, and yet it made him
famous at the age of twenty-eight. The novel deals with what is new and
surprising; the romance with what is old and universal. In "The Vicar
of Wakefield" we have the old story of virtue outwitted by evil, which
is in its turn outwitted by wisdom. There is nothing new in it except
the charming exposition which Goldsmith's genius has given to the
subject. Thackeray ridiculed "The Sorrows of Werther," and in the light
of matured judgment the tale appears ridiculous; but it strikes home to
the heart, because we all learn wisdom through such experiences, of
which young Werther's is an extreme instance. It was only another
example of the close relation that subsists between comedy and tragedy.

It cannot be questioned that "The Scarlet Letter" ranks above "The
Sorrows of Werther;" nor is it less evident that "The Marble Faun"
falls short of "Wilhelm Meister" and "Don Quixote." [Footnote: See
"Cervantes" in _North American Review_, May, 1905] Hawthorne's
position, therefore, lies between these two--nearer perhaps to
"Werther" than to "Wilhelm Meister." In certain respects he is
surpassed by the great English novelists: Fielding, Scott, Thackeray,
Dickens and Marian Evans; but he in turn surpasses them all in the
perfection and poetic quality of his art. There is much poetry in Scott
and Dickens, a little also in Thackeray and Miss Evans, but Hawthorne's
poetic vein has a more penetrating tone, and appeals more deeply than
Scott's verses. If power and versatility of characterization were to be
the test of imaginative writing, Dickens would push closely on to
Shakespeare; but we do not go to Shakespeare to read about Hamlet or
Falstaff, or for the sake of the story, or even for his wisdom, but for
the _tout ensemble_--to read Shakespeare. Raphael painted a dozen
or more pictures on the same subject, but they are all original,
interesting and valuable, because Raphael painted them. If it were not
for the odd characters and variety of incident in Dickens's novels they
would hardly be worth reading. Hawthorne's _dramatis personæ_ is
not a long one, for his plots do not admit of it, but his characters
are finely drawn, and the fact that they have not become popular types
is rather in their favor. There are Dombeys and Shylocks in plenty, but
who has ever met a Hamlet or a Rosalind in real life?

A certain English writer promulgated a list of the hundred superior
authors of all times and countries. There were no Americans in his
catalogue, but he admitted that if the number was increased to one
hundred and eighteen Hawthorne and Emerson might be included in it.
Doubtless he had not heard of Webster or Alexander Hamilton, and many
of his countrymen would be inclined to place Longfellow before Emerson.

I have myself frequently counted over the great writers of all times
and languages, weighing their respective values carefully in my mind,
but I have never been able to discover more than thirty-five authors
who seem to me decidedly superior to Hawthorne, nor above forty others
who might be placed on an equality with him. [Footnote: Appendix C.]
This, of course, is only an individual opinion, and should be accepted
for what it is worth; but there are many ancient writers, like Hesiod,
Xenophon, and Catullus, whose chief value resides in their antiquity,
and a much larger number of modern authors, such as Balzac, Victor
Hugo, Freytag, and Ruskin, who have been over-estimated in their own
time. Petrarch, and the author of "Gil Bias," might be placed on a
level with Hawthorne, but certainly not above him. Those whom he most
closely resembles in style and subject matter are Goldsmith, Manzoni,
and Auerbach.

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