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The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne

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It was all in vain. Hawthorne's nature was not like Emerson's, and what
stimulated the latter mentally made comparatively little impression on
the former. Hawthorne found, then as always, that in order to practice
his art, he must devote himself to it, wholly and completely, leaving
side issues to go astern. In order to create an ideal world of his own,
he was obliged to separate himself from all existing conditions, as
Beethoven did when composing his symphonies. Composition for Hawthorne
meant a severe mental strain. Those sentences, pellucid as a mountain
spring, were not clarified without an effort. The faculty on which
Hawthorne depended for this, as every artist does, was his imagination,
and imagination is as easily disturbed as the electric needle. There is
no fine art without sensitiveness. We see it in the portrait of
Leonardo da Vinci, a man who could bend horseshoes in his hands; and
Bismarck, who was also an artist in his way, confessed to the same
mental disturbance from noise and general conversation, which Hawthorne
felt at Brook Farm. It was the mental sensitiveness of Carlyle and
Bismarck which caused their insomnia, and much other suffering besides.

George Ripley published an essay in the _Dial_, in which he
heralded Fourier as the great man who was destined to regenerate
society; but Fourier has passed away, and society continues in its old
course. What he left out of his calculations, or perhaps did not
understand, was the principle of population. If food and raiment were
as common as air and water, mankind would double its numbers every
twelve or fifteen years, and the tendency to do so produces a pressure
on poor human nature, which is almost like the scourge of a whip,
driving it into all kinds of ways and means in order to obtain
sufficient sustenance. Most notable among the methods thus employed is,
and always has been, the division of labor, and it will be readily seen
that a community like Brook Farm, where skilled labor, properly
speaking, was unknown, and all men were all things by turns, could
never sustain so large a population relatively as a community where a
strict division of industries existed. If a nation like France, for
instance, where the population is nearly stationary, were to adopt
Fourier's plan of social organization, it would prove a more severe
restriction on human life than the wars of Napoleon. This is the reason
why the attempt to plant a colony of Englishmen in Tennessee failed so
badly. There was a kind of division of labor among them, but it was
purely a local and a foreign division and not adapted to the region
about them. Ripley's method of allowing work to be counted by the hour
instead of by the day or half-day, was of itself sufficient to prevent
the enterprise from being a financial success. Farming everywhere
except on the Western prairies requires the closest thrift and economy,
and all hands have to work hard.

Neither could such an experiment prove a success from a moral point of
view. Emerson said of it: "The women did not object so much to a common
table as they did to a common nursery." In truth one might expect that
a common nursery would finally result in a free fight. The tendency of
all such institutions would be to destroy the sanctity of family life;
and it would also include a tendency to the deterioration of manliness.
One of the professed objects of the Brook Farm association was, to
escape from the evils of the great world,--from the trickery of trade,
the pedantry of colleges, the flunkyism of office, and the arrogant
pretensions of wealth. Every honest man must feel a sympathy with this;
there are times when we all feel that the struggle of life is an
unequal conflict, from which it would be a permanent blessing to
escape; yet he who turns his back upon it, is like a soldier who runs
away from the battle-field. It is the conflict with evil in the great
world, and in ourselves, that constitutes virtue and develops
character. It is _good_ to learn the trickery of knaves and to
expose it, to contend against pedantry and set a better example, to
administer offices with a modest impartiality, and to treat the gilded
fool with a dignified contempt. But if the wings of the archangel are
torn and soiled in his conflict with sin, does it not add to the honor
of the victory? The man who left his wife and children, because he
found that he could not live with them without occasionally losing his
temper, committed a grievous wrong; and it is equally true that
hypocrisy, the meanest of vices, may sometimes become a virtue.

George P. Bradford, and a few others, enjoyed the life at Brook Farm,
and would have liked to remain there longer. John S. Dwight, the
translator of Goethe's and Schiller's ballads, [Footnote: One of the
most musical translations in any language.] said in his old age that if
he were a young man, he would be only too glad to return there; and it
is undeniable that such a place is suited to a certain class of
persons, both men and women. It cannot be repeated too often, however,
that the true object of life is not happiness, but development. It is
our special business on this planet, to improve the human race as our
progenitors improved it, and developed it out of we know not what. By
doing this, we also improve ourselves and happiness comes to us
incidentally; but if we pursue happiness directly, we soon become
pleasure-seekers, and, like Faust, join company with Mephistopheles.
Happiness comes to a philosopher, perhaps while he is picking berries;
to a judge, watching the approach of a thunder-storm; to a merchant,
teaching his boy to skate. It came to Napoleon listening to a prayer-
bell, and to Hawthorne playing games with his children. [Footnote:
Perhaps also in his kindliness to the terrapin.] Happiness flies when
we seek it, and steals upon us unawares.

George P. Bradford's account of Brook Farm in the "Memorial History of
Boston" [Footnote: Vol. iv. 330.] is not so satisfactory as it might
have been if he had given more specific details in regard to its
management. The general supposition has been that there was an annual
deficit in the accounts of the association, which could only be met by
Mr. Ripley himself, who ultimately lost the larger portion of his
investment. It is difficult to imagine how such an experiment could end
otherwise, and the final conflagration of the principal building, or
"The Hive," as it was called, served as a fitting consummation of the
whole enterprise,--a truly dramatic climax. George Ripley went to New
York to become literary editor of the _Tribune_, and was as
distinguished there for the excellence of his reviews, and the elegance
of his turnout in Central Park as he had been for the use of the spade
and pitchfork at West Roxbury.

Mr. Bradford returned to the instruction of young ladies in French and
Latin; and John S. Dwight became one of the civilizing forces of his
time, by editing the Boston _Journal of Music_. None of them were
the worse for their agrarian experiment.

Even if the West Roxbury _commune_ had proved a success for two or
three generations, it would not have sufficed for a test of Fourier's
theory for it would have been a republic within a republic, protected
by the laws and government of the United States, without being
subjected to the inconvenience of its own political machinery. The only
fair trial for such a system would be to introduce it in some tract of
country especially set apart and made independent for the purpose; but
the chances are ten to one that a community organized in this manner
would soon be driven into the same process of formation that other
colonies have passed through under similar conditions. The true
socialism is the present organization of society, and although it might
be improved in detail, to revolutionize it would be dangerous. Yet the
interest that has been aroused at various times by discussions of the
Brook Farm project, shows how strong the undercurrent is setting
against the present order of things; and this is my chief excuse for
making such a long digression on the subject.

During these last months of his bachelorhood, Hawthorne appears to us
somewhat in the light of a hibernating bear; for we hear nothing of him
at that season at all. Between the last of October, 1841, and July,
1842, there are a large number of odd fancies, themes for romances, and
the like, published from his diary, but no entries of a personal
character. We hear incidentally that he was at Brook Farm during a
portion of the spring, which is not surprising in view of the fact that
Doctor Nathaniel Peabody had removed from Salem to Boston in the mean
time. One conclusion Hawthorne had evidently arrived at during the
winter months, and it was that his engagement to Miss Sophia Peabody
ought to be terminated in the way all such affairs should be; viz., by
matrimony. Their prospects in life were not brilliant, but it was
difficult to foresee any advantage in waiting longer, and there were
decided disadvantages in doing so. It was accordingly agreed that they
should be married at, or near, the summer solstice, the most suitable
of all times for weddings--or engagements. On June 20, he wrote to his
_fiancée_ from Salem, reminding her that within ten days they were
to become man and wife, and added this significant reflection: "Nothing
can part us now; for God himself hath ordained that we shall be one. So
nothing remains but to reconcile yourself to your destiny. Year by year
we shall grow closer to each other; and a thousand years hence, we
shall be only in the honeymoon of our marriage."

Yet we find him writing again the tenderest and most graceful of love-
letters on June 30. [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 241.] The wedding has
evidently been postponed; but two days later he is in Boston, and finds
a pleasant recreation watching the boys sail their toy boats on the
Frog Pond. The ceremony finally was performed on July 9, and it was
only the day previous that Hawthorne wrote the following letter, which
is dated from 54 Pinckney Street:


"MY DEAR SIR:

"Though personally a stranger to you, I am about to request of you the
greatest favor which I can receive from any man. I am to be married to
Miss Sophia Peabody to-morrow, and it is our mutual desire that you
should perform the ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly a rainy day,
a carriage will call for you at half-past eleven o'clock in the
forenoon.

"Very respectfully yours,
"NATH. HAWTHORNE.

"REV. JAMES F. CLARKE,
"Chestnut St."


George S. Hillard lived on Pinckney Street, and Hawthorne may have been
visiting him at the moment. The Peabodys attended service at Mr.
Clarke's church in Indiana Place, where Hawthorne may also have gone
with them. He could not have made a more judicious choice; but,
singularly enough, although Mr. Clarke became Elizabeth Peabody's life-
long friend, and even went to Concord to lecture, he and Hawthorne
never met again after this occasion.

The ceremony was performed at the house of Sophia Peabody's father, No.
13 West Street, a building of which not one stone now rests upon
another. It was a quiet family wedding (such as oftenest leads to
future happiness), and most deeply impressive to those concerned in it.
What must it have been to Hawthorne, who had known so much loneliness,
and had waited so long for the comfort and sympathy which only a
devoted wife can give?

Time has drawn a veil over Hawthorne's honeymoon, but exactly four
weeks after the wedding, we find him and his wife installed in the
house at Concord, owned by the descendants of Reverend Dr. Ripley. It
will be remembered that Hawthorne had invested his only thousand
dollars in the West Roxbury Utopia, whence it was no longer possible to
recover it. He had, however, an unsubstantial Utopian sort of claim for
it, against the Association, which he placed in the hands of George S.
Hillard, and subsequent negotiation would seem to have resulted in
giving Hawthorne a lease of the Ripley house, or "Old Manse," in return
for it. It was already classic ground, for Emerson had occupied the
house for a time and had written his first book there; and thither
Hawthorne went to locate himself, determined to try once more if he
could earn his living by his pen.

[Illustration: THE OLD MANSE, RESIDENCE OF DR. RIPLEY]




CHAPTER VIII

CONCORD AND THE OLD MANSE: 1842-1845


The Ripley house dates back to the times of Captain Daniel Hathorne, or
even before him, and at Concord Fight the British left wing must have
extended close to it. Old and unpainted as it is, it gives a distinct
impression of refinement and good taste. Alone, I believe, among the
Concord houses of former times, it is set back far enough from the
country-road to have an avenue leading to it, lined with balm of Gilead
trees, and guarded at the entrance by two tall granite posts somewhat
like obelisks. On the further side of the house, Dr. Ripley had planted
an apple orchard, which included some rare varieties, especially the
blue pearmain, a dark-red autumn apple with a purple bloom upon it like
the bloom upon the rye. A high rounded hill on the northeast partially
shelters the house from the storms in that direction; and on the
opposite side the river sweeps by in a magnificent curve, with broad
meadows and rugged hills, leading up to the pale-blue outline of Mount
Wachusett on the western horizon. The Musketequid or Concord River has
not been praised too highly. Its clear, gently flowing current,
margined by bulrushes and grassy banks, produces an effect of mental
peacefulness, very different from the rushing turbulent waters and
rocky banks of Maine and New Hampshire rivers. From whatever point you
approach the Old Manse, it becomes the central object in a charming
country scene, and it does not require the peculiar effect of
mouldering walls to make it picturesque. It has stood there long, and
may it long remain.

There was formerly an Indian encampment on the same ground,--a well-
chosen position both strategically and for its southern exposure. Old
Mrs. Ripley had a large collection of stone arrow-heads, corn-mortars,
and other relics of the aborigines, which she used to show to the young
people who came to call on her grandchildren; and there were among them
pieces of a dark-bluish porphyry which she said was not to be found in
Massachusetts, but must have been brought from northern New England.
There was no reason why they should not have been. The Indians could go
from Concord in their canoes to the White Mountains or the Maine lakes,
and shoot the deer that came down to drink from the banks of the river;
but the deer disappeared before the advance of the American farmer, and
the Indians went with them. Now a grandson of Madam Ripley, in the
bronze likeness of a minuteman of 1775, stands sentinel at "The Old
North Bridge."

Hawthorne ascended the hill opposite his house and wrote of the view
from it:

"The scenery of Concord, as I beheld it from the summit of the hill,
has no very marked characteristics, but has a great deal of quiet
beauty, in keeping with the river. There are broad and peaceful
meadows, which, I think, are among the most satisfying objects in
natural scenery. The heart reposes on them with a feeling that few
things else can give, because almost all other objects are abrupt and
clearly defined; but a meadow stretches out like a small infinity, yet
with a secure homeliness which we do not find either in an expanse of
water or air."

The great cranberry meadows below the north bridge are sometimes a
wonderful place in winter, when the river overflows its banks and they
become a broad sheet of ice extending for miles. There one can have a
little skating, an exercise of which Hawthorne was always fond.

It was now, and not at Brook Farm, that he found his true Arcadia, and
we have his wife's testimony that for the first eighteen months or more
at the Old Manse, they were supremely happy. Every morning after
breakfast he donned the blue frock, which he had worn at West Roxbury,
and went to the woodshed to saw and split wood for the daily
consumption. After that he ascended to his study in the second story,
where he wrote and pondered until dinner-time. It appears also that he
sometimes assisted in washing the dishes--like a helpful mate. After
dinner he usually walked to the post-office and to a reading-room in
the centre of the town, where he looked over the Boston _Post_ for
half an hour. Later in the afternoon, he went rowing or fishing on the
river, but his wife does not seem to have accompanied him in these
excursions, for Judge Keyes, who often met him in his boat, does not
mention seeing her with him. In the evenings he read Shakespeare with
Mrs. Hawthorne, commencing with the first volume, and going straight
through to the end, "Titus Andronicus" and all,--and this must have
occupied them a large portion of the winter. How can a man fail to be
happy in such a mode of life!

Hawthorne also went swimming in the river when the weather suited--
rather exceptional in Concord for a middle-aged gentleman; but there
were two very attractive bathing places near the Old Manse, one, a
little above on the opposite side of the river, and the other,
afterwards known as Simmons's Landing, where there was a row of tall
elms a short distance below the bridge. It is probable that Hawthorne
frequented the latter place, as being more remote from human
habitations. He did not take to his gun again, although he could see
the wild ducks in autumn, flying past his house. There were grouse and
quail in the woods, and woodcock were to be found along the brook which
ran through Emerson's pasture; but perhaps Hawthorne had become too
tenderhearted for field-sports.

If Boston is the hub of the universe, Concord might be considered as
the linchpin which holds it on. Its population was originally derived
from Boston, and it must be admitted that it retains more Bostonian
peculiarities than most other New England towns. It does not assimilate
readily to the outside world. Nor is it surprising that few local
visitors called upon the Hawthornes at the Old Manse. Emerson, always
hospitable and public-spirited, went to call on them at once; and John
Keyes, also a liberal-minded man, introduced Hawthorne at the reading-
club. Margaret Fuller came and left a book for Hawthorne to read, which
may have annoyed him more than anything she could have said. Elizabeth
Hoar, a woman of exalted character, to whose judgment Emerson sometimes
applied for a criticism of his verses, also came sometimes; but the Old
Manse was nearly a mile away from Emerson's house, and also from what
might be called the "court end" of the town. Hawthorne's nearest
neighbor was a milk-farmer named George L. Prescott, afterward Colonel
of the Thirty-second Massachusetts Volunteers. He not only brought them
milk, but also occasionally a bouquet culled out of his own fine
nature, as a tribute to genius. A slightly educated man, he was
nevertheless one of Nature's gentlemen, and his death in Grant's
advance on Richmond was a universal cause of mourning at a time when so
many brave lives were lost.

Hawthorne, as usual, was on the lookout for ghosts, and there could not
have been a more suitable abode for those airy nothings, than the Old
Manse. Mysterious sounds were heard in it repeatedly, especially in the
nighttime, when the change of temperature produces a kind of settlement
in the affairs of old woodwork. Under date of August 8 he writes in his
diary:

"We have seen no apparitions as yet,--but we hear strange noises,
especially in the kitchen, and last night, while sitting in the parlor,
we heard a thumping and pounding as of somebody at work in my study.
Nay, if I mistake not (for I was half asleep), there was a sound as of
some person crumpling paper in his hand in our very bedchamber. This
must have been old Dr. Ripley with one of his sermons."

Evidently he would have preferred seeing a ghost to receiving an
honorary degree from Bowdoin College, and if the shade of Doctor Ripley
had appeared to him in a dissolving light, like the Röntgen rays,
Hawthorne would certainly have welcomed him as a kindred spirit and
have expressed his pleasure at the manifestation.

Another idiosyncrasy of his, which seems like the idiom in a language,
was his total indifference to distinguished persons, simply as such. It
was not that he considered all men on a level, for no one recognized
more clearly the profound inequalities of human nature; but he was
quite as likely to take an interest in a store clerk as in a famous
writer. It is not necessary to suppose that a man is a parasite of fame
because he goes to a President's reception, or wishes to meet a
celebrated English lecturer. It is natural that we should desire to
know how such people appear--their expression, their tone of voice,
their general behavior; but Hawthorne did not care for this. At the
time of which we write, Doctor Samuel G. Howe, the hero of Greek
independence and the mental liberator of Laura Bridgman, was a more
famous man than Emerson or Longfellow. He came to Concord with his
brilliant wife, and they called at the Old Manse, where Mrs. Hawthorne
received them very cordially, but they saw nothing of her husband,
except a dark figure gliding through the entry with his hat over his
eyes. One can only explain this by one of those fits of exceeding
bashfulness that sometimes overtake supersensitive natures. School-
girls just budding into womanhood often behave in a similar manner; and
they are no more to be censured for it than Hawthorne,--to whom it may
have caused moments of poignant self-reproach in his daily reflections.
But Doctor Howe was the man of all men whom Hawthorne ought to have
known, and half an hour's conversation might have made them friends for
life.

George William Curtis was a remarkably brilliant young man, and gave
even better promise for the future than he afterwards fulfilled,--as
the editor of a weekly newspaper. He was at Brook Farm with Hawthorne,
and afterward followed him to Concord, but is only referred to by
Hawthorne once, and then in the briefest manner. Neither has Hawthorne
much to say of Emerson; but Thoreau and Ellery Channing evidently
attracted his attention, for he refers to them repeatedly in his diary,
and he has left the one life-like portrait of Thoreau--better than a
photograph--that now exists. He surveys them both in rather a critical
manner, and takes note that Thoreau is the more substantial and
original of the two; and he is also rather sceptical as to Channing's
poetry, which Emerson valued at a high rate; yet he narrowly missed
making a friend of Channing, with whom he afterward corresponded in a
desultory way.

We should not have known of Hawthorne's skating at Concord, but for
Mrs. Hawthorne's "Memoirs," from which we learn that he frequently
skated on the overflowed meadows, where the Lowell railway station now
stands. She writes: "Wrapped in his cloak, he moved like a self-
impelled Greek statue, stately and grave." This is the manner in which
we should imagine Hawthorne to have skated; but all others were a foil
to her husband in the eyes of his wife. [Footnote: "Memories of
Hawthorne," 52.] He was evidently a fine skater, gliding over the ice
in long sweeping curves. Emerson was also a dignified skater, but with
a shorter stroke, and stopping occasionally to take breath, or look
about him, as he did in his lectures. Thoreau came sometimes and
performed rare glacial exploits, interesting to watch, but rather in
the line of the professional acrobat. What a transfiguration of
Hawthorne, to think of him skating alone amid the reflections of a
brilliant winter sunset!

When winter came Emerson arranged a course of evening receptions at his
house for the intellectual people of Concord, with apples and
gingerbread for refreshments. Curtis attended these, and has told us
how Hawthorne always sat apart with an expression on his face like a
distant thunder-cloud, saying little, and not only listening to but
watching the others. Curtis noticed a certain external and internal
resemblance in him to Webster, who was at times a thunderous-looking
person--denoting, I suppose, the electric concentration in his
cranium. Emerson also watched Hawthorne, and the whole company felt his
silent presence, and missed him greatly once or twice when he failed to
come. Miss Elizabeth Hoar said:

"The people about Emerson, Channing, Thoreau and the rest, echo his
manner so much that it is a relief to him to meet a man like Hawthorne,
on whom his own personality makes no impression." Neither did Mrs.
Emerson echo her husband.

The greater a man is, intellectually, the more distinct his difference
from a general type and also from other men of genius. No two
personalities could be more unlike than Hawthorne and Emerson.

It would seem to be part of the irony of Fate that they should have
lived on the same street, and, have been obliged to meet and speak with
each other. One was like sunshine, the other shadow. Emerson was
transparent, and wished to be so; he had nothing to conceal from friend
or enemy. Hawthorne was simply impenetrable. Emerson was cordial and
moderately sympathetic. Hawthorne was reserved, but his sympathies were
as profound as the human soul itself. To study human nature as
Hawthorne and Shakespeare did, and to make models of their
acquaintances for works of fiction, Emerson would have considered a
sin; while the evolution of sin and its effect on character was the
principal study of Hawthorne's life. One was an optimist, and the other
what is sometimes unjustly called a pessimist; that is, one who looks
facts in the face and sees people as they are.

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