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Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1





September.--The elm-trees have golden branches intermingled with their
green already, and so they had on the first of the month.

To picture the predicament of worldly people, if admitted to paradise.

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures,
American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The
Egyptian is so of the cavern and mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the
Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

"Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it,"--an
extempore prayer by a New England divine.

In old times it must have been much less customary than now to drink pure
water. Walker emphatically mentions, among the sufferings of a
clergyman's wife and family in the Great Rebellion, that they were forced
to drink water, with crab-apples stamped in it to relish it.

Mr. Kirby, author of a work on the History, Habits, and Instincts of
Animals, questions whether there may not be an abyss of waters within the
globe, communicating with the ocean, and whether the huge animals of the
Saurian tribe--great reptiles, supposed to be exclusively antediluvian,
and now extinct--may not be inhabitants of it. He quotes a passage from
Revelation, where the creatures under the earth are spoken of as distinct
from those of the sea, and speaks of a Saurian fossil that has been found
deep in the subterranean regions. He thinks, or suggests, that these may
be the dragons of Scripture.

The elephant is not particularly sagacious in the wild state, but becomes
so when tamed. The fox directly the contrary, and likewise the wolf.

A modern Jewish adage,--"Let a man clothe himself beneath his ability,
his children according to his ability, and his wife above his ability."

It is said of the eagle, that, in however long a flight, he is never seen
to clap his wings to his sides. He seems to govern his movements by the
inclination of his wings and tail to the wind, as a ship is propelled by
the action of the wind on her sails.

In old country-houses in England, instead of glass for windows, they used
wicker, or fine strips of oak disposed checkerwise. Horn was also used.
The windows of princes and great noblemen were of crystal; those of
Studley Castle, Holinshed says, of beryl. There were seldom chimneys;
and they cooked their meats by a fire made against an iron back in the
great hall. Houses, often of gentry, were built of a heavy timber frame,
filled up with lath and plaster. People slept on rough mats or straw
pallets, with a round log for a pillow; seldom better beds than a
mattress, with a sack of chaff for a pillow.


October 25th.--A walk yesterday through Dark Lane, and home through the
village of Danvers. Landscape now wholly autumnal. Saw an elderly man
laden with two dry, yellow, rustling bundles of Indian corn-stalks,--a
good personification of Autumn. Another man hoeing up potatoes. Rows of
white cabbages lay ripening. Fields of dry Indian corn. The grass has
still considerable greenness. Wild rose-bushes devoid of leaves, with
their deep, bright red seed-vessels. Meeting-house in Danvers seen at a
distance, with the sun shining through the windows of its belfry.
Barberry-bushes,--the leaves now of a brown red, still juicy and healthy;
very few berries remaining, mostly frost-bitten and wilted. All among
the yet green grass, dry stalks of weeds. The down of thistles
occasionally seen flying through the sunny air.

In this dismal chamber FAME was won. (Salem, Union Street.)

Those who are very difficult in choosing wives seem as if they would take
none of Nature's ready-made works, but want a woman manufactured
particularly to their order.

A council of the passengers in a street: called by somebody to decide
upon some points important to him.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in
some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not.

A Thanksgiving dinner. All the miserable on earth are to be invited,
--as the drunkard, the bereaved parent, the ruined merchant, the
broken-hearted lover, the poor widow, the old man and woman who have
outlived their generation, the disappointed author, the wounded, sick,
and broken soldier, the diseased person, the infidel, the man with an
evil conscience, little orphan children or children of neglectful
parents, shall be admitted to the table, and many others. The giver of
the feast goes out to deliver his invitations. Some of the guests he
meets in the streets, some he knocks for at the doors of their houses.
The description must be rapid. But who must be the giver of the feast,
and what his claims to preside? A man who has never found out what he is
fit for, who has unsettled aims or objects in life, and whose mind gnaws
him, making him the sufferer of many kinds of misery. He should meet
some pious, old, sorrowful person, with more outward calamities than any
other, and invite him, with a reflection that piety would make all that
miserable company truly thankful.

Merry, in "merry England," does not mean mirthful; but is corrupted from
an old Teutonic word signifying famous or renowned.

In an old London newspaper, 1678, there is an advertisement, among other
goods at auction, of a black girl, about fifteen years old, to be sold.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a
troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.

The race of mankind to be swept away, leaving all their cities and works.
Then another human pair to be placed in the world, with native
intelligence like Adam and Eve, but knowing nothing of their predecessors
or of their own nature and destiny. They, perhaps, to be described as
working out this knowledge by their sympathy with what they saw, and by
their own feelings.

Memorials of the family of Hawthorne in the church of the village of
Dundry, Somersetshire, England. The church is ancient and small, and has
a prodigiously high tower of more modern date, being erected in the time
of Edward IV. It serves as a landmark for an amazing extent of country.

A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and
loathsome of all brutes.

A snake, taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from fifteen
years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. A type of envy or
some other evil passion.

A sketch illustrating the imperfect compensations which time makes for
its devastations on the person,--giving a wreath of laurel while it
causes baldness, honors for infirmities, wealth for a broken
constitution,--and at last, when a man has everything that seems
desirable, death seizes him. To contrast the man who has thus reached
the summit of ambition with the ambitious youth.

Walking along the track of the railroad, I observed a place where the
workmen had bored a hole through the solid rock, in order to blast it;
but, striking a spring of water beneath the rock, it gushed up through
the hole. It looked as if the water were contained within the rock.

A Fancy Ball, in which the prominent American writers should appear,
dressed in character.

A lament for life's wasted sunshine.

A new classification of society to be instituted. Instead of rich and
poor, high and low, they are to be classed,--First, by their sorrows: for
instance, whenever there are any, whether in fair mansion or hovel, who
are mourning the loss of relations and friends, and who wear black,
whether the cloth be coarse or superfine, they are to make one class.
Secondly, all who have the same maladies, whether they lie under damask
canopies or on straw pallets or in the wards of hospitals, they are to
form one class. Thirdly, all who are guilty of the same sins, whether
the world knows them or not; whether they languish in prison, looking
forward to the gallows, or walk honored among men, they also form a
class. Then proceed to generalize and classify the whole world together,
as none can claim utter exemption from either sorrow, sin, or disease;
and if they could, yet Death, like a great parent, comes and sweeps them
all through one darksome portal,--all his children.

Fortune to come like a pedler with his goods,--as wreaths of laurel,
diamonds, crowns; selling them, but asking for them the sacrifice of
health, of integrity, perhaps of life in the battle-field, and of the
real pleasures of existence. Who would buy, if the price were to be paid
down?

The dying exclamation of the Emperor Augustus, "Has it not been well
acted?" An essay on the misery of being always under a mask. A veil may
be needful, but never a mask. Instances of people who wear masks in all
classes of society, and never take them off even in the most familiar
moments, though sometimes they may chance to slip aside.

The various guises under which Ruin makes his approaches to his victims:
to the merchant, in the guise of a merchant offering speculations; to the
young heir, a jolly companion; to the maiden, a sighing, sentimentalist
lover.

What were the contents of the burden of Christian in the Pilgrim's
Progress? He must have been taken for a pedler travelling with his pack.

To think, as the sun goes down, what events have happened in the course
of the day,--events of ordinary occurrence: as, the clocks have struck,
the dead have been buried.

Curious to imagine what murmurings and discontent would be excited, if
any of the great so-called calamities of human beings were to be
abolished,--as, for instance, death.

Trifles to one are matters of life and death to another. As, for
instance, a farmer desires a brisk breeze to winnow his grain; and
mariners, to blow them out of the reach of pirates.

A recluse, like myself, or a prisoner, to measure time by the progress of
sunshine through his chamber.

Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow
for, and vice versa? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning
at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they attained
riches and honor, as only so much care added?

If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other token
of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it remain
till a death occurred elsewhere, and then to hang that same garland over
the other house, it would have, methinks, a strong effect.

No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.

Fame! Some very humble persons in a town may be said to possess it,--as,
the penny-post, the town-crier, the constable,--and they are known to
everybody; while many richer, more intellectual, worthier persons are
unknown by the majority of their fellow-citizens. Something analogous in
the world at large.

The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of
the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a
layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their
sphere.

Nobody will use other people's experience, nor has any of his own till it
is too late to use it.

Two lovers to plan the building of a pleasure-house on a certain spot of
ground, but various seeming accidents prevent it. Once they find a
group of miserable children there; once it is the scene where crime is
plotted; at last the dead body of one of the lovers or of a dear friend
is found there; and, instead of a pleasure-house, they build a marble
tomb. The moral,--that there is no place on earth fit for the site of a
pleasure-house, because there is no spot that may not have been saddened
by human grief, stained by crime, or hallowed by death. It might be
three friends who plan it, instead of two lovers; and the dearest one
dies.

Comfort for childless people. A married couple with ten children have
been the means of bringing about ten funerals.

A blind man on a dark night carried a torch, in order that people might
see him, and not run against him, and direct him how to avoid dangers.

To picture a child's (one of four or five years old) reminiscences at
sunset of a long summer's day,--his first awakening, his studies, his
sports, his little fits of passion, perhaps a whipping, etc.

The blind man's walk.

To picture a virtuous family, the different members examples of virtuous
dispositions in their way; then introduce a vicious person, and trace out
the relations that arise between him and them, and the manner in which
all are affected.

A man to flatter himself with the idea that he would not be guilty of
some certain wickedness,---as, for instance, to yield to the personal
temptations of the Devil,--yet to find, ultimately, that he was at that
very time committing that same wickedness.

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry
heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?

A girl's lover to be slain and buried in her flower-garden, and the earth
levelled over him. That particular spot, which she happens to plant with
some peculiar variety of flowers, produces them of admirable splendor,
beauty, and perfume; and she delights, with an indescribable impulse, to
wear them in her bosom, and scent her chamber with them. Thus the
classic fantasy would be realized, of dead people transformed to flowers.

Objects seen by a magic-lantern reversed. A street, or other location,
might be presented, where there would be opportunity to bring forward all
objects of worldly interest, and thus much pleasant satire might be the
result.

The Abyssinians, after dressing their hair, sleep with their heads in a
forked stick, in order not to discompose it.

At the battle of Edge Hill, October 23, 1642, Captain John Smith, a
soldier of note, Captain Lieutenant to Lord James Stuart's horse, with
only a groom, attacked a Parliament officer, three cuirassiers, and three
arquebusiers, and rescued the royal standard, which they had taken and
were guarding. Was this the Virginian Smith?

Stephen Gowans supposed that the bodies of Adam and Eve were clothed in
robes of light, which vanished after their sin.

Lord Chancellor Clare, towards the close of his life, went to a village
church, where he might not be known, to partake of the Sacrament.

A missionary to the heathen in a great city, to describe his labors in
the manner of a foreign mission.

In the tenth century, mechanism of organs so clumsy, that one in
Westminster Abbey, with four hundred pipes, required twenty-six bellows
and seventy stout men. First organ ever known in Europe received by King
Pepin, from the Emperor Constantine, in 757. Water boiling was kept in a
reservoir under the pipes; and, the keys being struck, the valves opened,
and steam rushed through with noise. The secret of working them thus is
now lost. Then came bellows organs, first used by Louis le Debonnaire.

After the siege of Antwerp, the children played marbles in the streets
with grape and cannon shot.

A shell, in falling, buries itself in the earth, and, when it explodes, a
large pit is made by the earth being blown about in all directions,--
large enough, sometimes, to hold three or four cart-loads of earth. The
holes are circular.

A French artillery-man being buried in his military cloak on the
ramparts, a shell exploded, and unburied him.

In the Netherlands, to form hedges, young trees are interwoven into a
sort of lattice-work; and, in time, they grow together at the point of
junction, so that the fence is all of one piece.

To show the effect of gratified revenge. As an instance, merely, suppose
a woman sues her lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by
instalments, through a long series of years. At last, when the miserable
victim were utterly trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very
devil of evil passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that
a far greater evil would have come upon himself than on his victim.

Anciently, when long-buried bodies were found undecayed in the grave, a
species of sanctity was attributed to them.

Some chimneys of ancient halls used to be swept by having a culverin
fired up them.

At Leith, in 1711, a glass bottle was blown of the capacity of two
English bushels.

The buff and blue of the Union were adopted by Fox and the Whig party in
England. The Prince of Wales wore them.

In 1621, a Mr. Copinger left a certain charity, an almshouse, of which
four poor persons were to partake, after the death of his eldest son and
his wife. It was a tenement and yard. The parson, head-boroughs, and his
five other sons were to appoint the persons. At the time specified,
however, all but one of his sons were dead; and he was in such poor
circumstances that he obtained the benefit of the charity for himself, as
one of the four.

A town clerk arranges the publishments that are given in, according to
his own judgment.

To make a story from Robert Raikes seeing dirty children at play, in the
streets of London, and inquiring of a woman about them. She tells him
that on Sundays, when they were not employed, they were a great deal
worse, making the streets like hell; playing at church, etc. He was
therefore induced to employ women at a shilling to teach them on Sundays,
and thus Sunday schools were established.

To represent the different departments of the United States government by
village functionaries. The War Department by watchmen, the law by
constables, the merchants by a variety store, etc.

At the accession of Bloody Mary, a man, coming into a house, sounded
three times with his mouth, as with a trumpet, and then made proclamation
to the family. A bonfire was built, and little children were made to
carry wood to it, that they might remember the circumstance in old age.
Meat and drink were provided at the bonfires.

To describe a boyish combat with snowballs, and the victorious leader to
have a statue of snow erected to him. A satire on ambition and fame to
be made out of this idea. It might be a child's story.

Our body to be possessed by two different spirits; so that half of the
visage shall express one mood, and the other half another.

An old English sea-captain desires to have a fast-sailing ship, to keep a
good table, and to sail between the tropics without making land.

A rich man left by will his mansion and estate to a poor couple. They
remove into it, and find there a darksome servant, whom they are
forbidden by will to turn away. He becomes a torment to them; and, in
the finale, he turns out to be the former master of the estate.

Two persons to be expecting some occurrence, and watching for the two
principal actors in it, and to find that the occurrence is even then
passing, and that they themselves are the two actors.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps,
through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
To imagine such circumstances. A woman, tempted to be false to her
husband, apparently through mere whim,--or a young man to feel an
instinctive thirst for blood, and to commit murder. This appetite may be
traced in the popularity of criminal trials. The appetite might be
observed first in a child, and then traced upwards, manifesting itself in
crimes suited to every stage of life.

The good deeds in an evil life,--the generous, noble, and excellent
actions done by people habitually wicked,--to ask what is to become of
them.

A satirical article might be made out of the idea of an imaginary museum,
containing such articles as Aaron's rod, the petticoat of General
Harrison, the pistol with which Benton shot Jackson,--and then a diorama,
consisting of political or other scenes, or done in wax-work. The idea
to be wrought out and extended. Perhaps it might be the museum of a
deceased old man.

An article might be made respecting various kinds of ruin,--ruin as
regards property,--ruin of health,--ruin of habits, as drunkenness and
all kinds of debauchery,--ruin of character, while prosperous in other
respects,--ruin of the soul. Ruin, perhaps, might be personified as a
demon, seizing its victims by various holds.

An article on fire, on smoke. Diseases of the mind and soul,--even more
common than bodily diseases.

Tarleton, of the Revolution, is said to have been one of the two
handsomest men in Europe,--the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.,
being the other. Some authorities, however, have represented him as
ungainly in person and rough in manners. Tarleton was originally bred to
the law, but quitted law for the army early in life. He was son to a
mayor of Liverpool, born in 1754, of ancient family. He wrote his own
memoirs after returning from America. Afterwards in Parliament. Never
afterwards distinguished in arms. Created baronet in 1818, and died
childless in 1833. Thought he was not sufficiently honored among more
modern heroes. Lost part of his right hand in battle of Guilford Court
House. A man of pleasure in England.

It would be a good idea for a painter to paint a picture of a great
actor, representing him in several different characters of one scene,--
Iago and Othello, for instance.


Maine, July 5th, 1837.--Here I am, settled since night before last with
B------, and living very singularly. He leads a bachelor's life in his
paternal mansion, only a small part of which is occupied by a family who
serve him. He provides his own breakfast and supper, and occasionally
his dinner; though this is oftener, I believe, taken at the hotel, or an
eating-house, or with some of his relatives. I am his guest, and my
presence makes no alteration in his way of life. Our fare, thus far, has
consisted of bread, butter, and cheese, crackers, herrings, boiled eggs,
coffee, milk, and claret wine. He has another inmate, in the person of a
queer little Frenchman, who has his breakfast, tea, and lodging here, and
finds his dinner elsewhere. Monsieur S------ does not appear to be more
than twenty-one years old,--a diminutive figure, with eyes askew, and
otherwise of an ungainly physiognomy; he is ill-dressed also, in a coarse
blue coat, thin cotton pantaloons, and unbrushed boots; altogether with
as little of French coxcombry as can well be imagined, though with
something of the monkey aspect inseparable from a little Frenchman. He
is, nevertheless, an intelligent and well-informed man, apparently of
extensive reading in his own language,--a philosopher, B------ tells me,
and an infidel. His insignificant personal appearance stands in the way
of his success, and prevents him from receiving the respect which is
really due to his talents and acquirements; wherefore he is bitterly
dissatisfied with the country and its inhabitants, and often expresses
his feelings to B------ (who has gained his confidence to a certain
degree) in very strong terms.

Thus here are three characters, each with something out of the common
way, living together somewhat like monks. B------, our host, combines
more high and admirable qualities, of that sort which make up a
gentleman, than any other that I have met with. Polished, yet natural,
frank, open, and straightforward, yet with a delicate feeling for the
sensitiveness of his companions; of excellent temper and warm heart; well
acquainted with the world, with a keen faculty of observation, which he
has had many opportunities of exercising, and never varying from a code
of honor and principle which is really nice and rigid in its way. There
is a sort of philosophy developing itself in him which will not
impossibly cause him to settle down in this or some other equally
singular course of life. He seems almost to have made up his mind never
to be married, which I wonder at; for he has strong affections, and is
fond both of women and children.

The little Frenchman impresses me very strongly, too,--so lonely as he is
here, struggling against the world, with bitter feelings in his breast,
and yet talking with the vivacity and gayety of his nation; making this
his home from darkness to daylight, and enjoying here what little
domestic comfort and confidence there is for him; and then going about
all the livelong day, teaching French to blockheads who sneer at him, and
returning at about ten o'clock in the evening (for I was wrong in saying
he supped here,--he eats no supper) to his solitary room and bed. Before
retiring, he goes to B------'s bedside, and, if he finds him awake,
stands talking French, expressing his dislike of the Americans, "Je hais,
je hais les Yankees!"--thus giving vent to the stifled bitterness of the
whole day. In the morning I hear him getting up early, at sunrise or
before, humming to himself, scuffling about his chamber with his thick
boots, and at last taking his departure for a solitary ramble till
breakfast. Then he comes in, cheerful and vivacious enough, eats pretty
heartily, and is off again, singing French chansons as he goes down the
gravel-walk. The poor fellow has nobody to sympathize with him but
B------, and thus a singular connection is established between two
utterly different characters.

Then here is myself, who am likewise a queer character in my way, and
have come to spend a week or two with my friend of half a lifetime,--the
longest space, probably, that we are ever destined to spend together; for
Fate seems preparing changes for both of us. My circumstances, at least,
cannot long continue as they are and have been; and B------, too, stands
between high prosperity and utter ruin.

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