And one is also tempted to add:
Hawthorne’s earthly paradise only endured until the autumn of 1843. When cool weather arrived, want and care came also. On November 26 he wrote to George S. Hillard:
“I wish at some leisure moment you would give yourself the trouble to call into Munroe’s book-store and inquire about the state of my ‘Twice-told Tales.’ At the last accounts (now about a year since) the sales had not been enough to pay expenses; but it may be otherwise now—else I shall be forced to consider myself a writer for posterity; or at all events not for the present generation. Surely the book was puffed enough to meet with a sale.”
{Footnote: London Athenæum, August 10, 1889.}
The interpretation of this is that Longfellow, Hillard and Bridge could appreciate Hawthorne’s art, but the solid men of Boston (with some rare exceptions) could not. Even Webster preferred the grotesque art of Dickens to Hawthorne’s “wells of English undefiled.” Recently, one of the few surviving original copies of “Fanshawe” was sold at auction for six hundred dollars. Such is the difference between genius and celebrity.
The trouble then and now is that wealthy Americans as a class feel no genuine interest in art or literature. They do not form a true aristocracy, but a plutocracy, and are for the most part very poorly educated. It was formerly the brag of the Winthrops and Otises that they could go through college and learn their lessons in the recitation-room. Now they go to row, and play foot-ball, and after they graduate, they leave the best portion of their lives behind them. Then if they have a talent for business they become absorbed in commercial affairs; or if not, they travel from one country to another, picking up a smattering of everything, but not resting long enough in any one place for their impressions to develop and bear good fruit. They are not like the aristocratic classes of England, France and Germany, who become cultivated men and women, and serve to maintain a high standard of art and literature in those countries.
The captain of a Cunard steamship, who owned quite a library, said in 1869: “I have bought some very interesting books in New York, especially by a writer named Hawthorne, but the type and paper are so poor that they are not worth binding.” The reason why American publishers do not bring out books in such good form as foreign publishers—is that there is no demand for a first-rate article. Thus do the fine arts languish. When rich young Americans take as much interest in painting and sculpture as they do in foot-ball and yachting, we shall have our Vandycks and Murillos,—if nothing better.
Discouraged with the ill success of “Fanshawe,” Hawthorne had limited himself since then to the writing of short sketches, such as would be acceptable to the magazine editors, and now that he had formed this habit, he found it difficult to escape from it. He informs us in the preface to “Mosses from an Old Manse” that he had hoped a more serious and extended plot would come to him on the banks of Concord River, but his imagination did not prove equal to the occasion. Most of the stories in “Mosses” must have been composed at Concord, but “Mrs. Bull-Frog’” and “Monsieur du Miroir” must have been written previously, for he refers to them in a letter at Brook Farm. A few were published in the Democratic Review, and others may have been elsewhere; but the proceeds he derived from them would not have supported a day-laborer, and toward the close of his second year at the Manse, Hawthorne found himself running in debt for the necessaries of life. He endured this with his usual stoical reticence, although there is nothing like debt to sicken a man’s heart,—unless he be a decidedly light-minded man. Better fortune, however, was on its way to him in the shape of a political revolution.
On March 3, 1844, a daughter was born to the Hawthornes, whom they named Una, in spite of Hillard’s objection that the name was too poetic or too fanciful for the prosaic practicalities of real life. The name was an excellent one for a poet’s daughter, and did not seem out of place in Arcadian Concord. Miss Una grew up into a graceful, fair and poetic young lady,—in all respects worthy of her name. She had an uncommonly fine figure, and, as often happens with first-born children, resembled her father much more than her mother. Her name also suggests the early influence of Spenser in her father’s style and mode of thought.
Soon after this fortunate event Hawthorne wrote a letter to Hillard, in which he said:
“I find it a very sober and serious kind of happiness that springs from the birth of a child. It ought not come too early in a man’s life—not till he has fully enjoyed his youth—for methinks the spirit can never be thoroughly gay and careless again, after this great event. We gain infinitely by the exchange; but we do give up something nevertheless. As for myself who have been a trifler preposterously long, I find it necessary to come out of my cloud-region, and allow myself to be woven into the sombre texture of humanity.”
It seems then that his conscience sometimes reproached him, but this only proves that his moral nature was in a healthy normal condition. There was a certain kind of indolence in him, a love of the dolce far niente, and an inclination to general inactivity which he may have inherited from his seafaring ancestors. Much better so, than to suffer from the nervous restlessness, which is the rule rather than the exception in New England life.
In the same letter he mentions having forwarded a story to Graham’s Magazine, which was accepted but not yet published after many months. He also anticipates an amelioration of his affairs from a Democratic victory in the fall elections.
Meanwhile, Horatio Bridge had been traversing the high seas in the “Cyane,” which was finally detailed to watch for slavers and to protect American commerce on the African coast. He had kept a journal of his various experiences and observations, which he sent to Hawthorne with a rather diffident interrogation as to whether it might be worth publishing. Hawthorne was decidedly of the opinion that it ought to be published,—in which we cordially agree with him,—and was well pleased to edit it for his friend; and, although it has now shared the fate of most of the books of its class, it is excellent reading for those who chance to find a copy of it. Bridge was a good observer, and a candid writer.
The election of 1844 was the most momentous that had yet taken place in American history. It decided the annexation of Texas, and the acquisition of California, with a coast-line on the Pacific Ocean nearly equal to that on the Atlantic; but it also brought with it an unjust war of greed and spoliation, and other evil consequences of which we are only now begining to reach the end. The slaveholders and the Democratic leaders desired Texas in order to perpetuate their control of the government, and it was precisely through this measure that they lost it,—as happens so often in human affairs. It was the gold discoveries in California that upset their calculations. California would not come into the Union as a slave state. Enraged at this failure, the Southern politicians made a desperate attempt to recover lost ground, by seizing on the fertile prairies in the Northwest; but there they came into conflict with the industrial classes of the North, who fought them on their own ground and abolished slavery. Never had public injustice been followed by so swift and terrible a retribution.
In regard to the candidates of 1844, it was hardly possible to compare them. Polk possessed the ability to preside over the House of Representatives, but he did not rise above this; while Clay could be fairly compared on some points with Washington himself, and united with this a persuasive eloquence second only to Webster’s. He was practically defeated by fifteen or twenty thousand abolitionists who preferred to throw away their votes rather than to cast them for a slave-holder.
Hawthorne, in the quiet seclusion of his country home, did not realize this danger to the Republic. He only knew that his friends were victorious, and was happy in the expectation of escaping from his debts, and of providing more favorably for his little family.
There is no evidence in the Hawthorne documents or publications to show exactly when the first edition of “Mosses from an Old Manse” made its appearance, and copies of it are now exceedingly rare, but we find the Hawthorne family in Salem reading the book in the autumn of 1845, so that it was probably brought out at that time and helped to maintain its author during his last days at Concord.
There must have been some magical influence in the Old Manse or in its surrounding scenery, to have stimulated both Emerson’s and Hawthorne’s love of Nature to such a degree. Emerson’s eye dilates as he looks upon the sunshine gilding the trunks of the balm of Gilead trees on his avenue; and Hawthorne dwells with equal delight on the luxuriant squash vines which spread over his vegetable garden. Discoursing on this he says:
“Speaking of summer squashes, I must say a word of their beautiful and varied forms. They presented an endless diversity of urns and vases, shallow or deep, scalloped or plain, molded in patterns which a sculptor would do well to copy, since art has never invented anything more graceful.”
And again:
“A cabbage, too—especially the early Dutch cabbage, which swells to a monstrous circumference, until its ambitious heart often bursts asunder—is a matter to be proud of when we can claim a share with the earth and sky in producing it.”
It would seem as if no one before Hawthorne had rightly observed these common vegetables, whose external appearance is always before our eyes. He not only humanizes whatever attracts his attention, but he looks through a refining medium of his own personality. He has the gift of Midas to bring back the Golden Age for us. Who besides Homer has been able to describe a chariot-race, and who but Hawthorne could extract such poetry from a farmer’s garden?
If we compare this introductory chapter with such earlier sketches as “The Vision at the Fountain” and “The Toll-Gatherer’s Day,” we recognize the progress that Hawthorne has made since the first volume of “Twice Told Tales.” We are no longer reminded of the plain unpainted house on Lake Sebago. His style is not only more graceful, but has acquired greater fulness of expression, and he is evidently working in a deeper and richer vein of thought. Purity of expression is still his polar star, and his writing is nowhere overloaded, but it has a warmer tone, a deeper perspective, and an atmospheric quality which painters call chi-aroscuro. He charms with pleasing fancies, while he penetrates to the soul.
Hawthorne rarely repeats himself in details, and never in designs. Two of Dickens’s most interesting novels, “Oliver Twist” and “David Copperfield,” are constructed on the same theme, but each of the studies in this collection has a distinct individuality which appeals to the reader after a fashion of its own. Each has its moral, or rather central, idea to which all its component parts are related, and teaches a lesson of its own, so unobtrusively that we become possessed of it almost unawares. Some are intensely, even tragically, serious; others so light and airy that they seem as if woven out of gossamer.
There are a few, however, that do not harmonize with the general tone and character of the rest,—especially “Mrs. Bull-Frog,” which Hawthorne himself confessed to having been an experiment, and which strangely enough is much more in the style of his son Julian. “Monsieur du Miroir” and “Sketches from Memory” are relics of his earlier writings; perhaps also “Feather-Top” and “The Procession of Life.” It would have been better perhaps if “Young Goodman Brown” had been used to light a fire at the Old Manse.
“Monsieur du Miroir” is chiefly interesting as an example of Hawthorne’s faculty for elaborating the most simple subject until every possible phase of it has been exhausted. It may also throw some light scientifically on the origin of consciousness. We see ourselves reflected not only in the mirror, but on the blade of a knife, or a puddle in the road; and, if we look sharply enough, in the eyes of other men—even in the expression of their faces. In such manner does Nature force upon us a recognition of our various personalities—the nucleus of self-knowledge, and self-respect.
Whittier once spoke of “Young Goodman Brown” as indicating a mental peculiarity in Hawthorne, which like the cuttle-fish rarely rises to the surface. The plot is cynical, and largely enigmatical. The very name of it (in the way Hawthorne develops the story) is a fearful satire on human nature. He may have intended this for an exposure of the inconsistency, and consequent hypocrisy, of Puritanism; but the name of Goodman Brown’s wife is Faith, and this suggests that Brown may have been himself intended for an incarnation of doubt, or disbelief carried to a logical extreme. Whatever may have been Hawthorne’s design, the effect is decidedly unpleasant.
Emerson talked in proverbs, and Hawthorne in parables. The finest sketches in this collection are parables. “The Birth Mark,” “Rappacini’s Daughter,” “A Select Party,” “Egotism,” and “The Artist of the Beautiful.” “The Celestial Railroad” is an allegory, a variation on “Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“The Birth Mark” and “Rappacini’s Daughter” are like divergent lines, which originate at an single point; and that point is the radical viciousness of trying experiments on human beings. It is bad enough, although excusable, to vivisect dogs and rabbits; but why should we attempt the same course of procedure with those that are nearest and dearest to us? Such parables were not required in the time of Tiberius Cæsar and men and women grew up in a natural, vigorous manner; but now we have become so scientific that we continually attempt to improve on Nature,—like the artist who left the rainbow out of his picture of Niagara because its colors did not harmonize with the background.
The line of divergence in “The Birth Mark” is indicated by its name. We all have our birth-marks,—traits of character, which may be temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the background, but which cannot be eradicated and are certain to reappear at unguarded moments, or on exceptional occasions. Education and culture can do much to soften and temper the disposition, but the original material remains the same. The father who attempts to force his son into a mode of life for which Nature did not intend him, or the mother who quarrels with her daughter’s friends, commits an error similar to that of Hawthorne’s alchemist, who endeavors to remove the birthmark from the otherwise beautiful face of his wife, but only succeeds in effecting this together with her death. The tragical termination of the alchemist’s experiments, the pathetic yielding up of life by his sweet “Clytie,” is described with an impressive tenderness. She sinks to her last sleep without a murmur of reproach.
“Rappacini’s Daughter” might serve as a protest against bringing up children in an exceptional and abnormal manner. I once knew an excellent lady, who, with the best possible intentions, brought up her daughter to be different from all other girls. As a consequence, she was different,—could not assimilate herself to others. She had no admirers, or young friends of her own sex, for there were few points of contact between herself and general society. Her mother was her only friend. She aged rapidly and died early. Similarly, a boy brought up in a secluded condition of purity and ignorance, finally developed into one of the most vicious of men.
Hawthorne has prefigured this by a bright colored flower which sparkles like a gem, very attractive at a distance, but exhaling a deadly perfume. He may not have been aware that the opium poppy has so brilliant a flower that it can be seen at a distance from which all other flowers are invisible. The scene of his story is placed in Italy,—the land of beauty, but also the country of poisoners. Rappacini, an old botanist and necromancer, has trained up his daughter in the solitary companionship of this flower, from which she has acquired its peculiar properties. A handsome young student is induced to enter the garden, partly from curiosity and partly through the legerdemain of Rappacini. The student soon falls under the daughter’s influence and finds himself being gradually poisoned. A watchful apothecary, who has penetrated the necromancer’s secret, provides the young man with an antidote which saves him, but deprives the maiden of life. She crosses the barrier which separated her from a healthy existence, and the poison reacts upon her system and kills her. The old apothecary looks out from his window, and cries, “O Rappacini! Is this the consummation of your experiment?”
The underlying agreement between this story and “The Birth Mark” becomes apparent when we observe that the termination of one is simply a variation upon the last scene of the other. In one instance a beautiful daughter is sacrificed by her father, and in the other a lovely wife is victimized by her husband. There have been thousands, if not millions, of such cases.
There is no other writer but Shakespeare who has portrayed the absolute devotion of a woman’s love with such delicacy of feeling and depth of sympathy as Hawthorne. In the two stories we have just considered, and also in “The Bosom Serpent,” this element serves, like the refrain of a Greek chorus, to give a sweet, penetrating undertone which reconciles us to much that would otherwise seem intolerable. The heroines in these pieces have such a close spiritual relationship that one suspects them of having been studied from the same model, and who could this have been so likely as Hawthorne’s own wife. {Footnote: Notice also the similar character of Sophia in J. Hawthorne’s “Bressant."}
The theme of “The Bosom Serpent” is a husband’s jealousy; and it is the self-forgetful devotion of his wife that finally cures his malady and relieves him of his unpleasant companion. The tale ends with one of those mystifying passages which Hawthorne weaves so skilfully, so that it is difficult to determine from the text whether there was a real serpent secreted under the man’s clothing, or only an imaginary one,—although we presume the latter. Francis of Verulam says, “the best fortune for a husband is for his wife to consider him wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous”; and with good reason, for if he is unreasonably jealous, it shows a lack of confidence in her; but mutal confidence is the well-spring from which love flows, and if the well dries up, there is an end of it.
“The Select Party” is quite a relief, after this tragical trilogy. It is easy to believe that Hawthorne imagined this dream of a summer evening, while watching the great cumulus clouds, tinted with rose and lavender like aerial snow-mountains, floating toward the horizon. Here were true castles in the air, which he could people with shapes according to his fancy; but he chose the most common abstract conceptions, such as, the Clerk of the Weather, the Beau Ideal, Mr. So-they-say, the Coming Man, and other ubiquitous personages, whom we continually hear of, but never see. The Man of Fancy invites these and many others to a banquet in his cloud-castle, where they all converse and behave according to their special characters. A ripple of delicate humor, like the ripple made by a light summer breeze upon the calm surface of a lake, runs through the piece from the first sentence to the last; and the scene is brought to a close by the approach of a thunder-storm, which spreads consternation among these unsubstantial guests, much like that which takes place at a picnic under similar circumstances; and Hawthorne, with his customary mystification, leaves us in doubt as to whether they ever reached terra firma again.
There is one proverbial character, however, whom Hawthorne has omitted from this account; namely, Mr. Everybody. “What Everybody says, must be true;” but unfortunately Everybody’s information is none of the best, and his judgment does not rise above his information. His self-confidence, however, is enormous. He understands law better than the lawyer, and medicine better than the physicians. He is never tired of settling the affairs of the country, and of proposing constitutional amendments. Is it not perfectly natural that Everybody should understand Everybody’s business as well as or better than his own? He is continually predicting future events, and if they fail to take place he predicts them again. He is omnipresent, but if you seek him he is nowhere to be found,—which we may presume to be the reason why he did not appear at the entertainment given by the Man of Fancy.
That which gives the elevated character to Raphael’s faces—as in the “Sistine Madonna” and other paintings—is not their drawing, though that is always refined, but the expression of the eyes, which are truly the windows of the soul. It was the same in Hawthorne’s face, and may be observed in all good portraits of him. An immutable calmness overspread his features, but in and about his eyes there was a spring-like mirthfulness; while down in the shadowy depth of those luminous orbs was concealed the pathos that formed the undercurrent of his life. So it is that high comedy, as Plato long ago observed, lies very close to tragedy.
A well-known French writer compares English humor, in a general way, to beer-drinking, and this is more particularly applicable to Dickens’s characters. The very name of Mark Tapley suggests ale bottles. Thackeray’s humor is of a more refined quality, but a trifle sharp and satirical. It is, however, pure and healthful and might be compared to Rhine-wine. Hawthorne’s humor at its best is more refined than Thackeray’s, as well as of a more amiable quality, and reminds one (on Taine’s principle) of those delicate Italian wines which have very little body, but a delightful bouquet. As a humorist, however, Hawthorne varies in different times and places more than in any other respect. He adapts himself to his subject; is light and playful in “The Select Party”; takes on a more serious vein in “The Celestial Railroad”; in his resuscitation of Byron, in the letter from a lunatic called “P’s Correspondence” he is simply sardonic; and “The Virtuoso’s Collection” has all the effect, although he does not anywhere descend to low comedy, of a roaring farce. In “Mrs. Bull-Frog,” as the title intimates, he approaches closely to the grotesque.
In “The Virtuoso’s Collection” we have the humor of impossibility. Nothing is more common than this, but Hawthorne gives it a peculiar value of his own. A procession of mythological objects, strange historical relics, and the odd creations of fiction passes before our eyes. The abruptness of their juxtaposition excites continuous laughter in us. It would be an extremely phlegmatic person who could read it with a serious face. Don Quixote’s Rosinante, Doctor Johnson’s cat, Shelley’s skylark, a live phoenix, Prospero’s magic wand, the hard-ridden Pegasus, the dove which brought the olive branch, and many others appear in such rapid succession that the reader has no time to take breath, or to consider what will turn up next. Like an accomplished showman, Hawthorne enlivens the performance here and there with original reflections on life, which are perfectly dignified, but become humorous from contrast with their surroundings. In spite of its comical effect, the piece has a very genteel air, for its material is taken from that general stock of information that passes current in cultivated families. The young man of fashion who had never heard of Elijah, or of Poe’s “Raven,” would not have understood it.
In “The Hall of Fantasy,” we catch some glimpses of Hawthorne’s favorite authors:
“The grand old countenance of Homer, the shrunken and decrepit form, but vivid face, of Æsop, the dark presence of Dante, the wild Ariosto, Rabelais’s smile of deep-wrought mirth, the profound, pathetic humor of Cervantes, the all glorious Shakespeare, Spenser, meet guest for an allegoric structure, the severe divinity of Milton and Bunyan, molded of the homeliest clay, but instinct with celestial fire—were those that chiefly attracted my eye. Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied conspicuous pedestals.”
He also adds Goethe and Swedenborg, and remarks of them:
“Were ever two men of transcendent imagination more unlike?”
It is evident that Byron was not a favorite with Hawthorne. In addition to his severe treatment of that poet, in “P’s Correspondence,” he says in “Earth’s Holocaust,” where he imagines the works of various authors to be consumed in a bonfire:
“Speaking of the properties of flame, me-thought Shelley’s poetry emitted a purer light than almost any other productions of his day, contrasting beautifully with the fitful and lurid gleams and gushes of black vapor that flashed and eddied from the volumes of Lord Byron.”
This seems like rather puritanical treatment. If there are false lines in Byron, there are quite as many weak lines in Shelley. If sincerity were to give out a pure flame, Byron would stand that test equal to any. His real fault is to be found in his somewhat glaring diction, like the voix blanc in singing, and in an occasional stroke of persiflage. This increases his attractiveness to youthful minds, but to a nature like Hawthorne’s anything of an exhibitory character must always be unpleasant.
Emerson and Hawthorne only knew Goethe through the translations of Dwight, Carlyle and Margaret Fuller, and yet his poetry made a deeper impression on them than on Lowell and Longfellow, who read it in the original. Hawthorne appears to have taken lessons in German while at Brook Farm, for we find him studying a German book at the Old Manse, with a grammar and lexicon; but, as he confesses in his diary, without making satisfactory progress.
“The Artist of the Beautiful” is a Dantean allegory, and a poetic gem. A young watchmaker, imbued with a spirit above his calling, neglects the profits of his business in order to construct an artificial butterfly,—at once the type of useless beauty and the symbol of immortality, and he perseveres in spite of the difficulties of the undertaking and the contemptuous opposition of his acquaintances. He finally succeeds in making one which seems to be almost endowed with life, but only to be informed that it is no better than a toy, and that he has wasted his time on a thing which has no practical value. A child (who represents the thoughtlessness of the great world) crushes the exquisite piece of workmanship in his little hand; but the watch-maker does not repine at this, for he realizes that after having achieved the beautiful, in his own spirit, the outward symbol of it has comparatively little value. The Artist of the Beautiful is Hawthorne himself; and in this exquisite fable he has not only unfolded the secret of all high art, but his own life-secret as well.
HAWTHORNE AND TRANSCENDENTALISM
The French and English scepticism of the eighteenth century, produced a reaction in the more contemplative German nature, which took the form of a strong assertion of spirit or mind as an entity in itself, and distinct from matter. This movement was more like a national impulse than the proselytism of a sect, but the individual in whom this spiritual impulse of the German people manifested itself at that time was Immanuel Kant. Without discrediting the revelations of Hebrew tradition, he taught the doctrine that instead of looking for evidence of a Supreme Being in the external world, we should seek him in our own hearts; that every man could find a revelation in his own conscience,—in the consciousness of good and evil, by which man improves his condition on earth; that the ideas of a Supreme Being, or of immortality and freedom of will, are inherent in the human mind, and are not to be acquired from experience; but that, as the finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite, we cannot know God in the same sense that we know our own earthly fathers, or as Goethe afterwards expressed it,—-
and that it is in this aspiration for the unattainable, in this reverence for absolute purity, wisdom and love, that the spirit of true religion consists.
The new philosophy was named “Transcendentalism” by Kant’s followers, because it included ideas which were beyond the range of experience. It became popular in Germany, as Platonism, to which it is closely related, became popular in ancient Greece. It has never been accepted in France, where scepticism still predominates, though we hear of it in Taine and a few other writers; but in Great Britain, although the English universities repudiated it, Transcendentalism became so influential that Gladstone has spoken of it, in his Romanes lecture, as the dominant philosophy of the nineteenth century. Every notable English writer of that period, with the exception of Macaulay, Mill, and Spencer, became largely imbued with it. In America its influence did not extend much beyond New England, but in that section at least its proselytes were numbered by thousands, and it effected an intellectual revolution which has since influenced the whole country.
The Concord group of transcendentalists did not accept the teaching of Kant in its original purity; but mixed with it a number of other imported products, that in no way appertain to it. Thoreau was an American sansculotte, a believer in the natural man; Ripley was mainly a socialist; Margaret Fuller was one of the earliest leaders in woman’s rights; Alcott was a Neo-Platonist, a vegetarian, and a non-resistant; while Emerson sympathized largely with Thoreau, and from his poetic exaltation of Nature was looked upon as a pantheist by those who were not accustomed to nice discriminations. Thus it happened that Transcendentalism came to be associated in the public mind with any exceptional mode or theory of life. Its best representatives in America, like Professor Hedge of Harvard, Reverend David A. Wasson and Doctor William T. Harris (so long Chief of the National Bureau of Education), were much abler men than Emerson’s followers, but did not attract so much attention, simply because they lived according to the customs of good society.
Sleepy Hollow, before it was converted into a cemetery, was one of the most attractive sylvan resorts in the environs of Concord. It was a sort of natural amphitheatre, a small oval plane, more than half surrounded by a low wooded ridge; a sheltered and sequestered spot, cool in summer, but also warm and sunny in spring, where the wild flowers bloomed and the birds sang earlier than in other places.
There, on August 22, 1842, a notable meeting took place, between Hawthorne, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, who came that afternoon to enjoy the inspiration of the place, without preconcerted agreement. Margaret Fuller was first on the ground, and Hawthorne found her seated on the hill-side—his gravestone now overlooks the spot—reading a book with a peculiar name, which he “did not understand, and could not afterward recollect.” Such a description could only apply to Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” the original fountain-head and gospel of Transcendentalism.
It does not appear that Nathaniel Hawthorne ever studied “The Critique of Pure Reason.” His mind was wholly of the artistic order,—the most perfect type of an artist, one might say, living at that time,—and a scientific analysis of the mental faculties would have been as distasteful to him as the dissection of a human body. History, biography, fiction, did not appear to him as a logical chain of cause and effect, but as a succession of pictures illustrating an ideal determination of the human race. He could not even look at a group of turkeys without seeing a dramatic situation in them. In addition to this, as a true artist, he was possessed of a strong dislike for everything eccentric and abnormal; he wished for symmetry in all things, and above all in human actions; and those restless, unbalanced spirits, who attached themselves to the transcendental movement and the anti-slavery cause, were particularly objectionable to him. It has been rightly affirmed that no revolutionary movement could be carried through without the support of that ill-regulated class of persons who are always seeking they know not what, and they have their value in the community, like the rest of us; but Hawthorne was not a revolutionary character, and to his mind they appeared like so many obstacles to the peaceable enjoyment of life. His motto was, “Live and let live.” There are passages in his Concord diary in which he refers to the itinerant transcendentalist in no very sympathetic manner.
His experience at Brook Farm may have helped to deepen this feeling. There is no necessary connection between such an idyllic-socialistic experiment and a belief in the direct perception of a great First Clause; but Brook Farm was popularly supposed at that time to be an emanation of Transcendentalism, and is still largely so considered. He was wearied at Brook Farm by the philosophical discussions of George Ripley and his friends, and took to walking in the country lanes, where he could contemplate and philosophize in his own fashion,—which after all proved to be more fruitful than theirs. Having exchanged his interest in the West Roxbury Association for the Old Manse at Concord (truly a poetic bargain), he wrote the most keenly humorous of his shorter sketches, his “The Celestial Railroad,” and in it represented the dismal cavern where Bunyan located the two great enemies of true religion, the Pope and the Pagan, as now occupied by a German giant, the Transcendentalist, who “makes it his business to seize upon honest travellers and fat them for his table with plentiful meals of smoke, mist, moonshine, raw potatoes, and sawdust.”
That Transcendentalism was largely associated in Hawthorne’s mind with the unnecessary discomforts and hardships of his West Roxbury life is evident from a remark which he lets fall in “The Virtuoso’s Collection.” The Virtuoso calls his attention to the seven-league boots of childhood mythology, and Hawthorne replies, “I could show you quite as curious a pair of cowhide boots at the transcendental community of Brook Farm.” Yet there could have been no malice in his satire, for Mrs. Hawthorne’s two sisters, Mrs. Mann and Miss Peabody, were both transcendentalists; and so was Horace Mann himself, so far as we know definitely in regard to his metaphysical creed. Do not we all feel at times that the search for abstract truth is like a diet of sawdust or Scotch mist,—a “chimera buzzing in a vacuum”?
James Russell Lowell similarly attacked Emerson in his Class Day poem, and afterward became converted to Emerson’s views through the influence of Maria White. It is possible that a similar change took place in Hawthorne’s consciousness; although his consciousness was so profound and his nature so reticent that what happened in the depths of it was never indicated by more than a few bubbles at the surface. He was emphatically an idealist, as every truly great artist must be, and Transcendentalism was the local costume which ideality wore in Hawthorne’s time. He was a philosopher after a way of his own, and his reflections on life and manners often have the highest value. It was inevitable that he should feel and assimilate something from the wave of German thought which was sweeping over England and America, and if he did this unconsciously it was so much the better for the quality of his art.
There are evidences of this even among his earliest sketches. In his account of “Sunday at Home” he says: “Time—where a man lives not—what is it but Eternity?” Does he not recognize in this condensed statement Kant’s theorem that time is a mental condition, which only exists in man, and for man, and has no place in the external world? In fact, it only exists by divisions of time, and it is man who makes the divisions. The rising of the sun does not constitute time; for the sun is always rising—somewhere. The positivists and Herbert Spencer deny this, and argue to prove that time is an external entity—independent of man—like electricity; but Hawthorne did not agree with them. He evidently trusted the validity of his consciousness. In that exquisite pastoral, “The Vision at the Fountain,” he says:
“We were aware of each other’s presence, not by sight or sound or touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so among the dead?”
You have probably heard of the German who attempted to evolve a camel out of his inner consciousness. That and similar jibes are common among those persons of whom the Scriptures tell us that they are in the habit of straining at gnats; but Hawthorne believed consciousness to be a trustworthy guide. Why should he not? It was the consciousness of self that raised man above the level of the brute. This was the rock from which Moses struck forth the fountain of everlasting life.
Again, in “Fancy’s Show-Box” we meet with the following:
“Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable before an earthly tribunal, will guilty thoughts,—of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows,—will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence in the supreme court of eternity?”
Is this not an induction from or corollary to the preceding? If it is not Kantian philosophy, it is certainly Goethean. Margaret Fuller was the first American critic, if not the first of all critics, to point out that Goethe in writing “Elective Affinities” designed to show that an evil thought may have consequences as serious and irremediable as an evil action—in addition to the well-known homily that evil thoughts lead to evil actions. In his “Hall of Fantasy” Hawthorne mentions Goethe and Swedenborg as two literary idols of the present time who may be expected to endure through all time. Emerson makes the same prediction in one of his poems.
In “Rappacini’s Daughter” Hawthorne says: “There is something truer and more real than what we can see with the eyes and touch with the finger.”
And in “The Select Party” he remarks: “To such beholders it was unreal because they lacked the imaginative faith. Had they been worthy to pass within its portals, they would have recognized the truth that the dominions which the spirit conquers for itself among unrealities become a thousand times more real than the earth whereon they stamp their feet, saying, ‘This is solid and substantial! This may be called a fact!’”
The essence of Transcendentalism is the assertion of the indestructibility of spirit, that mind is more real than matter, and the unseen than the seen. “The visible has value only,” says Carlyle, “when it is based on the invisible.” No writer of the nineteenth century affirms this more persistently than Hawthorne, and in none of his romances is the principle so conspicuous as in “The House of the Seven Gables.” It is a sister’s love which, like a cord stronger than steel, binds together the various incidents of the story, while the avaricious Judge Pyncheon, “with his landed estate, public honors, offices of trust and other solid unrealities,” has after all only succeeded in building a card castle for himself, which may be dissipated by a single breath. Holgrave, the daguerreotypist, who serves as a contrast to the factitious judge, is a genuine character, and may stand for a type of the young New England liberal of 1850: a freethinker, and so much of a transcendentalist that we suspect Hawthorne’s model for him to have been one of the younger associates of the Brook Farm experiment. He is evidently studied from life, and Hawthorne says of him:
“Altogether, in his culture and want of culture, in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous zeal for man’s welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages had established in man’s behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked, the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many compeers in his native land.”
This is a fairly sympathetic portrait, and it largely represents the class of young men who went to hear Emerson and supported Charles Sumner. In the story, Holgrave achieves the reward of a veracious nature by winning the heart of the purest and loveliest young woman in American fiction.
If Hawthorne were still living he might object to the foregoing argument as a misrepresentation; nor could he be blamed for this, for Ripley, Thoreau, Alcott and other like visionary spirits have so vitiated the significance of Transcendentalism that it ought now to be classed among words of doubtful and uncertain meaning.
Students of German philosophy are now chiefly known as Kantists or Hegelians, and outside of the universities they are commonly classed as Emersonians.
In May, 1845, Paymaster Bridge found himself again on the American coast. Meeting with Franklin Pierce in Boston, they agreed to go to Concord together, and look into Hawthorne’s affairs. Soon after breakfast, Mrs. Hawthorne espied them coming through the gateway. She had never met Pierce, but she recognized Bridge’s tall, elegant figure, when he waved his hat to her in the distance. Hawthorne himself was sawing and splitting in the wood-shed, and thither she directed his friends—to his no slight astonishment when they appeared before him. Pierce had his arm across Hawthorne’s broad shoulders when they reappeared. There is one pleasure, indeed, which young people cannot know, and that is, the meeting of old friends. Mrs. Hawthorne was favorably impressed with Franklin Pierce’s personality; while Horatio Bridge danced about and acted an impromptu pantomime, making up faces like an owl. They assured Hawthorne that something should be done to relieve his financial embarrassment.{Footnote: J. Hawthorne, 281.}
All those whose attention Hawthorne attracted out of the rush and hurry of the world were sure to become interested in his welfare. O’Sullivan, the editor of the Democratic Review, had already exerted himself in Hawthorne’s behalf; but President Polk evidently did not know who Hawthorne was, so that O’Sullivan was obliged to have a puff inserted in his review for the President’s better information. George Bancroft was now in the Cabinet, and could easily have obtained a lucrative post for Hawthorne, but it is plain that Bancroft was not over-friendly to him and that Hawthorne was fully aware of this. Hawthorne had suggested the Salem postmastership, but when O’Sullivan mentioned this, Bancroft objected on the ground that the present incumbent was too good a man to be displaced, and proposed the consulates of Genoa and Marseilles, two deplorable positions and quite out of the question for Hawthorne, in the condition of his family at that time. Perhaps it would have been better for him in a material sense, if he had accepted the invitation to dine with Margaret Fuller.
The summer wore away, but nothing was acomplished; and late in the autumn Hawthorne left the Old Manse to return to his Uncle Robert Manning’s house in Salem, where he could always count on a warm welcome. There he spent the winter with his wife and child, until suddenly, in March, 1846, he was appointed Surveyor of the Port, or, as it is now more properly called, Collector of Customs.
This was, in truth, worth waiting for. The salary was not large, but it was a dignified position and allowed Hawthorne sufficient leisure for other pursuits,—the leisure of the merchant or banker. Salem had already begun to lose its foreign trade, and for days together it sometimes happened that there was nothing to do. Hawthorne’s chief business was to prevent the government from being cheated, either by the importers or by his own subordinates; and it required a pretty sharp eye to do this. All the appointments, even to his own clerks, were made by outside politicians, and when a reduction of employees was necessary, Hawthorne consulted with the local Democratic Committee, and followed their advice. Such a method was not to the advantage of the public service, but it saved Hawthorne from an annoying responsibility. His strictness and impartiality, however, soon brought him into conflict with his more self-important subordinates, who were by no means accustomed to exactness in their dealings, and this finally produced a good deal of official unpleasantness; and the unfavorable reports which were afterward circulated concerning Hawthorne’s life during this period, probably originated in that quarter.
{Illustration: THE CUSTOM HOUSE, SALEM, MASS., WHERE HAWTHORNE WAS EMPLOYED AS SURVEYOR OF THE FORT OF SALEM, AT THE TIME OF HIS WRITING “THE SCARLET LETTER"}
All the poetry that Hawthorne could extract from his occupation at the Custom House is to be found in his preface to “The Scarlet Letter,” but he withholds from us the prosaic side of it,—as he well might. At times he comes close to caricature, especially in his descriptions of “those venerable incumbents who hibernated during the winter season, and then crawled out during the warm days of spring to draw their pay and perform those pretended duties, for which they were engaged.” There were formerly large numbers of moss-grown loafers in the government service, with whiskey-reddened noses and greasy old clothing, who would sun themselves on the door-steps, and tell anecdotes of General Jackson, Senator Benton, and other popular heroes, with whom they would intimate a good acquaintance at some remote period of their lives. If removed from office, they were quite as likely to turn up in a neighboring jail as in any other location. This is no satire, but serious truth; and instances of it can be given.
Hawthorne’s life during the next three years was essentially domestic. In June, 1846, his son Julian was born—a remarkably vigorous baby—at Doctor Peabody’s house in West Street, Boston; Mrs. Hawthorne wisely preferring to be with her own mother during her confinement. {Footnote: At the age of thirty-five, Julian resembled his father so closely that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s old friends were sometimes startled by him, as if they had seen an apparition. He was, however, of a stouter build, and his eyes were different.} With two small children on her hands, Mrs. Hawthorne had slight opportunity to enjoy general society, fashionable or otherwise. Rebecca Manning says, however:
“Neither Hawthorne nor his wife could be said to be ‘in society’ in the technical sense. When the Peabody family lived in Salem, they were, I have been told, somewhat straitened pecuniarily. After Hawthorne’s marriage, I think I remember hearing of his wife going to parties and dinners occasionally. Dr. Loring’s wife was her cousin. Other friends were the Misses Howes, one of whom is now Mrs. Cabot of Boston. Mrs. Foote, who was a daughter of Judge White, was a friend, and I remember some Silsbees who were also her friends. Hawthorne’s wife knew how to cultivate her friends and make the most of them far better than either Hawthorne or his sisters did. I have been told that when Hawthorne was a young man, before his marriage, if he had chosen to enter Salem’s ‘first circle’ he would have been welcome there.”
During this last sojourn in his native city Hawthorne was chosen on the committee for the lyceum lecture course, and proved instrumental in bringing Webster to Salem,—where he had not been popular since the trial of the two Knapps,—to deliver an oration on the Constitution; of which Mrs. Hawthorne has given a graphic description in a letter to her mother on November 19, 1848:
“The old Lion walked the stage with a sort of repressed rage, when he referred to those persons who cried out, ‘Down with the Constitution!’ ‘Madmen! Or most wicked if not mad!’ said he with a glare of fire.”
A pure piece of acting. The national Constitution was not even endangered by the Southern rebellion,—much less by the small band of original abolitionists; and Webster was too sensible not to be aware of this.
While Hawthorne was at the Salem Custom House, he made at least two valuable friends: Doctor George B. Loring, who had married a cousin of Mrs. Hawthorne, and William B. Pike, who occupied a subordinate position in the Custom House, but whom Hawthorne valued for moral and intellectual qualities of which he would seem to have been the first discoverer. They were not friends who would be likely to affect Hawthorne’s political views, except to encourage him in the direction to which he had always tended. Four years earlier, Doctor Loring had been on cordial terms with Longfellow and Sumner, being a refined and intellectual sort of man, but like Hillard, had withdrawn from them on account of political differences. He was an able public speaker, and became a Democratic politician, until 1862, when he went over to the Republicans; but after that he was looked upon with a good deal of suspicion by both parties. The governorship was supposed to have been the object of his ambition, but he never could obtain the nomination. Late in life he was appointed Commissioner of Agriculture, a post for which he was eminently fitted, and finally went to Portugal as United States Minister.
William B. Pike either lacked the opportunity or the necessary concentration to develop his genius in the larger world, but Hawthorne continued to communicate with him irregularly until the close of his life. He invited him to Lenox when he resided there, and Mrs. Lathrop recollects seeing him at the Wayside in Concord, after Hawthorne’s return from Europe. She discribes him as a “short, sturdy, phlegmatic and plebeian looking man,” but with a gentle step and a finely modulated voice. It may have been as well for him that he never became distinguished. {Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, “Memories of Hawthorne,” 154.}
The war with Mexico was now fairly afield, and Franklin Pierce, who left the United States Senate on account of his wife’s health, was organizing a regiment of New Hampshire volunteers, as a “patriotic duty.” Salem people thought differently, and party feeling there soon rose to the boiling-point. There is no other community where political excitement is so likely to become virulent as in a small city. In a country town, like Concord, every man feels the necessity for conciliating his neighbor, but the moneyed class in Salem was sufficient for its own purposes, and was opposed to the war in a solid body. The Whigs looked upon the invasion of Mexico as a piratical attempt of the Democratic leaders to secure the permanent ascendency of their party, and this was probably the true reason for Franklin Pierce’s joining it. In their eyes, Hawthorne was the representative of a corrupt administration, and they would have been more than human if they had not wished him to feel this. The Salem gentry could not draw him into an argument very well, but they could look daggers at him on the street and exhibit their coldness toward him when they went on business to the Custom House. It is evident that he was made to suffer in some such manner, and to a tenderhearted man with a clear conscience, it must have seemed unkind and unjust. {Footnote: When the engagement between the “Chesapeake” and the “Shannon” took place off Salem harbor in August, 1813, and Captain Lawrence was killed in the action, the anti-war sentiment ran so high that it was difficult to find a respectable mansion where his funeral would be permitted.} In his Custom House preface, Hawthorne compares the Whigs rather unfavorably with the Democrats, and this is not to be wondered at; but he should have remembered that it was his own party which first introduced the spoils-of-office system.
The first use that Hawthorne made of his government salary was to cancel his obligations to the Concord tradespeople, and the next was to provide a home for his wife and mother. They first moved to 18 Chestnut Street, in June, 1846; and thence to a larger house, 14 Mall Street, in September, 1847, in which “The Snow Image” was prepared for publication, and “The Scarlet Letter” was written. Hawthorne’s study or workshop was the front room in the third story, an apartment of some width but with a ceiling in direct contradiction to the elevated thoughts of the writer. There is an ominous silence in the American Note-book between 1846 and 1850, which is rather increased than diminished by the publication from his diary of a number of extracts concerning the children. The babies of geniuses do not differ essentially from those of other people, and it is not supposable that Hawthorne’s reflections during this period were wholly confined to his own family. It is to be hoped that fuller information will yet be given to the public concerning their affairs in Salem; for the truth deserves to be told.
In January, 1846, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to her mother:
“No one, I think, has a right to break the will of a child, but God; and if the child is taught to submit to Him through love, all other submission will follow with heavenly effect upon the character. God never drives even the most desperate sinner, but only invites or suggests through the events of His providence.”
Nothing is more unfortunate than to break the will of a child, for all manliness and womanliness is grounded in the will; but it is often necessary to control the desires and humors of children for their self-preservation. Hawthorne himself was not troubled with such fancies. Alcott, who was his nearest neighbor at the Wayside, once remarked that there was only one will in the Hawthorne family, and that was Nathaniel’s. His will was law and no one thought of disputing it. Yet what he writes concerning children is always sweet, tender, and beautiful, with the single exception of a criticism of his own daughter, which was published long after his death and could not have been intended for the public eye.
The war with Mexico was wonderfully successful from a military point of view, but its political effects were equally confounding to the politicians who projected it. The American people resemble the French, quite as much perhaps as they do the English, and the admiration of military glory is one of their Gallic traits. It happened that the two highest positions in the army were both held by Whig generals, and the victory of Buena Vista carried Zachary Taylor into the White House, in spite of the opposition of Webster and Clay, as well as that of the Democrats and the Free Soilers. Polk, Bancroft, and Pierce had all contributed to the defeat of their own party. The war proved their political terminus to the two former; but, mirabile dictu, it became the cap of Fortunatus to Pierce and Hawthorne.
This, however, could not have been foreseen at the time, and the election of Taylor in November, 1848, had a sufficiently chilling effect on the little family in Mall Street. Hawthorne entertained the hope that he might be spared in the general out-turning, as a distinguished writer and an inoffensive partisan, and this indicates how loath he was to relinquish his comfortable position. Let us place ourselves in his situation and we shall not wonder at it. He was now forty-five, with a wife and two children, and destitution was staring him in the face. For ten years he had struggled bravely, and this was the net result of all his endeavors. Never had the future looked so gloomy to him.
The railroad had superseded his Uncle Manning’s business, as it had that of half the mercantile class in the city, and his father-in-law was in a somewhat similar predicament. At this time Elizabeth Peabody was keeping a small foreign book-store in a room of her father’s house on West Street. One has to realize these conditions, in order to appreciate the mood in which Hawthorne’s Custom House preface was written.
There is one passage in it, however, that is always likely to be misunderstood. It is where he says:
“I thought my own prospects of retaining office, to be better than those of my Democratic brethren; but who can see an inch into futurity, beyond his nose? My own head was the first that fell!”
It is clear that some kind of an effort was made to prevent his removal, presumably by George S. Hillard, who was a Whig in good favor; but the conclusion which one would naturally draw from the above, that Hawthorne was turned out of office in a summary and ungracious manner, is not justified by the evidence. He was not relieved from duty until June 14, 1849; that is, he was given a hundred days of grace, which is much more than officeholders commonly are favored with, in such cases. We may consider it morally certain that Hillard did what he could in Hawthorne’s behalf. He was well acquainted with Webster, but unfortunately Webster had opposed the nomination of General Taylor, and was so imprudent as to characterize it as a nomination not fit to be made. This was echoed all over the country, and left Webster without influence at Washington. For the time being Seward was everything, and Webster was nothing.
In a letter to Horace Mann, shortly after his removal, Hawthorne refers to two distinct calumnies which had been circulated concerning him in Salem, and only too widely credited. The most important of these—for it has seriously compromised a number of Salem gentlemen—was never explained until the publication of Mrs. Lathrop’s “Memories of Hawthorne” in 1897; where we find a letter from Mrs. Hawthorne to her mother, dated June 10, 1849, and containing the following passage:
“Here is a pretty business, discovered in an unexpected manner to Mr. Hawthorne by a friendly and honorable Whig. Perhaps you know that the President said before he took the chair that he should make no removals except for dishonesty and unfaithfulness. It is very plain that neither of these charges could be brought against Mr. Hawthorne. Therefore a most base and incredible falsehood has been told—written down and signed and sent to the Cabinet in secret. This infamous paper certifies among other things (of which we have not heard)—that Mr. Hawthorne has been in the habit of writing political articles in magazines and newspapers!” So it appears that the gutta-percha formula {Footnote: By which eighty-eight per cent, of the classified service were removed.} of President Cleveland in regard to “offensive partisanship” was really invented forty years before his time, and had as much value in one case as in the other. It is possible that such a document as Mrs. Hawthorne describes was circulated, signed, and sent to Washington, to make the way easy for President Taylor’s advisers, and if so it was a highly contemptible proceeding; but the statement rests wholly on the affirmation of a single witness, whose name has always been withheld, and even if it were true that Hawthorne had written political articles for Democratic papers the fact would have in no wise been injurious to his reputation. The result must have been the same in any case. General Taylor was an honorable man, and no doubt intended to keep his word, as other Presidents have intended since; but what could even a brave general effect against the army of hungry office-seekers who were besieging the White House,—a more formidable army than the Mexicans whom he had defeated at Buena Vista? In all probability he knew nothing of Hawthorne and never heard of his case.
The second calumny which Hawthorne refers to was decidedly second-rate, and closely resembles a servant’s intrigue. The Department at Washington, in a temporary fit of economy, had requested him to discharge two of his supervisors. He did not like to take the men’s bread away from them, and made a mild protest against the order. At the same time he consulted his chief clerk as to what it might be best to do, and they agreed upon suspending two of the supervisors who might suffer less from it than some others. As it happened, the Department considered Hawthorne’s report favorably, and no suspension took place; but his clerk betrayed the secret to the two men concerned, who hated Hawthorne in consequence, and afterward circulated a report that he had threatened to discharge them unless they contributed to the Democratic campaign fund. This return of evil for good appears to have been a new experience for Hawthorne, but those who are much concerned in the affairs of the world soon become accustomed to it, and pay little attention to either the malice or the mendacity of mankind.
Twenty years later one of Hawthorne’s clerks, who had prudently shifted from the Democratic to the Republican ranks, held a small office in the Boston Navy Yard, and was much given to bragging of his intimacy with “Nat,” and of the sprees they went on together; but the style and description of the man were sufficient to discredit his statements without further evidence. There were, however, several old shipmasters in the Salem Custom House who had seen Calcutta, Canton, and even a hurricane or two; men who had lived close to reality, with a vein of true heroism in them, moreover; and if Hawthorne preferred their conversation to that of the shipowners, who had spent their lives in calculating the profits of commercial adventures, there are many among the well educated who would agree with him. He refers particularly to one aged inspector of imports, whose remarkable adventures by flood and field were an almost daily recreation to him; and if the narratives of this ancient mariner were somewhat mixed with romance, assuredly Hawthorne should have been the last person to complain of them on that account.
At first he was wholly unnerved by his dismissal. He returned to Mall Street and said to his wife: “I have lost my place. What shall we now do for bread?” But Mrs. Hawthorne replied: “Never fear. You will now have leisure to finish your novel. Meanwhile, I will earn bread for us with my pencil and paint-brush.” {Footnote: Mrs. George S. Hillard.} Besides this, she brought forward two or three hundred dollars, which she had saved from his salary unbeknown to him; but who would not have been encouraged by such a brave wife? Fortunately her pencil and paint-brush were not put to the test; at least so far as we know. Already on June 8, her husband had written a long letter to Hillard, explaining the state of his affairs and containing this pathetic appeal:
“If you could do anything in the way of procuring me some stated literary employment, in connection with a newspaper, or as corrector of the press to some printing establishment, etc., it could not come at a better time. Perhaps Epes Sargent, who is a friend of mine, would know of something. I shall not stand upon my dignity; that must take care of itself. Perhaps there may be some subordinate office connected with the Boston Athenæum (Literary). Do not think anything too humble to be mentioned to me.” {Footnote: Conway, 113.}
There have been many tragical episodes in the history of literature, but since “Paradise Lost” was sold for five pounds and a contingent interest, there has been nothing more simply pathetic than this,—that an immortal writer should feel obliged to apply for a subordinate position in a counting-room, a description of work which nobody likes too well, and which to Hawthorne would have been little less than a death in life. “Do not think anything too humble to be mentioned to me”!
What Hillard attempted to do at this time is uncertain, but he was not the man to allow the shrine of genius to be converted into a gas-burner, if he could possibly prevent it. We may presume that he went to Salem and encouraged Hawthorne in his amiable, half-eloquent manner. But we do not hear of him again until the new year. Meanwhile Madam Hawthorne fell into her last illness and departed this life on July 31; a solemn event even to a hard-hearted son—how much more to such a man as she had brought into the world. Three days before her death, he writes in his diary of “her heart beating its funeral march,” and diverts his mind from the awful finale by an accurate description of his two children playing a serio-comic game of doctor and patient, in the adjoining room.
It was under such tragical conditions, well suited to the subject, that he continued his work on “The Scarlet Letter,” and his painfully contracted brow seemed to indicate that he suffered as much in imagination, as the characters in that romance are represented to have suffered. In addition he wrote “The Great Stone Pace,” one of the most impressive of his shorter pieces (published, alas! in a Washington newspaper), and the sketch called “Main Street,” both afterward included in the volume of “The Snow Image.” On January 17, 1850, he was greatly surprised to receive a letter from George S. Hillard with a large check in it,—more than half-way to a thousand dollars,—which the writer with all possible delicacy begged him to accept from a few of his Boston admirers. It was only from such a good friend as Hillard that Hawthorne would have accepted assistance in this form; but he always considered it in the character of a loan, and afterward insisted on repaying it to the original subscribers,—Professor Ticknor, Judge Curtis, and others. Hillard also persuaded James T. Fields, the younger partner of Ticknor & Company, to take an interest in Hawthorne as an author who required to be encouraged, and perhaps coaxed a little, in order to bring out the best that was in him. Fields accordingly went to Salem soon afterward, and has given an account of his first interview with Hawthorne in “Yesterdays with Authors,” which seems rather melodramatic: “found him cowering over a stove,” and altogether in a woe-begone condition. The main point of discussion between them, however, was whether “The Scarlet Letter” should be published separately or in conjunction with other subjects. Hawthorne feared that such a serious plot, continued with so little diversity of motive, would not be likely to produce a favorable impression unless it were leavened with material of a different kind. Fields, on the contrary, thought it better that the work should stand by itself, in solitary grandeur, and feared that it would only be dwarfed by any additions of a different kind. He predicted a good sale for the book, and succeeded in disillusionizing Hawthorne from the notions he had acquired from the failure of “Fanshawe.”
As it was late in the season, Fields would not even wait for the romance to be finished, but sent it to the press at once; and on February 4, Hawthorne wrote to Horatio Bridge:
“I finished my book only yesterday; one end being in the press at Boston, while the other was in my head here at Salem; so that, as you see, the story is at least fourteen miles long.”
The time of publication was a propitious one: the gold was flowing in from California, and every man and woman had a dollar to spend. The first edition of five thousand copies was taken up within a month, and after this Hawthorne suffered no more financial embarrassments. The succeeding twelve years of his life were as prosperous and cheerful as his friends and readers could desire for him; although the sombre past still seemed to cast a ghostly shadow across his way, which even the sunshine of Italy could not entirely dissipate.
“THE SCARLET LETTER”
The germ of this romance is to be found in the tale of “Endicott and the Red Cross,” published in the Token in 1838, so that it must have been at least ten years sprouting and developing in Hawthorne’s mind. In that story he gives a tragically comic description of the Puritan penitentiary,—in the public square,—where, among others, a good-looking young woman was exposed with a red letter A on her breast, which she had embroidered herself, so elegantly that it seemed as if it was rather intended for a badge of distinction than as a mark of infamy. Hawthorne did not conjure this up wholly out of his imagination, for in 1704 the General Court of Massachusetts Bay passed the following law, which he was no doubt aware of: