NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 HOW TO KNOW HIM 
 
 By 
 
 George Edward Woodberry 
 
 iAuthor of 
 
 America in Literature, The Torch 
 
 Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 
 
 etc. , etc. 
 
 With Portrait 
 
 027 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS 
 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright 1918 
 The BoBBs-MERRiLt Company 
 
 ^^'^ 
 
 
 \'^ 
 
 % 
 
 /C 
 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUNWORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 nCT -4 i9i8 
 ©CI.A5ila6.) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I Old New England 1 
 
 II Tales of an Elder Day 40 
 
 III Hawthorne's Artistic Method 73' 
 
 IV The Colonial Tradition 96 
 
 V The Great Puritan Romance 136 
 
 VI The New Englander Abroad 179 
 
 VII Conclusion 220 
 
 Index 237 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
HAWTHORNE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OLD NEW ENGLAND 
 
 WHAT is more characteristic of old New Eng- 
 land than a snow-storm ? Whittier's "Snow- 
 Bound" is an epitome of the old home life. Emer- 
 son's "Snow Storm" — 
 
 "Announced by all the trumpets of the sky" — 
 
 although bad meteorology, gives truly the wind- 
 sculpture of the day after, out-of-doors, with its 
 soft farm-contours on "stake, or tree, or door," 
 on "coop or kennel," in the brilliant air. They mix 
 an exquisite homeliness with the wintry beauty, both 
 true to the soil. Hawthorne, in "Snow-Flakes," a 
 slight sketch, describes the approach of the storm, 
 as mere weather, with a loving and minute care that 
 makes it a real overture to winter. The scene is 
 atmospheric, and the air bites. This is old New 
 England on a December day : 
 
 "There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the 
 morning! — and, through the partially frosted win- 
 
 1 
 
2 HAWTHORNE 
 
 dow panes, I love to watch the gradual beginning of 
 the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered 
 widely through the air, and hover downward with 
 uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, 
 now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the 
 atmosphere. These are not the big flakes, heavy 
 with moisture, which melt as they touch the ground, 
 and are portentous of a soaking rain. It is to be, in 
 good earnest, a wintry storm. The two or three peo- 
 ple visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endur- 
 ance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evi- 
 dently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and 
 blustering day. By nightfall, or at least before the 
 sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us, the 
 street and our little garden will be heaped with 
 mountain snow-drifts. The soil, already frozen for 
 weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden 
 may be laid upon it ; and, to a northern eye, the land- 
 scape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire 
 a beauty of its own, when Mother Earth, like her 
 children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her 
 winter's wear. The cloud spirits are slowly weaving 
 her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a 
 rime like hoarfrost over the brown surface of the 
 street; the withered grass of the grass-plat is still 
 discernible; and the slated ropfs of the houses do 
 but begin to look gray instead of black. All the snow 
 that has yet fallen within the circumference of my 
 view, were it heaped up together, would hardly 
 equal the hillock of a grave." 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 3 
 
 There is a snow-bound leisure in the very style! 
 
 A more fixed feature of ancestral New England, 
 with which Hawthorne, boy and man, was familiar, 
 is the fishing village on the coast. He knew the 
 region, also, far and wide in the interior, both by 
 residence and random bits of travel; but his birth 
 and home were by the sea, and he had sea-blood 
 from his fathers. His employment, too, in middle 
 life, brought him in close contact Avith seafaring 
 men. The touch of salt was not uncommon then, in 
 New England blood. Longfellow had it ; and how 
 happily the sea slips like a tide into his verse ! 
 
 "I remember the black wharves and the slips, 
 
 And the sea-tides tossing free ; 
 And the Spanish sailors with bearded lips, 
 And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 
 
 And the magic of the sea." 
 
 Longfellow looked like a sailor, in cheek, eye and 
 build. Hawthorne, in the long tramps he was accus- 
 tomed to take by the rocky ledges of the shore and 
 upon the broad stretches of shining beach, must 
 have felt the call of the blood. All the paraphernalia 
 of the sea interested him ; and its human figures held 
 his eye, alike by their reality and their picturesque- 
 ness. Consider this sketch of the coast village : 
 
 "It was a small collection of dwellings that 
 seemed to have been cast up by the sea, with the 
 rockweed and marine plants that it vomits after a 
 
4 HAWTHORNE 
 
 storm, or to have come ashore among the pipe staves 
 and other lumber which had been washed from the 
 deck of an eastern schooner. There was just space 
 for the narrow and sandy street, between the beach 
 in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its rocky- 
 forehead in the rear, among a waste of juniper 
 bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. 
 The village was picturesque in the variety of its edi- 
 fices, though all were rude. Here stood a little old 
 hovel, built perhaps of driftwood; there a row of 
 boat-houses ; and beyond them a two-story dwelling, 
 of dark and weather-beaten aspect, the whole inter- 
 mixed with one or two snug cottages, painted white, 
 a sufficiency of pigsties, and a shoemaker's shop. 
 Two grocery stores stood opposite each other, in 
 the center of the village. These were the places of 
 resort, at their idle hours, of a hardy throng of fish- 
 ermen, in red baize shirts, oilcloth trousers, and 
 boots of brown leather covering the whole leg; true 
 seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than 
 walk the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as 
 if they did but creep out of salt water to sun them- 
 selves; nor would it have been wonderful to see 
 their lower limbs covered with clusters of little shell- 
 fish, such as cling to rocks and old ship timber over 
 which the tide ebbs and fiows." 
 
 And hearken to "Uncle Parker," as he sits "yarn- 
 ing" in the village store : 
 
 **His figure is before me now, enthroned upon a 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 5 
 
 mackerel barrel, a lean old man, of great height, but 
 bent with years and twisted into an uncouth shape 
 by seven broken limbs ; furrowed also, and weather- 
 worn, as if every gale, for the better part of a cen- 
 tury, had caught him somewhere on the sea. He 
 looked like a harbinger of tempest; a shipmate of 
 the Flying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages 
 aboard men-of-war and merchant-men, fishing 
 schooners and chebacco boats, the old salt had be- 
 come master of a handcart, which he daily trundled 
 about the vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn 
 through the streets of Salem. One of Uncle Par- 
 ker's eyes had been blown out with gunpowder, and 
 the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it 
 upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of 
 cruises against the French, and battles with his own 
 shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be 
 seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down 
 by a spike nail through his trousers, and there to 
 fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the deli- 
 cious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like 
 fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on 
 the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an in- 
 terminable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had 
 gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum 
 and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India 
 schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist, as 
 he related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed 
 him and his companions of their lawful spoil, and 
 sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving 
 him not a drop to drovv^n his sorrow. Villains they 
 
6 HAWTHORNE 
 
 were, and of that wicked brotherhood who are said 
 to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the mariner 
 along the dangerous shores of the Cape.'* 
 
 When it comes the imaginary narrator's turn to 
 take the old "uncle's" place, he tells of the marvelous 
 sailors of a former age: "If the young men boast 
 their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I 
 speak of pilots v/ho knew the wind by its scent and 
 the wave by its taste, and could have steered bHnd- 
 fold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert, 
 guided only by the rote of the shore, — the peculiar 
 sound of the surf on each island, beach, and line 
 of rocks along the coast." This is the same pen 
 that, at a riper period of life and experience, wrote 
 reminiscences of ships' cabins at Boston and sea- 
 captains' talk at Liverpool, and drew those too- 
 faithful and yet-un forgotten portraits of the worth- 
 ies of the Salem Custom House. 
 
 Hawthorne delighted in these local pen-drawings. 
 He was a born observer; and this faculty of minute 
 observation, with the attendant power to reproduce 
 the scene in words, was perhaps the first literary dis- 
 covery he made in the matter of his talent. He was 
 an inveterate journalizer. "Keeping a diary" was 
 a habit of old New England, and, though Haw- 
 thorne called the thing a "note-book," he must have 
 produced endless reams of such writing. This daily 
 exercise — it seems to have been practically that- 
 sharpened and fixed his habit of observation; and, 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 7 
 
 perhaps, it encouraged an indiscriminate attention to 
 small matters. What he jotted in one of these note- 
 books was apt to turn up afterward in a sketch or 
 tale. It was out of such observation and annotation 
 that his early local sketches grew — scenes of the 
 Salem streets, landscapes from a steeple, figures in a 
 railway station, a day in a toll-house on the bridge, 
 and the like. The look of old New England might 
 be almost reconstructed out of these and similar 
 passages in Hawthorne's work. 
 
 But it was not only the local aspect of his imme- 
 diate vicinity that Hawthorne saw and recorded. 
 Old New England was not merely a winter scene or 
 a fishing village, nor even a whole county; it em- 
 braced a mode of life scattered over a wide district. 
 Hawthorne had summered and wintered it in many 
 parts besides Salem, his birthplace, and its surround- 
 ing country. He spent his boyhood at Sebago Lake, 
 in Maine, in a region almost primitive; his college 
 days were passed at Bowdoin; and, later, he knew 
 some sort of vacation travels that took him to New 
 Hampshire, Connecticut and Western Massachu- 
 setts, and apparently as far as Niagara. There are 
 even whispers of Detroit, as a far-western terminal 
 to his wayfaring. Those were the days of the stage- 
 coach, with its abundant opportunity to see the 
 world on a journey, and not merely to speed through 
 it. There was a vagabond streak in Hawthorne at 
 that age, a desire to wander, natural to his years. It 
 seems to have been rather a slow fever, it is true ; it 
 
8 HAWTHORNE 
 
 did not take him far, except in his mind, perhaps; 
 but it made him very sympathetic with the things of 
 "the road." The nucleus of the story-telhng faculty, 
 from Chaucer's day, has often been a pilgrimage. 
 Among Hawthorne's early plans in literature, that 
 never worked out, was one to weave a chain of such 
 vagabond tales by an itinerant story-teller and his 
 companion. Such literary schemes in his mind de- 
 rived both their material and their method from his 
 little journeys in rural communities, where the free- 
 masonry of the stage-coach and the tavern prevailed. 
 The scenes and the characters of these excursions 
 into the provincial world of New England, are often 
 set forth in their raw state in his contemporary 
 note-book, minutely and at length. These are very 
 informal writings, with little intention in them, best 
 described by their editor as "the results of an early 
 formed taste for exercising his pen upon the sim- 
 plest objects of notice that surrounded him." For 
 this very reason they are almost a photographic ren- 
 dering of New England. 
 
 The note-books, indeed, are so continuous and 
 abundant that they constitute, taken together, a mo- 
 tion-picture, so to speak, of Hawthorne's environ- 
 ment from youth to age. The scene is more 
 crowded with humanity, when he is abroad in the 
 world ; when he comes home again, nature comes to 
 the foreground. The diary of his Concord days, 
 after his marriage, illustrates this. It is a history of 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND S 
 
 his farm. Its main interest may be said to be vege- 
 tables. This is his garden : 
 
 "The natural taste of man for the original Adam's 
 occupation is fast developing itself in me. I find that 
 I am a good deal interested in our garden, although, 
 as it was planted before we came here, I do not feel 
 the same affection for the plants that I should if the 
 seed had been sown by my own hands. It is some- 
 thing like nursing and educating another person's 
 children. Still, it was a very pleasant moment when 
 I gathered the first string-beans, which were the 
 earliest esculent that the garden contributed to our 
 table. And I love to watch the successive develop- 
 ment of each new vegetable, and mark its daily 
 growth, which always affects me with surprise. It 
 is as if something were being created under my own 
 inspection, and partly by my own aid. One day, per- 
 chance, I look at my bean-vines, and see only the 
 green leaves clambering up the poles; again, to- 
 morrow, I give a second glance, and there are the 
 delicate blossoms; and a third day, on a somewhat 
 closer observation, I discover the tender young beans, 
 hiding among the foliage. Then, each morning, I 
 watch the swelling of the pods and calculate how 
 soon they will be ready to yield their treasures. All 
 this gives a pleasure and an ideality, hitherto un- 
 thought of, to the business of providing sustenance 
 for my family. I suppose Adam felt it in Paradise ; 
 
10 HAWTHORNE 
 
 and, of merely and exclusively earthly enjoyments, 
 there are few purer and more harmless to be experi- 
 enced. Speaking of beans, by the way, they are a 
 classical food, and their culture must have been the 
 occupation of many ancient sages and heroes. Sum- 
 mer-squashes are a very pleasant vegetable to be 
 acquainted with. They grow in the forms of urns 
 and vases, — some shallow, others deeper, and all 
 with a beautifully scalloped edge. Almost any 
 squash in our garden might be copied by a sculptor, 
 and would look lovely in marble, or in china; and, 
 if I could afford it, I would have exact imitations 
 of the real vegetable as portions of my dining-serv- 
 ice. They would be very appropriate dishes for 
 holding garden-vegetables. Besides the summer- 
 squashes, we have the crook-necked winter-squash, 
 which I always delight to look at, when it turns up 
 its big rotundity to ripen in the autumn sun. Except 
 a pumpkin, there is no vegetable production that im- 
 parts such an idea of warmth and comfort to the 
 beholder. Our own crop, however, does not prom- 
 ise to be very abundant ; for the leaves formed such 
 a superfluous shade over the young blossoms, that 
 most of them dropped off without producing the 
 germ of fruit. Yesterday and to-day I have cut 
 oft* an immense number of leaves, and have thus 
 given the remaining blossoms a chance to profit by 
 the air and sunshine; but the season is too far ad- 
 vanced, I am afraid, for the squashes to attain any 
 great bulk, and grow yellow in the sun. We have 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 11 
 
 muskmelons and watermelons, which promise to 
 supply us with as many as we can eat. After all, 
 the greatest interest of these vegetables does not 
 seem to consist in their being articles of food. It 
 is rather that we love to see something born into 
 the world ; and w^hen a great squash or melon is pro- 
 duced, it is a large and tangible existence, which the 
 imagination can seize hold of and rejoice in. I love, 
 also, to see my own works contributing to the life 
 and well-being of animate nature. It is pleasant to 
 have the bees come and suck honey out of my 
 squash-blossoms, though, when they have laden 
 themselves, they fly away to some unknown hive, 
 which will give me back nothing in return for what 
 my garden has given them. But there is much more 
 honey in the world, and so I am content. Indian 
 corn, in the prime and glory of its verdure, is a very 
 beautiful vegetable, both considered in the separate 
 plant, and in a mass in a broad field, rustling and 
 waving, and surging up and down in the breeze and 
 sunshine of a summer afternoon. We have as many 
 as fifty hills, I should think, which will give us an 
 abundant supply. Pray Heaven that we may be able 
 to eat it all ! for it is not pleasant to think that any- 
 thing which Nature has been at the pains to produce 
 should be thrown away. But the hens will be glad 
 of our superfluity, and so will the pigs, though we 
 have neither hens nor pigs of our own. But hens we 
 must certainly keep. There Is something very so- 
 ciable and quiet, and soothing, too, in their solilo- 
 
12 HAWTHORNE 
 
 quies and converse among themselves; and, in an 
 idle and half -meditative mood, it is very pleasant to 
 watch a party of hens picking up their daily sub- 
 sistence, with a gallant chanticleer in the midst of 
 them. Milton had evidently contemplated such a 
 picture with delight. 
 
 "I find that I have not given a very complete idea 
 of our garden, although it certainly deserves an 
 ample record in this chronicle, since my labors in 
 it are the only present labors of my life. Besides 
 what I have mentioned, we have cucumber-vines, 
 which to-day yielded us the first cucumber of the 
 season, a bed of beets, and another of carrots, and 
 another of parsnips and turnips, none of which 
 promise a very abundant harvest. In truth, the soil 
 is worn out, and, moreover, received very little 
 manure this season. Also, we have cabbages in 
 superfluous abundance, inasmuch as we neither of 
 us have the least affection for them; and it would 
 be unreasonable to expect Sarah, the cook, to eat 
 fifty head of cabbages. Tomatoes, too, we shall have 
 by and by. At our first arrival, we found green 
 peas ready for gathering, and these, instead of the 
 string-beans, were the first offering of the garden 
 to our board.'* 
 
 The mild vein of meditation slipping in between 
 the squashes and the corn, in this extract, indicates 
 that "sunthin' in the pastoral line," long native to 
 the New England literary temperament, though it 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 13 
 
 seldom crops out m recent years. Thoreau was its 
 most distinguished prose prophet; but it covered all 
 our pastures with a mist of sentiment. The mood 
 clung about persons as well as products. There is 
 an adjoining passage, in the diary, about Emerson 
 and Margaret Fuller in the summer woods of Con- 
 cord, near the Old Manse farm described above, 
 which is a true Yankee idyl. Hawthorne is espe- 
 cially happy in his descriptions of the forest land- 
 scape and country atmosphere of his early Concord 
 days. It was, indeed, an enchanted region ; the eyes 
 that looked on it had been touched by fairy herbs. 
 Thoreau confounded Concord River with the Nile, 
 and spoke slightingly of travel except in the Maine 
 woods or on Cape Cod. Emerson, it must be owned, 
 was a fellow conspirator with him in this advocacy 
 of the parish. 
 
 It requires large minds and immense vistas to do 
 away with perspectives and proportion, in this high 
 Concord way. It is to forego the telescope for the 
 microscope, as if minuteness of observation could 
 compensate for the world's horizons. A certain 
 pettiness creeps inevitably upon the daily page that 
 records the habitual and the commonplace, no mat- 
 ter how truthfully. "Yesterday I found two mush- 
 rooms in the woods, probably of the preceding 
 night's growth. Also I saw a mosquito, frost- 
 pinched, and so wretched that I felt avenged for all 
 the injuries which his tribe inflicted ujx^n me last 
 summer, and so did not molest this lone survivor. 
 
14 HAWTHORNE 
 
 ... I found a maple-leaf to-day, yellow all over, 
 except its extremest point, which was bright scarlet. 
 It looked as if a drop of blood were hanging from 
 it." Hawthornesque remarks, truly. These things 
 belong to the fecundity of universal nature, and the 
 infinitesimal has a large share in that. Yet, even in 
 trifles, Hawthorne never loses for long his vivid 
 literary touch. "A gust of violets along a wood- 
 path," — that is the whole note; simple, elemental, 
 like an eastern drawing. But such simplicity, ap- 
 plied to a whole summer and a countryside, requires 
 the tolerance of a strolling mind. His own spirit 
 was of a leisurely make. Small things easily ab- 
 sorbed his attention; they illustrate the nicety of 
 his senses, and, often, the wings of his imagination; 
 but, though it may seem a paradox to say so, this 
 habit of small thinking points to an indolence in 
 his mentality, as if it grew comatose in such leth- 
 argic surroundings as he found himself in from time 
 to time. 
 
 But when he lifts his eyes from insect life, the 
 pigsty and the kitchen-garden, how the winding 
 Concord River comes into view, the grape-vine 
 thickets by Brook Farm, Cow Island with its stately 
 pines — "Somewhat like looking among the pillars 
 of a church;" or, to quote once more his infinite 
 panorama of the countryside, the "American au- 
 tumn" emerges, drenched in sunlight, a tranquil 
 scene worthy of his own romances! 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 15 
 
 "I returned home by the high-road. On my right, 
 separated from the road by a level field, perhaps 
 fifty yards across, was a range of young forest- 
 trees, dressed in their garb of autumnal glory. The 
 sun shone directly upon them; and sunlight is like 
 the breath of life to the pomp of autumn. In its 
 absence, one doubts whether there be any truth in 
 what poets have told about the splendor of an 
 American autumn; but when this charm is added, 
 one feels that the effect is beyond description. As I 
 beheld it to-day, there was nothing dazzling; it 
 was gentle and mild, though brilliant and diversi- 
 fied, and had a most quiet and pensive influence. 
 And yet there were some trees that seemed really 
 made of sunshine, and others were of a sunny red, 
 and the whole picture was painted with but little 
 relief of darksome hues, — only a few evergreens. 
 But there was nothing inharmonious ; and, on closer 
 examination, it appeared that all the tints had a re- 
 lationship among themselves. And this, I suppose, 
 is the reason that, while nature seems to scatter them 
 so carelessly, they still never shock the beholder by 
 their contrasts, nor disturb, but only soothe. The 
 brilliant scarlet and the brilliant yellow are different 
 hues of the maple-leaves, and the first changes into 
 the last. I saw one maple-tree, its center yellow as 
 gold, set in a framework of red. The native poplars 
 have different shades of green, verging towards 
 yellow, and are very cheerful in the sunshine. Most 
 
16 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of the oak-leaves have still the deep verdure of sum- 
 mer; but where a change has taken place, it is into 
 a russet-red, warm, but sober. These colors, in- 
 finitely varied by the progress which different trees 
 have made in their decay, constitute almost the 
 whole glory of autumnal woods; but it is impossible 
 to conceive how much is done with such scanty ma- 
 terials." 
 
 This is like a glass of Donatello's golden wine at 
 Monte Beni. 
 
 As characteristic a scene of Hawthorne's old New 
 England is this sketch in the heart of the city, at no 
 less locally famous a rendezvous than the *'Frog 
 Pond" on Boston Common : 
 
 ''One of my chief amusements is to see the boys 
 sail their miniature vessels on the Frog Pond. 
 There is a great variety of shipping owned among 
 the young people, and they appear to have a con- 
 siderable knowledge of the art of managing vessels. 
 There is a full-rigged man-of-war, with, I believe, 
 every spar, rope, and sail, that sometimes makes its 
 appearance ; and, when on a voyage across the pond, 
 it so identically resembles a great ship, except in 
 size, that it has the effect of a picture. All its mo- 
 tions, — its tossing up and down on the small waves, 
 and its sinking and rising in a calm swell, its heeling 
 to the breeze, — the whole effect, in short, is that of 
 a real ship at sea; while, moreover, there is some- 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 17 
 
 thing that kindles the imagination more than the 
 reality would do. If we see a real, great ship, the 
 mind grasps and possesses, within its real clutch, 
 all that there is of it; while here the mimic ship is 
 the representation of an ideal one, and so gives us a 
 more imaginative pleasure." 
 
 The lesson as to the imagination is significant, 
 and illustrates the nearness of Hawthorne's medita- 
 tion or fancy or sentiment to any object his eye 
 noted; reflection seems instantaneous with observa- 
 tion, and almost to coincide with it. Neither eye nor 
 mind was less hospitable, it seems, to one thing than 
 another. 
 
 But to bring to an end these extracts from many 
 times and seasons and varieties of place, which show 
 different aspects of Hawthorne's native world and 
 the kind of interest he took in it, observe the vivid 
 detail, both material and human, of this Dutch pic- 
 ture, as it were, of the old original Boston hostelry, 
 renowned as 'Tarker's" : 
 
 "I did not go out yesterday afternoon, but after 
 tea I went to Parker's. The drinking and smoking 
 shop is no bad place to see one kind of life. The 
 front apartment is for drinking. The door opens 
 into Court Square, and is denoted, usually, by some 
 choice specimens of dainties exhibited in the win- 
 dows, or hanging beside the door-post; as, for in- 
 stance, a pair of canvas-back ducks, distinguishable 
 
18 HAWTHORNE 
 
 by their delicately mottled feathers; an admirable 
 cut of raw beefsteak; a ham, ready boiled, and with 
 curious figures traced in spices on its outward fat; 
 a half, or perchance the whole, of a large salmon, 
 when in season; a bunch of partridges, etc., etc. A 
 screen stands directly before the door, so as to con- 
 ceal the interior from an outside barbarian. At the 
 counter stand, at almost all hours, — certainly at all 
 hours when I have chanced to observe, — tipplers, 
 either taking a solitary glass, or treating all round, 
 veteran topers, flashy young men, visitors from the 
 country, the various petty officers connected with 
 the law, whom the vicinity of the Court-House 
 brings hither. Chiefly, they drink plain liquors, gin, 
 brandy, or whiskey, sometimes a Tom and Jerry, a 
 gin cocktail (which the bar-tender makes artistic- 
 ally, tossing it in a large parabola from one tumbler 
 to another, until fit for drinking), a brandy-smash, 
 and numerous other concoctions. All this toping 
 goes forward with little or no apparent exhilaration 
 of spirits; nor does this seem to be the object 
 sought, — it being rather, I imagine, to create a tit- 
 illation of the coats of the stomach and a general 
 sense of invigoration, without affecting the brain. 
 Very seldom does a man grow wild and unruly. 
 
 "The inner room is hung round with pictures and 
 engravings of various kinds, — a painting of a pre- 
 mium ox, a lithograph of a Turk and of a Turkish 
 lady, . . . and various showily engraved tailors' 
 advertisements, and other shop-bills; among them 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 19 
 
 all, a small painting of a drunken toper, sleeping on 
 a bench beside the grog-shop, — a ragged, half -hat- 
 less, bloated, red-nosed, jolly, miserable-looking 
 devil, very well done, and strangely suitable to the 
 room in which it hangs. Round the walls are placed 
 some half a dozen marble-topped tables, and a cen- 
 ter-table in the midst; most of them strewn with 
 theatrical and other show-bills; and the large the- 
 ater-bills, with their type of gigantic solidity and 
 blackness, hung against the walls. . . . 
 
 "Pacing the sidewalk in front of this grog-shop 
 of Parker's (or sometimes, on cold and rainy days, 
 taking his station inside), there is generally to be ob- 
 served an elderly ragamufhn, in a dingy and bat- 
 tered hat, an old surtout, and a more than shabby 
 general aspect; a thin face and red nose, a patch 
 over one eye, and the other half drowned in mois- 
 ture. He leans in a slightly stooping posture on a 
 stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody, but 
 fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain in- 
 tentness. He is a man who has been in decent cir- 
 cumstances at some former period of his life, but, 
 falling into decay (perhaps by dint of too frequent 
 visits at Parker's bar), he now haunts about the 
 place, as a ghost haunts the spot where he was mur- 
 dered, 'to collect his rents,' as Parker says, — that is, 
 to catch an occasional nine-pence from some char- 
 itable acquaintances, or a glass of liquor at the bar. 
 The word 'ragamuffin,' which I have used above, 
 does not accurately express the man, because there 
 
20 HAWTHORNE 
 
 is a sort of shadow or delusion of respectability 
 about him, and a sobriety too, and a kind of decency 
 in his groggy and red-nosed destitution." 
 
 In this fresh print from life one recognizes at a 
 glance ''old Moodie," of TJie Blithcdale Romance, 
 on his native or adopted heath, the "saloon," where 
 he was wont to *'lurk." The absence of Moodie, at 
 the moment when, in the romance, the author enters 
 on the scene in search of him, gives an opportunity 
 for a minute description of the saloon, which is an 
 interesting example of how Hawthorne reworked 
 his note-books in more elaborate composition for the 
 press. That autumn foliage, just spread upon the 
 page, is a vista from Blithedale, and could not have 
 been far from "Eliot's pulpit," which is one of the 
 high lights of the rural landscape in the story. In 
 fact, the whole Blithcdale Romance is embedded 
 in contemporaneity to a degree not paralleled in any 
 other of Hawthorne's w^orks, and reproduces scenes 
 from the life of the community in which he lived, 
 that startle the memory by their vivid truth. Their 
 veracity is that of a crude realism. 
 
 Blithedale is set in the midst of wood and pas- 
 ture, and in the breath of agricultural toil. Its story 
 enfolds episodes of quiet beauty and many senti- 
 mental delights; but, as to the life depicted, one 
 closes the pages with a prevailing sense of the trivial 
 and the meager, the anaemic, the dingy and the dull 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 21 
 
 It is intellectually mediocre, and at loose ends ; and, 
 to a degree unusual even in Hawthorne's art, it 
 grows by agglomeration of scene and incident more 
 than by inward development. It shares one great 
 advantage of historical fiction, although it is not 
 history, in that it is based on actual events and 
 social characteristics that had a high interest at 
 the time, and still retain a legendary charm of 
 faded romance; and the opportunity it affords for 
 presenting old New England life, though greatly 
 narrowed by its reform atmosphere, makes it a true 
 chronicle of the time, of permanent local value. It 
 enshrines, as is well known, the economic and spir- 
 itual episode of Brook Farm, but rather as a ro- 
 mantic incident in the community than as a material 
 fact. Brook Farm, however, is only the fountain 
 and origin of the story, which wanders off into 
 quiet dreary suburban places and sinks in mean 
 surroundings. 
 
 The two poles of interest in the story are scenes 
 from nature on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 four romantic characters, obscurely made out as re- 
 gards their relations to one another, Hollingsworth, 
 Zenobia, Priscilla and Westervelt, who move in the 
 contemporary New England environment in town 
 and country; an environment specialized, however, 
 by the socialistic reform atmosphere of those days, 
 as it was illustrated at Brook Farm, and also by 
 the "magnetic" or "mesmeric" interests of the hour. 
 
22 HAWTHORNE 
 
 The place of nature in the romance is symbolized by 
 ''Eliot's pulpit," a rock in the forest, like a score of 
 others in the country woods : 
 
 "The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a 
 shattered granite bowlder, or heap of bowlders, with 
 an irregular outline and many fissures, out of which 
 sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees; as if the 
 scanty soil within those crevices were sweeter to their 
 roots than any other earth. At the base of the pulpit, 
 the broken bowlders inclined towards each other, so 
 as to form a shallow cave, within which our little 
 party had sometimes found protection from a sum- 
 mer shower. On the threshold, or just across it, 
 grew a tuft of pale columbines, in their season, and 
 yiolets, sad and shadowy recluses, such as Priscilla 
 v/as when we first knew her; children of the sun, 
 who had never seen their father, but dwelt among 
 damp mosses, though not akin to them. At the sum- 
 mit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy of a 
 birch-tree which served as a sounding-board for 
 the pulpit. Beneath this shade (with my eyes of 
 sense half shut, and those of the imagination widely 
 opened) I used to see the holy Apostle of the Indi- 
 ans, with the sunlight flickering down upon him 
 through the leaves, and glorifying his figure as with 
 the half-perceptible glow of a transfiguration. 
 
 "I the more minutely describe the rock, and this 
 little Sabbath solitude, because Hollingsworth, at 
 our solicitation, often ascended Eliot's pulpit, and 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 23 
 
 not exactly preached, but talked to us, his few disci- 
 ples, in a strain that rose and fell as naturally as the 
 wind's breath among the leaves of the birch-tree. 
 No other speech of man has ever moved me like 
 some of those discourses. It seemed most pitiful — 
 a positive calamity to the world — that a treasury 
 of golden thoughts should thus be scattered, by the 
 liberal handful, down among us three, when a thou- 
 sand hearers might have been the richer for them; 
 and Hollingsworth the richer, likewise, by the sym- 
 pathy of multitudes. After speaking much or lit- 
 tle, as might happen, he would descend from his 
 gray pulpit, and generally fling himself at full 
 length on the ground, face downward. Meanwhile, 
 we talked around him on such topics as were sug- 
 gested by the discourse." 
 
 The conclusion of the colloquies at the base of 
 "Eliot's pulpit" was staged by the novelist at the 
 village hall, or "lyceum hall," as it was often then 
 called, an institution of those days, that ranked 
 with the "chapel" of an earlier, or the "forum" of 
 a later, time. 
 
 "The scene was one of those lyceum-halls, of 
 which almost every village has now its own, dedi- 
 cated to that sober and pallid, or rather drab- 
 colored, mode of winter-evening entertainment, the 
 lecture. Of late years, this has come strangely into 
 vogue, when the natural tendency of things would 
 
24 HAWTHORNE 
 
 seem to be to substitute lettered for oral methods 
 of addressing the public. But, in halls like this, 
 besides the winter course of lectures, there is a rich 
 and varied series of other exhibitions. Hither comes 
 the ventriloquist, with all his mysterious tongues; 
 the thaumaturgist, too, with his miraculous trans- 
 formations of plates, doves, and rings, his pancakes 
 smoking in your hat, and his cellar of choice liquors 
 represented in one small bottle. Here, also, the 
 itinerant professor instructs separate classes of la- 
 dies and gentlemen in physiology, and demonstrates 
 his lessons by the aid of real skeletons, and manikins 
 in wax, from Paris. Here is to be heard the choir 
 of Ethiopian melodists, and to be seen the diorama 
 of Moscow or Bunker Hill, or the moving pano- 
 rama of the Chinese wall. Here is displayed the 
 museum of wax figures, illustrating the wide Catholi- 
 cism of earthly renown, by mixing up heroes and 
 statesmen, the pope and the Mormon prophet, kings, 
 queens, murderers, and beautiful ladies; every sort 
 of person, in short, except authors, of whom I never 
 beheld even the most famous done in wax. And 
 here, in this many-purposed hall (unless the select- 
 men of the village chance to have more than their 
 share of the Puritanism, which, however diversi- 
 fied with later patchwork, still gives its prevailing 
 tint to New England character), here the company 
 of strolling players sets up its little stage, and 
 claims patronage for the legitimate drama. 
 
 "But, on the autumnal evening which I speak of, 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 25 
 
 a number of printed handbills — stuck up in the bar- 
 room, and on the sign-post of the hotel, and on the 
 meeting-house porch, and distributed largely through 
 the village — had promised the inhabitants an inter- 
 view with that celebrated and hitherto inexplicable 
 phenomenon, the Veiled Lady! 
 
 *'The hall was fitted up with an amphitheatrical de- 
 scent of seats towards a platform, on which stood a 
 desk, two lights, a stool, and a capacious antique 
 chair. The audience was of a generally decent and 
 respectable character : old farmers, in their Sunday 
 black coats, with shrewd, hard, sun-dried faces, and 
 a cynical humor, oftener than any other expression, 
 in their eyes; pretty girls, in many-colored attire; 
 pretty young men, — the schoolmaster, the lawyer, 
 or student at law, the shop-keeper, — all looking 
 rather suburban than rural. In these days, there is 
 absolutely no rusticity, except when the actual labor 
 of the soil leaves its earth-mould on the person. 
 There was likewise a considerable proportion of 
 young and middle-aged women, many of them stern 
 in feature, with marked foreheads, and a very defi- 
 nite line of eyebrow ; a type of womanhood in which 
 a bold intellectual development seems to be keeping 
 pace with the progressive delicacy of the physical 
 constitution. Of all these people I took note, at 
 first, according to my custom. But I ceased to do 
 so the moment that my eyes fell on an individual 
 who sat two or three seats below me, immovable, 
 apparently deep in thought, with his back, of course, 
 
26 HAWTHORNE 
 
 towards me, and his face turned steadfastly upon 
 the platform. 
 
 "After sitting awhile in contemplation of this per- 
 son's familiar contour, I was irresistibly moved to 
 step over the intervening benches, lay my hand on 
 his shoulder, put my mouth close to his ear, and 
 address him in a sepulchral, melodramatic whis- 
 per: — 
 
 " 'Hollingsworth ! where have you left Zeno- 
 bia?' . . . 
 
 "The audience now began to be impatient; they 
 signified their desire for the entertainment to com- 
 mence by thump of sticks and stamp of boot-heels. 
 Nor was it a great while longer before, in response 
 to their call, there appeared a bearded personage in 
 Oriental robes, looking like one of the enchanters 
 of the Arabian Nights. He came upon the platform 
 from a side door, saluted the spectators, not with a 
 salaam, but a bow, took his station at the desk, and 
 first blowing his nose with a white handkerchief, 
 prepared to speak. The environment of the homely 
 village hall, and the absence of many ingenious 
 contrivances of stage-effect with which the exhibi- 
 tion had heretofore been set off, seemed to bring 
 the artifice of this character more openly upon the 
 surface. No sooner did I behold the bearded en- 
 chanter, than, laying my hand again on HoUings- 
 worth's shoulder, I whispered in his ear,- — 
 
 " *Do you know him?' 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 27 
 
 " *I never saw the man before,' he muttered, 
 without turning his head. 
 
 "But I had seen him three times already. Once, 
 on occasion of my first visit to the Veiled Lady; a 
 second time, in the wood-path at Blithedale; and 
 lastly, in Zenobia's drawing-room. It was Wester- 
 velt. A quick association of ideas made me shudder 
 from head to foot; and again, like an evil spirit, 
 bringing up reminiscences of a man's sins, I whis- 
 pered a question in Hollingsworth's ear, — 
 
 " *What have you done with Priscilla?' 
 
 "He gave a convulsive start, as if I had thrust a 
 knife into him, writhed himself round on his seat, 
 glared fiercely into my eyes, but answered not a 
 word. 
 
 "The Professor began his discourse, explanatory 
 of the psychological phenomena, as he termed them, 
 which it was his purpose to exhibit to the spectators. 
 There remains no very distinct impression of it on 
 my memory. It was eloquent, ingenious, plausible, 
 with a delusive show of spirituality, yet really im- 
 bued throughout with a cold and dead materialism. 
 I shivered, as at a current of chill air issuing out of 
 a sepulchral vault, and bringing the smell of cor- 
 ruption along with it. He spoke of a new era that 
 was dawning upon the world; an era that would 
 link soul to soul, and the present life to what we 
 call futurity, with a closeness that should finally 
 convert both worlds into one great, mutually con- 
 
28 HAWTHORNE 
 
 scious brotherhood. He described (in a strange, 
 philosophical guise, with terms of art, as if it were 
 a matter of chemical discovery) the agency by 
 which this mighty result was to be effected; nor 
 would it have surprised me, had he pretended to 
 hold up a portion of his universally pervasive fluid, 
 as he affirmed it to be, in a glass phial. 
 
 "At the close of his exordium, the Professor 
 beckoned with his hand, — once, twice, thrice, — and a 
 figure came gliding upon the platform, enveloped in 
 a long veil of silvery whiteness. It fell about her 
 like the texture of a summer cloud, with a kind of 
 vagueness, so that the outline of the form beneath 
 it could not be accurately discerned. But the move- 
 ment of the Veiled Lady was graceful, free, and 
 unembarrassed, like that of a person accustomed to 
 be the spectacle of thousands; or, possibly, a blind- 
 fold prisoner within the sphere with which this 
 dark earthly magician had surrounded her, she was 
 wholly unconscious of being the central object to 
 all those straining eyes. 
 
 "Pliant to his gesture (which had even an obse- 
 quious courtesy, but at the same time a remarkable 
 decisiveness), the figure placed itself in the great 
 chair. Sitting there, in such visible obscurity, it 
 was, perhaps, as much like the actual presence of a 
 disembodied spirit as anything that stage trickery 
 could devise. The hushed breathing of the spec- 
 tators proved how high-wrought were their antici- 
 pations of the wonders to be performed through 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 29 
 
 the medium of this incomprehensible creature. I, 
 too, was in breathless suspense, but with a far dif- 
 ferent presentiment of some strange event at hand. 
 
 " 'You see before you the Veiled Lady/ said the 
 bearded Professor, advancing to the verge of the 
 platform. 'By the agency of which I have just 
 spoken, she is at this moment in communion with 
 the spiritual world. That silvery veil is, in one 
 sense, an enchantment, having been dipped, as it 
 were, and essentially imbued, through the potency 
 of my art, with the fluid medium of spirits. Slight 
 and ethereal as it seems, the limitations of time and 
 space have no existence within its folds. This hall 
 — these hundreds of faces, encompassing her within 
 so narrow an amphitheatre — are of thinner sub- 
 stance, in her view, than the airiest vapor that the 
 clouds are made of. She beholds the Absolute!' 
 
 "As preliminary to other and far more wonderful 
 psychological experiments, the exhibitor suggested 
 that some of his auditors should endeavor to make 
 the Veiled Lady sensible of their presence by such 
 methods — provided only no touch were laid upon 
 her person — as they might deem best adapted to 
 that end. Accordingly, several deep-lunged country- 
 fellows, who looked as if they might have blown 
 the apparition away with a breath, ascended the 
 platform. Mutually encouraging one another, they 
 shouted so close to her ear that the veil stirred like 
 a wreath of vanishing mist; they smote upon the 
 floor with bludgeons; they perpetrated so hideous 
 
30 HAWTHORNE 
 
 a clamor, that methought it might have reached, at 
 least, a little way into the eternal sphere. Finally, 
 with the assent of the Professor, they laid hold of 
 the great chair, and were startled, apparently, to 
 find it soar upward, as if lighter than the air through 
 which it rose. But the Veiled Lady remained 
 seated and motionless, with a composure that was 
 hardly less than awful, because implying so im- 
 measurable a distance betwixt her and these rude 
 persecutors. 
 
 " These efforts are wholly without avail,' ob- 
 served the Professor, who had been looking on with 
 an aspect of serene indifference. 'The roar of a bat- 
 tery of cannon would be inaudible to the Veiled 
 Lady. And yet, were I to will it, sitting in this very 
 hall, she could hear the desert wind sweeping over 
 the sands as far off as Arabia ; the icebergs grinding 
 one against the other in the polar seas; the rustle 
 of a leaf in an East-Indian forest; the lowest whis- 
 pered breath of the bash fullest maiden in the world, 
 uttering the first confession of her love. Nor does 
 there exist the moral inducement, apart from my 
 own behest, that could persuade her to lift the sil- 
 very veil, or arise out of that chair.' 
 
 "Greatly to the Professors discomposure, how- 
 ever, just as he spoke these words, the Veiled Lady 
 arose. There was a mysterious tremor that shook 
 the magic veil. The spectators, it may be, imagined 
 that she was about to take flight into that invisible 
 sphere, and to the society of those purely spiritual 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 31 
 
 beings with whom they reckoned her so near akin. 
 HoUingsworth, a moment ago, had mounted the 
 platform, and now stood gazing at the figure, with a 
 sad intentness that brought the whole power of his 
 great, stern, yet tender soul into his glance. 
 
 " *Come,' said he, waving his hand towards her. 
 'You are safe T 
 
 "She threw off the veil, and stood before that 
 multitude of people pale, tremulous, shrinking, as if 
 only then had she discovered that a thousand eyes 
 were gazing at her. Poor maiden! How strangely 
 had she been betrayed ! Blazoned abroad as a won- 
 der of the world, and performing what were ad- 
 judged as miracles, — in the faith of many, a seeress 
 and a prophetess; in the harsher judgment of others, 
 a mountebank, — she had kept, as I religiously be- 
 lieve, her virgin reserve and sanctity of soul through- 
 out it all. Within that encircling veil, though an 
 evil hand had flung it over her, there was as deep 
 a seclusion as if this forsaken girl had, all the while, 
 been sitting under the shadow of Eliot's pulpit, in 
 the Blithedale woods, at the feet of him who now 
 summoned her to the shelter of his arms. And the 
 true heart-throb of a woman's affection was too 
 powerful for the jugglery that had hitherto en- 
 vironed her. She uttered a shriek, and fled to Hol- 
 lingsworth, like one escaping from her deadhest 
 enemy, and was safe forever." 
 
 These various extracts illustrate the nature of the 
 
32 HAWTHORNE 
 
 environment amid which Hawthorne was placed in 
 his day and generation, and the raw material, both 
 physical and social, upon which his genius began to 
 work. It does not seem, at first sight, to be a rich 
 soil for genius. It was a provincial life, set in natu- 
 ral magic, but, humanly, rather sad-colored, not to 
 say drab. That is the impression that ^'Blithedale'' 
 gives; and "Blithedale" is all Hawthorne's genius 
 could make of the contemporary scene of New Eng- 
 land in its heyday of ''reform." To a certain degree 
 the reform element in the tale denaturalized New 
 England. The vegetable garden at Concord and 
 the fishing village are truer to type, as are the vign- 
 ettes, soon to be noticed, of the church steeple, the 
 toll-bridge, and the town pump. After all, the town 
 pump is the characteristic topic of Hawthorne's 
 early manner. It rightly occupied, for a season, the 
 center of his stage. That was during the time of 
 his hermit-like seclusion in his chamber at Salem, 
 waiting for his hour to come and knock at his door. 
 Provincial as was his environment in those early 
 years of manhood, after he left college, his share 
 in it was of the slightest. He had no contacts, ap- 
 parently, with life, in the ordinary sense, except 
 through sight. He had little, if any, touch of it. 
 Perhaps this peculiar situation — this social isolation 
 in a small community — sharpened his habits of ob- 
 servation; it certainly emphasized his brooding pro- 
 pensities ; and it, doubtless, deepened the dark veins 
 in his genius. 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 33 
 
 It would, however, be taking far too narrow a 
 view to seek the impress of New England on Haw- 
 thorne's genius merely in his description of the 
 aspect of the soil, or in scenes from contemporary 
 life, as he transferred them direct to his note-books, 
 or in modified forms to his fiction. He drew more 
 deeply from the springs of his birthplace, and his 
 nature was more catholic in its response to life, more 
 comprehensive of the various influences about him, 
 with a greater diversity of gifts, than has been indi- 
 cated. He was distinguished from the New Eng- 
 land group in general by being more of the common 
 human nature, not so specialized in culture or lim- 
 ited in taste and talent as was the fortune of one or 
 another of them. Not so literary — not such a belle- 
 lettrist — as Longfellow, nor so clergy-minded as 
 Emerson — not so countrified as Thoreau, nor so 
 homespun as Whittier, he was a more complete New 
 Englander than any of them, more fully and vari- 
 ously representative of the soil and the people. It 
 has required time to make this apparent; but as the 
 whole period removes gradually, the very excess, 
 as it sometimes seems, of contemporaneity in Haw- 
 thorne stamps him as the outstanding scribe of his 
 age in its **form and feature" as it lived; and not 
 merely realistically for the span of one generation or 
 two, but he cast the spirit and the look of old New 
 England in literature, as one might cast it in bronze, 
 for its whole course — our forefathers and their 
 land, from the little log-house church in the forest 
 
34 HAWTHORNE 
 
 clearing to India wharf with its fleets, "wafted on 
 some of their many courses by every breeze that 
 blows." 
 
 Prolific in books as the later age is, there has 
 been no better description of the New England land, 
 — hill, field and forest, — than Hawthorne wrote 
 down, none so sharply bitten in and at the same time 
 comprehensive in its sweep, so true to atmosphere 
 and faithful to the rich, native color under a bril- 
 liant sky; and to the land he added the rocky mar- 
 gin of his own coast, the inshore sea with its myriad 
 life, and the solitude that spread its larger silence 
 over the non-human world. Similarly, to the quiet 
 but thriving activity of his own day he added the 
 backward reach of history, — the colony; he made 
 himself familiar with the books of his folk, the 
 landmarks of their coming hither and their stay, 
 the superstition that afi^righted them in the wilder- 
 ness, the freedom that sprang up on the new soil, 
 more sound and wholesome than grain, the spirit 
 of adventure that sent their ships through the w^orld ; 
 and his genius, being thus instinct with the whole 
 life of his people, delighted in the tale it told. II 
 the story was crossed with black humors, they were 
 native ones; if it showed meagerness of matter and 
 deprivations of the spirit, they, too, were of the 
 soil and the race. Hawthorne absorbed history 
 from the land, as he had absorbed its natural look; 
 and he went on from this secular understanding of 
 New England to a spiritual understanding, striving 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 35 
 
 to follow its dark and secret thought. This was the 
 climax of his genius. His range, from first to last, 
 was thus broadly inclusive. 
 
 What was, perhaps, fundamental in this slow and 
 orderly unfolding of Hawthorne's genius was his 
 brooding temper, his ability to see things long and 
 repeatedly and to let them sink in, to think ''long 
 thoughts," like the boy in Longfellow's poem remi- 
 niscent of his own youth, and in general to be con- 
 tent with reverie and dream and meditation in lieu 
 of more active pursuits. Though he shows little 
 obvious influence of the sea in his works, except 
 by the presence of such topics as any citizen of a 
 seaport would naturally take up, one associates this 
 brooding temper with the sea-strain in his heredity. 
 He had sea-blood ; and that, perhaps, told most in a 
 certain moodiness and melancholy that underlay his 
 genius and that was, unfortunately, favored and 
 intensified by the mode of his life after leaving col- 
 lege and in the opening years of manhood. But, 
 whatever its cause, meditation came natural to him, 
 and hours of solitary thought and secret musing, 
 indoors and outdoors as well; it was thus that his 
 genius ripened in lonely places. This isolation gave 
 him leisure and concentration, and he used them to 
 appropriate New England's present and past, as they 
 came into his view. The completeness with which 
 he did this showed in the high sentiments of his his- 
 toric imagination and in the human sympathy of his 
 contemporary observations; but it was not in the 
 
36 HAWTHORNE 
 
 picturesque adornment of his native history, nor in 
 feehng sketches of Hfe as he saw it, that he was 
 to paint most intimately the spirit of New England. 
 He drew near, as it were in concentric circles, like 
 a bird of prey, to the core of the New England 
 mystery, — the sense of evil at the heart of life, sin 
 and its ways with the soul. The penance of con- 
 science that follows on acted sin, like an inward 
 vengeance slowly spreading outward on the face of 
 things, the working out of the ancient curse on the 
 children to the third and fourth generation, the 
 transformation wrought in the innocent by the 
 knowledge of good and evil, such that it seems the 
 very birth of the soul itself, — these were the topics 
 that finally evolved the full force of his genius and 
 the perfection of his art. The common ground of 
 all these was his Puritan heredity; not that he set 
 forth in his tales the doctrinal beliefs of the an- 
 terior age, but the true source of his interest in 
 these themes was in his blood and breeding; they 
 stand relieved against that antique history, and 
 draw their imaginative substance and spiritual 
 breath from that old "orthodoxy," as it came to be 
 called. The earlier age, Jonathan Edwards and his 
 virile race of the old clergy, had gone by; now from 
 their dark thoughts and fervid experiences a moral 
 heredity had been distilled, a moral imagination had 
 been generated, and Hawthorne in his creations and 
 meditations spoke for a special culture, markedly 
 religious at bottom, diffused through his community. 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 37 
 
 His creations were the fruit of his meditations. 
 Thought was at their basis. More and more, as 
 will be illustrated, an abstract element entered into 
 his imagination. It is in the quality of this element 
 that his New Englandism is most intense. The New 
 Englanders were a thinking people, and both their 
 thought about life and their experience of life were 
 steeped in the old "orthodoxy," however much lib- 
 eralism had made, here and there, rifts and pockets, 
 as it were, in the common mass. Hawthorne repre- 
 sented this people, and, especially in his major 
 works, their spiritual stamina and the dark air in 
 which it throve. A deeper, but not unusual, shade 
 belonged to his temperament, it may be, than w^as 
 generally found; there may be some question as to 
 the value of his insights, or the success, historically, 
 of his portrayals; but there is no doubt as to the 
 place and character of his main interest. That lay 
 in the fortune of the soul under sin. Again and 
 again, in the small and in the large, he set it forth. 
 In this he most completely fulfilled his function, not 
 merely of describing the land and displa3ang the 
 chronicles of New England, but of being, by grace 
 of the imagination, its true historian. 
 
 There is still another phase of his representative 
 character in relation to his society. The mental 
 manners and customs of New England at that day 
 were marked and peculiar. The age, naturally, had 
 an intellectual cut of its own, as well as a moral 
 and religious habit. The common books of that 
 
38 HAWTHORNE ' 
 
 time often seem very old-fashioned, not only by 
 their pictures, but by the character of their senti- 
 ments and their fancies. It must be acknowledged 
 that some of Hawthorne's early writings seem like 
 lessons in an old New England reader; nor did his 
 literary consanguinity with the times end there. 
 The books of our fathers, like those of modern days, 
 have their fates; but if one is able to recall, by 
 chance, the magazine literature of that period, or, 
 better still, the annuals, keepsakes and that order of 
 compositions, the kind of blood-relationship that is 
 here in mind will be plain. Jones Very, an ad- 
 mirable poet of Salem, if one should turn his pages, 
 will give some sense of the moral atmosphere of the 
 society with which Hawthorne was in contact. Best 
 of all, perhaps, Sylvester Judd's once famous novel 
 —-famous, at least, in limited circles — Margaret, 
 illustrates the imaginative quality of the period. It 
 is in Hawthorne's pages that this vein is found in its 
 permanency, a vein so subtle, so fine, so tenuous, at 
 times, that its presence almost escapes the senses. 
 There was a diaphanous quality in the New Eng- 
 land imagination then, a delicacy of thought and 
 feeling, native to that climate, which found expres- 
 sion in a "visionary sense." Hawthorne often so 
 projected his dream as reverie; and in his firmest 
 creative work something of this illusory feeling in- 
 terleaves the pages. New England was then a place 
 of imagination. 
 
OLD NEW ENGLAND 39 
 
 In these various modes Hawthorne gathered into 
 a focus of genius the Hfe of New England, — its 
 landscape, its annals, its superstitions and its faith, 
 its fantasy and its dreaming ways. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 
 
 HAWTHORNE was, preeminently, an observer 
 and a moralist; or, to state it more broadly 
 and justly, he was both artist and thinker, and with 
 the progress of life, naturally, the mind counted for 
 more than the eye. The objects of observation and 
 meditation, which came within the scope of his inter- 
 ests in the juvenile years of his literary life and be- 
 fore his mind had concentrated and settled on its 
 main bases of thought and tendency in mature man- 
 hood, were miscellaneous. In this earlier and ex- 
 tremely varied portion of the mass of his writings 
 his genius is more experimental and discursive, with 
 traits of youth; but for that very reason the con- 
 tinuous stream of short tales that came from his 
 pen up to middle life discloses more plainly the 
 nature of his mental growth. His journals show 
 rich traces of a wandering mind as well as of a 
 strolling habit ; they are studded with what one can 
 only call "fancies," — ideas and suggestions to be 
 worked out; and the miscellaneousness of these is 
 only a degree greater than that of the tales them- 
 selves. His artistic creations, indeed, are the mo- 
 tions of a wandering mind. The stories, at times, 
 
 40 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 41 
 
 reflect his interest in vagabondage and in oddities of 
 character; they often reveal his Hking for the pic- 
 turesque, the processional, the formal speech of an 
 older fiction, or give a pageant effect to the scenes 
 presented; they are full of decorative instinct, of 
 that half unconscious artistic feeling for the beauti- 
 ful, the exquisite and the subtle, that denotes the 
 artist born. 
 
 The final concentration of Hawthorne's mind 
 upon moral themes, and his treatment of them by 
 symbolical modes, was a very gradual process and 
 seems to have been dependent on that maturity 
 of the mind which comes with time. He would not 
 have been a New Englander if he had not brooded 
 on moral phenomena. But besides this fundamental 
 predisposition of his intellectual interests, supported 
 and reinforced by the temper of the community 
 where he lived, his artistic attention was constantly 
 caught and excited by any concrete sight or circum- 
 stance, any incident or tale or floating fancy, which 
 had a moral meaning or which could be made to 
 suggest one. He was first of all an observer; he 
 was only secondarily a thinker, given to meditation ; 
 his mind worked originally in surfaces, images, 
 fancies. The quality of thought that arises in 
 imagination becomes philosophical and truly medi- 
 tative only after the abstract element makes itself 
 plainly apparent ; in Hawthorne's case this involved 
 the transformation of a physical image into a sym- 
 tpl. Th^t was his artistic rnethod of philosophizing. 
 
42 HAWTHORNE 
 
 But the method was seldom, if ever, quite equal to 
 the task. The result is a continual failure of the 
 art to express the thought; the art falls silent; the 
 thought ceases to appear. The natural motion of 
 the artist, in such a case, is to fall back on the 
 artistic element in his work, on the concrete, the 
 definite, the vivid, and so to lose himself in material 
 realities. 
 
 Hawthorne relinquished slowly the less imagi- 
 native elements in his work, such as historic and 
 legendary fact and the contemporary actualities he 
 observed and noted in his native city and its New 
 England surroundings. Until the time of the novels, 
 he was, in his tales, a thoroughly local New Eng- 
 lander; nor did he lose much of the flavor of the 
 soil in either The House of the Seven Gables or 
 The Blithedale Romance, while The Scarlet Letter 
 merely removes his provincial guise and habit 
 a few generations. He was, in fact, a contempo- 
 rary of all his books, and wrote them, so to speak, 
 from his own generation. He did not transcend 
 his own time by any gift of education, sympathy 
 or travel. It follows from this that he was sub- 
 stantially a man of his parish, — one might say an 
 antiquary of his parish. The innumerable tales of 
 the New England precinct, present and past, real 
 and fanciful, by farmstead and woodland and sea- 
 side, of so many sorts and conditions of men, attest 
 how profoundly and variously he was sympathetic 
 with his own people, their history, and the soil. His 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 43 
 
 genius, as it grew free in his greater works, did not 
 detach him from his inheritance; it rather urged 
 him, as he matured, into the ancient moral channels 
 of his folk; but through all his development, with 
 his growth in moral depth and artistic subtlety, in 
 the knowledge and the means of truth, he held 
 close to his New England nature, breeding and ex- 
 perience. Not so provincial as Whittier, not so 
 "parochial" (to use James's word) as Thoreau, he 
 was infinitely less the cosmopolite than Lowell, Irv- 
 ing or Longfellow. The word, cosmopolitan, in- 
 deed, hardly applies to the Americans of that age; 
 as for Hawthorne, he was, first and last, the New 
 Englander. 
 
 This is most plainly evident, as is natural, in those 
 early writings where the sense of locality is most 
 marked, the product of the duller years in the lonely 
 chamber at Salem, of which he made so much men- 
 tion, in the time when he waited long for fame to 
 come to him. Realism of the most obvious and 
 every-day kind played a large part in his composi- 
 tions; they were, seemingly, condensations of what 
 may have been his daily diary, things seen from his 
 window or on his walks. Commonplace as these 
 slight essays may have been in their day, and jour- 
 nalistic in the sense of having been written for the 
 day's or the week's reading, and being often of the 
 nature of small talk on humble topics, they have 
 acquired with time an antiquarian value, like diaries 
 of our grandfathers; they reproduce with fidelity 
 
44 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the look, the mood, the concerns of that quiet, old- 
 fashioned, early nineteenth-century countryside, and, 
 besides, its intellectual and moral habit. 
 
 It is not the flow of life itself, but the mere aspect 
 of things that is most recorded. The scene is usu- 
 ally of large horizons, of the day's events, or of the 
 road. There is an order of time in these descrip- 
 tions of what goes on from hour to hour for the 
 eye to note in mundane surroundings and happen- 
 ings; but, on the whole, it must be admitted that 
 the little essays often seem chronicles of Lilliput. 
 Spread out the earth and go up into a steeple to sur- 
 vey it, and you gain a certain unity of view, a 
 panoramic sweep; but it is at the cost of nearness 
 to the human world. Some such sense of distance 
 from his kind pervades Hawthorne's local descrip- 
 tions. He found a solitude about him wherever he 
 looked. He takes his umbrella and goes out for a 
 walk in the wet evening ; he sees the mudhole at the 
 corner and the flash of colored lights in the thor- 
 oughfare, the lovers falling into a puddle, — all there 
 is to be seen, in fact, on a dark and stormy night; 
 and then he goes back to be comfortable and alone 
 in "the chamber" that he has left, this time, at 
 least, only in fancy. Little journeys like this, he is 
 fond of. They may take him only to the town 
 pump, or they may take him as far as Nantucket; 
 or perhaps he rambles with only the fancy of the 
 bell-man's ding-dong, crying the lost, in his head. 
 Be they far or near, matter of fact or matter of 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 45 
 
 fancy, they are compact of realism, — gravestones, 
 toy-shops, the menagerie, sugar-plums, organ- 
 grinders, an endless medley. Now and then a scene 
 as clear-cut and lively as a Bewick tail-piece occurs. 
 Here is one, fresh from Salem's Asiatic trade : 
 
 "I see vessels unlading at the wharf, and precious 
 merchandise strewn upon the ground, abundantly 
 as at the bottom of the sea, that market whence 
 no goods return, and where there is no captain nor 
 supercargo to render an account of sales. Here, 
 the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils, 
 and sailors ply the block and tackle that hang over 
 the hold, accompanying their toil with cries, long 
 drawn and roughly melodious, till the bales and 
 puncheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance 
 a group of gentlemen are assembled round the door 
 of a warehouse. Grave seniors be they, and I would 
 wager — if it were safe in these times to be respon- 
 sible for any one — that the least eminent among 
 them might vie with old Vicentio, that incomparable 
 trafficker of Pisa. I can even select the wealthiest 
 of the company. It is the elderly personage, in 
 somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair, the 
 superfluous whiteness of which is visible upon the 
 cape of his coat. His twenty ships are wafted on 
 some of their many courses by every breeze that 
 blows, and his name — I will venture to say, though 
 I know it not — is a familiar sound among the far 
 separated merchants of Europe and the Indies." 
 
46 HAWTHORNE 
 
 These vignettes of small scenes are innumerable 
 in Hawthorne's local writings. They are even more 
 brief, scarcely outline sketches, in those articles 
 whose method of construction is simply a tying-up 
 of infinite detail, such as the narrative of the inci- 
 dents of the day at the toll-bridge. It was a 
 famous bridge in those times, the old Essex bridge 
 that led from Salem to Beverly across the river, 
 where a broad arm of the sea made inland. On its 
 timbers, he says, the travel of the north and east 
 continually throbbed : and he details the nondescript 
 procession of the road from the first fragrant load 
 of hay before dawn to the noonday glare, the stop- 
 page of traf^c when the eastern schooner "sticks" 
 in the draw, on till the gleam of the island light- 
 house far seaward follows the sunset glow. The 
 scene is a picture of an old New England sea- 
 side day. 
 
 "Here, in a substantial family chaise, setting forth 
 betimes to take advantage of the dewy road, come 
 a gentleman and his wife, with their rosy-cheeked 
 little girl sitting gladsomely between them. The 
 bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious 
 band-boxes, and carpet-bags, and beneath the axle 
 swings a leathern trunk, dusty with yesterday's 
 journey. Next appears a four-wheeled carryall, 
 peopled with a round half dozen of pretty girls, 
 all drawn by a single horse, and driven by a single 
 gentleman. Luckless wight, doomed, through a 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 4Z 
 
 whole summer day, to be the butt of mirth and mis- 
 chief among the frolicsome maidens ! Bolt upright 
 in a sulky rides a thin, sour-visaged man, who, as 
 he pays his toll, hands the toll-gatherer a printed 
 card to stick upon the wall. The vinegar- faced 
 traveller proves to be a manufacturer of pickles. 
 Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horse- 
 man clad in black, with a meditative brow, as of one 
 who, whithersoever his steed might bear him, would 
 still journey through a mist of brooding thought. 
 He is a country preacher, going to labor at a pro- 
 tracted meeting. The next object passing town- 
 ward is a butcher's cart, canopied with its arch of 
 snow-white . cotton. Behind comes a *sauceman,' 
 driving a wagon full of new potatoes, green ears of 
 corn, beets, carrots, turnips, and summer squashes; 
 and next, two wrinkled, withered, witch-looking old 
 gossips, in an antediluvian chaise, drawn by a horse 
 of former generations, and going to peddle out a 
 lot of huckleberries. See there, a man trundling 
 a wheelbarrow load of lobsters. And now a milk 
 cart rattles briskly onward, covered with green can- 
 vas, and conveying the contributions of a whole 
 herd of cows in large tin canisters. 
 
 *'The draw being lifted to permit the passage of 
 a schooner, laden with wood from the eastern 
 forests, she sticks immovably, right athwart the 
 bridge! Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm, 
 
48 HAWTHORNE 
 
 a throng of impatient travellers fret and fume. 
 Here are two sailors in a gig, with the top thrown 
 back, both puffing cigars, and swearing all sorts of 
 forecastle oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dash- 
 ingly dressed gentleman and a lady, he from a 
 tailor's shopboard and she from a milliner's back 
 room — the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And 
 what are the haughtiest of us but the ephemeral 
 aristocrats of a summer's day? Here is a tin ped- 
 lar, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, 
 like a travelling meteor or opposition sun; and on 
 the other side a seller of spruce beer, which brisk 
 liquor is confined in several dozens of stone bot- 
 tles. Here comes a party of ladies on horseback, 
 in green riding habits, and gentleman attendant; 
 and there a flock of sheep for the market, patter- 
 ing over the bridge with a multitudinous clatter of 
 their little hoofs. Here a Frenchman, with a hand 
 organ on his shoulder ; and there an itinerant Swiss 
 jeweller. 
 
 "Far westward now^ the reddening sun throws a 
 broad sheet of splendor across the flood, and to the 
 eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly among the 
 timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the 
 town to quaff the freshening breeze. One or two 
 let down long lines, and haul up flapping flounders, 
 or cunners, or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others, 
 and fair girls among them, with the flush of the 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 49 
 
 hot day still on their cheeks, bend over the railing 
 and watch the heaps of seaweed floating upward 
 with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp 
 heavily along the bridge, and wistfully bethink them 
 of their stables. Rest, rest, thou weary world! for 
 to-morrow's round of toil and pleasure will be as 
 wearisome as to-day's has been; yet both shall bear 
 thee onward a day's march of eternity. Now the 
 old toll-gatherer looks seaward, and discerns the 
 light-house kindling on a far island, and the stars, 
 too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way be- 
 yond; and mingling reveries of heaven with remem- 
 brances of earth, the whole procession of moral 
 travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage which he has 
 witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms 
 for his thoughtful soul to muse upon." 
 
 Through this busy day it is curious to observe 
 how Hawthorne, just as in the wet evening, keeps 
 the solitude of the spectator. It is as if these figures 
 and objects passed in a mirror. Far deeper is the 
 solitude in which he plunges himself by the sea- 
 side. Photographic as are his impressions of land 
 scenes, of the village street, the kitchen garden, the 
 deep woods at Concord or the more open roadside 
 country, it is the sea that he most absorbs into his 
 spirit, and reproduces with the tones, almost, of 
 nature herself. A thousand small scenes recur to 
 the memory familiar with his deep-water pages. 
 He does not tell of the blue sea itself, as the 
 
50 HAWTHORNE 
 
 sailor knows it; he always views it from the land, 
 as an ancient poet preferred, and thus it is coast- 
 scenery he describes ; but with what a pencil for mi- 
 nutiae, for shadings and aspects ! and with the frank- 
 ness of a solitary, of one who does not fear to be 
 overheard ! and with v/hat an intimacy with the ob- 
 ject! His day by the seashore gathers up many 
 days, no doubt. Did one ever find, except in boy- 
 hood, as many objects as he catalogues in one stroll? 
 To review briefly his pleasures of "hours and 
 hours," what a perfect description of beach birds 
 is this ! and how vivid is the sweep and thunder of 
 the chasm, that follows ! 
 
 "I made acquaintance with a flock of beach birds. 
 These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me 
 by about a stone's throw along the strand, seeking, 
 I suppose, for food upon its margin. Yet, with a 
 philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate, 
 they drew a continual pleasure from their toil for 
 a subsistence. The sea was each little bird's great 
 playmate. They chased it downward as it swept 
 back, and again ran up swiftly before the impending 
 wave, which sometimes overtook them and bore 
 them off their feet. But they floated as lightly as 
 one of their own feathers on the breaking crest. In 
 their airy flutterings they seemed to rest on the 
 evanescent spray. Their images — long-legged little 
 figures, with gray backs and snowy bosoms — were 
 seen as .^^tinctly as the realities in the mirror of the 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 51 
 
 glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a score 
 or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced 
 their dalliance with the surf wave; and thus they 
 bore me company along the beach, the types of 
 pleasant fantasies, till, at its extremity, they took 
 wing over the ocean and were gone. 
 
 **Here is a narrow avenue, which might seem to 
 have been hewn through the very heart of an enor- 
 mous crag, affording passage for the rising sea to 
 thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous 
 foam, and then leaving its floor of black pebbles 
 bare and glistening. In this chasm there was once 
 an intersecting vein of softer stone, which the waves 
 have gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite 
 walls remain entire on either side. How sharply, 
 and with what harsh clamor, does the sea rake back 
 the pebbles, as it momentarily withdraws into its 
 own depths! At intervals the floor of the chasm 
 is left nearly dry; but anon, at the outlet, two or 
 three great waves are seen struggling to get in at 
 once; two hit the walls athwart, while one rushes 
 straight through, and all three thunder as if with 
 rage and triumph. They heap the chasm with a 
 snow-drift of foam and spray. While watching this 
 scene, I can never rid myself of the idea that a 
 monster, endowed with life and fierce energy, is 
 striving to burst his way through the narrow pass. 
 And what a contrast, to look through the stormy 
 
52 HAWTHORNE 
 
 chasm, and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea 
 beyond!" 
 
 Does it seem a mere waste of time to watch beach 
 birds and great rollers, like this? As Hawthorne 
 himself says on the next page, — "child's play be- 
 comes magnificent on so grand a scale." Let us 
 write our names on the sand then ! 
 
 *'Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides 
 may barely measure them, and three for the long 
 strokes! Cut deep that the record may be perma- 
 nent! Statesmen and warriors and poets have 
 spent their strength in no better cause than this. 
 Is it accomplished ? Return then in an hour or two 
 and seek for this mighty record of a name. The 
 sea will have sv^^ept over it, even as time rolls its 
 effacing waves over the names of statesmen and 
 warriors and poets. Hark, the surf wave laughs 
 at you!" 
 
 But one can not follow the solitary through the 
 infinite riches of his idleness. Even here a boat 
 on the sea seems neighborly, or distant children 
 playing on the sand; but, as man comes nigh, he 
 flees to a deeper retreat, a recess so characteristic 
 of his rocks, so intimate with his spirit in early man- 
 hood, that the passage may well seem a chronicle of 
 autobiography : 
 
 **It is pleasant to gaze down from some high 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 53 
 
 crag and watch a group of children gathering peb- 
 bles and pearly shell, and playing with the surf, 
 as with old Ocean's hoary beard. Nor does it in- 
 fringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at 
 anchor off the shore, swinging dreamily to and fro, 
 and rising and sinking with the alternate swell; 
 while the crew — four gentlemen, in roundabout 
 jackets — are busy with their fishing-lines. But, 
 with an inward antipathy and a headlong flight, do 
 I eschew the presence of any meditative stroller 
 like myself, known by his pilgrim staff, his saunter- 
 ing step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet ab- 
 stracted eye. From such a man, as if another self 
 had scared me, I scramble hastily over the rocks, 
 and take refuge in a nook which many a secret 
 hour has given me a right to call my own. I would 
 do battle for it even with the churl that should pro- 
 duce the title deeds. Have not my musings melted 
 into its rocky walls and sandy floor, and made them 
 a portion of myself? 
 
 "It is a recess in the line of clififs, walled round by 
 a rough, high precipice, which almost encircles and 
 shuts in a little space of sand. In front, the sea 
 appears as between the pillars of a portal. In the 
 rear, the precipice is broken and intermixed with 
 earth, which gives nourishment not only to clinging 
 and twining shrubs, but to trees, that gripe the rock 
 with their naked roots, and seem to struggle hard 
 for footing and for soil enough to live upon. These 
 are fir-trees; but oaks hang their heavy branches 
 
54 HAWTHORNE 
 
 from above, and throw dov/n acorns on the beach, 
 and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. 
 At this autumnal season the precipice is decked with 
 variegated splendor; trailing wreaths of scarlet 
 flaunt from the summit downward; tufts of yellow- 
 flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their red- 
 dened leaves and glossy seed berries, sprout from 
 each crevice; at every glance, I detect some new 
 light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the 
 stern, gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the 
 cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain 
 it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This 
 recess shall be my dining hall. And what the feast ? 
 A few biscuits made savory by soaking them in sea- 
 water, a tuft of samphire gathered from the beach, 
 and an apple for the dessert. By this time the little 
 rill has filled its reservoir again ; and, as I quaff it, 
 I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet, 
 that He gives me the healthful appetite to make a 
 feast of bread and water. 
 
 "Dinner being over, I throw myself at length 
 upon the sand, and, basking in the sunshine, let my 
 mind disport itself at will. The walls of this my 
 hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though 
 I sometimes fancy that they have ears to hear them, 
 and a soul to sympathize. There is a rragic in this 
 spot. Dreams haunt its precincts and flit around 
 me in broad sunlight, nor require that sleep shall 
 blindfold me to real objects ere these be visible. 
 Here can I frame a story of two lovers, and make 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 55 
 
 their shadows Hve before me and be mirrored in the 
 tranquil water, as they tread along the sand, leaving 
 no footprints. Here, should I will it, I can summon 
 up a single shade, and be myself her lover. Yes, 
 dreamer, — but your lonely heart will be the colder 
 for such fancies. Sometimes, too, the Past comes 
 back and finds me here, and in her train come faces 
 which were gladsome when I knew them, yet seem 
 not gladsome now. Would that my hiding-place 
 were lonelier, so that the past might not find me! 
 Get ye all gone, old friends, and let me listen to the 
 murmur of the sea, — a melancholy voice, but less 
 sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling? 
 Of sunken ships and whereabouts they lie? Of 
 islands afar and undiscovered, whose tawny chil- 
 dren are unconscious of other islands and of con- 
 tinents, and deem the stars of heaven their nearest 
 neighbors? Nothing of all this. What then? Has 
 it talked for so many ages and meant nothing all 
 the while ? No ; for those ages find utterance In the 
 sea's unchanging voice, and warn the listener to 
 withdraw his interest from mortal vicissitudes, and 
 let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul. 
 This is wisdom." 
 
 A vein of moralizing, it will be observed, slightly 
 colors even the least of these wayside discourses, 
 and variegates them like the sea-rocks so often 
 under his feet. Now it is a streak of yellow or pink 
 that steals on the drab and the gray, — some jocu- 
 
56 HAWTHORNE 
 
 larity about girls' dresses, or a bit of old-fashioned 
 sentiment; now it is of a soberer hue, shadows of 
 mortality on the page ; and not seldom it is black as 
 the ebon rifts in the native granite of the sea cliffs, 
 — the solid gloom of the ancient time. Though one 
 accepts melancholy as an inseparable part of Haw- 
 thorne's genius, one wonders, at times, at his grave- 
 yard fancies. Apart, however, from the tomb, 
 itself, which was prolific of thought and fancy, as 
 well as of ghosts, in the age when he was born, there 
 is an infusion of morality in his writings, more 
 nearly akin to the sermonizing of the period than to 
 its sepulchral sentiment. Those were days when the 
 coarser terrors of life were vividly painted, in the 
 interest of reform; but the terrors of thought, 
 though they did not reach the ghastliness of the 
 former age, were by no means forgotten, and came 
 not far behind. The troop of sorrows that Gray, 
 the poet of the country graveyard, was accustomed 
 to marshal, still came at the literary call. They ap- 
 peared in full costume when Hawthorne waved his 
 wand, as, for example, in that description of a wake- 
 ful night which he calls "The Haunted Mind." The 
 passage, though interesting for its New England 
 phantasms, appeals most directly to the reader for 
 the authentic view of the famous "chamber," with 
 which it begins and ends, as with a snap-shot 
 photograph : 
 
 "You peep through the half-drawn window cur- 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 57 
 
 tain, and observe that the glass is ornamented with 
 fanciful devices in frostwork, and that each pane 
 presents something like a frozen dream. There will 
 be time enough to trace out the analogy while wait- 
 ing the summons to breakfast. Seen through the 
 clear portion of the glass, where the silvery moun- 
 tain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the 
 most conspicuous object is the steeple; the white 
 spire of which directs you to the wintry lustre of 
 the firmament. You may almost distinguish the 
 figures on the clock that has just told the hour. 
 Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and 
 the long vista of the frozen street, all white, and 
 the distant water hardened into rock, might make 
 you shiver, even under four blankets and a woolen 
 comforter. Yet look at that one glorious star! Its 
 beams are distinguishable from all the rest, and 
 actually cast the shadow of the casement on the 
 bed, with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, 
 though not so accurate an outline." 
 
 Now, the graveyard! 
 
 "You think how the dead are lying in their cold 
 shrouds and narrow coffins, through the drear win- 
 ter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy 
 that they neither shrink nor shiver, when the snow 
 is drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter 
 blast howls against the door of the tomb. That 
 gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude, and 
 throw its complexion over your wakeful hour,'* 
 
58 HAWTHORNE 
 
 And now, the family of sighs ! 
 
 "In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and 
 a dungeon, though the Hghts, the music, and revelry 
 above may cause us to forget their existence, and the 
 buried ones, or prisoners, whom they hide. But 
 sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, these dark re- 
 ceptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, 
 when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no 
 active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, 
 imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power 
 of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your 
 griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse 
 not break their chain. It is too late! A funeral 
 train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion 
 and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the 
 mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is 
 your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wear- 
 ing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, 
 with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy fea- 
 tures, and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next 
 appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust 
 among her golden hair, and her bright garments 
 all faded and defaced, stealing from your glance 
 with drooping head, as fearful of reproach; she 
 was your fondest Hope, but a delusive one; so call, 
 her Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, 
 with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron 
 authority; there is no name for. him unless it be 
 Fatality, an emblem of the evil influence that rules 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 59 
 
 your fortunes; a demon to whom you subjected 
 yourself by some error at the outset of life, and 
 were bound his slave forever, by once obeying him. 
 See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the dark- 
 ness, the wTithed lip of scorn, the mockery of that 
 living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore 
 place in your heart! Do you remember any act of 
 enormous folly at which you would blush, even in 
 the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize 
 your Shame. 
 
 "Pass, wretched band! Well for the wakeful one, 
 if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not sur- 
 round him, the devils of a guilty heart, that holds 
 its hell within itself. What if Remorse should as- 
 sume the features of an injured friend? Wliat if 
 the fiend should come in woman's garments, with 
 a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down 
 by your side? What if he should stand at your bed's 
 foot, in the likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain 
 upon the shroud ? Sufficient, without such guilt, is 
 this nightmare of the soul; this heavy, heavy sink- 
 ing of the spirits ; this wintry gloom about the heart; 
 this indistinct horror of the mind, blending itself 
 w^ith the darkness of the chamber." 
 
 And now, once more, the chamber where *'fame 
 was won!" 
 
 "The slumbering embers on the hearth send forth 
 a gleam which palely illuminates the whole outer 
 
60 HAWTHORNE 
 
 room, and flickers through the door of the bed- 
 chamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your 
 eye searches for whatever may remind you of the 
 Hving world. With eager minuteness you take note 
 of the table near the fireplace, the book with an 
 ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, 
 the hat, and the fallen glove. Soon the flame van- 
 ishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though 
 its image remains an instant in your mind's eye, 
 when darkness has swallowed the reality." 
 
 The darker shades of thought that occasionally 
 fall on Hawthorne's reflective page are obvious 
 here, and they sufficiently illustrate the diffusion 
 through his earlier pieces of the Puritan heredity 
 which he shared with the community, and which in 
 his later years concentrated his meditative art on 
 the touch and presence of evil in the soul. Equally 
 temperamental in himself, and also of the times, 
 was the delicacy of his spirit in creative work; the 
 fragility — what may better be styled the insubstanti- 
 ality — of his imaginative figures, the dreamlike at- 
 mosphere, the air of reverie, the omnipresence of 
 fancy, are partly individualistic, especially in their 
 degree, but they also have the "form and pressure" 
 of the age ; the airy phantasm was as frequent with 
 him as the distempered dream. There is a striking 
 contrast between the solid characters, shown with 
 firm motion in the colonial tales — Puritans like 
 Scott's Presbyterians — and this frailer breed of a 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 61 
 
 later generation, both of life and literature. It is 
 evident that, in his early years, the touch of history 
 was to Hawthorne like the touch of earth to Antaeus 
 of old; it gave him life. In the first essays of his 
 unassisted imagination, there was some uncertainty; 
 his achievement was apt to be rather a vision than 
 an illusion of reality. One should not press the point 
 too much. The fashion of literature, like other 
 fashions, passes away. It may be only a change of 
 taste that is involved. The essential matter is to 
 realize that Hawthorne was a man of his own time 
 in his moods of imagination as well as in his dark 
 Puritan humors. 
 
 This environment, the outward aspect of which 
 has been fully illustrated, he reacted from by an 
 extraordinary isolation; it threw him back sharply 
 on his literary heredity for the nurture of his talents. 
 He was a constant reader in those Salem years, and 
 it naturally followed that the eighteenth century 
 claimed him as a belated, that is, a colonial, child, 
 and the early nineteenth impressed contemporary 
 traces upon him. From the former he had that 
 pellucid style, whose American flow began with 
 Washington Irving and ceased with his own pen, 
 and, to mention a detail, that mood of the grave- 
 yard, already noted, which, though deeply rooted 
 in the Puritan temperament, had its literary memo- 
 rial in Gray's "Elegy'* and left its great American 
 boulder in "Thanatopsis" ; and he was allied to his 
 own generation, it must be owned, by an occasional 
 
62 HAWTHORNE 
 
 touch of sentimentality. Scott early taught him 
 how to stage the theatrical tableau in an episode. 
 Such marks of literary ancestry and of his time are 
 easily to be discerned, as his work grows under his 
 hand and year succeeds to year; and they are to be 
 ascribed, in the main, to his studies, his readings, 
 which occupied his mind more than ^'sights from a 
 steeple'* or walks by Marblehead rocks, — more, 
 perhaps, tha'n the "thousands upon thousands of 
 visions" that he says he saw in his lonely chamber. 
 \A genius is, in part, the product of a thousand 
 subtleties, — literary breeding, social environment, 
 humanity pressing upon it in many ways; Haw- 
 thorne, in all his isolation, was not exempt from 
 this moulding; but in its essence genius is original 
 power, and obeys its own instincts. 
 
 Hawthorne's life in early manhood was thus un- 
 commonly secluded. However thronged with phan- 
 toms of the mind, it was sterile in external ex- 
 perience. He describes it, himself, as a semi-vital 
 existence. Nor was the case much bettered when he, 
 at last, emerged from the Salem chamber into the 
 dull and ordinary publicity of the business of the 
 community. Whether he occupied himself as a 
 "measurer" in the Boston Custom House, or spaded 
 the "gold-mine," as he euphoniously styled the 
 manure heap at Brook Farm, or collected his slim 
 salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a year as 
 "surveyor" in the custom-hou»se at Salem, he was 
 unable to be content with his part in the common 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 63 
 
 lot. There was always, of course, the rigid line, 
 dividing his existence into two lives, one humdrum 
 with mortal tasks, and the other imaginative, medi- 
 tative, spiritual. He never found vital air in "prac- 
 tical life"; as soon as he breathed that atmosphere, 
 he began to be asphyxiated; "this earthly cavern 
 where I am now buried," he writes of his Boston 
 office, and, again, "my darksome dungeon . . . 
 into which dismal region never comes any bird of 
 paradise." On the other hand he never tires of 
 minute observation, of day-dreaming, of moral 
 analysis, and of recombining these mental elements 
 in his life in imaginative creation in his tales. The 
 activity of his mind throws into strong contrast, at 
 times, the triviality of the matter on which it is em- 
 ployed. One grows more and more aware of the 
 fineness of the mental quality, and also of the pov- 
 erty of the matter of life involved. Here is a 
 natural artist, one says, — sensibility, imagination, 
 temperament, — but he starves. 
 
 Hawthorne was not indifferent to his surround- 
 ings nor impatient of them. He made the most of 
 what his eyes saw, and of the suggestions that arose 
 in his heart and imagination. He cultivated his 
 experience, indeed, with great assiduity and econ- 
 omy. A necessity seemed laid upon him to set down 
 in words the scenes and meditations that made up 
 his day, as if a spell were upon him to make a record 
 of what passed and only his pen would relieve the 
 ever-present need of expression. The circle of ex- 
 
64 HAWTHORNE 
 
 perience within which he worked was narrow; but 
 it was minutely scanned, as if he would make up by 
 scrutiny and penetration what there was lacking in 
 extent. He slowly took possession of the object 
 and completely absorbed it, whatever it might be; 
 but, in the process of absorption, an artistic element 
 was at work, a thing of selection and modification, 
 of suggestion oftentimes, which gave a special char- 
 acter to the image or the thought, and made them 
 Hawthornesque. This belonged to the artist in 
 Hawthorne. It is true that the charm operated even 
 on the trivial and meager, in daily life; its fascina- 
 tion, in some sort, is over all he wrote; but the spell 
 was ever seeking a wider horizon, an atmosphere of 
 greater freedom from the pressure of the actual, 
 an ether of more delicate and secret life, in which 
 to work its full power of magic and mystery. In a 
 word, Hawthorne's genius, as it grew more and 
 more aware of itself in its mastery of expression, 
 though sensitive to its environment on every side, 
 and, indeed, in a true sense its product, seems seek- 
 ing to escape from it. His genius had, as it were, 
 an instinct of escape, which slowly found a larger 
 world. What really happened to Hawthorne, how- 
 ever, was that, as he grew, his mind became stored 
 with the experiences of past generations and of 
 other times, and his imagination operated on this 
 new material. The fresh matter came in the shape 
 of history or of local tradition; it was not purely 
 imaginary, but it offered less resistance to the ar- 
 
TALES OF AX ELDER DAY 65 
 
 tistic touch than did the matter-of-fact of the sub- 
 stantial environment in the scenes of the Salem 
 countn'side and the characters of the village. 
 Habitually in the note-books, occasionally in the 
 tales, and especially in the stor}- of Blithedale. Haw- 
 thorne dealt with reality, as he saw it, — with the 
 commonplace, the contemporar}*, and the usual, how- 
 ever it might be picked out with romantic color, 
 now and then; but it was not in such work that his 
 genius took wing. These passages, charming as 
 they often are by virtue of some secret touch of 
 glamour or of memory, give up their charm, in the 
 main, only to a reader with a certain affection for 
 New England. The true romancer — the magician 
 — requires another and imaginary sphere. He found 
 it slowly, and he did not always inhabit it; he did 
 not, at the best, inhabit it altogether ; and from time 
 to time he "harked back,'* as the old savins: was, 
 to the "real" world and actual things. He made his 
 first adventures in the imaginary world most not- 
 ably by attempts to reconstruct colonial scenes, with 
 a solid historical core, and history proved itself a 
 good hand-maid to romance, as it has often done. 
 The colonial tradition, in brief, was a main avenue 
 of his escape from the environment in which he 
 found himself in his youth. On what other scenes, 
 indeed, should he exercise his imagination than those 
 that formed his mental horizon, — the legendary 
 "Sabbaths" of old Witch Lane, the sea-tragedies of 
 !Marblehead beaches, the historic episodes of Salem 
 
66 HAWTHORNE 
 
 streets? For days he would sit, at Salem, in an 
 alcove of the Athenaeum library reading, with only 
 one other person in another alcove. What sights 
 would interest his "mind's eye" more, amid that 
 solitude, than the stately figures of the former age 
 at the old Province House, near by in Boston, or the 
 ancient worthies of his ow^n Puritan city in its early 
 years ; and who could set the mould for his imagina- 
 tion to display the panorama of sixty or a hundred 
 years before with more certainty than the great 
 "Author of Waverley"? When Hawthorne's eyes 
 ceased to rest on the falling snow in the winter twi- 
 light, or on the tasks of the sea-beach or the com- 
 mon sights of the town-life, it was on the ancestral 
 scenes of his own people that he most delighted to 
 look in fancy, and it was with such a wand as Scott's 
 that he summoned up the vision. In these episodes 
 of "the times before,'* as they were depicted by his 
 pen, both he and his subjects were at their best. It 
 is true that in the humbler scenes from the days 
 that had gone by there is a more delicate, if less ob- 
 vious charm; but for boldness, power and concen- 
 tration, what piece of historical imagination have 
 our records finer than the tale of "Endicott and the 
 Red Cross"? or, more impressive still because of its 
 element of mystery, "The Gray Champion"? The 
 story is of the New England, where American 
 liberty began. It is a scene from a land of long 
 ago ; but it holds its colors well. It was long a popu- 
 lar taJe. 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY Ci? 
 
 Stories of this sort find a true home in the peo- 
 ple's heart. They are hke the old tale of King Al- 
 fred and the cakes, that is almost the first glimpse of 
 history that many of us ever had. They smell of 
 antiquity, and give substance to a nation's whole 
 past. In the nature of things there can not be many 
 such, with so wide and so long an appeal to a nation's 
 instincts. "The Gray Champion," however, has a 
 number of less distinguished kindred among Haw- 
 thorne's imaginary revivals of colonial times. The 
 series of the "Tales of the Province House" is the 
 most brilliant group of these, both for romantic 
 color and historical illusion. "Old Esther Dudley" is 
 a dame no Bostonian of "the old race" ever for- 
 gets, and "Sweet Alice Vane" still has her gentle 
 gallants, however unknown. Quite apart, too, from 
 the local color and human attraction of such figures 
 in the colonial drama, reminiscent of the gentlemen 
 and fashions of buried time, there is, besides, in 
 these legends that something Hawthornesque 
 which discloses a temperament, and marks them 
 as from an artist's hand. These sketches all tran- 
 scend reality by their simplification; thence comes 
 that impression they make of something elemental 
 in them, which of itself proclaims them works of 
 art. They bear traces of Hawthorne's genius, as a 
 statue keeps the marks of the soil from which it 
 has been dug. His personality has passed into the 
 story created in his imagination. In a certain de- 
 gree this is true also of his note-books, of his bor- 
 
68 HAWTHORNE 
 
 rowings from his observations, and of the contempo- 
 rary portrayals at BHthedale ; but, broadly speaking, 
 his genius makes a purer impress in proportion as 
 he recedes from the actual in circumstance, charac- 
 ter and event. In other words, his genius first found 
 that larger world it sought, with entire freedom and 
 opportunity to develop its power, by brooding over 
 and dreaming in and recreating the colonial tradition 
 which was the background of himself and the com- 
 munity in which he dwelt. 
 
 Hawthorne's genius, however idiosyncratic it 
 may appear, will never be dissociated from his com- 
 munity ; the two are revealed together. So comple- 
 mentary do they appear that it would seem, at some 
 moments of reflection, that only by the light of 
 that genius could the Puritan community, in a true 
 sense, have been visibly set forth, and again that 
 only that community could have been the proper 
 medium to display his genius. The reality was seen 
 through his temperament, and the two tended more 
 and more to be fused in one union ; but, in the ear- 
 lier years, the communal element was more evident, 
 in the avowedly historical sketches and local scenes, 
 — portraits of places, rightly so-called, alike from 
 their method and their theme; while the tempera- 
 ment of the writer counts for more, his individu- 
 ality makes a larger contribution, in proportion as 
 he passes from the general to the private life. In 
 narrating the excursion of Goodman Brown into the 
 Essejc woods, in attendance on the witches' Sabbath, 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 69 
 
 Hawthorne summons up the ghosts of the whole 
 Satanic countryside of that far-off day, and all he 
 accomplishes by it is to unsettle the Goodman's faith 
 in the honesty and virtue of his neighbors; but the 
 lesson implied as to the doubt of every-day appear- 
 ances, is less prominent than the orgy of diabolism 
 itself. How curiously lacking in imagination those 
 orgies in the forest now seem to us, though faithful 
 to the crude and childish fancies of the time ! What 
 is read in the tale, in the main, is less the eternal 
 lesson of the possibilities of hypocrisy — by no means 
 a novel and not at all an improving lesson — than the 
 simple phantasmagoria of a superstitious and much 
 bedeviled age. To take another instance of com- 
 munal coloring in the hundred short tales of Haw- 
 thorne, the commonplace incidents told in *'The 
 Wives of the Dead" set forth circumstances and 
 moments of customary tragedy in the houses of a 
 seacoast village. The story is told out of the life 
 of the time, out of the occupations and the fatality 
 of humble people in the usual routine of work and 
 sleep and death ; but it is drenched with Hawthorne's 
 temperament. No other pen could have written it. 
 In quite a different way, "Drowne's Wooden Im- 
 age," is yet more individual and Hawthornesque, 
 to use the term that best designates the thing. It 
 has to do with an artist temperament in a carver 
 of wood, and with the transformation that love 
 wrought upon his skill, when once he carved a 
 figure for the bowsprit of a ship. The tale belongs 
 
70 HAWTHORNE 
 
 with the small group in Hawthorne's works that 
 deal directly with the experiences of the artistic life. 
 The humbleness of the wood-carver and his associ- 
 ation with ships fit in with the community; but his 
 talent, vitalized as it was by love, was a thing of 
 personal delicacy, and the power to evoke it from 
 the environment was Hawthorne's peculiar spell. 
 
 Hawthorne's genius, indeed, penetrated his ma- 
 terial to such a degree as to take complete possession 
 of it, though the finished blend may seem to have 
 more of realism in one place and more of fancy in 
 another. Whether the community or the tempera- 
 ment of the writer comes more to the fore, it is the 
 romance of New England that the page gives up, — 
 the New England of a romantic imagination, now 
 almost as well established in tradition as history 
 itself. It is not merely that Hawthorne sheds the 
 sympathetic and penetrative light of indigenous 
 genius upon a thousand facets of the life and cir- 
 cumstances where New England was bred by the 
 sea and in the upland on the edge of the early and 
 withdrawing wilderness ; he did this, and it is won- 
 derful with what a fulness of miscellaneous illustra- 
 tion of the people, the times and the interests of old 
 New England he has made his works a deposit, as 
 it were, of past generations; but amid all this di- 
 versity of age and sex and circumstance, of era 
 and creed, of history and legend, of the look of the 
 forest and the sea and the meadows, he drew nearer 
 and nearer, as he grew older in art and wisdom, to 
 
TALES OF AN ELDER DAY 71 
 
 the heart of it all, to the spell of the soil that placed 
 all these things in a spiritual medium, wrapped them 
 in it and saw them through it ; in other words, first 
 of all, his material was neither dramatic nor pic- 
 turesque, not merely human, neither emotional nor 
 esthetic, but it was simply and above all moral ma- 
 terial; nothing else in it greatly counted for him; 
 and it was by this preoccupation with and pene- 
 tration into the secret of New England — old New 
 England — that he became the great New England 
 romancer, and its historical embodiment in our na- 
 tional literature. 
 
 There was a younger aspect of the New England 
 that has now become old New England in Haw- 
 thorne's tales for children. The presence of child- 
 hood in his minor works is a noticeable trait and 
 often gives a gleam of sunshine and a tender touch 
 to his musings or descriptions; but nowhere with 
 such a concentrated charm and brightness as in the 
 group of eager countenances that listened to the 
 youthful story-teller of the Greek myths, which 
 themselves seem independent of time. The two 
 clusters of Hawthorne's Tanglewood stories stand 
 quite apart from his other work, in an ideal realm 
 of their own; but, in one case, they are framed, as 
 it were, on a background of rural pictures of the 
 Berkshire year, exquisitely beautiful, like little 
 fresco squares of the seasons on which the childish 
 groups are relieved, as it might be in Italian paint- 
 ing; and, in the second case, the listeners are felt. 
 
72 HAWTHORNE 
 
 if not seen, so familiar has the essential situation 
 of story-telling become in the series. The old New 
 England where these tales were told was as real as 
 the snow-storm with which this volume began, as 
 the fishing-village and Concord and Blithedale. All 
 these elements melt now into one field of memory, 
 reaching back in the far distance to witchcraft days, 
 the Gray Champion and the unchanging rock-bound 
 coast. It is this field of memory that Hawthorne's 
 imagination enlightens, while he draws from it the 
 truths of life. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Hawthorne's artistic method 
 
 THE artistic method of an original genius sel- 
 dom seems to be deliberate; it appears, rather, 
 to begin in instinctive motions and to be developed 
 largely by experiment. In Hawthorne's earlier work 
 there is no intention discernible except to write ; the 
 topic may be this or that, but the incitement is plainly 
 self-expression, to publish what is interesting in his 
 own mind to himself, something fanciful, it may be, 
 or something reportorial in the form of a sketch, 
 past or present or in no man's land. Mental ac- 
 tivity, supported by a sharp eye and a reflective 
 turn of thought, explains fully, perhaps, the begin- 
 nings of his genius. As time went on, however, a 
 promise of organizing power grew visible, a nascent 
 genius with a bent of its own; and though there 
 was nothing wholly novel in the method that began 
 to show, yet Hawthorne so subdued it to his per- 
 sonality, and released his genius in great measure 
 by it, that it has come to be characteristically his, 
 and qualifies his literary memory. There is much 
 of his writing in which this artistic method does not 
 enter, or is slightly used when employed at all; a 
 good portion of his work was miscellaneous or non- 
 73 
 
74 HAWTHORNE 
 
 descript; but as he attempted imaginative creation, 
 he relied upon his method more and more till it 
 was practically exhausted, so far as it was service- 
 able to him. It is most convenieiit to examine it in 
 the major short tales of imagination, where it is 
 most clear. 
 
 The primary element in Hawthorne's art is the 
 image, clearly and vividly grasped by the eye. It is 
 an image, like others, out of the general flux, or 
 flow of sensations that make up our impression of 
 the outer world as a moving picture. Its appeal 
 to him was due to the strength of his power of ob- 
 servation, and it afforded the sensuous basis of his 
 genius. But he was not only an observer, he was a 
 thinker ; and, more than a thinker, he was a brooder 
 upon thought, — often, upon one thought. The idea, 
 the second element in his art, belongs in a higher 
 region than sensation, in a world whose principle is 
 intellectual order rather than temporal sequence — 
 that is, in the universal world of thought, not in the 
 world of events. The effort of art is to blend these 
 two worlds, — to pass from the world of the image to 
 the world of the idea, and accumulate truth on the 
 way without loss of distinctness in the vision. Haw- 
 thorne was an expert in the process, for he had tried 
 it in many forms. He was well endowed for the at- 
 tempt, both by his eye for the image and his mind 
 for the idea. He was equally at home in the world 
 of sense and in that of thought; he would use the 
 former to express the latter, for the former is pri- 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 75 
 
 mary, at first, as the latter is fundamental at last. 
 To observe his fortunes with his task is to have a 
 lesson in the ways of a genius with his art. 
 
 Hawthorne, in that portion of his general work 
 which is capital in importance, was accustomed to 
 select some simple object, such as a veil or a flower 
 or a butterfly, and then by gradual touches to give it 
 secret and mysterious significance till the object, 
 whatever it was, became a sort of fetish to the mind, 
 — a thing whose meaning and essential nature was 
 wholly apart from its outward seeming. The image, 
 so presented, always had a relation to an idea, some- 
 times in one way, sometimes in another. He gazed 
 at the image, as one looks at a crystal globe, accord- 
 ing to old stories, till he saw something; by a process 
 of repetition, suggestion, echo, which may briefly 
 be described as overlay, and by a profound artistic 
 concentration of interest, curiosity and mystery, he 
 charged the image with mental meaning until it 
 seemed to deny its original nature, and become, with 
 various degrees of success, a thing of thought in- 
 stead of sense. It is sometimes customary to de- 
 scribe this method of writing'as allegory; but it is 
 an inexact expression and does not discriminate be- 
 tween the many ways in which the spell is woven. A 
 simple case is the tale of "The Minister's Veil." The 
 story is that a minister wore a veil for many years 
 over his face so that none should see his features. 
 The idea developed is, of course, the secrecy of 
 men's hosoms. The veil is ^'allegorical," and 
 
76 HAWTHORNE 
 
 "stands for" the impenetrable curtain of the human 
 breast. But Hawthorne's tale is more delicately told 
 than these words imply. The veil, the physical ob- 
 ject, is moralized and becomes a type, the universal 
 garment of secrecy, and the particular minister 
 himself, whatever his story, fades into a class of 
 men ; both veil and minister have entered into the in- 
 tellectual w^orld. 
 
 The main theme of this tale — the solitude of a 
 man's bosom — had a potent fascination for Haw- 
 thorne. He was himself of a solitary nature and 
 accustomed to the unheard voices that deepen soli- 
 tude. His understanding of such natures came from 
 sympathy, grounded upon much intimate acquaint- 
 ance with loneliness. The Puritan heredity in him, 
 the moral prepossession of his genius, gave direction 
 to his thoughts and, especially in this field, a dark 
 color to his imaginations; the secrecy of men's bos- 
 oms, in itself a normal and necessary incident of life 
 — and there are happy as well as dark secrets — be- 
 came another name for hypocrisy, or it suggested 
 the gloom natural to religious musings in those parts 
 and in the age from which for the most part his 
 genius derived its traits. Solitary natures w^ith a 
 guilty sense were, through life, a main theme of 
 his brooding; the situation, indeed, w^as one of his 
 fixed ideas, from which his imagination never freed 
 itself. 'In the Protean changes of such a creative 
 idea it is natural to find the notion of suppressed 
 crimes recur again and again in his work, and also 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 77 
 
 to discover in his description of the motions of the 
 human breast something of the knowledge and skill 
 of a confessor. It is here, in particular, that the 
 psychologist is seen at work, as it were in his study, 
 upon the diseased heart, to draw out its secret. 
 Hawthorne, before he had run his course, made this 
 feature a cardinal element in his novels. 
 
 In the tale of "The Minister's Veil" the relation 
 of the image to the idea is obvious ; there is no true 
 fusion of the two, but each is kept clearly apart. 
 The union between the sensuous and mental ele- 
 ments grows more close in other narratives, and a 
 certain scale, denoting their approach, might be 
 taken almost as an index of the artistic success of 
 the method. In "Lady Eleanor's Mantle" the proud 
 and haughty Lady Eleanor is presented from the 
 first as already in moral isolation by her character, 
 which is summarized and expressed in the rich man- 
 tle she wears; but this moral isolation is made evi- 
 dent only by the physical isolation which results 
 from the dread and secret contagion hidden in the 
 folds of the garment. The very sign and outward 
 seat of her pride, the mantle, is the center and source 
 of her humiliation; from being the one who casts 
 off, she becomes herself an outcast from human so- 
 ciety. The physical union of the image with the 
 person involved is closer than in the instance of the 
 veil; and there results from this a sense of subtler 
 fusion between the image and the idea itself. This 
 intimate fusion is still more keenly felt in the tale 
 
78 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of "The Birthmark,'' at the conclusion of which the 
 moral lesson is drawn that imperfection is the nec- 
 essary condition of mortality to the degree that with 
 its removal death must supervene, just as, when the 
 birthmark fades, the woman dies. A still greater 
 blend of the physical image with the person is found 
 in ''Rappaccini's Daughter," the woman who has 
 inhaled the fragrance of the poison-tree until she is 
 herself its living flower. In the cases mentioned the 
 physical image is, in an ascending scale, more com- 
 pletely personified; and the mental idea is, corre- 
 spondingly, more vitally expressed. 
 
 The fusion of the image with the idea, without 
 the intervention of a human person, is more curi- 
 ously wrought out in what is by far the most subtle 
 of Hawthorne's tales in this manner, both in thought 
 and workmanship, 'The Artist of the Beautiful." 
 The artist is, here, indeed, an intermediary in the 
 process ; but the image in no way enters into his own 
 personality, — on the contrary, it proceeds from the 
 artist, as a creation. The Butterfly is his work — a 
 mechanical toy, perhaps; or, perhaps, it is a ''spir- 
 itualization of matter." What else is all art but a 
 spiritualization of matter? The story of his work is 
 told with infinite knowledge, — how it began, how it 
 was broken off, how it was finished, and also what 
 was its worth to the artist, when he had succeeded. 
 The union of the image with the idea in this tale 
 amounts to identity: it is complete. The idea ab- 
 sorbs the image, and leaves it, at the end, a thing of 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 79 
 
 "little value," like the "glittering fragments" in the 
 infant's palm at the conclusion of the story, which 
 illustrates the method of Hawthorne's art, in this 
 regard, at its highest power : 
 
 "But to return to Owen Warland. It was his for- 
 tune, good or ill, to achieve the purpose of his life. 
 Pass we over a long space of intense thought, yearn- 
 ing effort, minute toil, and w^asting anxiety, suc- 
 ceeded by an instant of solitary triumph : let all this 
 be imagined ; and then behold the artist, on a winter 
 evening, seeking admittance to Robert Dan forth' s 
 fireside circle. There he found the man of iron, with 
 his massive substance thoroughly warmed and at- 
 tempered by domestic influences. And there was 
 Annie, too, now transformed into a matron, with 
 much of her husband's plain and sturdy nature, but 
 imbued, as Owen Warland still believed, with a finer 
 grace, that might enable her to be the interpreter 
 between strength and beauty. It happened, likewise, 
 that old Peter Hovenden was a guest this evening at 
 his daughter's fireside; and it was his well-remem- 
 bered expression of keen, cold criticism that first en- 
 countered the artist's glance. 
 
 "'My old friend Owen!' cried Robert Danforth, 
 starting up, and compressing the artist's delicate fin- 
 gers with a hand that was accustomed to gripe bars 
 of iron. 'This is kind and neighborly to come to us 
 at last. I was afraid your perpetual motion had be- 
 witched you out of the remembrance of old times.' 
 
80 HAWTHORNE , 
 
 " *We are glad to see you T said Annie, while a 
 blush reddened her matronly cheek. 'It was not like 
 a friend to stay from us so long.' 
 
 " 'Well, 0\ven,' inquired the old watchmaker, as 
 his first greeting, 'how comes on the beautiful? 
 Have you created it at last ?' 
 
 "The artist did not immediately reply, being 
 startled by the apparition of a young child of 
 strength that was tumbling about on the carpet, — a 
 little personage w^ho had come mysteriously out of 
 the infinite, but with something so sturdy and real 
 in his composition that he seemed moulded out of 
 the densest substance which earth could supply. 
 This hopeful infant crawled towards the new-comer, 
 and setting himself on end, as Robert Danforth ex- 
 pressed the posture, stared at Owen with a look of 
 such sagacious observation that the mother could 
 not help exchanging a proud glance with her hus- 
 band. But the artist was disturbed by the child's 
 look, as imagining a resemblance between it and 
 Peter Hovenden's habitual expression. He could 
 have fancied that the old watchmaker was com- 
 pressed into this baby shape, and looking out of 
 those baby eyes, and repeating, as he now did, the 
 malicious question : — 
 
 " 'The beautiful, Owen ! How comes on the beau- 
 tiful? Have you succeeded in creating the beauti- 
 ful?' 
 
 " 'I have succeeded,' replied the artist, with a mo- 
 mentary light of triumph in his eyes and a smile of 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 81 
 
 sunshine, yet steeped in such depth of thought that it 
 was almost sadness. *Yes, my friends, it is the truth. 
 I have succeeded/ 
 
 " Indeed!' cried Annie, a look of maiden mirth- 
 fulness peeping out of her face again. 'And is it 
 lawful, now, to inquire what the secret is?' 
 
 " 'Surely; it is to disclose it that I have come,' an- 
 swered Owen Warland. 'You shall know, and see, 
 and touch, and possess the secret! For, Annie, — if 
 by that name I may still address the friend of my 
 boyish years, — Annie, it is for your bridal gift that 
 I have wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this 
 harmony of motion, this mystery of beauty. It 
 comes late, indeed; but it is as we go onward in life, 
 when objects begin to lose their freshness of hue and 
 our souls their delicacy of perception, that the spirit 
 of beauty is most needed. If, — forgive me, Annie, 
 — if you know how to value this gift, it can never 
 come too late.' 
 
 "He produced, as he spoke, what seemed a jewel 
 box. It was carved richly out of ebony by his own 
 hand, and inlaid with a fanciful tracery of pearl 
 representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly, which, 
 elsewhere, had become a winged spirit, and was fly- 
 ing heavenward ; while the boy, or youth, had found 
 such efficacy in his strong desire that he ascended 
 from earth to cloud, and from cloud to celestial at- 
 mosphere, to win the beautiful. This case of ebony 
 the artist opened, and bade Annie place her finger 
 on its edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a 
 
82 HAWTHORNE 
 
 butterfly fluttered forth, and, alighting on her fin- 
 ger's tip, sat waving the ample magnificence of its 
 purple and gold-speckled wings, as if in prelude to a 
 flight. It is impossible to express by words the 
 glory, the splendor, the delicate gorgeousness which 
 were softened into the beauty of this object. Na- 
 ture's ideal butterfly was here realized in all its per- 
 fection; not in the pattern of such faded insects as 
 flit among earthly flowers, but of those which hover 
 across the meads of paradise for child-angels and 
 the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves 
 with. The rich down was visible upon its wings; 
 the luster of its eyes seemed instinct wdth spirit. 
 The firelight glimmered around this wonder — the 
 candles gleamed upon it; but it glistened apparently 
 by its own radiance, and illuminated the finger and 
 outstretched hand on which it rested with a white 
 gleam like that of precious stones. In its perfect 
 beauty, the consideration of size was entirely lost. 
 Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mind 
 could not have been more filled or satisfied. 
 
 "'Beautiful! beautiful!' exclaimed Annie. Ts it 
 alive? Is it alive?' 
 
 " 'Alive ? To be sure it is,' answered her husband. 
 'Do you suppose any mortal has skill enough to 
 make a butterfly, or w^ould put himself to the trouble 
 of making one, when any child may catch a score of 
 them in a summer's afternoon? Alive? Certainly! 
 But this pretty box is undoubtedly of our friend 
 Owen's manufacture; and really it does him credit.' 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 83 
 
 "At this moment the butterfly waved its wings 
 anew, with a motion so absolutely lifelike that Annie 
 was startled, and even awestricken; for, in spite of 
 her husband's opinion, she could not satisfy herself 
 whether it was indeed a living creature or a piece of 
 wondrous mechanism. 
 
 " *Is it alive ?' she repeated, more earnestly than 
 before. 
 
 " 'Judge for yourself,' said Owen Warland, who 
 stood gazing in her face with fixed attention. 
 
 "The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, flut- 
 tered round Annie's head, and soared into a distant 
 region of the parlor, still making itself perceptible to 
 sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of its 
 wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed 
 its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying 
 about the room, it returned in a spiral curve and set- 
 tled again on Annie's finger. 
 
 " *But is it alive ?' exclaimed she again ; and the 
 finger on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted 
 was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to 
 balance himself with his wings. *Tell me if it be 
 alive, or whether you created it.' 
 
 " 'Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beauti- 
 ful?' replied Owen Warland. 'Alive? Yes, Annie; 
 it may well be said to possess life, for it has absorbed 
 my own being into itself; and in the secret of that 
 butterfly, and in its beauty, — which is not merely 
 outward, but deep as its whole system, — is repre- 
 sented the intellect, the imagination, the sensibility, 
 
84 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the soul of an Artist of the Beautiful! Yes; I cre- 
 ated it. But' — and here his countenance somewhat 
 changed — 'this butterfly is not now to me what it 
 was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of 
 my youth.' 
 
 " *Be it what it may, it is a pretty plaything,' said 
 the blacksmith, grinning with childlike delight. 'I 
 wonder whether it would condescend to alight on 
 such a great clumsy finger as mine ? Hold it hither, 
 Annie.' 
 
 "By the artist's direction, Annie touched her fin- 
 ger's tip to that of her husband; and, after a mo- 
 mentary delay, the butterfly fluttered from one to 
 the other. It preluded a second flight by a similar, 
 yet not precisely the same, waving of wings as in 
 the first experiment ; then, ascending from the blacks 
 smith's stalwart finger, it rose in a gradually enlarg- 
 ing curve to the ceiling, made one wide sweep 
 around the room, and returned with an undulating 
 movement to the point whence it had started. 
 
 " 'Well, that does beat all nature !' cried Robert 
 Danforth, bestowing the heartiest praise that he 
 could find expression for; and indeed, had he 
 paused there, a man of finer words and nicer percep- 
 tion could not easily have said more. *That goes be- 
 yond me, I confess. But what then? There is more 
 real use in one downright blow of my sledge hammer 
 than in the whole five years' labor that our friend 
 Owen has wasted on this butterfly.' 
 
 **Here the child clapped his hands and made a 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 85 
 
 great babble of indistinct utterance, apparently de- 
 manding that the butterfly should be given him for 
 a plaything. 
 
 ''Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced sidelong at 
 Annie, to discover whether she sympathized in her 
 husband's estimate of the comparative value of the 
 beautiful and the practical. There was, amid all her 
 kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder and 
 admiration with which she contemplated the marvel- 
 lous work of his hands and incarnation of his idea, a 
 secret scorn — too secret, perhaps, for her owai con- 
 sciousness, and perceptible only to such intuitive dis- 
 cernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the lat- 
 ter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region 
 in which such a discovery might have been torture. 
 He knew that the w^orld, and Annie as the represent- 
 ative of the world, whatever praise might be be- 
 stowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the 
 fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recom- 
 pense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by 
 a material trifle, — converting what was earthly to 
 spiritual gold, — had won the beautiful into his handi- 
 work. Not at this latest moment was he to learn 
 that the reward of all high performance must be 
 sought within itself, or sought in vain. There was, 
 however, a view of the matter which Annie and her 
 husband, and even Peter Hovenden, might fully 
 have understood, and which would have satisfied 
 them that the toil of years had here been worthily 
 bestowed. Owen Warland might have told them 
 
86 HAWTHORNE 
 
 that this butterfly, this plaything, this bridal gift of a 
 poor watchmaker to a blacksmith's wife, was, in 
 truth, a gem of art that a monarch would have pur- 
 chased with honors and abundant wealth, and have 
 treasured it among the jewels of his kingdom as 
 the most unique and wondrous of them all. But the 
 artist smiled and kept the secret to himself. 
 
 " 'Father,' said Annie, thinking that a word of 
 praise from the old watchmaker might gratify his 
 former apprentice, *do come and admire this pretty 
 butterfly.' 
 
 " 'Let us see,' said Peter Hovenden, rising from 
 his chair, with a sneer upon his face that always 
 made people doubt, as he himself did, in everything 
 but a material existence. 'Here is my finger for it 
 to alight upon. I shall understand it better when 
 once I have touched it.' 
 
 "But, to the increased astonishment of Annie, 
 when the tip of her father's finger was pressed 
 against that of her husband, on which the butterfly 
 still rested, the insect drooped its wings and seemed 
 on the point of falling to the floor. Even the bright 
 spots of gold upon its wings and body, unless her 
 eyes deceived her, grew dim, and the glowing purple 
 took a dusky hue, and the starry luster that gleamed 
 around the blacksmith's hand became faint and van- 
 ished. 
 
 " 'It is dying ! it is dying !' cried Annie in alarm. 
 
 " 'It has been delicately wrought,' said the artist, 
 calmly. 'As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual es- 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD S7 
 
 sence — call it magnetism, or what you will. In an 
 atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite sus- 
 ceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him 
 who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost 
 its beauty; but in a few moments more its mech- 
 anism would be irreparably injured.' 
 
 " Take away your hand, father !' entreated Annie, 
 turning pale. 'Here is my child; let it rest on his 
 innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life will revive 
 and its colors grow brighter than ever.' 
 
 "Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his 
 finger. The butterfly then appeared to recover the 
 power of voluntary motion, while its hues assumed 
 much of their original luster, and the gleam of star- 
 light, which was its most ethereal attribute, again 
 formed a halo round about it. At first, when trans- 
 ferred from Robert Danforth's hand to the small 
 finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful 
 that it positively threw the little fellow's shadow 
 back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extended his 
 plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, 
 and watched the waving of the insect's wings with 
 infantine delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain 
 odd expression of sagacity that made Owen War- 
 land feel as if here were old Peter Hovenden, par- 
 tially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard 
 skepticism into childish faith. 
 
 " 'How wise the little monkey looks !' whispered 
 Robert Dan forth to his wife. 
 
 " *I never saw such a look on a child's face/ an- 
 
88 HAWTHORNE 
 
 swered Annie, admiring her own infant, and with 
 good reason, far more than the artistic butterfly. 
 The darhng knows more of the mystery than we 
 do.' 
 
 "As if the butterfly, hke the artist, were conscious 
 of something not entirely congenial in the child's 
 nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At 
 length it arose from the small hand of the infant 
 with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward 
 without an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with 
 which its master's spirit had endowed it impelled 
 this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. 
 Had there been no obstruction, it might have soared 
 into the sky and growai immortal. But its luster 
 gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its 
 wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a 
 sparkle or two, as of Stardust, floated downward 
 and lay glimmering on the carpet. Then the butter- 
 fly came fluttering down, and, instead of returning 
 to the infant, was apparently attracted towards the 
 artist's hand. 
 
 " 'Not so ! not so !' murmured Ow^n Warland, as 
 if his handiwork could have understood him. 'Thou 
 has gone forth out of thy master's heart. There is 
 no return for thee.' 
 
 "With a wavering movement, and emitting a 
 tremulous radiance, the butterfly struggled, as it 
 were, towards the infant, and was about to alight 
 upon his finger ; but while it still hovered in the air, 
 the little child of strength, with his grandsire's sharp 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 89 
 
 and shrewd expression in his face, made a snatch at 
 the marvellous insect and compressed it in his hand. 
 Annie screamed. Old Peter Hovenden burst into a 
 cold and scornful laugh. The blacksmith, by main 
 force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found within 
 the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, 
 whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. And 
 as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what 
 seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was 
 yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly 
 than this. When the artist rose high enough to 
 achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made 
 it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value 
 in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the en- 
 jo3mient of the reality." 
 
 It is plain that Hawthorne's art in this tale is 
 quite different from, and goes far beyond that in 
 such a narrative as *'The Gray Champion." The 
 latter story was strong in both character and events, 
 — a dramatic scene of action; the tale, the conclud- 
 ing paragraphs of which have just been given, is 
 carefully wrought in character and incident, with 
 discriminating contrasts and finished interior scenes, 
 but its strength lies, not in its action, but in its 
 meaning; it is a moral, not an epic tale. Hawthorne, 
 as he matured, wrote, as it were, a palimpsest ; there 
 was a hidden writing underneath the script, and the 
 script was only the key to what was beneath. He 
 was, to this extent, indeed, a writer of allegory; 
 
90 HAWTHORNE 
 
 but this would be an incomplete designation of his 
 peculiar art, which was less simple than direct alle- 
 gory. His art was, in fact, abstract, however con- 
 crete it might be in superficial appearance; there 
 was an increasing element of thought in it, and its 
 significance grew with this element and his subtle 
 skill in handling it ; something was continually being 
 infused into description and incident, which fed 
 them with meaning, till the very contents of the 
 work became abstract, — one was in the presence of 
 thought rather than mere life. In other words, he 
 had worked out his craftsmanship; he had made the 
 passage from sense to thought without loss of sharp- 
 ness or vividness, and presented in his writings truth 
 in place of facts, — that is, what is real in all persons 
 instead of one only. The peculiarity of Haw- 
 thorne's art is that the element of the abstract in 
 it is so engrossing and takes so imaginative a form. 
 Such a temperament as Hawthorne's is apt, in its 
 history, to lose contact with art and become ab- 
 sorbed in mere thought, to be simply intellectualized. 
 The vigor of Hawthorne's imagination, however, — 
 its clear visual edge or eye for the object, and his in- 
 terest in sights and sounds, — withheld him from 
 such an extreme ; and, indeed, he seems to have been 
 one of that breed of thinkers who need some sub- 
 stance to think in, as it were, — that physical object 
 in which, as a matter of fact, he did so often think. 
 To do his thinking so is the salvation of an artist. 
 At another remove, in a higher region of thought. 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 91 
 
 the mystic thinks in the symbol. Hawthorne, how- 
 ever, was not a true symbolist ; he was a plain artist, 
 — with the senses, the mind and the heart of an art- 
 ist ; and he had, to an uncommon degree, that disin- 
 terestedness which is thought in some quarters to 
 be so valuable a trait of the artist, if not, indeed, 
 indispensable. As an observer, in his note-books, 
 it is noticeable to what an extent he simply mirrored 
 what he saw, with what lucidity he gives it back. 
 He seems, at times, to be only such a mirror of life, 
 giving it back uncolored by his personality, as a 
 pure medium. There was a negative side to him, 
 a certain irresponsiveness, a lack of interest, a 
 lethargy, a dulness; one looks in vain in his career 
 for deep convictions or any enthusiasm of nature, 
 and, in that age of many reforms and stirring pub- 
 lic interests, his apathy is the more noticeable; the 
 story of Blithedale and of Brook Farm displays him 
 as practically untouched by the moral passions of 
 his time. 
 
 Such aloofness from contemporary affairs does 
 not imply any lack of knowledge of them; on the 
 contrary, it is abundantly evident that Hawthorne 
 was well acquainted with the intellectual movement 
 about him, its social experiments and quasi-scientific 
 affiliations, such as Fourierism, mesmerism and the 
 minor reforms in which his community was then 
 so prolific ; but these things, despite his natural curi- 
 osity, left him for the most part quite unconcerned. 
 A certain stolidity of temperament was, perhaps, 
 
92 HAWTHORNE 
 
 fundamental in him; at all events, his isolation, 
 socially, due to his separation from the world in 
 early manhood and his feeling that the current of 
 life had left him thrown aside, had generated in 
 him a sense of disengagement from the world, an 
 attitude as if he were concerned only as an observer 
 of life, which was uncommonly favorable to the 
 mood of artistic disinterestedness. Whatever was 
 the reason, the absence of vital contemporary inter- 
 ests in him is obvious, and a capital fact. He was 
 a pure artist, and his preferred world was the imag- 
 ination ; he never descended from it and departed to 
 mingle in the matters of practical life at the Boston 
 or Salem Custom House, or at Blithedale, without 
 falling into black moods of discouragement and the 
 homelessness of the exile; always, at the touch of 
 the world, his genius froze. Whether he dealt with 
 the colonial tradition or with fables of his own in- 
 vention, he was apart from the current realities 
 about him ; he gradually freed his imagination from 
 the aid of either historic or contemporary fact in the 
 effort to enter into the universal world of pure art, 
 which is valid without regard to time or place./ 
 
 The instrument by which he reached this develop- 
 ment was the physical image in various modifica- 
 tions, which he transmuted into ideas of moral sig- 
 nificance and universal import, proper to that world ; 
 and he was aided in accomplishing this by his disen- 
 gagement for long periods from intimate contact 
 with the practical world, and by a disinterestedness 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 93 
 
 of temperament, which appears to have been native 
 with him. Convictions, except of a primary kind 
 and proceeding from an indigenous morahty in his 
 Puritan heredity, did not enter into his work; re- 
 form, then rampant in the community, did not de- 
 flect his art; indeed, it may fairly be said that he 
 broadened morals more than morals narrowed him. 
 He made the Puritan, for all his isolation in the wil- 
 derness, a world-figure in literary art. Puritanism, 
 a great moral phenomenon, has its most vivid Amer- 
 ican literary record, for the world, in his work. The 
 lesser moral phenomena of his own time left slight 
 traces there, comparatively negligible, as in the story 
 of Blithedale. Hawthorne's undeniable aloofness 
 from contemporary life was thus rather a matter of 
 his biography than of his genius. It was, indeed, 
 favorable to his genius, a truly artistic aloofness, 
 however undesigned or unwilling, which left his 
 eye clear and his mind unpreoccupied and his heart 
 unprejudiced; fundamentally he was of the Puritan 
 inheritance, but to seek any more particular descrip- 
 tion of his moral affinity with his own age would be 
 futile. 
 
 Picturesque aspects and romantic episodes of 
 colonial history, the legend of the Indian, the pio- 
 neer and the early settler, had been treated descrip- 
 tively and at times poetized by the greater writers 
 of our first literary awakening in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. In Longfellow and Whittier local tradition 
 in New England had found its scribes, while truly 
 
94 HAWTHORNE 
 
 continental themes and distant regions of the settle- 
 ment had occupied the former, in his Indian and 
 Acadian narratives. The fundamental secular myth 
 of history had thus been recorded, defined and ex- 
 panded in imaginative literature with ample breadth 
 by both poets and novelists. The distinction of 
 Hawthorne, peculiarly, was not that he was the most 
 vivid romanticist among the many who fell heir to 
 one or another portion of the Puritan tradition to 
 which he most gave artistic form and color, but 
 rather that he penetrated that tradition to its moral 
 substance. That was the center of his interest, the 
 very kernel of his meditation. What he presented 
 was a series of dramatic episodes, longer or shorter, 
 more or less loosely bound together, but they were, 
 besides, moral scenes. The spell in them, which he 
 relied on for fascination, was their moral meaning, 
 — their significance, that is, to the life of the soul. 
 His own eye obeyed this fascination; and though 
 he minded well, artist-like, his garniture of facts in 
 the physical world, his real intent was to bare the 
 spiritual fact. His meditation was the sounder in 
 that it worked through his imagination, his mind 
 still thinking in the image, as was said above; but 
 a conclusion of thought, in however imaginative a 
 shape, was the end in view. 
 
 It is this prepossession of his art with its moral 
 theme, which accounts for the engrossing interest to 
 him of the abstract element in his method, and par- 
 ticularly for the marked exclusions that finally char- 
 
HAWTHORNE'S ARTISTIC METHOD 95 
 
 acterlzed it. His interest was in states of the soul, — * 
 not so much in the history of a soul, according to 
 the Browning formula, but the states through which 
 the soul, per se, that is, by its own nature, passes 
 under the experience of lifeyTo state it negatively, 
 he took the slightest interest in the events that orig- 
 inally occasioned or led up to the spiritual crises in- 
 volved, and he cared as little for the after fortunes 
 of the persons in whom these crises arose; his sense 
 of individual life, apart from its illustrative char- 
 acter, is feeble; or, in other words, persons did not 
 interest him, for, under no other supposition can one 
 account for the negligent way in which he dismisses 
 them, at the end of the play. - It follows that action 
 is at its lowest value in his work, which finds its 
 theme rather in the results of the action in the soul 
 and their sequence there. The story grows more and 
 more a psychological study, general in essence, of 
 the nature of evil, or sin, in the soul's experience, 
 when one comes to the core of Hawthorne's interest 
 in human life; the abstract method he employs re- 
 sults in a meditative vein in his work that can never 
 be disregarded by his readers, for it is its substantive 
 part ; but, it should be said, it is only in his maturer 
 tales that these characteristics become plain and 
 commanding elements. Nevertheless the germ of 
 these developments can be clearly observed in the 
 short stories that preceded the great novels. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE COLONIAL TRADITION 
 
 THE colonial tradition of New England, as a 
 written record, exists in many forms, — history, 
 genealogy, legend. It finds in Hawthorne its imag- 
 inative form, and one so distinguished by his genius 
 that it bids fair to be the great literary memorial of 
 that age. His genius was, perhaps, as is apt to be the 
 case, an excess of temperament; and his peculiar 
 rendering of the ''times before" results from the 
 blend of his native instinct for the moral element in 
 life, wherein he was true to race, with his artistic 
 taste for a romantic investiture of it, which belonged 
 rather to his personality. It may well be that dif- 
 ferent readers will be aware of these two interests 
 in various degrees; to one his tales will seem full 
 of old moralities, to another full of old-fashioned 
 scents like a garden of long ago, and to a very few 
 these impressions will merge in one; but his works 
 will bring the aroma of time to all. Hawthorne had 
 an idiosyncratic power to gather this aroma, and 
 wrap it in words. The House of the Seven Gables 
 by its very name proclaims itself a nest of the old 
 tradition. It has a family sound, and seems to con- 
 
 96 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 97 
 
 centrate in itself the story of generations. Indeed, 
 one might better call the tale a myth than a novel; 
 for it rises, as a myth builds itself up, out of secu- 
 lar elements, though with realistic features. While 
 it narrates individual lives and depicts particular cir- 
 cumstances, it recalls a whole age. It signifies, as 
 one reads, not a group of little lives, but a long 
 period, an era, as it were. Taken in its obvious 
 meaning, it is true, the story is one of the extinction 
 of a family, really rather a slight sketch of shabby 
 gentility worn threadbare; and it is complicated by 
 the shadow of a crime in one generation and an an- 
 cestral curse in another. The family tale, however, 
 is so treated as to generalize a community, and par- 
 ticularly to appeal to the affections of an old race for 
 dying things, endeared by familiarity in youth. The 
 mould of decay is over all that bygone life; the sim- 
 plicity of its ways and circumstances deepens its 
 peculiar pathos and gives it the value that belongs to 
 an old man's memories of his early days; it is the 
 past, romantically colored, — the past of a w^hole 
 countryside, — that comes forth, like invisible writ- 
 ing, on the page. 
 
 The House of the Seven Gables, in unfolding 
 the story of the family, concentrates attention on 
 the situations and the persons. The tale moves for- 
 ward by a succession of set scenes, each carefully 
 elaborated, as if for its own sake, and the whole 
 thus resembles a history told in tableaux. The mo- 
 tive spring lies far in the background of events, and 
 
98 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the method of construction recalls that secret his- 
 tory, or machination, antecedent to the story, that 
 Scott sometimes employed, as a means of unravel- 
 ing his mystery. Thus the ancestral curse of witch- 
 craft days is the furthest background of this family 
 history, and nearer lies a second background in the 
 prison life of Clifford, who is the male protagonist 
 of the household drama. Both these, in which the 
 plot of implacable fate and its means alike are to 
 be sought, are left subordinate and in shadow, as 
 was Hawthorne's way; he was not interested in 
 events, but in states of mind. He throws his high 
 lights on the scenes and the persons ; but the envel- 
 oping plot, with its romantic accessories, — the ances- 
 tral curse, the mythical "eastern estate," the prison 
 of Clifford, — he leaves subsidiary, and often in his 
 narrative hardly more than suggested. Places and 
 figures, however, scenes, he stages with exquisite 
 care for their subtleties, their refinement and signifi- 
 cance to the eye and the mind ; especially, he gives 
 them an atmosphere of penetrating old-time reality; 
 and it is these things, in the main, that one carries 
 away from Hawthorne in mind and memory. The 
 local flavor, the flavor of the soil, is uncommonly 
 strong, too; one feels that these are things that 
 might have happened in Salem, — the picturesque, the 
 pathetic, the sentimental things of a provincial, al- 
 most a colonial city, of long ago. This union of 
 highly developed individuality in the treatment, with 
 universal human significance in the meaning, is the 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 99 
 
 mark of Hawthorne's genius. It turned a parochial 
 tale into a national memorial. 
 
 It seems unlikely to the analyst of Hawthorne's 
 genius that there was much method in its madness. 
 The note-book, with which the reader is already 
 familiar from the preceding chapters, was plainly a 
 seed-plot from which whatever was fit was trans- 
 ferred into new soil as from a nursery garden. This 
 is the same process as that which accounts for *'old 
 Moodie'^ in The Blithedale Romance. In The 
 House of the Seven Gables it accounts for the 
 scene of the hens. "Uncle Venner," with his fish- 
 horn, might have been one of the "Sights from a 
 Steeple." It is obvious, too, that Hawthorne's pro- 
 longed apprenticeship to the short story had hard- 
 ened a literary habit in him, more common in juve- 
 nile than in mature work. He had become, to a 
 certain extent, an artist in miniature. He was ac- 
 customed, in his sketches and tales, to brief spaces, 
 narrow horizons, few elements, and to labor on 
 these with microscopic attention and infinite detail ; 
 and the natural result was that, on attempting the 
 larger task of a romance or novel, he fell into a 
 method of agglomeration in art. He assembled his 
 materials, as the phrase goes now, and they were 
 apt, though they harmonized well enough, not to 
 fuse entirely. The tale of The House of the Seven 
 Gables, for example, is threefold, — the story of old 
 Maule, that of Alice, and that of Clifford and his 
 group; but they are separable parts; indeed, a later 
 
100 HAWTHORNE 
 
 novelist of the more massive sort would have made 
 three narratives of the matter. Similarly each 
 scene, as it comes before the eye, seems a thing 
 apart, as it were, and studied for itself. One is not 
 keenly aware of the vital logic, binding the parts; 
 and in a tale of hereditary guilt, this is a defect that 
 would greatly impair its convincing power, were it 
 not understood, in fact, that the curse is really an 
 artistic convention, allowed purely for the sake of 
 the story, since, otherwise, the story could not go on. 
 In The House of the Seven Gables, the convention 
 is the more readily granted, because it embodies tra- 
 ditional truth, and thus gives the right historical 
 perspective to the colonial tale. At the same time, 
 quite apart from the three phases of the curse, the 
 disparate materials of the story give the impression 
 of miscellaneousness, of a rather varied collection 
 of Hawthornesque items. The truth is that this is 
 characteristic of Hawthorne's method, in his larger 
 works. There is no mother-idea out of which they 
 develop, with a single, overpowering, master life of 
 their own. 
 
 The small scale on which Hawthorne had been 
 trained to work not only gives this multiple, miscel- 
 laneous and somewhat uncorrelated character to his 
 novels, but it underlies, most probably, his noticeable 
 artistic economy. The principle of economy is, in- 
 deed, fundamental in art, and happy is the talent 
 that can command it in any way without loss. It 
 may be the very flower of taste, as in some e:?camples 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 101 
 
 of primitive or alien art; or it may only mask pov- 
 erty of invention or insight. In Hawthorne, his 
 habitual use of few characters and slight incidents 
 is, perhaps, due to the early restrictions upon him 
 of the short story or sketch, shut naturally in brief 
 limits. There was not room for more. And the rule 
 is the same for prose as for poetry: the briefer the 
 lyric, the greater the perfection must be, both of sub- 
 stance and of workmanship. Thus with Hawthorne, 
 dealing habitually with few and slight elements in 
 his art, elaboration of the material became a neces- 
 sity, — hence, his detail, his minutiae, his shading, 
 and all that exquisite refmement of surface and del- 
 icacy of atmosphere in his work. His economy of 
 material reaches, at times, almost to parsimony. 
 And here, too, one is reminded of his garden days at 
 Concord and the forest walks at Blithedale ; after all 
 is said in his beautiful language, of the fallen au- 
 tumn leaf like a drop of blood, the mosquito that 
 was frost-bitten, and the gust of violets along a 
 wood road, how little he had to see ! The elabora- 
 tion of it in observation, in imagination, is marvel- 
 ous; but to find artistic value in that countryside 
 and in that anaemic life of the decaying gabled 
 house in old Salem, what eyes he must have had, and 
 what insight ! The parsimony was in his subject and 
 environment, truly; but from this very fact he 
 plucked no small part of the power that his genius 
 developed, because his theme almost thrust upon him 
 certain qualities of obsei*vation and workmanship 
 
102 HAWTHORNE 
 
 wherein his greatness, as a writer, came to He. He 
 belonged, in a certain sense, to what are called in 
 the history of art, the *1ittle masters," by virtue of 
 these qualities, in his tales, or portions of his ro- 
 mances, done on a small scale ; his artistic economies 
 allied him to their mode of work; and this manner, 
 so far as he carried it over into his longer novels, in- 
 jured the unity of impression in them so that one is 
 apt to remember particular scenes in them rather 
 than their general course and climax. It is the 
 scenes, rather than the plot or the idea, that count ; 
 in fact, one has to clarify the latter by thinking, be- 
 fore they are quite clear. On the other hand, one 
 sees the successive situations with great vividness. 
 
 In other words, Hawthorne's art, in its greater 
 examples, at least, was essentially composite, an add- 
 ing of cell to cell. This method allowed him to 
 avail himself with greater ease of the miscellaneous 
 elements of his rather haphazard New England up- 
 bringing among men and books. His mind was nat- 
 urally acquisitive; and, however lax were his social 
 instincts, he used his eyes with a good deal of inti- 
 macy upon their objects. He really absorbed expe- 
 rience, so far as it lay in the purview of observation ; 
 shy and solitary as he was, it is unlikely that any one 
 along that coast was more accurately familiar with 
 its look and with the habits and thoughts of its folk 
 and their forefathers. This knowledge, taken in 
 bulk, was his race-inheritance, whether it came to 
 him by direct observation of the things and people 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 103 
 
 where he lived and walked, or by reading the homely 
 memorials of the wilderness years in these same 
 places. Eager and acute to see, to notice and to 
 meditate what he saw, and with a sympathetic 
 genius to interpret and to understand, because he 
 was of the blood and knew the common past, he was 
 an ideal historiographer of the community; but, 
 besides, there was added to his blood the secret drop 
 of artistic genius that made him a creator instead of 
 a recorder of life. He put forth his works as things 
 of imagination instead of chronicles, but their sub- 
 stance was the life that had been lived, as he divined 
 it after long observation and meditation; naturally 
 there were many phases of this life, many peculiar- 
 ities, many thoughts, and in taking possession of the 
 riches of this inheritance he found a miscellany of 
 things. A composite method was forced upon him. 
 Hawthorne, himself, was aware of the greater 
 kinship between him and the story of the old Salem 
 house than existed in his other works. This tale 
 was not so high-strung in imagination and moral 
 feeling, and was more on the level of his familiar 
 days; the less severe parts of the composition are 
 hardly more than journalizing. In the story the 
 things of the eye or the memory, such as the look 
 of streets and gardens and their customary incidents, 
 come easily, and almost without notice; situa- 
 tion and dialogue, on the contrary, are more self- 
 conscious, and the legend of Alice shows imagi- 
 native tension; in some scenes one feels that they 
 
104 HAWTHORNE 
 
 are set, and the death of the judge, wearisome and 
 forced in style, is positively "staged," to use the 
 critical word; but, notwithstanding, all these things 
 proceed naturally from Hawthorne's cabinet and 
 tastes, and represent the contents of his mind and 
 heart more fully and characteristically than his 
 other novels. The book familiarizes one with the 
 author, more than any other of his writings. This, 
 together with the abiding charm of the old life it 
 represents, accounts for the favor, almost the affec- 
 tion, in which it is held by lovers of Hawthorne, 
 whatever may be said of its technique. Technique 
 is the excellence of the understanding, in any case. 
 Technique is posterior to genius, which is rather 
 allied to what used to be called the pure reason, and 
 acts by intuition. It is not because of any inferi- 
 ority of technique, which some might be disposed 
 to see in the miscellaneous character of the Salem 
 story, that these remarks are made; but rather to 
 illustrate and amplify the manner in which, before 
 the golden age of ^'technique," free genius found 
 out its way. 
 
 It was the spirit of the artist, moving in the mass 
 of inherited legend and environment which was 
 Hawthorne's material, that compensated for any 
 flaws and unconcerning defects in his work and gave 
 it the fascination that has assured its long success. 
 The artistic impulse was the master element in his 
 genius that used his other qualities of observation 
 and meditation merely as media of the creative light. 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 105 
 
 It is curious to observe this artistic instinct at work 
 in his recurring interest in the fine arts. He had a 
 cousinly feehng for them, a predilection that, how- 
 ever, was, perhaps, not rare in the New England of 
 his early manhood, but was significant, rather, of its 
 amateurish and awakening culture. One remem- 
 bers the Salem interest in "Flaxman's designs," the 
 reproduced masterpieces of painting on Hawthorne's 
 furniture, the visits to the Boston Athenaeum treas- 
 ures, in his American years; but, particularly, in 
 connection with the tales, one recalls the aquatic fig- 
 ure of *'Drowne's Wooden Image," and especially 
 the marvelous mechanical toy of "The Artist of the 
 Beautiful," with its profound esthetic meditation. 
 How frequent and how various, too, is his use of the 
 "portrait" ! The portrait was, indeed, a common 
 romantic property, and often called into requisition 
 in many lands. Hawthorne, like others, obeyed its 
 fascinating eyes, and continually resorted to it for 
 imaginative effect. In the "House of Seven Gables" 
 itself, the portrait has a place of honor, with the 
 deed of the "eastern estate," secreted behind it 
 in the wainscot, it will be remembered, and is, 
 in fact, the symbolic embodiment of the old ances- 
 tral curse of the Pyncheon house. But, in Haw- 
 thorne's work, the portrait was much more than a 
 common romantic property. It indicated, by his re- 
 peated use of it and in connection with other like 
 matters, an underlying artistic impulse and inclina- 
 tion to the beautiful in its pure forms that was 
 
106 HAWTHORNE 
 
 fundamental in his genius. More than the observer 
 or the morahst whom he is easily seen to be, he was 
 born an artist; by native endowmient, and by the 
 conditions, the impulse was loosed in literature, and 
 resulted in an even more delicate, richer and more 
 profound beauty in the expression of life by imagi- 
 nation, thought and the charm of words; but the 
 essentially esthetic quality of Hawthorne's genius 
 is, perhaps, more apparent at first by his obvious 
 cousinship in spirit with the wood-carver, the butter- 
 fly maker, the painter and the sculptor, from first 
 to last. He was, at least, a brother of all the crafts. 
 This artistic impulse led him to study and arrange 
 his material in detail, and to give the peculiarly ex- 
 quisite finish that distinguishes his literary touch; 
 but, in larger ways, it also taught him the sense of 
 the enveloping harmonies within which a whole 
 work of art is contained, — must, in fact, be con- 
 tained; and to this instinct and sense must be at- 
 tributed the numerous reduplications, echoes and 
 gradations that combine to make up his major ef- 
 fects and to unify them. Composite as his art is, 
 a higher harmony enfolds its elements and reconciles 
 them. This is due to his being, primarily, an artist 
 in imaginative work, — a creator, as has been said, 
 more than an observer or a moralist. 
 ' In the substance of his work, apart from the qual- 
 ity and coloring of his material, Hawthorne w^as, 
 preeminently, it need hardly be said, a psychologist. 
 His place was on that fall of the wave, just beyond 
 
 / 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 107 
 
 the crest of a literary movement, when, action and 
 even character being exhausted as major themes, 
 interest centers in analysis of motives, growths and 
 conditions, that is, in the inner rather than the outer 
 history of human nature, the underlying grounds of 
 both action and character. In this development he 
 anticipated the taste of the next age, and illustrated 
 in fiction the vein of intellectual subtlety character- 
 istic of New England culture from Edwards to 
 Emerson. He did this without intention, without 
 much thinking about it, as the rhodora blooms ; sim- 
 ply it belonged to the soil to bloom so. The old re- 
 ligion had made brooding on human nature, and 
 especially its moral phases, almost congenital in the 
 race, and the habit had been intensified in Haw- 
 thorne by his situation in his maturing years; the 
 secret alike of his meditation and of his observation 
 was the lonely life of an active mind. His heredity 
 concentrated his interest on the moral world; and 
 being the child of that civilization, thinking over and 
 ruminating its old thoughts, Hawthorne naturally 
 found his deeper mental life a meditation on sin, 
 especially on the ways of evil with a man, its work- 
 ing in the breast and its results. In The House of 
 the Seven Gables it is evil in the form of an in- 
 herited curse rather than in the individual, it is true, 
 — vengeance long drawn out ; or, if vengeance be too 
 strong an expression, it is retribution, penalty, the 
 inexorable debt that must be paid with time. The 
 theme, the idea, is of the Puritan moral scheme — 
 
108 HAWTHORNE 
 
 especially in the element of inheritance involved — 
 and thus was native to Hawthorne ; but in his genera- 
 tion its reality was hardly sufficiently felt to make it 
 effective in fiction without a delicate touch and much 
 management. At the end, indeed, the inherited curse 
 of the house is the most tenuous part of the tale, 
 while the entirely human character of Hepzibah 
 stands clear in the foreground. 
 
 Hawthorne's pro founder moral work, in fact, is 
 to be found elsewhere. In this tale he was distracted 
 from the main theme of sin, in human nature, by 
 the half-romantic attraction of the curse, clinging to 
 generation after generation, till it was finally solved 
 in new lives; and he was also diverted from too 
 serious a view by the fascination of the environment 
 and atmosphere of old Salem, as it was known to his 
 sympathies. The curse, after all, even in the very 
 home of the w^itches, had come to be "an old wives' 
 tale" ; try to vivify it as he might, Hawthorne could 
 not make it credible as other than a romantic back- 
 grotmd, fitting the locality and the figures; but this 
 relaxation of the moral fiber of the story left more 
 ample room, in which to unfold its gentle and hum- 
 ble humanity. It is, indeed, a lifeless life, a faded 
 bloom, that is disclosed in the old and shut-up house. 
 All things have left it but an old sister's love; and 
 hither, late in her years, comes back the broken fa- 
 vorite brother, released from his unjust prison. They 
 are victims of life, these two. The curse is but a 
 story in their dimmed memories — how can it be 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 109 
 
 thought to account for their Hves ? — but, for all that, 
 one way and another, their lives are ruined. Hepzi- 
 bah, the weary watcher of many years, is expecting 
 her brother, and has made what feeble preparation 
 she can for their common support by setting up the 
 famous "cent-shop" in the basement story: 
 
 "It has already been observed, that, in the base- 
 ment story of the gable fronting on the street, an 
 unworthy ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted 
 up a shop. Ever since the old gentleman retired 
 from trade, and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not 
 only the shop-door, but the inner arrangements, had 
 been suffered to remain unchanged; while the dust 
 of ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and 
 counter, and partly filled an old pair of scales, as if 
 it were of value enough to be weighed. It treasured 
 itself up, too, in the half-open till, where there still 
 lingered a base sixpence, worth neither more nor 
 less than the hereditary pride which had here been 
 put to shame. Such had been the state and condi- 
 tion of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood, 
 when she and her brother used to play at hide- 
 and-seek in its forsaken precincts. So it had re- 
 mained, until within a few days past. 
 
 *'But now, though the shop-window was still 
 closely curtained from the public gaze, a remark- 
 able change had taken place in its interior. The 
 rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had cost 
 a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's 
 
110 HAWTHORNE 
 
 labor to spin and weave, had been carefully brushed 
 away from the ceiling. The counter, shelves, and 
 floor had all been scoured, and the latter was over- 
 strewn with fresh blue sand. The brown scales, 
 too, had evidently undergone rigid discipline, in an 
 unavailing effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! 
 had eaten through and through their substance. 
 Neither was the little old shop any longer empty 
 of merchantable goods. A curious eye, privileged 
 to take an account of stock, and investigate behind 
 the counter, would have discovered a barrel, — yea, 
 two or three barrels and half ditto, — one containing 
 flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps, Indian 
 meal. There was likewise a square box of pine- 
 wood, full of soap in bars; also, another of the 
 same size, in which were tallow-candles, ten to the 
 pound. A small stock of brown sugar, some white 
 beans and split peas, and a few other commodities 
 of low price, and such as are constantly in demand, 
 made up the bulkier portion of the merchandise. It 
 might have been taken for a ghostly or phantasma- 
 goric reflection of the old shop-keeper Pyncheon's 
 shabbily provided shelves, save that some of the 
 articles were of a description and outward form 
 which could hardly have been known in his day. 
 For instance, there was a glass pickle- jar filled with 
 fragments of Gibraltar rock; not, indeed, splinters 
 of the veritable stone foundation of the famous 
 fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly done 
 up in white paper. Jim Crow, moreover, v/as seen 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 111 
 
 executing his world-renowned dance, in ginger- 
 bread. A party of leaden dragoons were galloping 
 along one of the shelves, in equipments and uniform 
 of modern cut; and there were some sugar figures, 
 with no strong resemblance to the humanity of any 
 epoch, but less unsatisfactorily representing our 
 own fashions than those of a hundred years ago. 
 Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, 
 was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old 
 times, would have been thought actually to borrow 
 their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of 
 Tophet. 
 
 "In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, 
 it was incontrovertibly evident that somebody had 
 taken the shop and fixtures of the long-retired and 
 forgotten Mr. Pyncheon, and was about to renew 
 the enterprise of that departed worthy, with a dif- 
 ferent set of customers. Who could this bold ad- 
 venturer be? And, of all places in the world, why 
 had he chosen the House of the Seven Gables as 
 the scene of his commercial speculations? 
 
 "We return to the elderly maiden. She at length 
 withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of 
 the Colonel's portrait, heaved a sigh, — indeed, her 
 breast was a very cave of ^olus that morning, — 
 and stept across the room on tiptoe, as is the cus- 
 tomary gait of elderly women. Passing through 
 an intervening passage, she opened a door that com- 
 municated with the shop, just now so elaborately 
 described. Owing to the projection of the upper 
 
112 HAWTHORNE 
 
 story — and still more to the thick shadow of the 
 Pyncheon Elm, which stood almost directly in front 
 of the gable — the twilight, here, was still as much 
 akin to night as morning. Another heavy sigh from 
 Miss Hepzibah! After a moment's pause on the 
 threshold, peering towards the window with her 
 near-sighted scowl, as if frowning down some bitter 
 enemy, she suddenly projected herself into the shop. 
 The haste, and, as it were, the galvanic impulse of 
 the movement, were really quite startling. 
 
 '^Nervously — in a sort of frenzy, we might almost 
 say — she began to busy herself in arranging some 
 children's playthings, and other little wares, on the 
 shelves and at the shop-window. In the aspect of 
 this dark-arrayed, pale-faced, lady-like old figure 
 there was a deeply tragic character that contrasted 
 irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness of her 
 employment. It seemed a queer anomaly, that so 
 gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in 
 hand; a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her 
 grasp; a miserably absurd idea, that she should 
 go on perplexing her stiff and sombre intellect with 
 the question how to tempt little boys into her prem- 
 ises! Yet such is undoubtedly her object. Now she 
 places a gingerbread elephant against the window, 
 but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon 
 the floor, with the dismemberment of three legs and 
 its trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant, and has 
 become a few bits of musty gingerbread. There, 
 again, she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 113 
 
 which roll different ways, and each individual mar- 
 ble, devil-directed, into the most difficult obscurity 
 that it can find. Heaven help our poor old Hepzi- 
 bah, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of 
 her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes 
 down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the ab- 
 sconding marbles, we positively feel so much the 
 more inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the 
 very fact that we must needs turn aside and laugh 
 at her. For here, — and if we fail to impress it 
 suitably upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that 
 of the theme, — here is one of the truest points of 
 melancholy interest that occur in ordinary life. It 
 was the final throe of what called itself old gentility. 
 A lady — who had fed herself from childhood with 
 the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and 
 whose religion it was that a lady's hand soils itself 
 irremediably by doing aught for bread — this born 
 lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain 
 to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank. 
 Poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, 
 has come up with her at last. She must earn her 
 own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon 
 Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon, too irreverently, at the 
 instant of time when the patrician lady is to be trans- 
 formed into a plebeian woman. 
 
 *Tn this republican country, amid the fluctuating 
 waves of our social life, somebody is always at the 
 drowning-point. The tragedy is enacted with as 
 continual a repetition as that of a popular drama on 
 
114 HAWTHORNE 
 
 a holiday; and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, per- 
 haps, as when an hereditary noble sinks below his 
 order. More deeply; since, with us, rank is the 
 grosser substance of wealth and a splendid estab- 
 lishment, and has no spiritual existence after the 
 death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them. 
 And, therefore, since we have been unfortunate 
 enough to introduce our heroine at so inauspicious 
 a juncture, we w^ould entreat for a mood of due 
 solemnity in the spectators of her fate. Let us be- 
 hold, in poor Hepzibah, the immemorial lady, — two 
 hundred years old, on this side of the water, and 
 thrice as many on the other, — with her antique por- 
 traits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and tradi- 
 tions, and her claim, as joint heiress, to that princely 
 territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness, 
 but a populous fertility, — born, too, in Pyncheon 
 Street, under the Pyncheon Elm, and in the Pyn- 
 cheon House, where she has spent all her days, — 
 reduced now, in that very house, to be the huck- 
 steress of a cent-shop. 
 
 "This business of setting up a petty shop is almost 
 the only resource of w^omen, in circumstances at all 
 similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With 
 her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of 
 hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not 
 be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years 
 gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite speci- 
 mens of ornamental needlework. A school for lit- 
 tle children had been often in her thoughts; and, at 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 115 
 
 one time, she had begun a review of her early 
 studies in the New England Primer, with a view 
 to prepare herself for the office of instructress. But 
 the love of children had never quickened in Hepzi- 
 bah's heart, and was now torpid, if not extinct; she 
 watched the little people of the neighborhood from 
 her chamber-window, and doubted whether she 
 could tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with 
 them. Besides, in our day, the very ABC has be- 
 come a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer 
 taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter. A 
 modern child could teach old Hepzibah more than 
 old Hepzibah could teach the child. So — with many 
 a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at last coming 
 into sordid contact with the world, from which she 
 had so long kept aloof, while every added day 
 of seclusion had rolled another stone against the 
 cavern-door of her hermitage — the poor thing be- 
 thought herself of the ancient shop- window, the 
 rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have held 
 back a little longer; but another circumstance, not 
 yet hinted at, had somewhat hastened her decision. 
 Her humble preparations, therefore, were duly made, 
 and the enterprise was now to be commenced. Nor 
 was she entitled to complain of any remarkable sin- 
 gularity in her fate; for, in the town of her nativity, 
 we might point to several little shops of a similar 
 description, some of them in houses as ancient as 
 that of the Seven Gables; and one or two, it may 
 be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the 
 
116 HAWTHORNE 
 
 counter, as grim an image of family pride as Miss 
 Hepzibah Pyncheon herself. 
 
 *'lt was overpoweringly ridiculous — we must hon- 
 estly confess it — the deportment of the maiden lady 
 while setting her shop in order for the public eye. 
 She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if 
 she conceived some bloody-minded villain to be 
 watching behind the elm-tree, with intent to take 
 her life. Stretching out her long, lank arm, she 
 put a paper of pearl buttons, a jew's-harp, or what- 
 ever the small article might be, in its destined place, 
 and straightway vanished back into the dusk, as if 
 the world need never hope for another glimpse of 
 her. It might have been fancied, indeed, that she 
 expected to minister to the wants of the community 
 unseen, like a disembodied divinity or enchantress, 
 holding forth her bargains to the reverential and 
 av^^e-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand. But 
 Hepzibah had no such flattering dream. She was 
 wdl aware that she must ultimately come forward, 
 and stand revealed in her proper individuality ; but, 
 like other sensitive persons, she could not bear to be 
 observed in the gradual process, and chose rather to 
 flash forth on the world's astonished gaze at once. 
 
 "The inevitable moment was not much longer to 
 be delayed. The sunshine might now be seen steal- 
 ing down the front of the opposite house, from the 
 windows of which came a reflected gleam, strug- 
 gling through the boughs of the elm-tree, and en- 
 lightening the interior of the shop more distinctly 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 117 
 
 than heretofore. The town appeared to be waking 
 up. A baker's cart had already rattled through the 
 street, chasing away the latest vestige of night's 
 sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells. 
 A milkman was distributing the contents of his 
 cans from door to door; and the harsh peal of a 
 fisherman's conch shell was heard far off, around 
 the corner. None of these tokens escaped Hepzi- 
 bah's notice. The moment had arrived. To delay 
 longer w^ould be only to lengthen out her misery. 
 Nothing remained, except to take down the bar from 
 the shop-door, leaving the entrance free — more than 
 free — welcome, as if all were household friends — 
 to every passerby, whose eyes might be attracted 
 by the commodities at the window. This last act 
 Hepzibah now performed, letting the bar fall with 
 what smote upon her excited nerves as a most 
 astounding clatter. Then — as if the only barrier 
 betwixt herself and the world had been thrown 
 down, and a flood of evil consequences would come 
 tumbling through the gap — she fled into the inner 
 parlor, threw herself into the ancestral elbow-chair, 
 and wept." 
 
 Dear old Hepzibah! What loving kindness she 
 had! It was likely to be a strange adventure for 
 her; but she took the castaway of life into her boat, 
 frail craft that it was, for the end of the voyage. 
 
 The book is full of such realistic scenes minutely 
 studied from the early years of the nineteenth cen- 
 
118 HAWTHORNE 
 
 tury in the neighborhoods that Hawthorne knew. 
 They give up their full local flavor, doubtless, only 
 to those who can recall the marvelous views on old- 
 fashioned wall-papers at Salem, the stately, white 
 bannisters and paneled walls of the houses of that 
 spacious era, just subsequent to the Revolution, the 
 box-bordered walks of the trim back-gardens, the 
 sunshine-flooded tulips, the scented breath of the 
 spearmint patch! Provincial life, if it has, in the 
 main, private delights and a charm incommunicable 
 except to the native-born, owns also, since Theocri- 
 tus, something of pastoral magic for all the world. 
 The rural scene, the rustic tale are, perhaps, the com- 
 moner and grosser forms in which the spell is woven 
 in our generation, and especially the novel of the 
 provinces, with a touch of dialect in speech as well 
 as in manners, is to the fore ; but the magic needs no 
 shepherd's tale nor idyllic poetry to find a home in 
 the heart, for, after all, the best magic is unadulter- 
 ated human nature, wherever f-ound. Dwellers in 
 cities, too, and people in country houses have their 
 chronicles, their *'life of the province," as many 
 modern writers of fiction bear witness in all lan- 
 guages. The type fascinates certain hearts in all 
 lands; and in the streets of old Salem it found a 
 wonderful soil, and a wonderful genius. 
 
 The old town lives again in these pages, if indeed 
 so feeble a flow may be called life. The anaemia of 
 the book pervades it; for its points of crisis are the 
 death-throes of the lives that are dying, the old 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 119 
 
 curse wearing itself out; while the fresh lives, the 
 new blood, in Phoebe, the niece, and her lover, the 
 daguerreotypist, are used only as background and epi- 
 sode. The most vital part is the reproduction of the 
 general scene, the manners and customs, the little 
 incidents, the way life went on. The first customer, 
 a small fellow of the neighborhood, enters the shop, 
 making the warning bell ring, with an effect of real, 
 waking life, comparable only to the knocking at the 
 gate in Macbeth. It is amazing, what a noise he 
 makes! How he seems to set the world going! 
 What boyhood memories he unlocks! Gibraltars 
 and black-jacks! Those gingerbread elephants! 
 Those lead soldiers ! Yet to what end is this inrush 
 of youthful spirits, or of the more mature young 
 womanhood and young manhood in the maiden 
 sweetness of Phoebe and the democratic **newness" 
 of the daguerreotypist? They may begin a new 
 story, but they will never carry on the tale of the 
 old house ; at the end of that tale, the old house will 
 be dead, and every step is toward the catastrophe. 
 It is as if one were witnessing an execution. 
 It is this temperament of the book, this atmosphere 
 pervading it, this irremediableness in misery, after 
 all, however caused, that imbues it with somber- 
 ness. It is only in this impression that the fatal ele- 
 ment in the curse is truly felt. Though one disbe- 
 lieves in the reality of the curse, he can not 
 altogether escape from it in the imagination. 
 There are ghosts in the old house, whatever one be- 
 
120 HAWTHORNE 
 
 lieves. The voices of the lovers, the call-bell of the 
 little boy, Uncle Venner's fish-horn do not drive 
 them away; and, meanwhile, as it were in their 
 presence, the old-time village life goes on. Hepzi- 
 bah gets the breakfast of broiled mackerel, and 
 Clifford, "the guest," descends the stairs to his first 
 meal "at home," as if there were no ghosts there, 
 barkening in the corners and peering from the old 
 Colonel's portrait. 
 
 "Hepzibah's small and ancient table, supported on 
 its slender and graceful legs, and covered with a 
 cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be 
 the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of 
 parties. The vapor of the broiled fish arose like in- 
 cense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while the 
 fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the 
 nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or w^iatever power has 
 scope over a modern breakfast-table. Phoebe's In- 
 dian cakes were the sweetest offering of all, — in 
 their hue befitting the rustic altars of the innocent 
 and golden age, — or, so brightly yellow were they, 
 resembling some of the bread which was changed 
 to glistening gold w^hen Midas tried to eat it. The 
 butter must not be forgotten, — butter which Phoebe 
 herself had churned, in her own rural home, and 
 brought it to her cousin as a propitiatory gift, — 
 smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing the 
 charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-pan- 
 elled parlor. All this, with the quaint gorgeousness 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 121 
 
 of the old china cups and saucers, and the crested 
 spoons, and a silver cream- jug (Hepzibah's only 
 other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest 
 porringer), set out a board at which the stateliest 
 of old Colonel Pyncheon's guests need not have 
 scorned to take his place. But the Puritan's face 
 scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on 
 the table pleased his appetite. 
 
 " 'Hush !' whispered Hepzibah. *Be cheerful ! 
 whatever may happen, be nothing but cheerful !' 
 
 ''The final pause at the threshold proved so long, 
 that Hepzibah, unable to endure the suspense, 
 rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in 
 the stranger by the hand. At the first glance, 
 Phoebe saw an elderly personage, in an old-fash- 
 ioned dressing-gown, of faded damask, and wearing 
 his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. 
 It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when 
 he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. 
 After a very brief inspection of his face, it was 
 easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily 
 be such an one as that which, slowly, and with as 
 indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a 
 floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there 
 were no tokens that his physical strength might not 
 have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It 
 was the spirit of the man that could not walk. The 
 expression of his countenance — while, notwithstand^ 
 
122 HAWTHORNE 
 
 ing, it had the hght of reason in it — seemed to 
 waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and 
 feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame 
 which we see twinkling among half -extinguished 
 embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were 
 a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward, — more in- 
 tently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought 
 either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or 
 be at once extinguished. 
 
 "For an instant after entering the room, the guest 
 stood still, retaining Hepzibah's hand, instinctively, 
 as a child does that of the grown person who guides 
 it. He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an illum- 
 ination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, 
 which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the par- 
 lor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the 
 glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sun- 
 shine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer 
 the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at cour- 
 tesy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an 
 idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, 
 such as no practised art of external manners could 
 have attained. It was too slight to seize upon at the 
 instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to 
 transfigure the whole man. 
 
 " 'Dear Clifford,' said Hepzibah, in the tone with 
 which one soothes a wayward infant, 'this is our 
 cousin Phoebe, — little Phoebe Pyncheon, — Arthur's 
 only child, you know. She has come from the 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 123 
 
 country to stay with us awhile; for our old house 
 has grown to be very lonely now/ 
 
 " Thcebe ? — Phoebe Pyncheon ? — Phoebe ?' re- 
 peated the guest, with a strange sluggish, ill-defined 
 utterance. 'Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No 
 matter ! She is very welcome !' . . . 
 
 "At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still 
 imperfect animation, Phoebe became convinced of 
 what she had at first rejected as too extravagant 
 and startling an idea. She saw that the person 
 before her must have been the original of the beau- 
 tiful miniature in her cousin Hepzibah's possession. 
 Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she had 
 at once identified the damask dressing-gown, which 
 enveloped him, as the same in figure, material, and 
 fashion, with that so elaborately represented in the 
 picture. This old, faded garment, w^ith all its pris- 
 tine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescrib- 
 able way, to translate the wearer's untold misfor- 
 tune, and make it perceptible to the beholder's eye. 
 It w^as the better to be discerned, by this exterior 
 type, how worn and old were the soul's more imme- 
 diate garments; that form and countenance, the 
 beauty and grace of which had almost transcended 
 the skill of the most exquisite of artists. It could 
 the more adequately be known that the soul of the 
 man must have suffered some miserable wrong, 
 from its earthly experience. There he seemed to 
 sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him 
 
124 HAWTHORNE 
 
 and the world, but through which, at flitting inter- 
 vals, might be caught the same expression, so re- 
 fined, so softly imaginative, which Malbone — ven- 
 turing a happy touch, with suspended breath — had 
 imparted to the miniature ! There had been some- 
 thing so innately characteristic in this look, that all 
 the dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity 
 which had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly 
 to destroy it." 
 
 Hepzibah embodies one phase of the tragedy of 
 women's lives in old New England; and, apart from 
 the special circumstances of her lot, she typifies a 
 class. Other later writers have attempted to por- 
 tray it; but she stands unrivaled, the protagonist of 
 all her kind. Clifford, her counterpart, is presented 
 in a different vein of pathos; and in him, particu- 
 larly, is seen an example of Hawthorne's preoccupa- 
 tion with artistic themes and the analysis of the 
 artistic nature, of the sort that has been already al- 
 luded to. The use of the miniature by Malbone, 
 in the last citation, is an instance of Hawthorne's 
 employment of properties of the kind; here it serves 
 as a minor echo of the old Colonel's portrait, which 
 is, of course, primary in the decorative scheme, if 
 one may use such a phrase without giving too much 
 sense of design. The general purpose is to develop 
 and unveil with an almost imperceptible increment 
 and fulness the esthetic side of Clifford's now 
 broken nature. With what slow approaches Haw- 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 125 
 
 thorne places him in the presence of simple objects 
 of beauty and shows his feeble responses, as if by 
 brief flashes of a rallying mind! The whole scene 
 is against the background of the old prison-life; the 
 age and grim scowl of Hepzibah are used for con- 
 trast, the youth of Phoebe concentrates the elements 
 of charm, the physical coarsening of Clifford's na- 
 ture by his privations gives deep-cut shadows; at 
 last the scene is focused in the flower, itself a kind 
 of replica of the young girl in her maidenhood and 
 a symbol of the fresh bud putting forth on the old 
 branch of the decaying house. But let the romancer, 
 himself, speak! — 
 
 "Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed 
 Clifford's nature to be a Sybarite. It was percept- 
 ible, even there, in the dark old parlor, in the in- 
 evitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted 
 towards the quivering play of sunbeams through 
 the shadowy foliage. It was seen in his appreciat- 
 ing notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which 
 he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical 
 organization so refined that spiritual ingredients are 
 moulded in with it. It was betrayed in the uncon- 
 scious smile with which he regarded Phoebe, whose 
 fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and 
 flowers, — their essence, in a prettier and more 
 agreeable mode of manifestation. Not less evident 
 was this love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the 
 instinctive caution with which, even so soon, his 
 
I 
 
 126 • HAWTHORNE 
 
 eyes 'turned away from his hostess, and wandered 
 to any quarter rather than come back. It was Hep- 
 zibah's misfortune, — not CHfford's fault. How 
 could he, — so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so 
 sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban 
 on her head, and that most perverse of scowls con- 
 torting her brow, — how could he love to gaze at 
 her ? But, did he owe her no affection for so much 
 as she had silently given? He owed her nothing. 
 A nature like Clifford's can contract no debts of 
 that kind. It is — we say it without censure, nor in 
 diminution of the claim which it inde feasibly pos- 
 sesses on beings of another mould — it is always 
 selfish in its essence; and we must give it leave 
 to be so, and heap up our heroic and disinter- 
 ested love upon it so much the more, without a 
 recompense. Poor Hepzibah knew this truth, or, 
 at least, acted on the instinct of it. So long es- 
 tranged fro;n what was lovely as Clifford had been, 
 she rejoiced — rejoiced, though with a present sigh, 
 and a secret purpose to shed tears in her own cham- 
 ber — that he had brighter objects now before his 
 eyes than her aged and uncomely features. They 
 never possessed a charm; and if they had, the can- 
 ker of her grief for him would long since have de- 
 stroyed it. 
 
 *'The guest leaned back in his chair. Mingled in 
 his countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a 
 troubled look of effort and unrest. He was seeking 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 127 
 
 to make himself more fully sensible of the scene 
 around him ; or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, 
 or a play of imagination, was vexing the fair mo- 
 ment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and 
 more durable illusion. 
 
 " 'Hov/ pleasant ! — How delightful !' he mur- 
 mured, but not as if addressing any one. 'Will it 
 last? How balmy the atmosphere through that 
 open window! An open window! How beautiful 
 that play of sunshine! Those flowers, how very 
 fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, 
 how blooming! — a flower with the dew on it, and 
 sunbeams in the dew-drops ! Ah ! this must be all 
 a dream! A dream! A dream! But it has quite 
 hidden the four stone walls !' 
 
 ''Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a 
 cavern or a dungeon had come over it ; there was no 
 more light in its expression than might have come 
 through the iron grates of a prison window, — still 
 lessening, too, as if he were sinking farther into 
 the depths. Phoebe (being of that quickness and 
 activity of temperament that she seldom long re- 
 frained from taking a part, and generally a good 
 one, in what was going forward) now felt herself 
 moved to address the stranger. 
 
 " 'Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this 
 morning in the garden,' said she, choosing a small 
 crimson one from among the flowers in the vase. 
 'There will be but five or six on the bush this sea- 
 
128 HAWTHORNE 
 
 son. This is the most perfect of them all; not a 
 speck of blight or mildew in it. And how sweet it 
 is ! — sweet like no other rose ! One can never for- 
 get that scent !' 
 
 " *Ah ! — let me see ! — let me hold it !' cried the 
 guest, eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell 
 peculiar to remembered odors, brought innumerable 
 associations along with the fragrance that it ex- 
 haled. *Thank you ! This has done me good. I re- 
 member how I used to prize this flower, — long ago, 
 I suppose, very long ago ! — or was it only yester- 
 day ? It makes me feel young again ! Am I young ? 
 Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, or 
 this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind 
 of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!' " 
 
 But, it is time to draw the curtain : 
 
 "A slumberous veil diffused itself over his coun- 
 tenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on its 
 naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that 
 which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, 
 throws over the features of a landscape. He ap- 
 peared to become grosser, — almost cloddish. If 
 aught of interest or beauty — even ruined beauty — 
 had heretofore been visible in this man, the be- 
 holder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse 
 his own imagination of deluding him with whatever 
 grace had flickered over that visage, and whatever 
 exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes. 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 129 
 
 "Finally, his chair being deep and softly cush- 
 ioned, Clifford fell asleep. Hearing the more regu- 
 lar rise and fall of his breath (which, however, even 
 then, instead of being strong and full, had a feeble 
 kind of tremor, corresponding with the lack of vigor 
 in his character), — hearing these tokens of settled 
 slumber, Hepzibah seized the opportunity to peruse 
 his face more attentively than she had yet dared to 
 do. Her heart melted away in tears; her profound- 
 est spirit sent forth a moaning voice, low, gentle, 
 but inexpressibly sad. In this depth of grief and 
 pity she felt that there was no irreverence in gazing 
 at his altered, aged, faded, ruined face. But no 
 sooner w^as she a little relieved than her conscience 
 smote her for gazing curiously at him, now that he 
 was so changed ; and, turning hastily away, Hepzi- 
 bah let down the curtain over the sunny window, 
 and left Clifford to slumber there.'* 
 
 Feeble as the life is in the old house, wdiatever 
 comes near it and most pertains to it lives most. 
 The outlying parts of the story, the subordinate in- 
 terests, are less vital. The idyl of Phoebe and the 
 young daguerreotypist fades away with their youth- 
 ful talk of the new age. The heavy tragedy of the 
 villain's taking off by apoplexy, though it is the 
 climax of the plot, notwithstanding the elal^orate 
 narrative, remains only an episode; the house-in- 
 terior and the wandering figures flitting there hold 
 the center of the stage. The fatuity of the lives of 
 
130 HAWTHORNE 
 
 Hepzlbah and Clifford reaches its climax, when 
 their courage fails them in the attempt to go to 
 church : 
 
 " 'Were I to be there/ he rejoined, 'it seems to 
 me that I could pray once more, when so many 
 human souls were praying all around me !' 
 
 "She looked into Clifford's face, and beheld there 
 a soft natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, 
 as it were, and ran over at his eyes, in delightful 
 reverence for God, and kindly affection for his 
 human brethren. The emotion communicated itself 
 to Hepzibah. She yearned to take him by the hand, 
 and go and kneel down, they two together, — both so 
 long separate from the world, and, as she now rec- 
 ognized, scarcely friends with Him above, — to kneel 
 down among the people, and be reconciled to God 
 and man at once. 
 
 " 'Dear brother,' said she, earnestly, 'let us go ! 
 We belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space 
 in any church to kneel upon ; but let us go to some 
 place of worship, even if we stand in the broad aisle. 
 Poor and forsaken as we are, some pew-door will 
 be opened to us !' 
 
 "So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves 
 ready, — as ready as they could in the best of their 
 old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or 
 been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness 
 and mouldy smell of the past was on them, — made 
 themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 131 
 
 church. They descended the staircase together, — 
 gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age- 
 stricken Clifford ! They pulled open the front door, 
 and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of 
 them, as if they were standing in the presence of the 
 whole world, and with mankind's great and terrible 
 eye on them alone. The eye of their Father seemed 
 to be withdrawn, and gave them no encouragement. 
 The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver. 
 Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of tak- 
 ing one step farther. 
 
 " Tt can not be, Hepzibah ! — It Is too late,' said 
 Clifford, with deep sadness. 'We are ghosts! We 
 have no right among human beings, — no right any- 
 where but in this old house, which has a curse on it, 
 and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! 
 And, besides,' he continued, with a fastidious sensi- 
 bility, inalienably characteristic of the man, 'it 
 would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly 
 thought that I should be frightful to my fellow-be- 
 ings, and that children would cling to their mothers' 
 gowns at sight of me !' 
 
 "They shrank back Into the dusky passage-way, 
 and closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, 
 they found the whole Interior of the house tenfold 
 more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the 
 glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just 
 snatched. They could not flee ; their jailer had but 
 left the door ajar in mockery, and stood behind it 
 to watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they 
 
132 HAWTHORNE 
 
 felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what other 
 dungeon is so dark as one's own heart ! What jailer 
 so inexorable as one's self!" 
 
 What is there left to them but flight from the 
 place of their abandonment by man and God? 
 
 What does it matter that it all ended at last, as 
 stories will, happily, in a clarification of incident, 
 in sunshine and gold, a retreat for old Uncle Ven- 
 ner and an open door to the future for Phoebe and 
 her lover ! Stories will end so. But the real story, 
 the genealogical story, the story of the curse, — did 
 Hawthorne believe it at all ? — did he believe in some 
 unescapable moral inheritance, a mystery of fate, — 
 or did he merely embroider on the groundwork of 
 old fancies, the village and landscape scenes of his 
 youth ? 
 
 However that may be, it is for the portrayal 
 of old Salem that one reads the tale. It was this 
 "old Salem," and not his contemporary abiding- 
 place, to which Hawthorne felt the ancestral cling 
 which he defined as *'not love, but instinct." He 
 recalls, in another place, the grounds for this, — the 
 succession of his forefathers in the old colony from 
 its first planting, and especially the hundred-year 
 line of ship-masters, the boy of fourteen succeeding 
 the gray-head in each generation, as he ''took his 
 hereditary place before the mast, confronting the 
 salt spray and the gale, which had blustered against 
 his sire and grandsire"; ^nd he declares the native 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 133 
 
 hold on the heart of a soil that is through long time 
 the family place of birth and burial. Then he speaks 
 as a son of the soil. "It is no matter that the place 
 is joyless for him; that he is weary of the old 
 wooden houses, the mud and dust, the dead level 
 of site and sentiment, the chill east-wind, and the 
 chillest of social atmospheres; all these, and what- 
 ever faults besides he may see or imagine, are noth- 
 ing to the purpose. The spell survives, and just as 
 powerfully as if the natal spot had been an earthly 
 paradise. So has it been in my case." He owns to 
 feeling that he has disappointed his worthy fore- 
 bears. "No aim, that I have ever cherished, would 
 they recognize as laudable; no success of mine — if 
 my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever l^een 
 brightened by success — would they deem otherwise 
 than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. . . 
 And yet, let them scorn me as they will, strong 
 traits of their nature have intertwined themselves 
 with mine." It was unfortunate that a man, destined 
 to recreate the life of his native place through long 
 stages of history should have felt such a cleavage 
 with the very theme of his tale. This cleavage, how- 
 ever, was felt quite as keenly on the other side. 
 Salem was not, at the time, nor has it been, very 
 friendly to her great citizen. Tlie charm of Haw- 
 thorne's sketches of the old village and town life 
 did not quickly dissipate the indifferent or adverse 
 atmosphere of his contemporary days, nor did his 
 fame waft it away in the next generation. But, 
 
134 HAWTHORNE 
 
 happily, the creations of the imagination free them- 
 selves from prejudice, ill-feeling, and personality, 
 and live in a larger world than the village of their 
 birth. 
 
 It should be borne in mind, too, in connection 
 v^ith this phase of Hawthorne's life that his griev- 
 ance, if it may be called such, was almost as much 
 against the Avorld as against Salem. Salem was only 
 the spot where he felt the rub of the world most. 
 Embitterment is plain in the words he came to write 
 finally of the place of his nativity and his fellow- 
 citizens; but, probably, it was the condition of the 
 literary life that was, after all, most to blame. He 
 had to earn his bread by other means than his crea- 
 tive talent, and it is not surprising that there was 
 friction of one kind and another. The truth is that, 
 probably, it was by the merest accident of his having 
 gone to college wuth classmates afterwards of 
 great political power, that his career escaped a tragic 
 ending, such as is frequent in literary annals. It 
 was due, perhaps, to his prolonged trials, as an au- 
 thor, that a certain self-distrust, which amounted to 
 a distrust of his genius, was, seemingly, developed 
 in him. At all events, a chasm opened between him 
 and life, in many directions, as his literary career 
 developed. He notices, himself, the unreality that 
 comes upon all things to the solitary dreamer, if 
 the mood be too long protracted. His lack of inti- 
 macy with intellectual equals, unless Ellery Chan- 
 ning be reckoned as an exception, is noticeable. He 
 
THE COLONIAL TRADITION 135 
 
 seems to have belonged to those hterary men who 
 find companionship outside the Hmits of the craft, 
 and have thus broader sympathies with hfe. He 
 was, in such w^ays, of a larger nature than his fel- 
 low-authors, as has been said, and had something 
 of Scott's "saving commonsense" in respect to his 
 art. 
 
 Thus, from one point of view and another, it 
 would appear that Hawthorne was characterized by 
 his genius and isolated by it, and saw the world 
 at Salem and was seen by it as the w^orld would 
 have seen him and been seen by him anywhere. The 
 situation was merely a local case of the "prophet 
 without honor in his own country.'* The years pass, 
 and the statue rises. This is the outward and vis- 
 ible sign of his acceptance by his people, where the 
 "House of the Seven Gables" is a shrine of local 
 pilgrimage. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 
 
 THE first generation of New England writers 
 of distinction fell heir to a common stock of 
 communal beliefs and memories, which was the 
 parent soil of their works, however diverse. Their 
 attitude toward this body of tradition discriminates 
 the varieties of their genius. Emerson, the most 
 purely spiritual among them, and ardent to advance 
 still further the light which had long burned in the 
 hearts of the men of that lonely wilderness, was de- 
 structive of the past, a foremost radical. Longfel- 
 low, with the instinct and training of a scholar, and 
 being, besides, a poet, was preservative of this tra- 
 dition, a continuer of its finer legends and aspira- 
 tions in tale and history. Hawthorne was the pure 
 artist, who, indeed, reflected the moral sky of that 
 old heaven under which he was born and grew into 
 his own somber manhood, but, nevertheless, handled 
 tradition with a predominantly artistic instinct and 
 feeling for objective effect, harmonious arrange- 
 ment, and unity of expression through all modula- 
 tions of contrast, episode and decoration. He was 
 not much interested in other things, such as reform, 
 except superficially; he minded, principally, his tale, 
 
 136 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 137 
 
 and if he is deeply affected by the moral significance 
 of what he tells, it is because that is the core of the 
 tale as he penetrates into its meaning. If Emerson 
 was destructive and Longfellow preservative of tra- 
 dition, Hawthorne is best described as penetrating 
 its moral substance. 
 
 He was, by nature, of a brooding temperament, 
 being the child of a sea- faring race, and born in a 
 community much given to meditation, with a vigor- 
 ous intellectual vein in it, the result in part of its 
 isolation and concentration of thought on religious 
 themes. It is true his environment in his own youth 
 and manhood was little favorable to genius. His 
 life was in small communities, where his contact 
 with men and affairs was at times slight, at times 
 humdrum, and never very stimulating, it would 
 seem, even at Concord, then the Mecca of intellect 
 in New England. His mental food in those days 
 was but a meager diet of experience, as he strolled 
 through country lanes, and his writing, as has been 
 observed, was apt to take the form of notes on vege- 
 tables, the look of trees in autumn, the behavior of 
 sea-gulls and plover on the beach. But as he 
 worked into his life, as even genius will, with a cer- 
 tain earnest intuition and sounding of the meaning, 
 while one scene and another passed before him sub- 
 stantially or in fancy, he found that for him, at 
 least, whatever the aspect of things might be within 
 the narrow limits of experience assigned to him or 
 others, the essential thing was moral, — that was the 
 
138 HAWTHORNE 
 
 meaning at the core of all things; however trivial 
 the scene might be, however lonely its small theater, 
 he discerned the nobility of his material by virtue of 
 its moral nature. One prime requirement of great 
 art, — that it should deal with noble material, — was 
 met in his instinctive moral view of life; here was 
 his pathway to universal interest, the chance to 
 make his humble treasures current in a greater 
 world than that from which they were derived, to 
 lift his thoughts into the general mind of man and 
 disseminate them there, if only he had the art, un- 
 der the inspiration, of his genius, to deal worthily 
 with the material at his hand. 
 
 Hawthorne had labored long at the short story, 
 before he produced the greater work of a novel. 
 It is said, indeed, that he first conceived The Scar- 
 let Letter as a brief tale of the colonies, such as 
 he told many a time. It is natural, in any case, to 
 find the novel cast in the lines of a tale, that being 
 the well-formed habit of his mind. From this early 
 prepossession of his mind by the methods of short- 
 story writing, doubtless, proceeded the trait that 
 continued to characterize him, of employing only a 
 few characters, supported by the most obvious and 
 simple accessories in the way of setting and environ- 
 ment, all of which should throw their light upon the 
 central figures. It was also natural that meditation, 
 thought about what was going on, should be to the 
 fore, as it had been in the allegorizing tales of his 
 earlier years. Meditation, indeed, — the author's 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 139 
 
 comment, — is an unusually large element in Haw- 
 thorne's way of presenting his theme. That, in 
 fact, was always substantially an idea; and medita- 
 tion, in the shape of the author's comment was the 
 natural method of developing it, — the end of the 
 tale being not an event, or any phase of action, for 
 itself, but a conviction in the reader's mind. The prin- 
 ciple of artistic economy is rigidly observed by him 
 in the novel as it had been in the tale; the fewest 
 characters and simple events, necessary to sl<:eleton- 
 ize the story and clothe it in time and place, in the 
 colors of mortality, are the sole means sought to set 
 forth the moral truth, which blazes in the garb of 
 art from the climax. The moral truth set forth is 
 not didactic; it is vital, and shown, whether in 
 events or scenes, corporeally as a picture. Thus the 
 last sentence of The Scarlet Letter is not a 
 maxim, but presents a tombstone as a summary, 
 compressing in itself the tale pictorially, itself the 
 graven symbol of a symbol : — "It bore a device, a 
 herald's wording of which might serve for a motto 
 and brief description of our now completed legend; 
 so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever- 
 glowing point of light, gloomier than the shadow : 
 
 ON A FIELD SABLE, THE LETTER A. GULES." 
 
 The scene of the romance, as presented in the 
 book, has one quality characteristic of the highest 
 creative art. It is perfectly isolated; Prospero's 
 enchanted isle is not more sundered from the com- 
 mon world. The lonely New England wilderness, 
 
140 HAWTHORNE 
 
 apart from its being Puritan, offered a fit stage for 
 a concentrated imaginative tale, complete within 
 itself. Although historic, by its distance in time 
 and sentiment, it seems another soil than ours. 
 Hawthorne intended to use but few characters in 
 the tale; but, for all that, its meaning was general 
 and its theme universal, and by the very nature of 
 its thought, which involved publicity as an essential 
 element, the tale required a social environment in 
 which to develop; especially was this the case be- 
 cause it was to be, substantially, a communal tale, 
 not one of individuals, primarily. He folded the 
 little world of the interior drama, therefore, be- 
 tween the two great communal scenes, at the begin- 
 ning and the end, each important and imposing in 
 village life, as one may style it, — the public execu- 
 tion of the sentence of the magistrates, on one hand, 
 and the holiday of the election sermon on the other. 
 Except in these instances the general life touches 
 the story only incidentally and vaguely. It is some- 
 what thus that the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 in Shakespeare, is isolated between the scenes of 
 Theseus' court. The environing Puritan world, in 
 general, in Hawthorne's tale, is felt by the public 
 acts of condemnation and exhortation; but it is 
 rendered only by slight and general touches, as re- 
 gards persons. It serves to introduce the figures of 
 the two male characters, and to give a guise of for- 
 mality to the town's officials; but, in the main, a? 
 environment, that world is a characteristic crowd, 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 141 
 
 like one of Shakespeare's mobs, picturesque with the 
 wild Indian guide on the outskirts, or the Spanish 
 sailors with the brooch of gold in their belts, and 
 vocal with the miscellaneous voices of hard or gen- 
 tle women. The early stage scenery is slight, — a 
 village street, a prison, a scaffold and a church ; and 
 the same simplicity is observed in the later stage- 
 settings, such as the Governor's house or the forest 
 brook-side. The background and accessories are 
 thus sketched in, after the visual impression and 
 general sentiment of the community have been 
 given, but with a sparing hand. The interior drama 
 of the main persons becomes quickly the center of 
 interest, like a play within a play, with only an oc- 
 casional local touch to hint a larger world, such as 
 a word on witchcraft in the forest or a glance at 
 some embroidered sleeve of that age of needle- 
 work ; and, in particular, the light beats with an ever 
 intenser ray on the Scarlet Letter. 
 
 The fantastical gold-embroidered letter itself on 
 Hester Prynne's bosom, as it takes the sunlight on 
 her emergence from the prison-door, marks the 
 climax of Hawthorne's use of the physical image 
 to concentrate and express the idea. In accordance 
 with his practise the action before and after the 
 play of events he presents is veiled; the drama be- 
 gins and at last ends at the scaffold. The lack of 
 interest in persons thus evidenced is obvious. The 
 neglect of adventure, passion, intrigue, the ways 
 and means of life, of the character and circumstance 
 
142 HAWTHORNE 
 
 out of which the drama arose, is as complete as pos- 
 sible; only so much is told as to furnish information 
 necessary to the understanding of the situation. The 
 abstract element in Hawthorne's art throws its 
 shadow before, from the rise of the curtain. The 
 Scarlet Letter, on its appearance, is almost an alge- 
 braic sign. It signifies a state of affairs, but no 
 particular facts or situations beforehand, no human 
 story of love or infatuation; it stands as if some- 
 thing given by hypothesis. What truth will follow 
 therefrom is independent of time, place or person. 
 The tale is of men's bosoms from the beginning; 
 it is of secret things and therefore not primarily 
 of observation, but of imagination. In this romance 
 imagination is the eye of the soul to which alone it 
 gives up its profound secrets. Historic fact and 
 description, indeed, there are besides; but the heart 
 of the story is in the gaze of the imagination on the 
 bosoms of the three, Hester, her lover and her hus- 
 band, so fatally linked. The tale is not of the pas- 
 sion or the sin; that chapter is closed. It is of pun- 
 ishment solely; and it starts, naturally, from the 
 simple and obvious punishment, a lifelong badge 
 of shame to be worn by the woman. 
 
 The handling of the physical image to give it 
 growth and range of power and load it with blast- 
 ing influence on these unhappy lives offers some 
 novel traits. Repetition and reduplication are cus- 
 tomary methods of concentration of interest and 
 development of meaning. In the tale of "The 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 143 
 
 Artist of the Beautiful," the physical image of the 
 butterfly was destroyed more than once, but it re- 
 appeared from its fragments with increasing signifi- 
 cance. The physical image of the Scarlet Letter is 
 never destroyed, but it is repeated in other forms 
 and persons, and, curiously enough, it is given a sort 
 of life of its own which grows like an evil and be- 
 witched thing. The tendency of the image to 
 achieve physical identity with the person involved, 
 in Hawthorne's short stories, has been pointed out 
 in the case of *The Birthmark," and, especially in 
 that of the poison-flower of ^'Rappacinni's Daugh- 
 ter." There it was a striking in of the image. The 
 Scarlet Letter, however, has its origin in the soul, 
 and proceeds outwardly to become an external 
 stigma. Whether by public enactment, as in Hes- 
 ter's case, or by a secret physiological change in the 
 minister's bosom — whatever be the particular mode 
 employed — the essential thing is to secure practical 
 union of the image and the idea, so far as their 
 significance is concerned. To employ the human 
 body, however, as the means of that union is dis- 
 tinctly a Hawthornesque trait, and is, no doubt, 
 related to the speculation of his time as to the in- 
 fluence of the mind on the body, or of spirit on 
 matter. It is, partly, by this device that he gives a 
 quasi-life to the letter, an evil growth. Something 
 in his method, here, is also due to the fact that the 
 true action, the spiritual action, is a thing of the 
 unseen sphere of the soul, and goes on in secret 
 
144 HAWTHORNE 
 
 within the breast. It is less a developing action 
 than a changing state. It can be observed only 
 by signs and indications, indirectly; and, however 
 the eye of the imagination penetrates the soul's 
 sphere, it can tell what it sees only by material 
 images. It is for this reason that, in default of 
 other means, Hawthorne is really driven to express 
 the progress of his story by presenting it as typi- 
 fied in the physique of the persons, in the minister 
 and physician, and in the material accouterment 
 and happenings of the scene, in the case of Hester. 
 It is essential to remember, in approaching the 
 tale, that it is not a history of the sin, but of the 
 punishment. This accounts for the fact that Hes- 
 ter's thoughts are centered on the badge ; very little 
 is said of what the great passion of life meant to 
 her in retrospect. At the very beginning the Scar- 
 let Letter is made to characterize her : 
 
 "On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, 
 surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fan- 
 tastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter 
 A. It was so artistically done and with so much 
 fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it 
 had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to 
 the apparel which she wore; and which was of a 
 splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, 
 but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sump- 
 tuary regulations of the colony. . . . She had 
 in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental character- 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 145 
 
 istic, a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, 
 
 save in the exquisite productions of her needle, 
 
 found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her 
 life to exercise itself on." 
 
 The continued use by Hawthorne of this skill in 
 needlework which Hester had, is an example of his 
 own decorative instinct as a writer, and the delicate 
 artistic tastes that are so frequently to be observed 
 in his works. Needlework and works of charity 
 became Hester's normal human life in the com- 
 munity; but she lived, nevertheless, in complete iso- 
 lation because of the letter, which was a Pariah 
 mark. Yet not wholly in isolation ; there were ave- 
 nues of thought that led straight to the breasts of 
 others. Her eyes had been rubbed with an all-see- 
 ing ointment. 
 
 "Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, 
 had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre, 
 would have been still more so, by the strange and sol- 
 itary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with 
 those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which 
 she was outwardly connected, it now and then ap- 
 peared to Hester, — if altogether fancy, it was nev- 
 ertheless too potent to be resisted, — she felt or fan- 
 cied, then, that the scarlet letter had endowed her 
 with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet 
 could not help believing, that it gave her a sympa- 
 thetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. 
 
146 HAWTHORNE 
 
 She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were 
 thus made. What were they ? Could they be other 
 than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who 
 would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, 
 as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of 
 purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were every- 
 where to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth 
 on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, 
 must she receive those intimations — so obscure, yet 
 so distinct — as truth? In all her miserable experi- 
 ence, there was nothing else so awful and so loath- 
 some as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked 
 her, by the irreverent ihopportuneness of the occa- 
 sions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes 
 the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympa- 
 thetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister 
 or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to 
 whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to 
 a mortal man in fellowship with angels. What 
 evil thing is at hand?' would Hester say to herself. 
 Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing 
 human within the scope of view, save the form of 
 this earthly saint ! Again, a mystic sisterhood would 
 contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sancti- 
 fied frown of some matron, who, according to the 
 rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within 
 her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow 
 in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on 
 Hester Prynne's, — what had the two in common? 
 Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 147 
 
 earning— ^Behold, Hester, here is a companion T 
 —and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a 
 young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter, shyly 
 and aside, and quickly averted with a faint, chill 
 crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity were some- 
 what sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, 
 whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou 
 leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor 
 sinner to revere?— such loss of faith is ever one of 
 the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof 
 that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her 
 own frailty, and man's hard law, that Hester 
 Prynne yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mor- 
 tal was guilty like herself." 
 
 The second phase of the letter is its rebirth, as it 
 were, in Pearl, the child. This is the least convinc- 
 ing form that the phantasm, to style it so, takes. In 
 spite of Hawthorne's skill in handling childish 
 scenes with charm and tenderness, and a certain 
 gaiety of spirits. Pearl is hardly subdued to his 
 magic; she seems always to be in the scene for a 
 purpose, and this is in itself inharmonious with nat- 
 ural childhood, while, besides, there is an essential 
 conflict between childish innocence and the significa- 
 tion of the letter, which is felt as a perpetual dis- 
 cord, when the two are brought closely together and 
 their union so tirelessly insisted on, as in the tale. 
 In a certain sense, it is not too much to say that 
 Pearl is used to torture her mother with refinements 
 
148 HAWTHORNE 
 
 of pain ingeniously thought out and contrived by 
 the author. Hawthorne not infrequently seems to 
 "manage" his characters, as the phrase goes; no- 
 where else does he give this impression so clearly 
 as in depicting little Pearl. She takes up the Scar- 
 let Letter, like an echo that keeps on reechoing 
 through the landscape in multiform and unexpected 
 voices and images. In initiating this new strain of 
 Pearl's childhood, in the history of the letter, the 
 connection with the theme is easily made through 
 Hesters skill in needlework, and delight in its exer- 
 cise that has already been emphasized. Pearl's pe- 
 culiar kind of beauty, indeed, seems to call for just 
 this high decorative touch, which makes her like an 
 exotic flower in the gray Puritan town; she, with 
 her elf-like life and brilliant color, seems, no less 
 than her mother, alien to the life in the midst of 
 which she is found. And when she appeared, the 
 little visitant might indeed have seemed a fairy 
 masker from old court revelries. 
 
 ''Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had 
 allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination 
 their full play; arraying her in a crimson velvet 
 tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered 
 with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So 
 much strength of coloring, which must have given a 
 wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, 
 was admirably adapted to Pearl's beauty, and made 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 149 
 
 her the very brightest Httle jet of flame that ever 
 danced upon the earth. 
 
 "But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, 
 and, indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it 
 irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of 
 the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear 
 upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in an- 
 other form; the scarlet letter endowed with life! 
 The mother herself — as if the red ignominy were 
 so deeply scorched into her brain that all her con- 
 ceptions assumed its form — had carefully wrought 
 out the similitude; lavishing many hours of morbid 
 ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object 
 of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and 
 torture. But, in truth, Pearl was the one, as well 
 as the other; and only in consequence of that iden- 
 tity had Hester contrived so perfectly to represent 
 the scarlet letter in her appearance. 
 
 " *What have we here ?' said Governor Belling- 
 ham, looking with surprise at the scarlet little fig- 
 ure before him. T profess, I have never seen the 
 like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's 
 time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor to 
 be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a 
 swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time; 
 and we called them children of the Lord of Mis- 
 rule. But how gat such a guest into my hall ?' 
 
150 HAWTHORNE 
 
 " 'Ay, indeed !' cried good old Mr. Wilson. *What 
 little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? Me- 
 thinks I have seen just such figures, when the sun 
 has been shining through a richly painted window, 
 and tracing out the golden and crimson images 
 across the floor. But that was in the old land. 
 Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what hast 
 ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fash- 
 ion ? Art thou a Christian child, — ha ? Dost know 
 thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty 
 elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left be- 
 hind us, with other relics of Papistry, in merry old 
 England ?' 
 
 " *I am mother's child/ answered the scarlet vi- 
 sion, 'and my name is Pearl !' '* 
 
 The scene by the brook-side, at a later moment, 
 between Pearl, her mother and the minister, brings 
 her into a new contact with the letter, while it hap- 
 pily varies the decorative quality of the childish fig- 
 ure. Hawthorne's fondness for mirrored effects is 
 noticeable in the child's image in the brook. The 
 heart of the scene, however, lies in Pearl's refusal to 
 recognize her mother without the Scarlet Letter, just 
 torn from her breast and cast aside. The letter has 
 become embodied in Hester, so that she was not 
 recognizable to her child without it. Hawthorne 
 passes the matter off as a childish whim; but his 
 meaning is evidently deeper than w^him. It may 
 -seem like refining too much to refine so, but what 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 151 
 
 really is set forth here Is the growtli of the letter, 
 spreading out and entering more deeply in, until it 
 absorbs these lives, like an evil monster. Hester is 
 subject to it; at her child's will, she puts it on again; 
 it began its career on her solitary breast, and grad- 
 ually, identifying itself with her life and shadowing 
 the world about her, it sprang to another life in 
 Pearl, and it will continue to break out in new 
 forms. The cling of the letter to the mind and 
 body of both mother and child is as close as fate, 
 and it seems impossible that they should ever be 
 freed from it; but the evil thing, in w^hich there is 
 much of Puritan pitilessness, is managed with much 
 prettiness in the woodland scenes by the sunshiny 
 brook, — scenes that Hawthorne knew well how to 
 paint. How tranquil it all is ! — 
 
 "By this time Pearl had reached the margin of 
 the brook, and stood on the farther side, gazing 
 silently at Hester and the clergyman, who still sat 
 together on the mossy tree-trunk, waiting to receive 
 her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced 
 to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected 
 a perfect image of her little figure, with all the bril- 
 liant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment 
 of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined 
 and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so 
 nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to 
 communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and 
 intangible quality to the child herself. It was 
 
152 HAWTHORNE 
 
 strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so 
 steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the 
 forest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with 
 a ray of sunshine that was attracted thitherward 
 as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath 
 stood another child, — another and the same, — with 
 likewise its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, 
 in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged 
 from Pearl; as if the child, in her lonely ramble 
 through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere 
 in which she and her mother dwelt together, and 
 was now vainly seeking to return to it. 
 
 'There was both truth and error in the impres- 
 sion; the child and mother were estranged, but 
 through Hester's fault, not Pearl's. Since the lat- 
 ter rambled from her side, another inmate had been 
 admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, 
 and so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, 
 the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted 
 place, and hardly knew where she was. 
 
 " *I have a strange fancy,' observed the sensitive 
 minister, 'that this brook is the boundary between 
 two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy 
 Pearl again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the 
 legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to 
 cross a running stream ? Pray hasten her ; for this 
 delay has already imparted a tremor to my nerves.' 
 
 " 'Come, dearest child 1' said Hester, encourag- 
 ingly, and stretching out both her arms. 'How 
 slow thou art! When hast thou been so sluggish 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 153 
 
 before now ? Here is a friend of mine, who must be 
 thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much 
 love, henceforward, as thy mother alone could give 
 thee ! Leap across the brook, and come to us. Thou 
 canst leap like a young deer T 
 
 'Tearl, without responding in any manner to 
 these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the 
 other side of the brook. Now she fixed her bright, 
 wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and 
 now included them both in the same glance; as if 
 to detect and explain to herself the relation which 
 they bore to one another. For some unaccountable 
 reason, as Arthur Dimmesdale felt the child's eyes 
 upon himself, his hand— with that gesture so habit- 
 ual as to have become involuntary — stole over his 
 heart. At length, assuming a singular air of author- 
 ity, Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small 
 forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards 
 her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of 
 the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny 
 image of little Pearl, pointing her small forefinger 
 
 too. 
 
 " Thou strange child, why dost thou not come 
 to me ?' exclaimed Hester. 
 
 'Tearl still pointed with her forefinger; and a 
 frown gathered on her brow; the more impressive 
 from the childish, the almost baby-like aspect of the 
 features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept 
 beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday 
 suit of unaccustomed smiles, the chil4 stamped her 
 
154 HAWTHORNE 
 
 foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture. 
 In the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the 
 image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, 
 and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect 
 of Httle Pearl. 
 
 " 'Hasten, Pearl ; or I shall be angry with thee V 
 cried Hester Prynne, who, however inured to such 
 behavior on the elf-child's part at other seasons, 
 was naturally anxious for a more seemly deport- 
 ment now. *Leap across the brook, naughty child, 
 and run hither ! Else I must come to thee !' 
 
 ''But Pearl, not a whit startled at her mother's 
 threats any more than mollified by her entreaties, 
 now suddenly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulat- 
 ing violently and throwing her small figure into the 
 most extravagant contortions. She accompanied 
 this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the 
 woods reverberated on all sides; so that, alone as 
 she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it 
 seemed as if a hidden multitude were lending her 
 their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the 
 brook, once more, was the shadowy wraith of 
 Pearl's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, 
 but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in 
 the midst of all, still pointing its small forefinger at 
 Hester's bosom! 
 
 " 'I see what ails the child,' whispered Hester to 
 the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong 
 effort to conceal her trouble and annoyance. *Chil- 
 dren will not abide any, the slightest, change in the 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 155 
 
 accustomed aspect of things that are daily before 
 their eyes. Pearl misses something which she has 
 always seen me wear T 
 
 "T pray you,' answered the minister, 'if thou 
 hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forth- 
 with ! Save it were the cankered wrath of an old 
 witch, like Mistress Hibbins,' added he, attempting 
 to smile, 'I know nothing I would not sooner en- 
 counter than this passion in a child. In Pearl's 
 young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a pre- 
 ternatural effect. Pacify her, if thou lovest mel' 
 
 "Hester turned again towards Pearl, with a crim- 
 son blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside 
 at the clergyman, and then a heavy sigh; while, 
 even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded 
 to a deadly pallor. 
 
 " Tearl,' said she, sadly, 'look down at thy feet ! 
 There! — before thee! — on the hither side of the 
 brook!' 
 
 "The child turned her eyes to the point indicated ; 
 and there lay the scarlet letter, so close upon the 
 margin of the stream, that the gold embroidery was 
 reflected in it. 
 
 " 'Bring it hither !' said Hester. 
 
 " 'Come thou and take it up !' answered Pearl. 
 
 " 'Was ever such a child !' observed Hester, aside 
 to the minister. 'Oh, I have much to tell thee about 
 her! But in very truth she is right as regards this 
 hateful token. I must bear its torture a little longer, 
 — only a few days longer, — until we shall have left 
 
156 HAWTHORNE 
 
 this region and look back hither as to a land which 
 we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! 
 The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and 
 swallow it up forever !' 
 
 "With these words, she advanced to the margin 
 of the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened 
 it again into her bosom. Hopefully, but a moment 
 ago, as Hester had spoken of drowning it in the 
 deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon 
 her, as she thus received back this deadly symbol 
 from the hand of fate. She had flung it into infi- 
 nite space! — she had drawn an hour's free breath! 
 — and here again was the scarlet misery, glittering 
 on the old spot ! So it ever is, whether thus typified 
 or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the char- 
 acter of doom. Hester next gathered up the heavy 
 tresses of her hair, and confined them beneath her 
 cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad 
 letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her 
 womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a 
 gray shadow seemed to fall across her. 
 
 ''When the dreary change was wrought, she ex- 
 tended her hand to Pearl. 
 
 " *Dost thou know thy mother now, child ?' asked 
 she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. 'Wilt 
 thou come across the brook, and own thy mother, 
 now that she has her shame upon her, — now that 
 she is sad?' 
 
 " *Yes ; now I will !' answered the child, bound- 
 ing across the brook, and clasping Hester in her 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 157 
 
 arms. 'Now thou art my mother indeed! And I 
 am thy Httle Pearl !' " 
 
 The history of the letter in the breast of the min- 
 ister is, almost too obviously, a vivid contrast, an 
 elaborate antithesis, to the open scarlet stigma on 
 Hesters ]x)som. In her case, the story is of a pun- 
 ishment striking in, coloring and absorbing life and 
 growing vital therein ; his tale is of a secret sin strik- 
 ing out, obscuring the face of life and transforming 
 it to his eyes, and finally becoming physically mani- 
 fest in his own body. The history of the punish- 
 ment, in either case, can only be told by sign and 
 symbol, for it is all an inward thing, a thing of the 
 spirit, and although its workings have carnal mani- 
 festations they are essentially secret and bodiless; 
 hence a certain touch of fantasy pervades the 
 thought and imagery of the book, as in a fable 
 where things are to be taken, not ocularly and tan- 
 gibly, but with the traditional "grain of salt." This 
 recourse to the "grain of salt," as a defense or de- 
 murrer, is a common subterfuge with Hawthorne, 
 when he is not quite able to believe himself, — as if 
 he were telling stories to children. The most singu- 
 lar instance of this failure of faith in his own imag- 
 ination is about to be given ; but this sort of doubt in 
 what he is saying seems temperamental. The touch 
 of fantasy, like a play of madness or fever, is con- 
 stantly felt in the progress of the fates of the three 
 main actors. There is something in the tale that 
 
158 HAWTHORNE 
 
 seems to denaturalize life itself, alike in child and 
 mother, and in the lovers, — here is a world truly out 
 of tune. Fantasy, naturally, springs from an un- 
 hinged or faltering mind. It easily takes form in 
 Pearl's figure and actions; but that is, after all, a 
 half -unconscious mirroring of Hester's.mind. In the 
 wandering mind of the minister it has a more fatal 
 career. "Why does he keep his hand over his 
 heart?" is little Pearl's constant question. The sense 
 of silence round his thoughts, of an unpenetrated re- 
 serve, is only deepened by the hound-like watchful- 
 ness of the physician, who has crept into his confi- 
 dence, to spy out his secret. Once or twice, indeed, 
 Hawthorne discloses the thoughts in the minister's 
 heart, but the sense of the dual punishment of the 
 secret and the known sinner is well preserved in a 
 balanced contrast, till the moment of open discovery 
 is to come. The difficulty is to tell of secret things, 
 things alike unseen and unsaid, — and it is by fantasy 
 that Hawthorne finds the way out. 
 
 The finest, and perhaps the greatest scene, in the 
 sense of that tableau which Hawthorne was accus- 
 tomed to stage, is really preparatory to the denoue- 
 ment, — the scene of the minister's midnight vigil on 
 the same platform where Hester suffered her public 
 exposure at the opening of the tale. With a certain 
 skill all the leading characters are introduced, 
 though some unbeknown to themselves, in the scene, 
 which has the efTect of a drama on the stage, such as 
 Richard's dream before the battle, on Bos worth 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 159 
 
 field; but the center and climax of the situation is 
 the sin breaking its secrecy in the minister's breast 
 and blazing forth to all the world, though this pub- 
 licity is, in fact, only symbolically achieved in the 
 episode, notwithstanding the passing figures. The 
 open confession is another matter. 
 
 "Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, 
 and perhaps actually under the influence of a species 
 of somnambulism, Mr. Dimmesdale reached the spot 
 where, now so long since, Hester Prynne had lived 
 through her first hours of public ignominy. The 
 same platform or scaffold, black and weather- 
 stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long 
 years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many 
 culprits who had since ascended it, remained stand- 
 ing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The 
 minister went up the steps. 
 
 *'It was an obscure night of early May. An un- 
 varied pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of 
 sky from zenith to horizon, li the same multitude 
 which had stood as eye-witnesses while Hester 
 Prynne sustained her punishment could now have 
 been summoned forth, they would have discerned 
 no face above the platform, nor hardly the outline 
 of a human shape, in the dark gray of the midnight. 
 But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of 
 discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so 
 pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, 
 without other risk than that the dank and chill night- 
 
160 HAWTHORNE 
 
 air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints 
 with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh 
 and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audi- 
 ence of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye 
 could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which 
 had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody 
 scourge. Why, then, had he come hither? Was it 
 but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, 
 but in which his soul trifled with itself ! A mockery 
 at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends re- 
 joiced, with jeering laughter ! He had been driven 
 hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged 
 him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely 
 linked companion was that Cowardice which in- 
 variably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, 
 just when the other impulse had hurried him to the 
 verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what 
 right had infirmity like his to burden itself with 
 crime ? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their 
 choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to 
 exert their fierce and savage strength for a good 
 purpose, and fling it off at once ! This feeble and 
 most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet con- 
 tinually did one thing or another, which intertwined, 
 in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven- 
 defying guilt and vain repentance. 
 
 "And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this 
 vain show of expiation, Mr. Dimmesdale was over- 
 come with a great horror of mind, as if the universe 
 were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 161 
 
 right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, 
 there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and 
 poisonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort 
 of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked 
 aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the 
 night, and was beaten back from one house to an- 
 other, and reverberated from the hills in the back- 
 ground; as if a company of devils, detecting so 
 much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything 
 of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro." 
 
 Little by little the night-scene develops, with the 
 death of a colonial magnate and the natural passing 
 to and fro of the physician and the watchers and the 
 old clergyman ih the dark street before the eyes of 
 the minister on the platform, whose spirit is dark- 
 ened and mind unhinged by hysterical thoughts. 
 Physical hysteria, indeed, was evidently his state, 
 and to his own involuntary "great peal of laughter" 
 came the response of a **light, airy, childish laugh." 
 
 " Tearl ! Little Pearl !' cried he after a moment's 
 pause; then, suppressing his voice, — 'Hester! Hes- 
 ter Prynne ! Are you there ?' 
 
 " *Yes ; it is Hester Prynne !' she replied, in a 
 tone of surprise; and the minister heard her foot- 
 steps approaching from the sidewalk, along which 
 she had been passing. Tt is I, and my little Pearl.' 
 
 " 'Whence come you, Hester ?' asked the minister. 
 *What sent you hither ?' 
 
162 HAWTHORNE 
 
 " 'I have been watching at a death-bed/ answered 
 Hester Prynne, — 'at Governor Winthrop's death- 
 bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am 
 now going homeward to my dwelHng.' 
 
 " 'Come up hither, Hester, thou and httle Pearl,' 
 said the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. *Ye have both 
 been here before, but I was not with you. Come up 
 hither once again, and we will stand all three to- 
 gether !' 
 
 "She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the 
 platform, holding little Pearl by the hand. The 
 minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. 
 The moment that he did so, there came what seemed 
 a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his 
 own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurry- 
 ing through all his veins, as if the mother and the 
 child were communicating their vital warmth to his 
 half -torpid system. The three formed an electric 
 chain. 
 
 " 'Minister !' whispered little Pearl. 
 
 "'What wouldst thou say, child?' asked Mr. 
 Dimmesdale. 
 
 " 'Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to- 
 morrow noontide ?' inquired Pearl. 
 
 " 'Nay; not so, my little Pearl,' answered the min- 
 ister; for with the new energy of the moment, all 
 the dread of public exposure, that had so long been 
 the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and 
 he was already trembling at the conjunction in 
 which — with a strange joy, nevertheless — he now 
 
, THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 163 
 
 found himself. *Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, 
 stand with thy mother and thee, one other day, but 
 not to-morrow.' 
 
 "Pearl laughed, and attempted to pull away her 
 hand. But the minister held it fast. 
 
 " 'A moment longer, my child !' said he. 
 
 " 'But wilt thou promise,' asked Pearl, *to take my 
 hand and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide ?' 
 
 " 'Not then. Pearl,' said the minister, 'but another 
 time.' 
 
 " *And what other time ?' persisted the child. 
 
 " *At the great judgment day,' whispered the min- 
 ister, — and, strangely enough, the sense that he was 
 a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to 
 answer the child so. 'Then, and there, before the 
 judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must 
 stand together. But the daylight of this world shall 
 not see our meeting !' 
 
 *'Pearl laughed again. 
 
 "But before Mr. Dimmesdale had done speaking, 
 a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled 
 sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those me- 
 teors, which the night-watcher may so often observe, 
 burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the at- 
 mosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it 
 thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud 
 betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault bright- 
 ened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed 
 the familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness 
 of mid-day, but also with the aw fulness that is al- 
 
164 HAWTHORNE 
 
 ways imparted to familiar objects by an unaccus- 
 tomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting 
 stories and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and 
 thresholds, with the early grass springing up about 
 them; the garden-plots, black with freshly-turned 
 earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and, even in the 
 market-place, margined with green on either side, — 
 all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that 
 seemed to give another moral interpretation to the 
 things of this world than they had ever borne be- 
 fore. And there stood the minister, with his hand 
 over his heart; and Hester Prynne, with the em- 
 broidered letter glimmering on her bosom; and lit- 
 tle Pearl, herself a symbol, and the connecting link 
 between those two. They stood in the noon of that 
 strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light 
 that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that 
 shall unite all who belong to one another. 
 
 "There was witchcraft in little Pearl's eyes, and 
 her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, 
 wore that naughty smile which made its expression 
 frequently so elfish. She withdrew her hand from 
 Mr. Dimmesdale's, and pointed across the street. 
 But he clasped both his hands over his breast, and 
 cast his eyes towards the zenith. 
 
 "We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in 
 his own eye and heart, that the minister, looking up- 
 ward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 165 
 
 an immense letter, — the letter A, — marked out in 
 lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have 
 shown itself at that point, burning duskily through 
 a veil of cloud; but with no such shape as his guilty 
 imagination gave it; or, at least, Avith so little defi- 
 niteness, that another's guilt might have seen an- 
 other symbol in it." 
 
 The wavering of Hawthorne's faith in his own 
 imagination is a curious thing, and to a certain ex- 
 tent it infuses an element of weakness into his work, 
 inasmuch as one begins to doubt if the author him- 
 self quite believes in the truth of his own tale. Did 
 it matter whether the script flaming in the sky was 
 the letter A or not ? It was so that the minister saw 
 it; and the truth v/as wdiat he saw, whether imag- 
 inary or real. The actual phenomenon may have 
 been one thing or another, — it is unconcerning and 
 immaterial: the ideal truth, the abstract truth, the 
 living truth was what the minister saw. The "air- 
 drawn dagger" of Macbeth was such a reality. To 
 question the ocular evidence in such a case is to deny 
 the very nature of that ideal world in which the im- 
 agination abides, and to confound the actual world 
 with it. The two are apart and incommensurable. The 
 truth is that Hawthorne, in subjection to the thoughts 
 of his time, regarded the supernatural as something 
 real indeed, but to be rationally explained and thus 
 taken out of the category of the miraculous. The 
 earlier effort of romancers before him had been to 
 
166 HAWTHORNE 
 
 explain the miraculous by mechanical or equally 
 obvious means of intentional deception, as mere 
 ghost-tricks of one or another sort. Hawthorne, 
 with a more subtle understanding and a finer hand, 
 would explain the marvelous or mysterious by the 
 psychology of the persons involved. He was fas- 
 cinated by the mysterious in any of its many forms ; 
 he was accustomed to deal in mystery, from the 
 crude supernaturalism of witchcraft in the forest to 
 the extravaganzas and refinements of fantasy; but 
 he was ill at ease with old beliefs, and he wished to 
 explain them by a rationalism that belonged to his 
 own time. The psychological solution of the matter 
 was at hand, and he utilized it : there was a lightning 
 flash, and, given the state of the minister's mind, 
 he may have thought he sazv the letter A blazing out 
 his secret sin in heaven. The curious thing is that 
 Hawthorne should have deemed it necessary to give 
 any explanation or to have warned his readers to 
 suspend their judgment as to the actual facts of the 
 case. 
 
 This reserve of Hawthorne in crediting his own 
 story is still more remarkable when he comes to the 
 central fact and climax of it all, so far as the min- 
 ister is concerned. It is plain that the scene for 
 which the last extract is preparatory, is at hand. 
 The tragic reversal, to be precise, is due, — in fact, 
 has already occurred symbolically by the portent in 
 the sky. The opposition in the tale between Hester's 
 shame and the minister's secret sin is about to be 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 167 
 
 dissolved. The tragic reversal is fully accomplished 
 when his breast is bared with the stigma stamped 
 upon it in the flesh, and he stands confessed her 
 lover on the same platform with her. Yet even here, 
 at the climax of fate and when the logic of the tale 
 is plain and convincing, Hawthorne implies much 
 question as to the reality of the stigma bitten into 
 the minister's long-hidden bosom. Did he believe 
 his own tale ? one involuntarily asks : or did he 
 sympathize with modern incredulity so far that he 
 felt obliged to admit explanations, at least, as of 
 miracles. The fact of such a stigma as a phenom- 
 enon, however caused, has been repeatedly avouched, 
 and is often attributed to the working of the mind on 
 the body in moments or moods of intensity. What- 
 ever was Hawthorne's motive, it must be allowed 
 that, at any rate, his explanation, — that is, his ex- 
 plaining away or permitting a doubt to intrude as 
 to the actual facts — of the letter in the sky and on 
 the minister's breast lies outside the story; for the 
 story, to be whole and sound in imagination, re- 
 quires them to be real. 
 
 The history of the letter, which has been followed 
 closely so far in the lives of the mother, the child 
 and the lover with its so varying fortunes, as it 
 gathered up and gave expression to their tortured 
 lives, ends with the public self -exposure of the min- 
 ister. The physician who is a mere observer and ac- 
 complice, as it were, of the letter in the punishment, 
 needs little comment, beyond the point that the pur- 
 
168 HAWTHORNE 
 
 suit of revenge left its physical tokens of degeneracy 
 on him in his face and appearance. Punishment of a 
 sort he received for his part, both willing and un- 
 willing, in the tangled fates of the little group, 
 where he was the hater, and thought himself the 
 avenger. Vengeance was worked out under his eyes, 
 indeed, but it did not come from him. His part 
 really seems superfluous, for one is told rather than 
 sees how he plays with the minister's inner life and 
 secrecy. 
 
 It has been observed that Hawthorne in this tale 
 worked under an extraordinary difficulty in finding 
 outward expression for the inward spiritual life of 
 the unhappy pair of lovers under their punishment, 
 either of open shame or secret remorse. He sought 
 to tell the story, as it were, in a visible language, b)^ 
 means of the Scarlet Letter, the secret stigma, and 
 the writing on the physician's face and figure. The 
 last is made most plain in the midnight scene, when 
 the lightning illuminated the sky and earth : 
 
 "The minister appeared to see him [the physi- 
 cian], with the same glance that discerned the mi- 
 raculous letter. To his features, as to all other ob- 
 jects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression ; 
 or it might well be that the physician was not so 
 careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malev- 
 olence with which he looked upon his victim. Cer- 
 tainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and dis- 
 closed the earth, with an aw fulness that admonished 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 169 
 
 Hester Prynne and the clergyman of the day of 
 judgment, then might Roger Chilhngworth have 
 passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there 
 with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid 
 was the expression, or so intense the minister's re- 
 ception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted in 
 the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an 
 effect as if the street and all things else were at once 
 annihilated/' 
 
 This writing of all secret things of the soul's ex- 
 periences and changes in visible lineaments, as it 
 were, pervades the method of the narrative, and 
 proceeds from the vivid imaginative force of Haw- 
 thorne's genius, which habitually worked with vis- 
 ualizing power. He seems to have been dependent 
 to an unusual degree on his visualizing power to 
 bring home the reality of things. The trait was per- 
 haps connected with his rare powers of observation. 
 At all events, the absorption of his mind in the phys- 
 ical object and his loading and reloading it with sig- 
 nificance and suggestion tend to overcharge the ma- 
 terial elements of the tale, in comparison with its 
 spiritual substance; the letter, itself, tends to take 
 the place alike of sin and punishment. One follows 
 its history as a separate evil thing that has its vic- 
 tims in its power. But of the actual state of the 
 bosoms of these characters, that the letter symbol- 
 izes in various forms, what is really told? What 
 repentance was there in the breasts of either? What 
 
170 HAWTHORNE 
 
 was their after-thought of their great passion? 
 There is only the one startHng sentence of Hester, 
 that throws a hght more penetrating than the fire in 
 heaven upon them : 
 
 " *Never, never !' whispered she. 'What we did 
 had a consecration of its own. We felt it so ! We 
 said so to each other ! Hast thou forgotten it?' " 
 
 Few words; but none are more humanly signifi- 
 cant in the whole story. How little after all Haw- 
 thorne's method achieved in unfolding the secrets 
 of the soul's experience! Some of the ways of its 
 torturing thoughts are illustrated, some of their is- 
 sues and expedients ; but of the silent lives of Hester 
 and her lover in themselves, is anything really re- 
 vealed? Was the physical image of the Scarlet Let- 
 ter capable of holding and releasing the story, or did 
 it fail, partly because it drew the story down into a 
 world of interpretation through physical symbols, 
 not of the soul's region, and weakened, besides, by 
 Hawthorne's own incredulity in them? 
 
 The Scarlet Letter is a tale of doomed lives 
 without escape, and one looks on at the tragedy as 
 at a play of fate. But the true inevitability of fate, 
 that makes the sweep and force of great tragedy, is 
 not in the play, as it develops before the eye. Plain 
 as the situation of each of the characters is, the char- 
 acters themselves are not made known, and espe- 
 cially is this true of Hester and her lover. Hester 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 171 
 
 seems a greater character than belonged to that Httle 
 world of the Puritan colony, and her womanly na- 
 ture is never given its range, while her lover, though 
 infinitely weaker in fiber, has no career developing 
 his own individuality; he appears only as the slave 
 of his profession, and, if she was of a larger, he 
 was of a smaller type than belonged to their en- 
 vironment. All that appears in the human story is 
 a tangle of fatal events. The moral lesson, if that 
 be sought, is hard and dark. The kindly elements 
 of life, its self-healing power, the ways of absolu- 
 tion are excluded, as if they were not. Pearl, the 
 child, is the child of the Scarlet Letter only : she 
 scarcely seems her mother's child. There is an arbi- 
 trariness in the tale, as of a sentence sealed and de- 
 livered, to be carried out. It strikes one, not with 
 the inevitability of great art grounded in human 
 character and the nature of this world, but as the 
 history of the sentence of a court. 
 
 Fantasy, which is a kind of wild imagination, had 
 a large career in the literature of the early nineteenth 
 century. Perhaps it was most obvious, poetically, in 
 Coleridge, but it sprang up, like a tender herb, 
 everywhere, in prose and verse, abroad and at home. 
 To speak vaguely, it was of the temperament of the 
 times. In Hawthorne's genius it was omnipotent 
 and pervasive, a form of wandering thought that 
 put forth where it would on any page. It blossomed 
 in unexpected places, with a random and uncon- 
 trolled movement that showed its natural sponta- 
 
172 HAWTHORNE 
 
 neity. Sometimes it took possession of an image or 
 an idea, like an elfish spirit of art, and moulded out 
 of it gargoyles of expression, as it were, transitory 
 suggestions and intimations. Hawthorne's thoughts 
 are full of such singularities. The true imagination, 
 the rational imagination, relaxes its rigor, and in its 
 place come reverie and dream, the half -perceived, 
 the divined, the mere play of the wakeful brain. If 
 then, the image or idea, already fantastic in its birth, 
 is given a free course to develop itself, without the 
 interference of the rational element, strange works 
 of art result, oftentimes original in form and mys- 
 terious in content. The physical image, as Haw- 
 thorne conceived it, had a touch of such fantasy, and 
 to what an extent it developed in the case of the 
 Scarlet Letter has just been illustrated. Such an 
 image tends to escape from its creator and develop 
 its own life. It is because Hawthorne feels the im- 
 age breaking away from him that he questions its 
 realit}^ at the moments of climax in the minister's 
 history. Fantasy had carried Hawthorne further 
 than, as a rationalist, he felt justified in going. 
 
 But a deeper truth of art lies in the matter. It 
 has been noticed that Hawthorne gives the double 
 impression of ''managing" his characters, at times, 
 or specifically in the case of Pearl, and of a certain 
 arbitrariness in the general plot, as of a thing whose 
 course and issue were agreed upon and detennined 
 in advance. In harmony with this, it is to be ob- 
 served that artifice is the natural accomplice of fan- 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 173 
 
 tasy, in art, because the fantastic by its very nature 
 is easily subject to change, being uncontrolled by 
 any inner law of its structure as rational imagina- 
 tion is controlled. The master of fantasy and the 
 fantastic in American poetry is Poe; and it has 
 often been alleged that artifice is the breath of his 
 genius. So extreme a charge is unjust, even when 
 he lends color to it himself; but this much is true, 
 that artifice is the temptation of the artist of the 
 fantastic, if for a moment his genius fails. The 
 large element of fantasy in Hawthorne's imagina- 
 tion is obvious to his readers; the check upon his 
 acceptance of it, in working out his stories as true 
 narratives of facts, is equally plain; and the manipu- 
 lation of the various parts of the tales, by reduplica- 
 tion and echo and like devices, is an example of the 
 sort of artifice that he consciously resorted to. The 
 ingenuity of his construction and development of 
 theme in fiction recall the same marked quality in 
 Poe's genius, and it is at least curious that fantasy 
 was a chief ingredient in the imagination of both. 
 In the case of both, their works, at times, seem 
 rather made than grown, and yet, at times, have a 
 vitality of their own. Fantasy, like true imagina- 
 tion, has its own principle of life. 
 
 Hawthorne's art in The Scarlet Letter, it must 
 be borne in mind, was something quite different 
 from his material. The material was moral, and 
 hence noble ; the art was fantastic ; the content was 
 abstract. The whole work was thus strangely com- 
 
174 HAWTHORNE 
 
 posite. The Puritan setting of the scene was sim- 
 ple and dignified, and passes before the eye Hke the 
 scenes of a play with fit backgrounds and properties ; 
 but on that quasi-religious stage the movement and 
 color and tone seem almost operatic, and the land- 
 scapes, groups and tableaux a performance of for- 
 eign opera. The Scarlet Letter itself is a brilliant 
 focus for all the meaning of the tale ; and as it comes 
 again and again in the child and in the sky and on 
 the minister's breast, it varies without changing the 
 central theme, till it dies out in the fatal climax 
 and collapse of the drama. Hester, herself, seems an 
 operatic character, sole and simple in eminence, and 
 Pearl an operatic child. Fantasy, more than reality, 
 envelops the scene. The suffering after the sin en- 
 nobles the theme with moral grandeur. The abstract 
 element, — namely, that this is a story, not of indi- 
 viduals, but of the fatal penalties of violated law 
 working out its nature in the human breast, — is 
 felt from the rise to the fall of the curtain. But the 
 art by which this is rendered is not, one feels, quite 
 dramatic or operatic ; it is something more original 
 and idiosyncratic, peculiar, indeed, to Hawthorne, — 
 Hawthornesque ; the art of a fantastic imagination, 
 ingenious in its methods, somewhat skeptical of its 
 own vision, somber in meditation, brooding on sin 
 after the fashion of old New England. 
 
 Any art, literary or other, is, to a certain extent, 
 shut within its own age, and can be thoroughly un- 
 derstood in all its tones and shades, and will seem 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 175 
 
 wholly natural, only to the spirit of that age. The 
 world's greatest works, works of universal art, alone 
 escape this limitation. The Scarlet Letter, though 
 it has aspects of universal meaning, is essentially a 
 provincial romance; it requires a contemporary of 
 Hawthorne for its most sympathetic and under- 
 standing reader. Its peculiar fantasy will come nat- 
 ural, indeed, only to one habituated to the tone of 
 the literature of that time; too often it will seem 
 whimsical, odd, individualistic. Other writers of the 
 age, however, had such a fashion of thought and ex- 
 pression. Contemporaneity is, perhaps, still more 
 marked in that vein of sentimentality, from which 
 few American writers v/ere wholly free in the first 
 half of the century, and which is occasionally to be 
 observed in Hawthorne's juvenile and slighter work. 
 The early years of Lowell, even, were subject to 
 it, and it had its peculiar and forgotten memorials 
 among the books and reputations of that truly lit- 
 erary age. The traits of the time as a period, inde- 
 pendent of persons, have never been made out in 
 our history; but, when this shall be done, it will be 
 found that both fantasy and sentimentality were 
 dominant in that generation. The age read, as well 
 as created its literature, with its own eyes; and in 
 particular, in the case of the Puritan romance, it 
 had a preconceived notion of Puritanism, derived 
 from its own tradition and reactions thereon, to 
 which it instinctively required any imaginative ac- 
 count of it to conform. It may be doubted whether 
 
176 HAWTHORNE 
 
 the eminent Puritan worthies would have found the 
 romance a faithful and illuminating record of their 
 httle state, but it certainly represented what the sev- 
 enth or eighth generation in New England wished 
 to believe of their founders. In other words, the 
 romance is not an original product of the Puritan 
 age, but a history written long after the facts, in 
 consonance with later notions. It made its appeal to 
 a generation of harsh judgment, as regards the 
 Puritan state, that found the hard and dark ele- 
 ments in the tale agreeable to their view of that 
 older Hfe; and the kind of art employed, with its 
 touches of fantasy and sentiment, was one that 
 might almost l^e called native to the community. 
 
 The thoughtful reader, too, can not fail to won- 
 der to what an extent Hawthorne was actually in- 
 terested in the moral problems that are the heart of 
 the mystery in the tale. Artist that he was and capa- 
 ble, as has been seen, of great indifference to mortal 
 concerns, was he attracted only by the vivid and 
 condensed story, and less concerned with the inner 
 spiritual histories and moralities? The attraction of 
 the general theme, the motifs of the secrets of the 
 bosom, solitary guilt and hypocrisy, the habit of his 
 mind to brood on the darker aspects of man's moral 
 life would seem to certify that he had a real rather 
 than a purely artistic interest in the spiritual history 
 of the Puritan outcasts. This may readily be 
 granted. As an artist, indeed, he found a solution 
 of the plots in the tragic reversal, bringing about the 
 
THE GREAT PURITAN ROMANCE 177 
 
 minister's confession and public exposure ; but, as a 
 moralist, he found no solution, inasmuch as the con- 
 fession left things very much as they were, with no 
 visible absolution or forgiveness. The sin is repre- 
 sented as irreparable; the broken order of life is in 
 no sense restored. There is nothing left at the end 
 but a pitiful tale of mortal frailty, and its issues. It 
 is this impotence of the moralist to bring his tale to 
 a conclusion, as the artist had done, which makes 
 the discord at the close. One feels that Hawthorne 
 was more competent in art than in meditation ; and 
 this sustains the impression that comes from many 
 sides, alike of his work and of his nature, that he 
 was, primarily, an artist in all his career. This, how- 
 ever, does not at all impeach the reality, and indeed 
 the depth, of his interest in the moral material, 
 which is the true substance of all his work. 
 
 It must be plain, from the tenor of these observa- 
 tions that the contemporaneity of his own time en- 
 tered into Hawthorne's great Puritan romance, both 
 in art and thought, to a degree that differentiates it 
 from works of ideal art, truly independent of time 
 and place. It is engaged in the literary and moral 
 fashions of its times, and so shot through with the 
 tem.perament of old New England as Plawthorne 
 knew it, as to make the modern reader not wholly 
 sympathetic with either the substance or the manner 
 of the tale ; it must strike him, in many ways, as old- 
 fashioned. Universal as the theme is, it is given in 
 a strictly New England view, and is colored by 
 
178 HAWTHORNE 
 
 ways of feeling and expression that belong to a past 
 age. It is not characteristically, but only historically, 
 an American tale ; truly speaking, both by its origin 
 and its manner, it is purely of New England. The 
 isolation of the scene, the condensation of the motif, 
 the great abstractness of the content, which are all 
 somewhat dependent on the strong use made of 
 symbolism by means of the letter, give an appear- 
 ance of universal art, but on a closer examination it 
 proves to be less an expression of the general heart 
 of man than a product of a local environment. The 
 Scarlet Letter is the chief monument that the New 
 England literary age left behind it in fiction. It is 
 the ornament of a small though flourishing litera- 
 ture, and the fruit, in its idea, of a peculiar religious 
 society in a remote quarter of a sparsely inhabited 
 world ; it belongs by both these traits to the provin- 
 cial in literature, and the more it is examined, the 
 more evident is the texture of contemporaneity and 
 locality in it. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 
 
 IT was the lot of this New Englander to go abroad, 
 — not merely to England, which was but a change 
 of homes, as from county to county, Berkshire to 
 Essex, — but to another and different world, to Italy. 
 Hawthorne is our chief example of the picturesque 
 early American tourist. Irving, indeed, had viewed 
 Spain, and Bayard Taylor tramped the Orient ; but 
 Italy came fresh from Hawthorne's pen. His nature 
 was predisposed to the experience by virtue of that 
 predilection for artistic things, which has already 
 been commented on as evinced almost from the be- 
 ginning of his career, and by a certain amateurish 
 interest in portraits and carving and artistic handi- 
 work of various sorts, noticeable throughout his 
 writings. To such an observant eye, and to a mind 
 so stored v/ith sentiment and imagination, Italy be- 
 came at once an environment as close as his own 
 Berkshire hills or Essex woods; he wrote about it 
 with the same minuteness and precision of object 
 and outline, as to the external scene, and he caught 
 its atmosphere of classic myth or medieval aspect 
 or simple, idyllic, momentary charm as naturally as 
 if they were only a new variety of the mosses about 
 
 179 
 
180 HAWTHORNE 
 
 his own Old Manse. His note-books show how his 
 senses became filled with Italy as in those days it 
 came first to the eyes of the sentimental and faithful 
 tourist ; and it is this vision, — for it can scarcely be 
 called less, — that he spread before his old readers 
 in The Marble Faun, wnth its gardens, its galleries 
 and churches and squares, Monte Beni with its 
 ''sunshine" wine, the golden atmosphere of the hills, 
 the frolic of the carnival, and the thousand minute 
 Italian touches that make up the ground of that pic- 
 tured story. The environment is all Italian, as he 
 had eyes to see it, as in his earlier tales it had been 
 all New England. The scene is really separate 
 from the tale, however closely inwoven the latter 
 seems, like figures in a tapestry ; but the history that 
 is displayed on this background and runs in and out 
 of the landscape scenes, is a pure New England 
 fable. 
 
 It is needful to draw sharply the distinction be- 
 tween the moral tale, with the general type of which 
 the reader of Hawthorne is already acquainted, and 
 the fascination of the Italian scene in which it is set. 
 They are opposed very much as the ancestral curse 
 in The House of the Seven Gables is relieved 
 against the manners and customs and aspects of old 
 Salem. Rome is the scene of the play; but the the- 
 ater is as interesting as the drama, to say the least ; 
 perhaps, in the issue, it is more so. The story, then, 
 which must be the chief thing in a novel, is after 
 Hawthorne's well-established make. The characters 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 181 
 
 are few, — substantially only four, Donatello, Mir- 
 iam, Hilda and Kenyon, the first three sharply con- 
 trasted, the last of a neutral tint and hardly more 
 than a convenience in the narrative. Hawthorne 
 takes no marked interest in them as persons, though 
 he displays more feeling for Donatello's youth than 
 is customary with him. There is, perhaps, here a 
 reflection of the impression made upon him by an 
 Italian trait, — that southern gaiety of spirit, un- 
 known to northern temperaments. However, he was 
 as little concerned to tell anything of the after-life 
 of Donatello as he was to speak clearly of the earlier 
 life of Miriam; he was indifferent to their personal 
 fortunes. His interest, quite as plainly as in The 
 Scarlet Letter, is restricted to the abstract element 
 in the tale, namely, its moral truth. How did their 
 careers illustrate this, and make it evident, is all his 
 question. Miriam is a woman with an unknown 
 past, and acquainted with evil, though under what 
 form is not told; Donatello is a type of natural inno- 
 cence, brought in contact with her by his love and 
 so led to an impulsive crime in her behalf; his crime, 
 felt to be sin, results in such spiritual development 
 that it can only be described by saying his soul was 
 born thereby. The birth of the soul through sin is 
 the moral theme ; the scene is staged for it ; the plot 
 is made for it; the characters fulfil their part in 
 merely illustrating it. This being the end in view, 
 the characters are suppressed, except so far as they 
 advance it. 
 
182 HAWTHORNE 
 
 What has hitherto been designated the economy 
 of Hawthorne's art is shown, not only in this re- 
 striction of the characters, but by the ehmination of 
 action, both of which w^ere customary marks of his 
 manner. The act which is central and capital in the 
 plot is the least of an act possible, in the circum- 
 stances; though it is nothing less than murder, it 
 occupies but a brief space, a moment, of the tale, and 
 though it was the climax of Miriam's former and 
 darker life, it is substantially unexplained. The im- 
 pulse, which led Donatello to do the deed by a sud- 
 den seizure of emotion, seems disconnected with 
 any facts of that interior tragedy, whatever its na- 
 ture. The act, once done, appears wholly severed 
 from its circumstances ; it is not a particular crime, 
 with a history and explanation of its own, but a 
 sin, — sin in the abstract. Any other crime would 
 have served the purpose; what was essential to the 
 story was the destruction of Donatello's innocence. 
 The situation is not so different to that of The 
 Scarlet Letter , where there is a like indifference to 
 the element of action. There the sin was previous to 
 the opening of the scene, here it is a part of the nar- 
 rative, but in either case it is a fact presupposed by 
 the story, an hypothesis given; the interest in both 
 is not in the action, but in the suffering. The action, 
 in other words, like the characters, is subordinated 
 to the moral thesis, which is, again, the main subject 
 of meditation, — the history of the soul in sin; and 
 the method, by which Hawthorne discloses this his- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 183 
 
 tory, is not by action, but by portraying in indirect 
 ways states of the soul. The physical image, how- 
 ever, which had served him so long as an interpreter 
 of moral phenomena, had now exhausted its powers, 
 at least in its original form of a clear and definite 
 object in which significance could be concentrated 
 and reinforced by various devices. A relic of it re- 
 mains in the pointed ears of the Faun, hesitatingly 
 ascribed to Donatello, as the sign and symbol of his 
 ancestral heritage of a state of nature which his 
 mortal sin disturbed ; but it is only a relic and sur- 
 vival of the earlier manner, and plays no serious part 
 in the new tale. 
 
 The intent of the story is plain. It is a meditation 
 on the effects of sin on a state of nature, on that 
 simple innocence which, legends tell, filled the Ar- 
 cadian world before 
 
 "disproportioned sin 
 
 Broke the fair music that all creatures made." 
 
 Donatello is an inhabitant, a "strayed reveller," as it 
 were, from that virgin and paradisiacal region. He 
 is snared in the earthly curse ; and the tale is of his 
 transformation into a different being, a spiritual be- 
 ing, whose experience of sin had made him human 
 by developing in him the sorrowful but intelligent 
 soul that is characteristic of humanity. This is a 
 higher state, in the hierarchy of being, it would ap- 
 pear, than the primevar mountain innocence he had 
 known in his youth. But the matter is perplexing. 
 
184 HAWTHORNE 
 
 For one thing, clearly this new Fall of Man is sub- 
 stantially a rise in spiritual grade. The conception 
 of sin as a means of grace is, in a sense, paradoxical. 
 Hawthorne must have felt the black drop in this 
 philosophy. At all events, here, no less than in The 
 Scarlet Letter, he told a tale of doomed lives for 
 which there is no issue; Donatello and Miriam go to 
 their unknown fate, at the end, in great mystery, but 
 if Kenyon's parting address to them — a perfectly 
 correct little sermon from the New England stand- 
 point — is any indication of what was in store for 
 their mortal fate, there was to be only a secondary 
 and tempered happiness for them, if any. The diffi- 
 culty seems to be that Hawthorne was better aware 
 of the ways into tragedy than of the ways that lead 
 out. At all events, vv^iatever his flashes of knovv^l- 
 edge, or intuition, of the maladies of the soul, his 
 spiritual solutions are unsatisfactory. They are, in 
 fact, no solutions; they end in closed ways, over 
 which he drops a veil. 
 
 The difficulty, implicit in his artistic methods, of 
 representing the states of the soul, which he desires 
 to express, is the same here as in the earlier romance 
 of sin in soul. In the absence of such a symbol as 
 the Scarlet Letter, he resorts to many physical 
 images, instead of one, which serve him as so many 
 mirrors of unspoken thoughts or distant events ; and 
 he uses myth and fancy to reduplicate the themes 
 and moods that are dominant in the play of his im- 
 agination. The scene of the drawings and sketches, 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 185 
 
 the introduction of the figures of St. Michael and 
 the Cenci, the myth of the fountain nymph and her 
 knightly lover illustrate this reverberation of idea 
 and emotion from episode to episode through the 
 unfolding stages of the narrative; in essence, though 
 superficially different, it is the same method as that 
 employed in the Puritan tale by the repeated emer- 
 gence of the Scarlet Letter on its various back- 
 grounds. The sense of the blood-stain, the touch of 
 pollution, the loss of purity are made, though only 
 in consciousness, the outward and visible sign of the 
 change wrought in Donatello; his suffering in his 
 new moodiness is plain ; but, when the most has been 
 done to externalize and give color and form to his 
 spiritual history, the legend of the birth of the soul 
 remains obscure. He had become aware of dark and 
 terrible elements in the world and of strange and ill- 
 understood reactions within him in response to ex- 
 periences he had blindly encountered, — this is all 
 that is told of the matter. It seems inadequate for 
 such a history as was seemingly undertaken. 
 
 The assumption of the myth of the world before 
 sin, the Rousseau-like state of nature, the prehu- 
 man, faun-and-nymph world, is easily made in that 
 land of classical fragments and visible joy; and 
 Hawthorne describes it with his New England pen 
 of light fantasy and wild nature. The forest of the 
 new world had prepared his heart for it. The scene 
 of the murder breaks in on this sunny landscape, — a 
 midnight scene in ruins, It is a chapter of theatrical 
 
186 HAWTHORNE 
 
 romance, by itself, and seems like an extract from 
 an old, so-called "Gothic" tale. Then comes the long 
 and delaying after-play of fate, in the slow and 
 dumb torture of the nascent soul, surprised in its 
 birth by the rising and hostile shapes of sorrow. 
 Perhaps the most vivid moment, the most condensed 
 form of the transformation of Donatello, is when 
 he makes trial of his boyhood power of confident 
 converse with the creatures of the wood, and finds 
 that the old spell that made him a friend of the wild 
 and innocent world, is gone. What is evident in all 
 this is the intent of the moral tale ; but what charms 
 is the scene, whether it be the sylvan dance in the 
 gardens, the tragic Tarpeian rock at midnight, or 
 the Italian burst of wild weeping over the passing 
 of youth. 
 
 The three episodes characterize the stages of the 
 tale. The first is a glade of Eden before the en- 
 trance of the serpent, and is, perhaps, in feature and 
 atmosphere, the gayest passage in Hawthorne's al- 
 bum of old-fashioned fancies. It is almost a reverie, 
 so still and dreamlike is the motion, so pictorial in 
 effect that it issues naturally, and by unobserved 
 transition, in the marble dance of the sarcophagus, 
 w^ith its tragic suggestion of change and fate, — till 
 all is dissipated, and the scene is brought back to 
 reality with the forward leap of the demon of the 
 play, "the model," into the living group : 
 
 "Donatello, brisk and cheerful as he seemed be- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 187 
 
 fore, showed a sensibility to Miriam's gladdened 
 mood by breaking into still wilder and ever-vary- 
 ing activity. He frisked around her, bubbling over 
 with joy, which clothed itself in words that had 
 little individual meaning, and in snatches of song 
 that seemed as natural as bird-notes. Then they 
 both laughed together, and heard their own laugh- 
 ter returning the echoes, and laughed again at the 
 response, so that the ancient and solemn grove be- 
 came full of merriment for these two blithe spirits. 
 A bird happening to sing cheerily, Donatello gave a 
 peculiar call, and the little feathered creature came 
 fluttering about his head, as if it had known him 
 through many summers. 
 
 " *How close he stands to nature !' said Miriam, 
 observing this pleasant familiarity between her com- 
 panion and the bird. 'He shall make me as natural 
 as himself for this one hour.' . . . 
 
 "So the shadowy Miriam almost outdid Donatello 
 on his own ground. They ran races with each 
 other, side by side, with shouts and laughter; they 
 pelted one another with early flowers, and gathering 
 them up twined them with green leaves into gar- 
 lands for both their heads. They played together 
 like children, or creatures of immortal youth. So 
 much had they flung aside the sombre habitudes of 
 daily life, that they seemed born to be sportive for- 
 ever, and endowed with eternal mirthfulness instead 
 of any deeper joy. It was a glimpse far backward 
 into Arcadian life, or, further still, into the Golden 
 
188 HAWTHORNE 
 
 Age, before mankind was burdened with sin and 
 sorrow, and before pleasure had been darkened with 
 those shadows that bring it into high rehef, and 
 make it happiness. 
 
 " *Hark !' cried Donatello, stopping short, as he 
 was about to bind Miriam's fair hands with flowers, 
 and lead her along in triumph, 'there is music some- 
 where in the grove !' 
 
 " 'It is your kinsman, Pan, most likely,' said Mir- 
 iam, 'playing on his pipe. Let us go seek him, and 
 make him puff out his rough cheeks and pipe his 
 merriest air! Come; the strain of music will guide 
 us onward like a gaily colored thread of silk.' 
 
 " 'Or like a chain of flowers,' responded Dona- 
 tello, drawing her along by that which he had 
 twined. 'This way ! — Come !' 
 
 "As the music came fresher on their ears, they 
 danced to its cadence, extemporizing new steps and 
 attitudes. Each varying movement had a grace 
 which might have been worth putting into marble, 
 for the long delight of days to come, but vanished 
 with the movement that gave it birth, and was ef- 
 faced from memory by another. In Miriam's mo- 
 tion, freely as she flung herself into the frolic of the 
 hour, there was still an artful beauty; in Donatello's 
 there was a charm of indescribable grotesqueness 
 hand in hand with grace; sweet, bewitching, most 
 provocative of laughter, and yet akin to pathos, so 
 deeply did it touch the heart. This was the ultimate 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 189 
 
 peculiarity, the final touch, distinguishing between 
 the sylvan creature and the beautiful companion at 
 his side. Setting apart only this, Miriam resembled 
 a Nymph, as much as Donatello did a Faun. 
 
 "There were flitting moments, indeed, when she 
 played the sylvan character as perfectly as he. Catch- 
 ing glimpses of her, then, you would have fancied 
 that an oak had sundered its rough bark to let her 
 dance freely forth, endowed with the same spirit in 
 her human form as that which rustles in the leaves ; 
 or that she had emerged through the pebbly bottom 
 of a fountain, a water-nymph, to play and sparkle 
 in the sunshine, flinging a quivering light around 
 her, and suddenly disappearing in a shower of rain- 
 bow drops. 
 
 "As the fountain sometimes subsides into its basin, 
 so in Miriam there were symptoms that the frolic 
 of her spirits would at last tire itself out. 
 
 *' *Ah ! Donatello,* cried she, laughing, as she 
 stopped to take breath; *you have an unfair advan- 
 tage over me ! I am no true creature of the woods ; 
 while you are a real Faun, I do believe. When your 
 curls shook just now, methought I had a peep at the 
 pointed ears.' 
 
 "Donatello snapped his fingers above his head, as 
 fauns and satyrs taught us first to do, and seemed to 
 radiate jollity out of his whole nimble person. Never- 
 theless, there was a kind of dim apprehension in his 
 face, as if he dreaded that a moment's pause might 
 
190 HAWTHORNE 
 
 break the spell, and snatch away the sportive com- 
 panion whom he had waited for through so many 
 dreary months. 
 
 " 'Dance ! dance !' cried he, joyously. *If we take 
 breath, we shall be as we were yesterday. There, 
 now, is the music, just beyond this clump of trees. 
 Dance, Miriam, dance !' 
 
 **They had now reached an open, grassy glade (of 
 which there are many in that artfully constructed 
 wilderness), set round with stone seats, on which 
 the aged moss had kindly essayed to spread itself 
 instead of cushions. On one of the stone benches 
 sat the musicians, whose strains had enticed our wild 
 couple thitherward. They proved to be a vagrant 
 band, such as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; 
 comprising a harp, a flute, and a violin, which, 
 though greatly the worse for wear, the performers 
 had skill enough to provoke and modulate into tol- 
 erable harmony. It chanced to be a feast-day ; and, 
 instead of playing in the sun-scorched piazzas of the 
 city, or beneath the windows of some unresponsive 
 palace, they had bethought themselves to try the 
 echoes of these woods; for, on the festas of the 
 Church, Rome scatters its merry-makers all abroad, 
 ripe for the dance or any other pastime. 
 
 "As Miriam and Donatello emerged from among 
 the trees, the musicians scraped, tinkled, or blew, 
 each according to his various kind of instrument, 
 more inspiringly than ever. A dark-cheeked little 
 girl, with bright black eyes, stood by, shaking a tarn- 
 
, THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 191 
 
 bourine set round with tinkling bells, and thumping 
 it on its parchment head. Without interrupting his 
 brisk, though measured movement, Donatello 
 snatched away this unmelodious contrivance, and 
 flourishing it above his head, produced music of in- 
 describable potency, still dancing with frisky step, 
 and striking the tambourine, and ringing its little 
 bells, all in one jovial act. . . . 
 
 "The harper thrummed with rapid fingers; the 
 violin-player flashed his bow back and forth across 
 the strings; the flautist poured his breath in quick 
 puffs of jollity, while Donatello shook the tambour- 
 ine above his head, and led the merry throng with 
 unweariable steps. As they followed one another in 
 a wild ring of mirth, it seemed the realization of one 
 of those bas-reliefs where a dance of nymphs, satyrs, 
 or bacchanals is twined around the circle of an an- 
 tique vase ; or it was like the sculptured scene on the 
 front and sides of a sarcophagus, where, as often as 
 any other device, a festive procession mocks the 
 ashes and white bones that are treasured up within. 
 You might take it for a marriage-pageant; but after 
 a while, if you look at those merry-makers, follow- 
 ing them from end to end of the marble coflin, you 
 doubt whether their gay movement is leading them 
 to a happy close. A youth has suddenly fallen in 
 the dance ; a chariot is overturned and broken, fling- 
 ing the charioteer headlong to the ground ; a maiden 
 seems to have grown faint or weary and is drooping 
 on the bosom of a friend. Always some tragic inci- 
 
192 HAWTHORNE 
 
 dent is shadowed forth or thrust sidelong into the 
 spectacle ; and when once it has caught your eye you 
 can look no more at the festal portions of the scene, 
 except with reference to this one slightly suggested 
 doom and sorrow. 
 
 "As in its mirth, so in the darker characteristic 
 here alluded to, there was an analogy between the 
 sculptured scene on the sarcophagus and the wild 
 dance which we have been describing. In the midst 
 of its madness and riot Miriam found herself sud- 
 denly confronted by a strange figure that shook its 
 fantastic garments in the air, and pranced before 
 her on its tiptoes, almost vying with the agility of 
 Donatello himself. It was the model." 
 
 It is impossible to escape a certain feeling of un- 
 reality in this scene. It has the artificiality of the 
 stage, or, better, the opera, — of something arranged 
 and made to be looked at. It is too visibly, to use 
 the word hitherto employed, a tableau, a wall-fresco, 
 an echo of the sarcophagus. It is not often that fine 
 art, in the strict sense, moulds the form and expres- 
 sion of literature is so manifest a way. Hawthorne's 
 artistic senses, — ^his eye for line and shape and light, 
 for grouping and relief, were, no doubt, vividly re- 
 inforced by the arts in Italy; he always had a cer- 
 tain taste and tendency toward visible art, as has 
 been observed above; but no small portion of the 
 gaiety and natural high spirits of this scene came 
 from observation and his fresh contacts with life 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 193 
 
 itself in Italy in its free and primitive forms. The 
 impression of unreality, as of a picture or bas-relief, 
 is undeniable ; but it is no greater than that which in- 
 vades the mind in reading some of Hawthorne's 
 New England sketches, the insubstantiality of 
 which, when dream or reverie or fantasy seems to 
 control his imagination, has been mentioned. The 
 whole conception of the care-free primitive world m 
 which the faun-like nature of Donatello had its 
 birth and being, and of which the dance is but a 
 symbolic manifestation, is of no stronger woof. It 
 is all an invention of Hawthorne's brain, drawn from 
 the Golden Age, and memories of Tanglewood, and 
 the vision of Italy. Its unreality is its charm. 
 
 It must be acknowledged, too, that a kindred un- 
 reality pervades the next scene, that of the murder. 
 The act itself, being reduced to the lowest possible 
 terms, occupies but a line or two. The outstanding 
 fact of the situation is not the death, but the passion 
 of the two lovers, first truly known in their moral 
 communion in the crime. The "rage" of Donatello, 
 which *1iad kindled him into a man" and "had de- 
 veloped within him an intelligence," is briefly dwelt 
 on ; but it is the moment after, when Miriam and 
 Donatello drew together, "arm in arm, heart in 
 heart," that is expanded in their consciousness. The 
 exaltation of feeling at this cHmax of guilt is notice- 
 able, and recalls the much briefer words, already 
 quoted, which denoted the same climax in the earlier 
 case of Hester and the Puritan minister; the later 
 
194 HAWTHORNE 
 
 lovers, not unlike the former pair, were brought to- 
 gether in "one emotion, and that a kind of rapture," 
 in their embrace ; the world seemed annihilated, and 
 they to live in a sphere of their own. This may be 
 correct psychological analysis ; violent and unknown 
 emotions disturb the sanity of the universe, as it 
 were, and give rise to spectral scenes ; but the move- 
 ments and the mood of Donatello and Miriam as 
 they emerge from the murder have just the unreal- 
 ity, the nervous tension, of high-strung tragedy. 
 Without meaning to place the two instances on a 
 par, the parallel between "the far-off noise of sing- 
 ing and laughter" of their companions and "the 
 knocking at the gate" in Macbeth is obvious; but 
 here one still remains with the murder, inside the 
 gate. The exaltation of feeling in Donatello and 
 Miriam continues ; it blends with great Roman mem- 
 ories of imperial tragedy; and it fades out in that 
 strange and terrifying climax of thought and feel- 
 ing which makes all criminals one kindred. 
 
 The touch of fever at such a moment in a tragic 
 story, the note of delirium, the unforeseen motion of 
 thought in the wild whirl of emotion, unnatural and 
 paradoxical as they may seem, are true to a distem- 
 pered nature; unreality is just the impression that 
 ought to be given. It is not for the purpose, how- 
 ever, of illustrating the ways of literary art that 
 these remarks are made, but rather to show how 
 thoroughgoing is the artistic unreality of this ro- 
 mance, in all its creative facts, as distinguished from 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 195 
 
 those that merely reproduce the aspects and things 
 of the actual Italy of Hawthorne's day. The Golden 
 Age and the moral law belong to no period, to no 
 land nor climate. The legend and the tale of Monte 
 Beni lift far away from realism in any form; they 
 were conceived in the pure sphere of the imagina- 
 tion, where "things more real than living man" in- 
 habit; and this trait, wherein the genius of the work 
 consists, is most manifest in such "unrealities" as 
 have been dwelt on in these comments on both the 
 pastoral dance and the tragedy. But behold the 
 tragedy, — before and after! 
 
 "Meanwhile Miriam had not noticed the depart- 
 ure of the rest of the company; she remained on the 
 edge of the precipice and Donatello along with her. 
 
 " Tt would be a fatal fall, still/ she said to her- 
 self, looking over the parapet, and shuddering as 
 her eye measured the depth. *Yes; surely yes! Even 
 without the weight of an overburdened heart, a hu- 
 man body would fall heavily enough upon those 
 stones to shake all its joints asunder. How soon it 
 would be over !' 
 
 "Donatello, of whose presence she w^as possibly 
 not aware, now pressed closer to her side ; and he, 
 too, like Miriam, bent over the low parapet and 
 trembled violently. Yet he seemed to feel that per- 
 ilous fascination which haunts the brow of preci- 
 pices, tempting the unwary one to fling himself over 
 for the very horror of the thing, for, after drawing 
 
196 HAWTHORNE 
 
 hastily back, he again looked down, thrusting him- 
 self out farther than before. He then stood silent 
 a brief space, struggling, perhaps, to make himself 
 conscious of the historic associations of the scene. 
 
 " 'What are you thinking of, Donatello?' asked 
 Miriam. 
 
 " *Who are they,' said he, looking earnestly in her 
 face, Svho have been flung over here in days 
 gone by?' 
 
 " 'Men that cumbered the virorld,' she replied. 
 *Men whose lives were the bane of their fellow- 
 creatures. Men who poisoned the air, which is the 
 common breath of all, for their own selfish pur- 
 poses. There was short work with such men in old 
 Roman times. Just in the moment of their triumph, 
 a hand, as of an avenging giant, clutched them, and 
 dashed the wretches down this precipice.' 
 
 " 'Was it well done ?' asked the young man. 
 
 " Tt was well done,' answered Miriam ; 'innocent 
 persons were saved by the destruction of a guilty 
 one, who deserved his doom.' 
 
 "While this brief conversation passed, Donatello 
 had once or twice glanced aside with a watchful air, 
 just as a hound may often be seen to take sidelong 
 note of some suspicious object, while he gives his 
 more direct attention to something nearer at hand. 
 Miriam seemed now first to become aware of the 
 silence that had followed upon the cheerful talk and 
 laughter of a few moments before. 
 
 "Looking round, she perceived that all her com- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 197 
 
 pany of merry friends had retired, and Hilda, too, 
 in whose soft and quiet presence she had always an 
 indescribable feeling of security. All gone; and 
 only herself and Donatello left hanging over the 
 brow of the ominous precipice. 
 
 "Not so, however ; not entirely alone ! In the base- 
 ment wall of the palace, shaded from the moon, 
 there was a deep, empty niche, that had probably 
 once contained a statue ; not empty, either ; for a fig- 
 ure now came forth from it and approached Miriam. 
 She must have had cause to dread some unspeakable 
 evil from this strange persecutor, and to know that 
 this was the very crisis of her calamity; for, as he 
 drew near, such a cold, sick despair crept over her, 
 that it impeded her breath, and benumbed her natu- 
 ral promptitude of thought. Miriam seemed dream- 
 ily to remem.ber falling on her knees; but, in her 
 whole recollection of that wild moment, she beheld 
 herself as in a dim show, and could not well distin- 
 guish what was done and suffered; no, not even 
 whether she were really an actor and sufferer in the 
 scene. 
 
 "Hilda, meanwhile, had separated herself from 
 the sculptor, and turned back to rejoin her friend. 
 At a distance, she still heard the mirth of her late 
 companions, who were going down the cityward 
 descent of the Capitoline Hill; they had set up a new 
 stave of melody, in which her own soft voice, as well 
 as the powerful sweetness of Miriam's, was sadly 
 missed. 
 
198 HAWTHORNE 
 
 "The door of the Httle court-yard had swung upon 
 its hinges, and partly closed itself. Hilda (whose] 
 native gentleness pervaded all her movements) was 
 quietly opening it, when she was startled, midway, 
 by the noise of a struggle within, beginning and end- 
 ing all in one breathless instant. Along with it, or 
 closely succeeding it, was a loud, fearful cry, w^hich 
 quivered upward through the air, and sank quiver- 
 ing downward to the earth. Then, a silence ! Poor 
 Hilda had looked into the court-yard, and saw the 
 whole quick passage of a deed, which took but that 
 little time to grave itself in the eternal adamant. 
 
 "The door of the court-yard swung slowly, and 
 closed itself of its ow^n accord. Miriam and Dona- 
 tello were now alone there. She clasped her hands, 
 and looked wildly at the young man, whose form 
 , seemed to have dilated, and whose eyes blazed with 
 the fierce energy that had suddenly inspired him. It 
 had kindled him into a man ; it had developed within 
 him an intelligence which was no native characteris- 
 tic of the Donatello whom we have heretofore 
 known. But that simple and joyous creature was 
 gone forever. 
 
 " *What have you done ?^ said Miriam, in a hor- 
 ror-stricken whisper. 
 
 "The glow of rage was still lurid on Donatello's 
 face, and now flashed out again from his eyes. 
 
 " T did what ought to be done to a traitor !' he re- 
 plied. T did what your eyes bade me do, when I 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 199 
 
 asked them with mine, as I held the wretch over the 
 precipice T 
 
 'These last words struck Miriam like a bullet. 
 Could it be so ? Had her eyes provoked or assented 
 to this deed? She had not known it. But, alas! 
 looking back into the frenzy and turmoil of the scene 
 just acted, she could not deny — she was not sure 
 whether it might be so, or no — that a wild joy had 
 flamed up in her heart, when she beheld her perse- 
 cutor in his mortal peril. Was it horror? — or ec- 
 stasy? — or both in one? Be the emotion what it 
 might, it had blazed up more madly, when Donatello 
 flung his victim off the cliff, and more and more, 
 while his shriek went quivering downward. With 
 the dead thump upon the stones below had come an 
 unutterable horror. 
 
 " 'And my eyes bade you do it T repeated she. 
 'They both leaned over the parapet, and gazed 
 downward as earnestly as if some inestimable treas- 
 ure had fallen over, and were yet recoverable. On 
 the pavement, below, was a dark mass, lying in a 
 heap, with litde or nothing human in its appearance, 
 except that the hands were stretched out, as if they 
 might have clutched, for a moment, at the small 
 square stones. But there was no motion in them 
 now. Miriam watched the heap of mortality while 
 she could count a hundred, which she took pains to 
 do. No stir ; not a finger moved ! 
 
 " 'You have killed him, Donatello ! He is quite 
 
200 HAWTHORNE 
 
 dead!' said she. 'Stone dead! Would I were so, 
 too!' 
 
 " *Did you not mean that he should die?' sternly 
 asked Donatello, still in the glow of that intelligence 
 which passion had developed in him. 'There was 
 short time to weigh the matter ; but he had his trial 
 in that breath or two while I held him over the cliff, 
 and his sentence in that one glance, when your eyes 
 responded to mine! Say that I have slain him 
 against your will, — say that he died without your 
 w^hole consent, — and, in another breath, you shall 
 see me lying beside him.' 
 
 ** 'Oh, never !' cried Miriam. 'My one, own 
 friend! Never, never, never!' 
 
 "She turned to him, — the guilty, blood-stained, 
 lonely woman, — she turned to her fellow-criminal, 
 the youth, so lately innocent, whom she had drawn 
 into her doom. She pressed him close, close to her 
 bosom, with a clinging embrace that brought their 
 two hearts together, till the horror and agony of 
 each was combined into one emotion, and that a kind 
 of rapture. 
 
 " 'Yes, Donatello, you speak the truth !' said she ; 
 *my heart consented to what you did. We two slew 
 yonder wretch. The deed knots us together, for 
 time and eternity, like the coil of a serpent !' 
 
 "They threw one other glance at the heap of 
 death below, to assure themselves that it was there ; 
 so like a dream was the whole thing. Then they 
 turned from that fatal precipice, and came out of 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 201 
 
 the court-yard, arm in arm, heart in heart. Instinc- 
 tively, they were heedful not to sever themselves so 
 much as a pace or two from one another, for fear 
 of the terror and deadly chill that would thenceforth 
 wait for them in solitude. Their deed — the crime 
 which Donatello wrought, and Miriam accepted on 
 the instant — had wreathed itself, as she said, like a 
 serpent, in inextricable links about both their souls, 
 and drew them into one, by its terrible contractile 
 power. It was closer than a marriage-bond. So in- 
 timate, in those first moments, was the union, that 
 it seemed as if their new sympathy annihilated all 
 other ties, and that they were released from the 
 chain of humanity; a new sphere, a special law, had 
 been created for them alone. The world could not 
 come near them ; they were safe ! 
 
 "When they reached the flight of steps leading 
 downward from the Capitol, there was a far-off 
 noise of singing and laughter. Swift, indeed, had 
 been the rush of the crisis that was come and gone ! 
 This was still the merriment of the party that had so 
 recently been their companions. They recognized 
 the voices which, a little while ago, had accorded 
 and sung in cadence with their own. But they were 
 familiar voices no more; they sounded strangely, 
 and, as it were, out of the depths of space; so re- 
 mote was all that pertained to the past life of these 
 guilty ones, in the moral seclusion that had suddenly 
 extended itself around them. But how close, and 
 ever closer, did th^ breath of the immeasurable 
 
202 HAWTHORNE 
 
 waste, that lay between them and all brotherhood or 
 sisterhood, now press them one within the other ! 
 
 " 'O friend !' cried Miriam, so putting her soul 
 into the word that it took a heavy richness of mean- 
 ing, and seemed never to have been spoken before, — 
 *0 friend, are you conscious, as I am, of this com- 
 panionship that knits our heart-strings together?' 
 
 " 1 feel it, Miriam,' said Donatello. 'We draw 
 one breath; we live one life !' 
 
 " *Only yesterday,' continued Miriam ; 'nay, only 
 u short half -hour ago, I shivered in an icy solitude. 
 No friendship, no sisterhood, could come near 
 enough to keep the warmth within my heart. In an 
 instant, all is changed ! There can be no more lone- 
 liness !' 
 
 " 'None, Miriam !' said Donatello. 
 
 "'None, my beautiful one!' responded Miriam, 
 gazing in his face, which had taken a higher, almost 
 an heroic aspect, from the strength of passion. 
 'None, my innocent one ! Surely, it is no crime that 
 we have committed. One wretched and worthless 
 life has been sacrificed to cement two other lives for 
 evermore.* 
 
 " 'For evermore, Miriam !' said Donatello ; 'ce- 
 mented with his blood !' 
 
 "The young man started at the word which he had 
 himself spoken; it may be that it brought home, to 
 the simplicity of his imagination, what he had not 
 before dreamed of, — the ever-increasing loathsome- 
 ness of a union that consists in guilt. Cemented 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 203 
 
 with blood, which would corrupt and grow more 
 noisome forever and forever, but bind them none the 
 less strictly for that. 
 
 " 'Forget it ! Cast it all behind you !' said Mir- 
 iam, detecting, by her sympathy, the pang that was 
 in his heart. The deed has done its office, and has 
 no existence any more.' 
 
 "They flung the past behind them, as she coun- 
 selled, or else distilled from it a fiery intoxication, 
 which sufficed to carry them triumphantly through 
 those first moments of their doom. For, guilt has 
 its moment of rapture, too. The foremost result of 
 a broken law is ever an ecstatic sense of freedom. 
 And thus there exhaled upward (out of their dark 
 sympathy, at the base of which lay a human corpse) 
 a bliss, or an insanity, which the unhappy pair im- 
 agined to be well worth the sleepy innocence that 
 was forever lost to them. 
 
 "As their spirits rose to the solemn madness of 
 the occasion, they went onward, — not stealthily, not 
 fearfully, — but with a stately gait and aspect. Pas- 
 sion lent them (as it does to meaner shapes) its brief 
 nobility of carriage. They trod through the streets 
 of Rome, as if they, too, were among the majestic 
 and guilty shadows, that, from ages long gone by, 
 have haunted the blood-stained city. And, at Mir- 
 iam's suggestion, they turned aside, for the sake of 
 treading loftily past the old site of Pompey's Forum. 
 
 " 'For there was a great deed done here !' she said, 
 — "a deed of blood like ours ! Who knows, but we 
 
204 HAWTHORNE 
 
 may meet the high and ever-sad fraternity of 
 Caesar's murderers, and exchange a salutation?' 
 
 " *Are they our brethren, now ?' asked Donatello. 
 
 " *Yes; all of them,' said Miriam; 'and many an- 
 other, whom the world little dreams of, has been 
 made our brother or our sister, by what we have 
 done within this hour !' 
 
 "And, at the thought, she shivered. Where, then, 
 was the seclusion, the remoteness, the strange, lone- 
 some Paradise, into which she and her one compan- 
 ion had been transported by their crime ? Was there, 
 indeed, no such refuge, but only a crowded thor- 
 oughfare and jostling throng of criminals? And 
 was it true, that whatever hand had a blood-stain on 
 it, — or had poured out poison, — or strangled a babe 
 at its birth, — or clutched a grandsire's throat, he 
 sleeping, and robbed him of his few last breaths, — 
 had now the right to offer itself in fellowship w^ith 
 their two hands ? Too certainly, that right existed. 
 It is a terrible thought, that an individual wrong- 
 doing melts into the great mass of human crime, and 
 makes us, — who dreamed only of our own little sep- 
 arate sin, — makes us guilty of the whole. And thus 
 Miriam and her lover were not an insulated pair, 
 but members of an innumerable confraternity of 
 guilty ones, all shuddering at each other." 
 
 The last paragraph, which points a curious inver- 
 sion of the doctrine of the communion of the saints, 
 is characteristically Hawthornesque. It is perverse, 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 205 
 
 but a not unnatural offshoot of Puritan meditation, 
 and reminds one of the grotesques sometimes found 
 on cathedral churches. It contains, intellectually, 
 the same sort of repugnance to the idea of sin that 
 Hilda shows emotionally in her sensitive purity. A 
 brotherhood of sinners is surely not, necessarily, the 
 same as a brotherhood of devils; but, without dis- 
 cussing the philosophy of this whim or fantasy of 
 conscience on Miriam's part, it is enough to mark 
 by it the depth of root that old New England 
 thought had taken in this Arcadian soil of a long- 
 lost Golden Age. The Puritan tone is noticeable in 
 more than one phrase and sentiment, but in no one 
 passage is the genuine moral nativity of the tale so 
 plain as in this theory of the consubstantiality of 
 guilt. It would be worthy of a capital place in an- 
 cient metaphysic dogma. Here it is only a lurid 
 thought at a moment of intense spiritual strain; but 
 in its most imaginative and least theologic form it 
 defines Hawthorne's essential Puritanism and illus- 
 trates how fundamental such thought was in the 
 workings of his imagination. 
 
 One turns happily from this nightmare of a fev- 
 ered and guilty conscience to the pleasant idyl, 
 where Donatello in his misery turns to call the dear, 
 woodland companions of his boyhood, if, perchance, 
 they will know his changed voice : 
 
 " T used to make many strange acquaintances ; 
 for, from my earliest childhood, I was familiar with 
 
206 HAWTHORNE 
 
 whatever creatures haunt the woods. You would 
 have laughed to see the friends I had among them ; 
 yes, among the wild, nimble things, that reckon man 
 their deadliest enemy ! How it was first taught me, 
 I cannot tell; but there was a charm — a voice, a 
 murmur, a kind of chant — by which I called the 
 woodland inhabitants, the furry people, and the 
 feathered people, in a language that they seemed to 
 tuiderstand.' 
 
 " *I have heard of such a gift,' responded the 
 sculptor, gravely, *but never before met with a per- 
 son endowed with it. Pray, try the charm ; and lest 
 I should frighten your friends away, I will with- 
 draw into this thicket, and merely peep at them.' 
 
 " *I doubt,' said Donatello, 'whether they will re- 
 member my voice now. It changes, you know, as 
 the boy grows towards manhood.' 
 
 "Nevertheless, as the young Count's good-nature 
 and easy persuasibility were among his best charac- 
 teristics, he set about complying with Kenyon's re- 
 quest. The latter, in his concealment among the 
 shrubberies, heard him send forth a sort of modu- 
 lated breath, wild, rude, yet harmonious. It struck 
 the auditor as at once the strangest and the most 
 natural utterance that had ever reached his ears. 
 Any idle boy, it should seem, singing to himself and 
 setting his wordless song to no other or more defi- 
 nite tune than the play of his own pulses, might pro- 
 duce a sound almost identical with this; and yet, it 
 was as individual as a murmur of the breeze. Dona- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 207 
 
 tello tried it, over and over again, with many breaks, 
 at first, and pauses of uncertainty; then with more 
 confidence, and a fuller swell, like a wayfarer grop- 
 ing out of obscurity into the light, and moving with 
 freer footsteps as it brightens around him. 
 
 "Anon, his voice appeared to fill the air, yet not 
 with an obtrusive clangor. The sound was of a 
 murmurous character, soft, attractive, persuasive, 
 friendly. The sculptor fancied that such might 
 have been the original voice and utterance of the 
 natural man, before the sophistication of the human 
 intellect formed what we now call language. In 
 this broad dialect — broad as the sympathies of na- 
 ture — the human brother might have spoken to his 
 inarticulate brotherhood that prowl the woods, or 
 soar upon the wing, and have been intelligible to 
 such an extent as to vv^in their confidence. 
 
 "The sound had its pathos, too. At some of its 
 simple cadences, the tears came quietly into Ken- 
 yon's eyes. They welled up slowly from his heart, 
 which was thrilling with an emotion more delight- 
 ful than he had often felt before, but which he for- 
 bore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it should at once 
 perish in his grasp. 
 
 "Donatello paused two or three times, and seemed 
 to listen; then, recommencing, he poured his spirit 
 and life more earnestly into the strain. And, finally, 
 — or else the sculptor's hope and imagination de- 
 ceived him, — soft treads were audible upon the 
 fallen leaves. There was a rustling among the 
 
208 HAWTHORNE 
 
 shrubbery; a whirr of wings, moreover, that hov- 
 ered in the air. It may have been all an illusion; 
 but Kenyon fancied that he could distinguish the 
 stealthy, cat-like movement of some small forest 
 citizen, and that he could even see its doubtful 
 shadow, if not really its substance. But, all at once, 
 w^hatever might be the reason, there ensued a hur- 
 ried rush and scamper of little feet; and then the 
 sculptor heard a wild, sorrowful cry, and through 
 the crevices of the thicket beheld Donatello fling 
 himself on the ground." 
 
 This is a true glimpse of the "early world." The 
 tale is exquisitely told. The pathos of it is as natu- 
 ral as a catch in the throat. But the skepticism of 
 Hawthorne toward his own imagination, which has 
 often been commented on above, is obvious. He 
 describes the scene ; he creates the illusion ; but, like 
 a teller of stories to children, he can not refrain from 
 the reminder that it may be all make-believe. Is 
 matter-of-fact indeed so precious in art? Yet, for 
 all his caution, the heart rallies to its own creations, 
 its own illusions, it may be, and insists, for the mo- 
 ment, at least, on the truth of the vision. Dona- 
 tello's grief that he can not call the squirrels, and 
 other "nimble creatures," — and every woodsman 
 knows that there is a call which brings them near 
 and friendly, — this grief is a fable of the rift that 
 conscience discloses between innocence and experi- 
 ence; something is lost with the passing years be- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 209 
 
 side *'the splendor in the grass" and "the glory in 
 the flower ;" and it is this inner and mystic loss, this 
 bereavement, as it were, that is shadowed forth in 
 Donatello's cry. Fanciful as the scene and the inci- 
 dent may seem to some, in its essence the myth, if 
 myth it be, rings true to the heart of all. If the 
 faun in Donatello received his death-wound in the 
 murder scene, it was here in the wood that he died. 
 Here the "early world" passed out of Donatello's 
 life, as it passes out of the life of all men whom 
 life matures; and the truth is well enough set forth 
 imaginatively by this simple and beautiful Arcadian 
 fable of Donatello's call. 
 
 The visible charm and romantic emotion — w^hat 
 one may call the literary fascination — of these three 
 passages, is obvious. Hawthorne was at the height 
 of his power of representation and grace of descrip- 
 tion when he penned them. The golden and mel- 
 low glow, as of an American autumn, that pervades 
 Irving's ripe literary years and often transforms 
 Hawthorne's style into a sort of dreamland of the 
 imagination, rests like a haze on Monte Beni and its 
 shadowy valleys leading down to Rome. The per- 
 fection of it, as the woof of imaginative feeling and 
 verbal art, is undeniable; and the flash of Italian 
 landscapes and scenes completes the spell. But, 
 ethically, to keep attention fixed on the moral talc 
 involved in this picturesque web of material fact, 
 artistic tradition and spiritual speculation, the final 
 impression is of mystery. Mystery is, indeed, a per- 
 
210 HAWTHORNE 
 
 manent element in Hawthorne's mood of thought, 
 and sometimes it degenerates into the merely uncer- 
 tain, the unexplained or the fanciful. This lower 
 form of mystery occurs in the romance repeatedly; 
 it is plain enough in the untold story of Miriam and 
 the model and in the untold after-life of Miriam 
 and Donatello, neither of which seems logically con- 
 nected with the plot, though linked with it tempo- 
 rarily; there are always things left thus in the 
 penumbra of life or stories. But the mystery, which 
 is impressed on the mind, in the moral conduct of 
 the tale in its essence, is the age-old mystery of evil 
 in the world and its contact, by chance or fate, 
 with innocent lives, together with its results in the 
 destinies and the nature of its victims. This was a 
 problem of native attraction to the New England 
 romancer; he had changed his climate, but not his 
 mind. He assumed the state of innocence or of na- 
 ture, which he made identical, and he brought that 
 world in contact with evil in the form of a crime 
 which he interpreted as sin ; and he undertook to tell 
 the reactions that took place in the persons con- 
 cerned. He dealt with an artificial world, in both 
 instances, and dreamed his dream with such aid as 
 speculation could give him. Perhaps there was 
 more poetic fantasy than moral reality in his medi- 
 tation; but, however that may be, it is not for any 
 light he throws on the divine mystery of the soul's 
 life that one reads the tale. 
 
 It must be acknowledged that, for all its adven- 
 
 I 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 211 
 
 tures into the spiritual realm, the novel has made 
 its way mostly, certainly in later years, as a tourist's 
 companion, or better kind of guide-book, to give 
 .feeling and perspective to the ramblings of foreign- 
 ers in the hill country of Italy and to make "a Ro- 
 man holiday." Its vivid presentation of the scene 
 and background, as a mere book of travel, with its 
 myriad almost photographic touches, recommend it 
 to the eye that looks on Italy for the first time, and 
 with a sight half of memory of what has been told 
 and expectation of what shall be, as well as of ac- 
 tuality. It fulfills the early dream and prepares for 
 the greater vision. Hawthorne was so uncommonly 
 good a sight-seer and narrator, and also a bit of a 
 visionary, that his description of Italian scenes, 
 where he always had subjects equal to his powers, 
 is a masterpiece of realism with the unseen light in 
 it. His artistic predilections and associations, also, 
 which brought him, both temperamentally and so- 
 cially, into sympathy with paintings and statues 
 and gardens, however amateurish and initiatory his 
 comments and enthusiasms may seem to a more 
 sophisticated generation, enabled him to give an ap- 
 pearance of wholeness to his rendering of Italian 
 life, as a tourist sees it. He included in his imagi- 
 native survey of the land an uncommon amount and 
 variety of mere information, — sights, objects, as- 
 pects, customs and persons, the medley of the world 
 of foreign travel; and this gives another interest to 
 the tale, quite separate from that of the spiritual 
 
212 HAWTHORNE 
 
 story involved. What history is to the ordinary 
 historical novel, that travel is to this romance. In 
 particular, the talk, if it may be so designated, about 
 the Roman sights, the Church of the Capuchins, the 
 portrait of the Cenci, the painting of St. Michael, 
 and the confessional and the carnival, is interesting, 
 wholly apart from Donatello and the pitiful history 
 of his inner life and tragic fortune. In so pictur- 
 esque a world, with such manifold and fascinating 
 vistas and horizons of time, myth and natural 
 beauty, it seems to matter little what takes place; 
 the scene more than the action absorbs attention; 
 it is Rome, not Donatello, that holds the eye. 
 
 This over-balance of the surroundings and atmos- 
 phere of the story, in comparison with its human 
 narrative, is evident. The tale is read for its acci- 
 dents, so to speak, rather than for its substance. 
 Yet, without regard to the spiritual history of Dona- 
 tello, the characters are more interesting, person- 
 ally, than is common with Hawthorne, sharper and 
 more massive. Ordinarily, there is something thin 
 and fragile, unsubstantial, in the sense his characters 
 give of themselves, — a water-color effect, as it were; 
 Miriam, Donatello, Hilda, — and, somewhat re- 
 moved, Kenyon — seem like a marble group. Per- 
 haps, the name — The Marble Faun — is partly re- 
 sponsible for this impression, — the name and the 
 thing; but, besides, there is a certain immobility in 
 the figures, — they seem always posed. Even, when 
 most in action, as in the sylvan dance and the un- 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 213 
 
 easy movement after the murder, they recall the 
 motion of bas-reliefs more than the freedom of life. 
 The continuous artistic effect, as of posing, results 
 from the fewness of the characters, which are al- 
 ways identical and in simple relations, and their 
 singleness is only the more emphasized, when they 
 are seen against larger and nameless groups, as in 
 the sylvan dance, with the strollers of the murder- 
 scene, or in the square at Perugia beneath the bronze 
 pontiff's benediction. 
 
 There is great definiteness of outline to the four 
 characters; and yet, it is singular how little one 
 knows about them. Miriam is like a visitor from 
 another world, without origin or destiny. She is, 
 from her entrance, infinitely more mature than 
 Donatello and she continues to give this impression 
 of a being out of his sphere, even to the end, by 
 virtue of her experience; their partnership in crime 
 does not really unite them as equal mates. She was, 
 from the first, a w^oman, and he was a boy, to whom 
 experience came as a catastrophe and with illumina- 
 tion, no doubt ; but he remained a boy at heart, how- 
 ever saddened and wise, with the dark mortal knowl- 
 edge. It is a trait of Hawthorne's work in creation 
 that his characters show little substantial change in 
 nature, however much their situations alter. Are 
 not the characters of The Scarlet Letter essen- 
 tially the same at the close as at the beginning of 
 the tale? Their experience has passed over them, 
 and changed the circumstances, but are they changed 
 
214 HAWTHORNE 
 
 in any distinguishable way, except that they are 
 older in the lore of life? Miriam belongs to a spe- 
 cific and peculiar type of womanhood, that Haw- 
 thorne repeatedly tried to present, — the same type 
 as Hester and Zenobia. A richer nature, a more 
 massive physique, that something "oriental," as it is 
 described, characterized these women in general, and 
 set them over against the normal New England type, 
 delicate, fragile, paler, which Hilda, Priscilla, and 
 the unnamed frail woman of the crowd in the Puri- 
 tan romance reflected. The line between the two 
 types is almost racial, so definite is the contrast of 
 opposites; or, if not quite opposites, then aliens. 
 
 It is singular to observe that the stronger, richer, 
 more generous physical type seems the more human. 
 Hilda, though set forth as the very apotheosis of the 
 virginal, there in the tower with her doves, and again 
 in her instinctive revolt at the mere knowledge of 
 evil, and her refusal of it, in the incident of the con- 
 fessional, where she freed herself from the pollution 
 and dismay that the knowledge had been to her, — 
 Hilda, with all her sensitiveness to the shock within 
 her own nature, shows a hardness of virtue that re- 
 minds the reader of the "unco' guid." Would she, un- 
 der any circumstances, have been capable of seeing 
 Donatello with Miriam's eyes? As little as of win- 
 ning his love, one thinks. The two women are poles 
 apart. Whence came Hawthorne's breadth of view, 
 and especially this continually reappearing woman 
 of the stronger and richer, and, one must add, more 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 215 
 
 unrestrained nature? Knowledge of the realities of 
 life was with them, more than with their paler sis- 
 ters, he seems to say. In The Marble Faun, at 
 least, true knowledge was with Miriam and Dona- 
 tello, however much the conventional counsel of 
 Kenyon, at his leave-taking to go to the rescue of 
 Hilda, might look like wisdom, and, indeed, an ele- 
 vated form of it. Kenyon, indeed, is colorless, a 
 mere mouthpiece to fill out the play. 
 
 Hawthorne's success, as is readily seen, is usually 
 greater with his female than with his male charac- 
 ters. Neither Arther Dimmesdale nor Roger Chil- 
 lingworth is really interesting, and toward Hol- 
 lingsworth one feels social repugnance. Donatello 
 is a bright exception to the somewhat heavy villains 
 of the Hawthornesque stage. He is, in fact, a lov- 
 able creature, and fitted to his Arcadian environ- 
 ment like a beautiful animal to the woods and pas- 
 tures, but his fascination is wholly human; kind, 
 gentle, joyous, a devoted lover with the light spirits 
 of youth, it was ill fortune for him when the shad- 
 ows of Rome and of life fell across his native sun- 
 shine. His crime is so swiftly accomplished, so 
 vaguely motived, so unreflecting, that it does not 
 alienate him, in the least, from the natural affection 
 which he has already elicited from the reader. It 
 is hard to believe that it is a real crime that has been 
 seen, and not a mere nightmare of fancy. The 
 crime is not sufficiently rooted in evil to have the 
 effect attributed to it, one thinks, in remorse and in 
 
216 HAWTHORNE 
 
 revelation of the spiritual nature. . It is here that the 
 abstract element in Hawthorne's imagined situation 
 fails to carry conviction. It may be admitted in 
 theory that out of experience of sin a soul may 
 come to self -consciousness, and in that sense be born, 
 but it is not plain that Donatello's wild act was of 
 a sort to serve as a true type of sin; and in abstract 
 art conviction of the universality of the instance 
 given must be perfect. Casuistry has too large a 
 field in this case. Still less satisfactory is the ac- 
 count of his remorse, repentance and absolution, if 
 such there were. The history of the crime and its 
 spiritual consequences is too fragmentary, too 
 slightly made out and defined, to make the *'trans- 
 formation" of Donatello much more than a form of 
 words. He remains, in his alleged transformation, 
 much the same in nature as before, so far as visible 
 signs go, except it is a lovable nature seen in shadow 
 instead of in light. He has not forfeited good-will. 
 One is sorry for what has befallen him, but with 
 the pity that one feels for suffering that is not un- 
 derstood by its victim, and with sympathy that 
 abides in the memory. This is not the story of a 
 new fall of man, nor anything like it; nor is it a 
 new gospel of that fall; it is a tale, on the contrary, 
 not very well made out, so far as it lies in the spir- 
 itual realm of the history of the soul's birth and pil- 
 grimage. 
 
 But the case is far different with the earthly scene 
 and circumstances of the story. One almost calls it 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 217 
 
 a myth, because it has so lovely an investiture for 
 its moral doctrines, and lies so near, on the one hand, 
 to the tradition of the Golden Age, and, on the 
 other, to Roman classical remains. It has been 
 much used in Italy by the transient resident or trav- 
 eler, because of its sympathetic and contemplative 
 description of places and things. It rivals Childe 
 Harold, which is now old-fashioned, for such use, 
 and it is much more practical. Corinne and Stend- 
 hal are quite out of date. The Marble Faun is 
 a w^ork of the same utility as these for a more mod-, 
 ern and differently bred traveler than the gentlemen 
 of a century ago. It contains an introduction to the 
 visible land ; and it prepares the mind, as well as the 
 eye, for the scene. Its function has been even wider 
 and perhaps of greater value as an element in Amer- 
 ican culture, to the untraveled, inasmuch as it has 
 spread before them a vision of "delectable moun- 
 tains" they may never traverse, and embodied for 
 them the Italian dream. Hawthorne had both the 
 seeing and the dreaming eye, and both are needful 
 for the sight of Italy. Through his pellucid narra- 
 tive there runs the mirage, charm mixes with real- 
 ity on his page, there is the same uncertainty 
 w^hether this is life or dream, that his w^ork not in- 
 frequently gives ; and this fits the Italian scene. The 
 landscape and persons of his story, as he builds them 
 up imaginatively, have something of the character 
 of an emanation rather than of real substance, that 
 something diaphanous characteristic of the imagi- 
 
218 HAWTHORNE 
 
 nary in New England at that time, not quite phan- 
 tasmal and not quite flesh and blood. The imagi- 
 nary Italian scene, both in its figures and its look, 
 in Hawthorne's tale, is, really, mythical, to describe 
 it most appropriately; and it is in the atmosphere of 
 that world that he presents the realities of the land, 
 its squares and churches and crowds, its pictures 
 and statues. So admirably has he thrown this air 
 about all he touches that scarce any romance seems 
 so timeless. Donatello, by his very conception, puts 
 time to flight, and the Italy against which his figure 
 is relieved is eternal Italy. It is this Italy, where 
 myths seem real, that Hawthorne brought home to 
 his countrymen's apprehension. 
 
 It is obvious how near this romance was, by its 
 realism, to the actual scene, and, by its idealism, to 
 art, and thus doubly to Italy. It had the easy par- 
 ticularism of the one and the universality t)f the 
 other. In both ways it succeeded, as a book of 
 travel and as an idealization of an idylhc world, pre- 
 human in spirit, evolving into the sad world of uni- 
 versal experience, the human world; only, in this 
 second phase, the Puritanic elements in the trans- 
 formation — elements of hereditary thought in Haw- 
 thorne — fail to carry conviction of their reality. To 
 speak in the language of the schools, there is no 
 true "katharsis," that is, no manifest purification 
 and elimination of the sorrowful evil that had be- 
 fallen, no absolution, but the characters are left 
 struggling in the coil that had involved them, with 
 
THE NEW ENGLANDER ABROAD 219 
 
 a rather sternly expressed charge that they endure 
 their fate in a penitential mood. The Puritan solu- 
 tion does not end the tragedy; that is the fauU. It 
 follows naturally, for the human heart is sound, 
 that the preferred parts of the story are the travel 
 scenes and the myth of Donatello in the days of his 
 golden youth,— the Italian parts. The tragedy it- 
 self belongs to the thought and temper of a sterner 
 and darker land,— that old New England, out of 
 which Hawthorne's genius was originally taken, like 
 some great gray boulder of that soil, which, despite 
 its weight of wood-flowers and ferns and occasional 
 sun-gleams under the pines, shadows the hillside. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 IT was Hawthorne's pleasant but somewhat futile 
 habit to wind up his novels with a short chapter, 
 in which, before dismissing his characters to their 
 unrecorded fates, he vaguely indicated their various 
 fortunes in the great world. It would be similarly 
 pleasant, but equally futile, no doubt, for the critic 
 to attempt to gather the wandering strands of his 
 comment on such a miscellany as Hawthorne's 
 works constitute, and so set forth some outline 
 sketch, at least, of as eminent a genius as American 
 annals contain, before bidding him farewell. 
 A genius, however, like his books, has fates of his 
 own that no criticism can much deflect, even for the 
 period of current taste. It is to be suspected that, 
 even at the present time, Hawthorne has ceased to 
 be judged by the standards of contemporary popu- 
 lar taste and is most valued for that appeal his writ- 
 ings in general make to a communal regard and af- 
 fection for the things, the ways and the people of 
 the old time. He embodies the age he lived in and 
 many memories of the "times before," and this is 
 his hold — to a certain extent a sentimental hold — on 
 the generation that succeeded him, and is now pass- 
 ing. On the other hand, he is hardly yet come to be 
 
 220 
 
CONCLUSION 221 
 
 judged by the canons of pure taste and timeless art 
 which finally decide a nation's classics ; in any case, 
 when established, they appeal to but a few in each 
 age, though they are long-lived; true fame is the 
 breath of long-past time. It is plain, however, that 
 he was one of the greater writers of his own age; 
 and it is as a writer of his age, a contemporary 
 writer, that he has been viewed in this volume. 
 
 The contemporaneous element in his writings, 
 both in their subject-matter and their feeling, is so 
 large as almost to place him, at first sight, among 
 provincial authors, w^hose fame lies in the success 
 with which they describe and present the life of 
 their own locality. Each section of the older parts 
 of the country had its native romancer to celebrate 
 the scenes and historic episodes of the soil; and, 
 with the course of time, the newer parts have given 
 rise to fiction or poetry with the tang of their own 
 earth. The Creoles, the Argonauts, the Hoosiers, 
 have each a historian of manners, if not a Homer. 
 The strongly marked and picturesque characteris- 
 tics of the early settlements over all the continent 
 are thus preserved in literary beginnings. A litera- 
 ture, close to the soil, whose pride it is to be strictly 
 limited to *'the business and bosoms" of its own 
 people, is often highly extolled; in late years it has 
 been a mere incident of nationalist movements; and, 
 if those who maintain in literature the separatist 
 principle of nationality are right, then the provin- 
 cialism that Hawthorne, at first sight, displays is 
 
222 HAWTHORNE 
 
 only a badge of genius and proclaims him a true 
 master. Boston has often been compared, as re- 
 spects its literary status, to Edinburgh. Under the 
 theory which has been mentioned, New England lit- 
 erature would be, in regard to English, a colonial 
 product, of marked vigor and interesting traits, but 
 set off by itself and to be appreciated mainly by its 
 own folk. 
 
 The first impression given by Hawthorne's work 
 in general is, no doubt, of its strong local character. 
 It not only presents the local scene, but it smacks of 
 the soil in thought and sentiment. Its New Eng- 
 landism is a matter, too, of the history it enshrines, 
 and the idealism it illustrates. The whole literature 
 of the northeastern coast, however, in respect to that 
 of the rest of the country, gains distinction by its 
 comparative remoteness in time, and especially be- 
 cause, in consequence of its early date, it neighbored 
 the main stream of English letters, and drew from 
 that great tradition; the mellow accent of the 
 eighteenth century fell golden from its lips in the 
 new world. It was not merely graces of verbal style 
 that it remembered and absorbed ; there was a style 
 of thought, as well as of words, in Goldsmith and his 
 comrades and elders that had not yet found obHvion 
 when the first native authors and their immediate 
 successors began to wTite. It was this afterglow 
 of a great classical age in the colonial sky which 
 most distinguished the acknowledged American 
 masters of the earlier part of the nineteenth century 
 
CONCLUSION 223 
 
 from later pioneers of literature in the country at 
 large. Hawthorne was one of those who profited 
 most by the olden tradition, and most continued it. 
 He had from it his literary descent and breeding. 
 The old English culture which he absorbed in lit- 
 erary tradition, however remote from its old home, 
 added something to the local character of his work, 
 which differentiated it and gave it larger citizenship 
 in the world. The presence of this is most obvious, 
 perhaps, in his style. 
 
 Hawthorne's style has been much commented on. 
 It is not capable of any simple analysis, for it in- 
 volves much more than the mere graces of expres- 
 sion, and, indeed, flows rather from that style of 
 thought w^hich has just been mentioned as an inward 
 thing above expression. This is no more, perhaps, 
 than to say, as of old, "the style is the man." Such 
 style as Hawthorne's has nothing rhetorical about it ; 
 it is a grace of character. What is dwelt on here 
 more particularly, however, is that, if by his birth 
 he shared something communal with his society, and 
 was by virtue of that a provincial author, he also by 
 his genius shared in the great tradition of English 
 literature, — that tradition of serious character, 
 sweet speech and a certain elevation of tone, that 
 harmonized well with his Puritan blood and made 
 him a great master of the English tongue. This 
 literary breeding was, indeed, the common culture 
 of his time; but he appropriated it with a sympathetic 
 genius of such power as to distinguish his work 
 
224 HAWTHORNE 
 
 above others for those excellencies which were most 
 valued in that culture. The conspicuous quality of 
 his style is a wonderful purity of tone. It is the 
 dominance of this, together with the constant pres- 
 ence of the imaginative world, that establishes his 
 characteristic atmosphere ; no American writer works 
 so habitually in the artistic element. His page is bro- 
 ken by an occasional freak of humor or fancy ; it is 
 full of kindly feeling, of a certain neighborliness of 
 mind; for all its gloom, sunshine lies warm on it, 
 and friendliness pervades it. But, apart from any 
 human quality, the style Is the still and pellucid at- 
 mosphere through which his scenes are beheld, as 
 with all the masters of English. 
 
 Heredity was strong in Hawthorne, as it is gen- 
 erally observed to be in men of literary genius; but 
 it would be misleading to think of his inheritance as 
 narrowly local, a matter of village things; it was 
 also broadly intellectual, the patrimony of his peo- 
 ple. He drew his subject and his spirit from the 
 land — and, indeed, one may say, from the province 
 — of his birth; but his art — the real home of his 
 genius — was more universal. In like fashion, too, 
 the conception of his realism, a primary trait in his 
 earlier work and a distinguished feature of his 
 novels, should be enlarged. With that keen obser- 
 vation, habitual with him from the beginning, he 
 saw the object, whatever it was, clearly, and repre- 
 sented exactly even its minute and transitory as- 
 pects; but he saw it, as he saw history also, en- 
 
 1 
 
CONCLUSION 225 
 
 swathed in sentiment. The case is somewhat hke 
 that of realism in the pastoral, where facts are seen 
 plainly and often with a minuteness that seems tri- 
 fling, but through a medium of artistic feeling. It is 
 realism, as it were, at one remove. So Hawthorne 
 saw the native landscape — rocks and woods and sea 
 and the things of the farm and road — realistically 
 indeed, but Avith a certain home- feeling, instinctive 
 and unconscious in him, yet characteristic of his 
 people and his race, — saw it through the sentiment 
 of home; the habit, which was to him as his natural 
 breath, has, to a later generation, something almost 
 reminiscent in it; and the home-sentiment, which it 
 originally embodied, becomes, especially to those 
 who have long left the land, the sentiment for the 
 past. One can hardly overestimate this element in 
 Hawthorne's fascination. 
 
 The manner of his approach to local history, 
 whether in its actual or imaginative form, is similar. 
 It is not the mere historical fact that he presents, as 
 an annalist might do, or any writer interested only 
 in the specific truth ; but he shows it, as he sees it him- 
 self, through the sentiment of patriotism. This is 
 conspicuous in some of the colonial tales. The 
 home-sentiment under some form of local pride is 
 pervasive in his work. It is as fundamental in the 
 novels, though under a different phase, as in the leg- 
 ends of the early champions of New England liberty. 
 It is through the strength of this element in his fic- 
 tion, especially, that he came to be the imaginative 
 
226 HAWTHORNE 
 
 historian of the original New England folk and the 
 Puritanism in which their communal life was con- 
 centrated. In his novels he set forth the spirit of his 
 people, his "little clan" ; no one but a son of the soil 
 could have done it as he did it, viewing imagina- 
 tively their historic life, just as he looked on their 
 familiar fields and pastures, through a sentiment 
 born of his nativity. It was this sentiment which 
 gave antique charm to The House of the Seven 
 Gables, religious intensity to The Scarlet Letter 
 and moral meaning to The Marble Faun. Under- 
 lying each of these novels was a communal inher- 
 itance, a historic unity of Instinct, feeling and expe- 
 rience. They were not mere inventions of an idle 
 day, but in them Hawthorne gave voice to the great- 
 est realities his people had found. What had begun 
 with him as local history ended as ideal romance; 
 but the basis and origin of all alike lay in his orig- 
 inal attachment to his own soil, a profound New 
 England feeling, an instinct, he himself calls it, an- 
 other form, in fact, of the sentiment of home, but 
 with power upon a whole people instead of an indi- 
 vidual. It was the fulness with which he expressed 
 and obeyed this sentiment, both in his choice of sub- 
 ject and his method of treatment, that made him the 
 most representative writer of New England. He 
 showed It forth, not only as a land, but as a people. 
 Such modifications by the sentiment of home and 
 country as give emotional value to landscape and 
 history are initiatory stages to the pure illusions of 
 
CONCLUSION 227 
 
 art; they are a part of the process of making an art- 
 ist. The bare fact becomes malleable and changes 
 in significance. An emotional treatment of land- 
 scape, an imaginative and especially a dramatic 
 treatment of history are common, and it is under- 
 stood that they recreate their object. It has been 
 advised, indeed, on the highest authority of the 
 schools, that history should be so adapted to the 
 imagination on the score of the economy of inven- 
 tion thus obtained, both in conception and feeling. It 
 was Shakespeare's method in many of his plays. It 
 is usually essential to success, however, that in a 
 drama history should be very ductile, — indeed, pref- 
 erably a myth. The advantage to Hawthorne in 
 using Puritanism as a background is obvious, in that 
 he easily secured attention. The same gain is gen- 
 erally aimed at in the historical novel of any period. 
 It belongs to the historical novel that it should have 
 solid fact for its substance and attract the reader 
 by this circumstance as well as for other rea- 
 sons. It may well be doubted, however, in view of 
 the career of that type of novel in the last century, 
 whether history is, in any high degree, a preserva- 
 tive element in literature. Even in the capital case 
 of Sir Walter Scott, the unrivaled master of his- 
 torical fiction, the permanent hold of his books on 
 the world, outside Scotland, is matter of specula- 
 tion. The historical substance is local and temporal, 
 — essentially mortal ; it is a weight that the imagina- 
 tive and purely Hterary qualities of the book must 
 
228 HAWTHORNE 
 
 carry in the race with time. Such novels will re- 
 tain their interest so long as the history they em- 
 body is interesting either to the nation described or 
 to the world; later, in proportion as they are exact 
 renderings of the customs and atmosphere of the 
 times they represent, they will be consulted and read 
 mainly by persons of an antiquarian habit. Puritan- 
 ism, the historical element in Hawthorne's work, 
 will long preserve it in his own land, as being a past 
 phase of a land proud and reminiscent of its past; 
 but for preservation in the larger world, his work 
 must depend on something more than its historical 
 appeal. 
 
 To turn again to the case of pastoral poetry and 
 its treatment of landscape and human life, it sees 
 the real, as was said above, at one remove, as it 
 were, through a special atmosphere, as Hawthorne 
 saw his native New England, whether land or peo- 
 ple, through a sentiment. The pastoral, to put it 
 briefly, sees the world through the universal ele- 
 ments of beauty and of love with w^hich it sur- 
 rounds and fills the scene. What it sees is, there- 
 fore, for the eyes of all the world, beauty and love 
 being universal principles. Hawthorne, as his 
 genius matured, seized on the universal moral prin- 
 ciple, and saw human life and destiny in the world 
 through that. His Puritan origin led him to mark 
 mainly the shadows in the scene, — that is, the op- 
 eration of evil rather than good; this accounts for 
 the predominant impression of gloom one receives 
 
 n 
 
CONCLUSION 229 
 
 from his work, though in fact there is abundant sun- 
 shine in it. The main hues, however, are tragic, 
 pessimistic, hopeless. In so far as evil and its prob- 
 lems are a universal aspect of life, his work makes 
 a universal appeal. He thus exceeds his province 
 by virtue of his moral subject ; but he treats his sub- 
 ject with genius, and it is not the subject but the 
 genius that makes him great. He treated it under 
 the pure illusions of art. 
 
 The type of pure illusion in imaginative art is the 
 Shakespearean ideal drama. Here reality, in the 
 sense of the local and temporal, is refined away ; the 
 scene involves no special time or place or persons. 
 It is a great feat for the imagination to spare such 
 aid. Imagination was Hawthorne's prime faculty; 
 but it freed its wings slowly for a long flight. The 
 House of the Seven Gables is always near to Sa- 
 lem; but The Scarlet Letter is far less provincial 
 than it seems, and The Marble Faun at times seems 
 to forget its New England origin. The Scarkt 
 Letter is not only an episode of Puritanism, it is 
 universal tragedy; and The Marble Faun is half 
 a pastoral, and all in an ideal land of its own. The 
 quality of Hawthorne's imagination is hardly ap- 
 preciated. He was a master of pure illusion, and 
 held a magician's wand that commanded the regions 
 "out of space, out of time," with uncommon power. 
 No other American foot has entered the charmed 
 circle where Donatello appeared. Indeed, as has 
 been indicated, Hawthorne could scarcely believe 
 
230 HAWTHORNE 
 
 his own magic. Again and again he questions the 
 workings of his own imagination, as if he were pos- 
 sessed by a questioning spirit, a Mephistopheles of 
 the modern mind. "Did the scarlet letter burn in 
 the sky?" is a typical query; but, believe the portent 
 or not, the dreaming faculty — the creative instinct 
 having its will — went on, and again with the wiz- 
 ard's curse, and again with Donatello in the wood. 
 Genius, like love, "finds out its way." Hawthorne 
 approached art through those universal principles 
 that underlie it — characteristically, the moral prin- 
 ciple, — whose issue is the tragic ; but his imagination 
 was also master of gentler spells. 
 
 In the work of genius of so high a quality and so 
 pure an action, it is natural to observe more closely 
 its particular operation in its several tasks, in those 
 points of execution commonly examined in the case 
 of great genius. There is generally more of growth 
 than of deliberate intention in such works. Plots, 
 in creation, it is to be suspected, are apt to find their 
 own climaxes ; but it is interesting to see where they 
 occur and to notice their effect, both in the action 
 and on the author. The Scarlet Letter reaches its 
 climax in the apparition of the letter in the sky, if 
 it may be so described ; in The House of the Seven 
 Gables the point where the story turns is the inci- 
 dent of the judge's death, and in The Marble Faun 
 the critical event is the murder. In each case 
 the tragic reversal occurs at the place mentioned, in 
 the emblazonment in the sky of the minister's se- 
 
CONCLUSION 231 
 
 cret sin, in the fulfillment of the ancestral curse in 
 its last instance, and in Donatello's change of nature. 
 There is a sub-plot, also, in the plan for escape in 
 the first, and in the story of Alice and the myth of 
 the nymph in the other two cases; but it is feeble 
 and negligible, the plan being abortive and the two 
 brief legends mere reduplications of the main idea. 
 The climax, or reversal, is followed by an explana- 
 tory incident, emphasizing what has occurred, in the 
 public confession of the minister and in Donatello's 
 grief in the wood, when the wild creatures do not 
 answer to his call; and the flight of the brother and 
 sister from the old house is, essentially, the first step 
 in the dissolution of the curse and the freeing of 
 the plot. It is noticeable that, in all these cases, the 
 climax with its single pendant incident is the virtual 
 end of the main story; after it occurs the later fates 
 of Hawthorne's characters do not interest him; this 
 is true even in Donatello's case, for he ceases to be 
 prominent after the scene in the wood, and, in fact, 
 drops out of the tale, except as a flitting figure. 
 This, In the main, is because Hawthorne was inter- 
 ested in the idea and not in the persons of the 
 particular tale. The quality of human sympathy, 
 however, is strongly evident in the romance of old 
 Salem, and what may be called creative sympathy — 
 the sympathy of an author for his own creations — is 
 manifest especially in the Roman tale. 
 
 It is plain that Hawthorne's interest did not lie in 
 the logical development of a single action, the true 
 
232 HAWTHORNE 
 
 strength of plot. It was not dramatic interest ex- 
 cept incidentally; primarily, it was psychological, 
 — an interest, not in action, but in states of mind, 
 and, particularly, the recoil of action on the mind. 
 This is normally a state of suffering, and a basis of 
 tragic emotion. It is a fascinating field for the 
 psychologist with a dramatic instinct. It lends itself 
 more readily to scenes, phases, indirect expression, 
 repetition and meditation than the straightforward 
 evolution of a single action would allow; and, as a 
 matter of fact, Hawthorne does not so much develop 
 an action as illustrate an idea. His method in doing 
 this is most characteristically described as mosaic- 
 work. He gathers together his materials from 
 various quarters and combines them into a har- 
 monious and brilliant composite that makes his ro- 
 mance a succession of scenes only loosely connected. 
 In a novel this is not so injurious as it would be in 
 a drama; for the end of a dramatist is to portray an 
 action, but a novelist has many ends. Hawthorne's 
 purpose was to portray human nature under various 
 aspects, — mainly of suffering; and he set it forth, 
 not primarily through the acts, but through the men- 
 tal moods of his characters. But, when all allowance 
 has been made for the psychological interest and 
 eclectic method of Hawthorne, close analysis un- 
 doubtedly leaves the conviction that his work is 
 structurally weak in its greater examples. 
 
 The impression of some lack of structural vigor 
 in Hawthorne's genius is confirmed, if one looks at 
 
CONCLUSION 233 
 
 the history of his artistic method. His early use of 
 the physical object as a symbol has been sufficiently 
 described. It served him well, and its development 
 in his practise is interesting; but he exhausted it in 
 The Scarlet Letter, and in The Marble Faun 
 he was obliged to break it up, so to speak, and dis- 
 tribute its function among several objects. Symbol- 
 ism of this sort properly issues in mysticism as a 
 habit of thought; but Hawthorne was not a mystic. 
 On the contrary, he shared the temperament of his 
 age of reform and was skeptical in his mental mood. 
 The miscellaneous matter and eclectic habit of his 
 imagination are best illustrated by the group of his 
 unfinished posthumous tales, where he had not yet 
 coordinated and harmonized the various elements 
 into one narrative. It would seem that his long 
 practise in the short story had so habituated him to 
 its restrictions and its opportunities that he did not 
 fully gain the larger freedom of the longer form; his 
 romances tend to be a series of scenic tableaux, each 
 singly impressive, and in them he is in other ways 
 frequently reminiscent of his early manner. In 
 other words, he never developed an artistic method 
 so appropriate to the romance as the symbolism of 
 the physical image was to the brief tale of imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 But despite what critical deductions may be made 
 on the score of structure and method as applied in 
 the novels, Hawthorne's conspicuous excellencies 
 ^re richly illustrated in their progress, and charac- 
 
234 HAWTHORNE 
 
 terize the longer works more brilliantly than they do 
 the tales where they appear on a smaller scale. De- 
 signs on a small scale, indeed, favored the qualities 
 of his genius in some ways; but these brief and con- 
 densed scenes were more effective when grouped 
 than when taken singly. The vividness and vigor, 
 the harmony of the elements, the exquisite finish, 
 are characteristic of the patient artist trained in de- 
 tail, — in just that elaboration that a limited surface 
 requires. What has been described, in his early 
 work, as a taste for theatrical action, the set scene, 
 which he derived from Scott, remained with him 
 throughout. A writer with such a discipline and 
 taste, developed and fixed by long practise in the 
 short story, naturally falls into an agglomerative 
 method of construction, when he attempts a greater 
 task. The virtues of his school, however, remain 
 with him. Hawthorne's hand lost none of its cun- 
 ning, in the passage from the tale to the romance. 
 He owns the same brilliant effects of gloom and sun- 
 shine, of mystery, fantasy and myth, but now they 
 are massed. This is the characteristic difference 
 between his earlier and later manhood, with the 
 addition in his full maturity of a greater depth in 
 meditation and a fuJJer illusion in his visionary 
 power. 
 
 It is this illusion, the last triumph of imagination, 
 which most characterizes and crowns Hawthorne's 
 genius. It is the air that is the breath of ideal crea- 
 tions and spreads over the landscape of all works of 
 
CONCLUSION 235 
 
 imaginative genius with a scenic effect, as in a pic- 
 ture or a theater, that mocks reahty, so more es- 
 sentially real does it seem than fact. Poetic illusion 
 is its climax; Shakespearean illusion is its dramatic 
 form; but it always emanates from the ideal and 
 fills its world. Hawthorne's works are full of it; 
 and this is best indicated by the emphasis which has 
 been constantly placed here on the artistic quality in 
 his genius. This is what gives him his charm, as his 
 moral quality gives him his substance. At the end 
 these three traits stand out, characterizing him : he 
 was a New Englander, representative of the land 
 and the historic people; he was an artist, who filled 
 his somewhat abstract world with a magic of real- 
 ity, while he wrought with exquisite detail m ideal 
 elements; he was a moralist who made his art the 
 vehicle of thought upon the profoundest mysteries 
 of human fate. In the first phase he is dear to his 
 own people; but it is by the last two that he makes a 
 universal appeal. 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Alice Pyncheon, story of: shows imaginative tension, 103; a 
 sub-plot in House of Seven Gables, 231. 
 
 American Note-books, see Note-books. 
 
 Artist of the Beautiful: fusion of the physical image with men- 
 tal idea without intervention of human person, 78-79; 
 extract, 79-89; marvelous mechanical toy illustrates au- 
 thor's interest in the fine arts, 105; comparison with 
 Scarlet Letter, 143. 
 
 Birthmark: physical union of image with person involved, as 
 well as fusion of the physical image with mental idea, 
 78; comparison with Scarlet Letter, 143. 
 
 Blithedale Romance : contemporaneity of, 20, 32, 42, 65 ; Eliot's 
 pulpit, symboHzes nature, 22; extract from, 22-31; dis- 
 plays Hawthorne practically untouched by moral feel- 
 ings of his time, 91-93. 
 
 Boston : 'Trog Pond" on Boston Common, 16-17 ; "Parker's," 
 17-20; Boston Custom House, "darksome dungeon," 63; 
 Province House, 63 ; Boston Athenaeum visits, 105 ; 
 compared in respect to literary status with Edinburgh, 
 222. 
 
 Brook Farm : connection with Blithedale Romance, 21, 91 ; 
 Hawthorne's discontentment with practical life there, 62. 
 
 Browning formula, compared with Hawthorne's interest in 
 the soul, 95. 
 
 Channing, Ellery, Hawthorne's intimacy with, 134. 
 
 Childe Harold, descriptions compared with those of Marble 
 
 Faun, 217. 
 Chillingworth, Roger, 167, 215. 
 Clifford, 98, 120, 124, 125, 129. 
 Coleridge, S. T., fantasy of, 171. 
 Concord, Mecca of New England intellect, 137. 
 Corinne, descriptions compared with Marble Faun, 217. 
 
 Dimmesdalc, Arthur, 215. 
 
 Donatello, 16, 193, 212, 213, 215, 229, 230, 231. 
 
 Browne's Wooden Image, 69-70; 105. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan: moral heredity distilled, 2)6; intellectual 
 subtlety. 107. 
 
 Emerson, R. W. : Snow Storm and Snow-Flakes, 1 ; at Con- 
 cord, 13; compared with Hawthorne, 33, 137; intellec- 
 tual subtlety, 107. 
 
 239 
 
240 INDEX 
 
 Endicott and the Red Cross, 66. 
 
 Footprints on the Seashore, extracts, 50-52, 52-55. 
 
 Fourierism, 91. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret, at Concord, 13. 
 
 Goodman, Brown, 68. 
 
 Gray Champion: 66, 72; compared with Artist of the Beautiful, 
 
 89. 
 Gray's Elegy, graveyard mood, 61. 
 
 Haunted Mind: 56; extract. 56-60. 
 
 Hawthorne, N. : artistic instinct, 63-65, 90-91, 104-106, 136, 179, 
 192-4 ; contemporaneity, 1-3, 3-5, 20-33, 34. 42-43, 60-66, 
 91, 93, 99, 103, 117-120, 132-134, 140-141, 177-8, 121-122; 
 economy of his art, 100-103. 139, 182 ; imagination, 67-71, 
 90-99, 169, 171-174, 195, 208, 229, 234; moraHst. 36-37, 
 41-42, 55-56, 76, 89-90, 94-95. 106-108, 137-139, 176. 181, 
 205, 209-10. 218, 228; observer, 6-20, 40, 43-45, 46, 98, 
 169, 224-225 ; style, 223 ; success greater with female than 
 male characters, 215 ; use of phvsical image, 74-76, 77-79, 
 90-91, 141-144, 145, 147, 150-151,'l57-159, 165-168, 184-185. 
 
 Hepaihah, 107, 117, 120, 124, 125, 129. 
 
 Hilda, 212, 214. 
 
 Hollingsworth, 21. 
 
 House of Seven Gables: local flavor of, 42, 98, 226, 229; New 
 England tradition given imaginative form in, 96; story 
 of a family, 97-99; note-book, the seed-plot, for scene of 
 the hens, and character of Uncle Vernier, 99; the tale 
 is threefold, story of old Maide, story of Alice, story of 
 Clifford and his group, 99-100; greater kinship between 
 Hawthorne and this story than any other of his books, 
 103-104; use of the "portrait," 105; Puritan idea of 
 inexorable penalty of sin in inherited curse, 107-109; 
 extracts from, 109-117, 120-124, 125-129, 130-132; com- 
 parison with Marble Faun, 180; climax of story, 230. 
 
 Irving, Washington : compared as early American tourist, with 
 Hawthorne, 43, 179; style compared, 61. 
 
 Judd, Sylvester, novel "Margaret," 38. 
 
 Kenyan, 181, 184, 212, 215. 
 
 Lady Eleanor's Mantle, relation of physical image and mental 
 idea. 77. 
 
 Longfellow, H. W. : "My Lost Youth," stanza from, 3 ; belle- 
 lettrist, ZZ', "long thoughts," 35; cosmopolite compared 
 with Hawthorne, 43; treatment of local tradition, 93, 137. 
 
INDEX 241 
 
 Lowell, J. R. : cosmopolite compared with Hawthorne, 43 ; con- 
 temporaneity of, 175. 
 
 Macbeth: "air-drawn dagger" and flaming letter "A" in the 
 sky, 165 ; knocking at the gate and "far off noise of sing- 
 ing and laughter," in Marble Faun, 194. 
 
 Marble Faun: characters of. 180-181; extracts from, 186-192, 
 195-204, 205-208; local New England feeling in the 
 moral meaning of. 226; imaginative quahty of, 229; 
 climax of, 230; sub-plot in plan for escape, 231; sym- 
 bolism in, 233. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, general life of Theseus' court 
 touched as lightly as communal life of New England in 
 Scarlet Letter, 140. 
 
 Ministers Veil, physical image and mental idea, 75. 
 
 Miriam, 193, 212, 213, 214, 215. 
 
 Note-books: American, extracts, August 10, 1842, 9-12; Oc- 
 tober 9, 1841, 15-16; May 7, 1850, 17-20; English, ex- 
 tract, September 8, 1855, 16-17. 
 
 Old Esther Dudley, 67. 
 Old Manse, 13. 
 Old Moodie, 99. 
 
 Pearl, 147, 148. 150. 151. 158. 172, 174. 
 
 Pha:be, 119, 125, 129, 132. 
 
 Poe, E. A. : master of fantasy, 173 ; ingenuity of construction 
 
 and development of theme, l73. 
 Priscilla, 2\, 214. ^ ^^^ 
 
 Prynnc, Hester, 141, 142, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 157, 1^8, 170, 
 
 174, 193. 
 
 Rappacini's Daughter, blend of physical image with person and 
 fusion with mental idea, 78, 143. 
 
 Salem: worthies of Salem Custom House, 5; birthplace, 7; 
 early local sketches, 7; chamber at, 32, 43, 62; Salem 
 Custom House. 63. 92 ; gabled house in old Salem, 101, 
 103; Salem interest in "Flaxman's Designs." 108; pro- 
 vincial life of Salem in House of Seven Gables, 117-120; 
 "old Salem," Hawthorne's connection with it, 133-135. 
 
 Scarlet Letter: local flavor of, 42, lj9-140, 175. 177, 178; first 
 concept of, 138; letter "A," climax of Hawthorne's use 
 of phvsical image to express mental idea, 141-144, 147- 
 148, 150-151, 157-158, 165-167; extracts, 144-145, 145-147, 
 148-150, 151-157, 159-165, 168-169, 170; fantasy in, 171- 
 175. 
 
242 INDEX 
 
 Scott, Walter Sir : Scott's Presbyterians, 60 ; influence on Haw 
 thorne, 62, 66, 98, 234; Scott's "saving common-sense,' 
 135; historical novel, 227. 
 
 Shakesperean illusion, 235. 
 
 Sights from a Steeple, extracts, 45, 99. 
 
 Snow-Flakes, 1-2. 
 
 Sweet Alice Vane, 67. 
 
 1 
 
 Tales of the Province House, 67. 
 
 Tanglczvood Tales, 71. 
 
 Taylor, Bayard, early American tourist, 179. 
 
 Thanatopsis, graveyard mood of, 61. 
 
 Thoreau, H. : at Concord, 13 ; compared with Hawthorne, 
 
 ZZ, 43. 
 Tollgatherer's Day, extract, 46-49. 
 
 Uncle Parker, 4. 
 Uncle Venner, 99, 120. 
 
 Very, Jones, poet of Salem, 38. 
 Village Uncle, extracts, 3-4, 4-6. 
 
 Westervelt, 21. 
 
 Whittier, J. G. : "Snow-Bound," 1 ; compared with Hawthorne, 
 
 43; scribe of local tradition, 93. 
 Wives of the Dead, 69. 
 
 Zenobia, 21, 214. 
 
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