The Collected Gothic Tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition). Nathaniel Hawthorne

the old Unitarian First Church in the village, and Mr. Clarke, who had performed the marriage ceremony for Hawthorne, conducted the rites above him dead. It was a perfect day of spring; the roadside banks were blue with violets, the orchards were in bloom; and lilies of the valley, which were Hawthorne's favorites among flowers, had blossomed early as if for him, and were gathered in masses about him. Like a requiem chant, the clear strains that Longfellow wrote in memory of that hour still echo for us its tender solemnity:—

      "How beautiful it was, that one bright day

       In the long week of rain!

       Though all its splendor could not chase away

       The omnipresent pain.

      "The lovely town was white with apple-blooms,

       And the great elms o'erhead

       Dark shadows wove on their aerial looms,

       Shot through with golden thread.

      "Across the meadows, by the gray old manse,

       The historic river flowed;

       I was as one who wanders in a trance,

       Unconscious of his road.

      "The faces of familiar friends seemed strange;

       Their voices I could hear,

       And yet the words they uttered seemed to change

       Their meaning to the ear.

      "For the one face I looked for was not there,

       The one low voice was mute;

       Only an unseen presence filled the air,

       And baffled my pursuit.

      "Now I look back, and meadow, manse, and stream

       Dimly my thought defines;

       I only see—a dream within a dream—

       The hill-top hearsed with pines.

      "I only hear above his place of rest

       Their tender undertone,

       The infinite longings of a troubled breast,

       The voice so like his own.

      "There in seclusion and remote from men

       The wizard hand lies cold,

       Which at its topmost speed let fall the pen,

       And left the tale half told.

      "Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,

       And the lost clue regain?

       The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower

       Unfinished must remain!"

      V.

       Table of Contents

      This narrative of his career, in one sense so simple, so uneventful, has brought chiefly to the front, as we have followed it, a phase under which Hawthorne appears the most like other men; with motives easily understood, wishing to take his full share in human existence and its responsibilities; devoted in his domestic relations. Moderately ambitious of worldly welfare, but in poverty uncomplaining, he is so coolly practical in his view that he scarcely alludes to the products of his genius except as they may bear upon his material progress. Even this much of the character is uncommon, because of its sterling tone, the large, sustained manliness, and the success with which in the main it keeps itself firmly balanced; but it is a character not difficult to grasp, and one that appeals to every observer. It leaves out a great deal, however. The artist is absent from it. Neither is that essential mystery of organization included which held these elements together, united them with something of import far different, and converted the whole nature into a most extraordinary one, lifting it to a plane high above that on which it might, at first, seem to rest.

We know, from brief allusions in his "Note-Books," that Hawthorne was perfectly well aware of his high quality as an artist. He speaks of having won fame in his dismal room in Herbert Street; and at Arezzo, in 1858, the well "opposite Petrarch's birth-house" which Boccaccio introduced into one of his stories, recalls to the American writer one of his own performances. "As I lingered round it I thought of my own town-pump in old Salem, and wondered whether my towns-people would ever point it out to strangers, and whether the stranger would gaze at it with any degree of such interest as I felt in Boccaccio's well. Oh, certainly not; but I made that humble town-pump the most celebrated structure in the good town. A thousand and a thousand people had pumped there, merely to water oxen or fill their tea-kettles; but when once I grasped the handle, a rill gushed forth that meandered as far as England, as far as India, besides tasting pleasantly in every town and village of our own country. I like to think of this, so long after I did it, and so far from home, and am not without hopes of some kindly local remembrance on this score."[10] Such indications of the artistic consciousness are the merest ripples on the surface; the deeper substance of it, with Hawthorne, always remained out of sight. Letters, which are assumed to reveal so much of those who indite them, are, when we come to the fact, very insufficient exponents of character; as, for instance, we may observe in the letters of Michael Angelo, whose mood and manner vary according to the person addressed. Correspondence, it is true, is appetizing to readers, and should be prized for the help it gives in defining an individual, but it does not always do full justice to the larger being included in the whole personality. Hawthorne's letters are more representative of those faculties by which he came into association with his fellows, than of those which tended to separate him from them by making him single and phenomenal, in his function as writer of romance. But in his actual presence there was a something which did most noticeably correspond to the hidden sources of his power, and visibly express them. There was the hale and vigorous port of a man well fitted by his physical constitution to meet the rudest emergency; but there was also a temperament of which the reserve, the delicacy, the tremulous sensitiveness were equal to those of the most finely organized woman. "He was tall and strongly built," wrote his friend Hillard, "with broad shoulders, deep chest, a massive head.... He looked like a man who might have held the stroke oar in a University boat.... But, on the other hand, no man had more of the feminine element than he. He was feminine in his quick perceptions, his fine insight, his sensibility to beauty.... No man comprehended woman better than he. And his face was as mobile and rapid in its changes of expression as that of a young girl.... His eyes would darken visibly under the touch of a passing emotion, like the waters of a fountain ruffled by the breeze of summer. So, too, he was the shyest of men."[11]

      The same writer adds: "There was nothing morbid in his character or temperament. He was, indeed, much the reverse of morbid. No man of genius ever had less the infirmities of genius than he.... Hawthorne was physically one of the healthiest of men. His pulse always kept even music. He cared nothing for wine or tobacco, or strong coffee or strong tea. He was a sound sleeper and an early riser. He was never moody or fitful or irritable. He was never unduly depressed or unreasonably elated. His spirits were not brilliant, but they were uniform, and, as Mrs. Hawthorne says, 'The airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his own home.'"

      Dr. Loring has supplied another sketch of his appearance in general intercourse, which does a great deal to fill out our conception:—

"He knew no such thing as fear; was scrupulously honest; was unwavering in his fidelity; conscientious in the discharge of his duty. There may have been men of more latent power, but I have known no man more impressive, none in whom the great reposing strength seemed clad in such a robe of sweetness as he wore. I saw him on the day General Pierce was elected to the presidency. It was a bright and delicious day in late autumn. He was standing under the little shaded and embowered piazza of 'The Wayside,' at Concord, in the full vigor of his manhood, radiant with joy at the good fortune of his friend, and with that sad, shy smile playing over his face, which was so touching and charming. I have seen him fishing from the rocks of the Essex County shore at Swampscott,