Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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young German-American sculptor named Kuntze, who modelled a profile portrait of him in bas-relief. A farewell dinner was given him at Barry Cornwall's; and in June, 1860, he sailed for America, from which he had been absent seven years.
There was not yet any serious sign of a failure in his health; but the illness in his family, lasting through two winters, had worn severely upon him; his spirits had begun to droop. "I would gladly journalize some of my proceedings, and describe things and people; but I find the same coldness and stiffness in my pen as always since our return to England:" thus he had written in his Note-Book, while making that final London visit. In Italy, however, he had already shown symptoms of fatigue, saying to Mr. Fields: "I have had so many interruptions from things to see and things to suffer, that the story ['The Marble Faun'] has developed itself in a very imperfect way.... I could finish it in the time that I am to remain here, but my brain is tired of it just now." The voyage put fresh vigor into him, apparently. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Professor Stowe were on board, with their daughters, and Mr. Fields, who was also a passenger, has said: "Hawthorne's love for the sea amounted to a passionate worship, and while I (the worst sailor probably on this planet) was longing, spite of the good company on board, to reach land as soon as possible, Hawthorne was constantly saying in his quiet, earnest way, 'I should like to sail on and on forever, and never touch the shore again.'" His inherited susceptibility to the fascination of the sea no doubt intensified his enjoyment, and he is reported to have talked in a strain of delightful humor while on shipboard.
For nearly a year after his return to The Wayside, there is an uneventful gap in his history, concerning which we have very few details. He set about improving his house, and added to it a wing at the back, which, having three stories, rose above the rest of the building, and thus supplied him with a study in the top room, which had the effect of a tower. Meanwhile the political quarrel between the North and the South was rapidly culminating; in a few months the Slave States began their secession, and the Civil War broke out. This affected Hawthorne so deeply that for some time he was unable to engage in imaginative work, and he now relinquished the custom he had maintained for so many years, of keeping a journal. But there are letters which define his state of mind, which make his position clear with regard to the question of the Union, and show the change in his feeling brought on by the course of events.
Several years before, while he was still consul, he thus confided to Bridge (January 9, 1857) his general opinion respecting the crisis which even then impended:—
"I regret that you think so doubtfully of the prospects of the Union; for I should like well enough to hold on to the old thing. And yet I must confess that I sympathize to a large extent with the Northern feeling, and think it is about time for us to make a stand. If compelled to choose, I go for the North. At present, we have no country—at least, none in the sense in which an Englishman has a country. I never conceived, in reality, what a true and warm love of country is, till I witnessed it in the breasts of Englishmen. The States are too various and too extended to form really one country. New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.... However, I have no kindred with nor leaning toward the Abolitionists."
When hostilities had begun, he wrote to the same friend, May 26, 1861:—
"The war, strange to say, has had a beneficial effect upon my spirits, which were flagging woefully before it broke out. But it was delightful to share in the heroic sentiment of the time, and to feel that I had a country, a consciousness which seemed to make me young again. One thing as regards this matter I regret, and one thing I am glad of. The regrettable thing is that I am too old to shoulder a musket myself, and the joyful thing is that Julian is too young. He drills constantly with a company of lads, and means to enlist as soon as he reaches the minimum age. But I trust we shall either be victorious or vanquished by that time. Meantime, though I approve the war as much as any man, I don't quite see what we are fighting for or what definite result can be expected. If we pommel the South ever so hard, they will love us none the better for it; and even if we subjugate them, our next step should be to cut them adrift, if we are fighting for the annihilation of slavery. To be sure, it may be a wise object, and offers a tangible result and the only one which is consistent with a future union between North and South. A continuance of the war would soon make this plain to us, and we should see the expediency of preparing our black brethren for future citizenship, by allowing them to fight for their own liberties and educating them through heroic influences. Whatever happens next, I must say that I rejoice that the old Union is smashed. We never were one people, and never really had a country since the Constitution was formed."
Thus, then, Hawthorne, who had been brought up politically within the democratic party and thrice held office under its régime, had reached the conclusion, four years in advance of the event, that it was time for the North to "make a stand"; and now, while muskets rattled their grim prelude to a long and deadly conflict, he planted himself firmly on the side of the government—was among the first, moreover, to resolve upon that policy of arming the negroes, which was so bitterly opposed and so slow of adoption among even progressive reformers at the North. In his solitude, out of the current of affairs, trying to pursue his own peaceful, artistic calling, and little used to making utterances on public questions, it was not incumbent upon him nor proper to his character to blazon his beliefs where every one could see them. But, these private expressions being unknown, his silence was construed against him. One more reference to the war, occurring in a letter of October 12, 1861, to Lieutenant Bridge, should be recorded in this place:—
"I am glad you take such a hopeful view of our national prospects, so far as regards the war.... For my part, I don't hope (nor indeed wish) to see the Union restored as it was; amputation seems to me much the better plan, and all we ought to fight for is the liberty of selecting the point where our diseased members shall be lopped off. I would fight to the death for the Northern Slave-States, and let the rest go.... I have not found it possible to occupy my mind with its usual trash and nonsense during these anxious times; but as the autumn advances, I find myself sitting down to my desk and blotting successive sheets of paper, as of yore. Very likely I may have something ready for the public long before the public is ready to receive it."
It will be seen that he was not hopeful as to the restoration of the entire Union, adhered to his first view indeed, that the scission of a part would be preferable. In declining a cordial invitation from Bridge to come to Washington, in February, 1862, he gave renewed emphasis to this opinion. "I am not very well," he said, "being mentally and physically languid; but I suppose there is an even chance that the trip and change of scene might supply the energy which I lack." He announced that he had begun a new romance, and then turning to the questions of the day, remarked that he "should not much regret an ultimate separation," and that soon; adding that if a strong Union sentiment should not set in at the South, we ought to resolve ourselves into two nations at once. He was evidently growing despondent; a fact which may have been due in part to the physical and mental languor of which he told his friend. Misfortune had once more entered his household; for one of his children was suffering from a peculiarly distressing malady, which imposed a heavy strain upon his nerves and troubled his heart. More than this, he mourned over the multitude of private griefs which he saw or apprehended on every side—griefs resulting from the slaughter that was going on at the seat of war—as acutely as if they had been his own losses. He could not shut out, by any wall of patriotic fire, the terrible shapes of fierce passion and the pathetic apparitions of those whose lives had been blasted by the tragedies of the field. His health, we have already noticed, had begun to falter while he was still abroad. Neither was he free from pecuniary anxieties. He had laid up a modest accumulation from his earnings in the consulate; but the additions to his house, unambitious though they were, had cost a sum which was large in proportion to his resources; the expense of living was increased by the war, and his pen was for the time being not productive. His income from his books was always scanty. He was too scrupulous to be willing to draw upon the principal which had been invested for the future support of his family; and there were times when he was harassed by the need of money. All these causes conspired to reduce his strength; but the omnipresent misery of the war, and the destruction of the Union, which he believed to be inevitable, were perhaps the chief adverse factors in the case. "Hawthorne's life," Mr. Lowell has said to me, "was shortened by the war."
The romance mentioned as having been begun