Dark Tales (With Original Illustrations). Nathaniel Hawthorne
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sense of loss ineffable. It is very simple; it is very democratic—the unnoticed American boy in humble circumstances becoming the centre of a circle of fame which is still extending its radius. Very simple it is, and yet inexplicable. But if we cannot tell precisely how the mind came into being, nor what were the fostering influences that most cogently aided its growth, we can, at least, pay our reverence to the overruling Power that brings genius to the flowering-point under circumstances seemingly the most unpropitious.
In 1863—the last year of his life—Hawthorne wrote to Mr. Stoddard, who had sent him a copy of his poem, "The King's Bell." "I sincerely thank you," he said, "for your beautiful poem, which I have read with a great deal of pleasure. It is such as the public had a right to expect from what you gave us in years gone by; only I wish the idea had not been so sad. I think Felix might have rung the bell once in his lifetime, and again at the moment of death. Yet you may be right. I have been a happy man, and yet I do not remember any one moment of such happy conspiring circumstances that I could have rung a joy-bell for it."
Yes, he had been a happy man; one who had every qualification for a rich and satisfactory life, and was able to make such a life out of whatever material offered. He might not have been willing to sound the joy-bell for himself, but the world has rung it because of his birth. As for his death, it is better not to close our sketch with any glimpse of that, because, in virtue of his spirit's survival among those who read and think, he still lives.
G. P. L.
New York, May 20, 1883.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A Study of Hawthorne, III., 67-69.
[2] Yesterdays With Authors, p. 113.
[3] Both his friends, George William Curtis and George S. Hillard, in writing about him, have made the mistake of assigning to him black or dark eyes; an error perhaps due to the depth of shadowed cavity in which they were seen under the high and massive forehead.
[4] Hawthorne and his friends: Harper's Magazine, vol. 63 (July, 1881).
[5] Vol. 45 (July, 1837), p. 59.
[6] Transcendentalism in New England.
[7] She died, unmarried, in September, 1877.
[8] The allusion to a baby-boy is confusing, because Mr. Julian Hawthorne was not born at Concord, and when the family returned thither to occupy The Wayside, he was about six years old.
[9] This is the first intimation of the story of Septimius Felton, so far as local setting is concerned. The scenery of that romance was obviously taken from The Wayside and its hill.
[10] French and Italian Note-Books, May 30, 1858. A contributor to Appletons' Journal, writing in 1875, describes a surviving specimen of the old contrivances which then gave Salem its water-supply. "The presumption is that a description of this particular one answers for Hawthorne's pump, seeing that they were all alike. It is large enough for a mausoleum and looks not unlike one, made of slabs of dingy stone, like stained, gray gravestones set up on one end, in a square at the foundation, but all inclining inward at the top, where they are kept in position by a band of iron. A decaying segment of log appears, in which the pump-handle works in vain, now, however, since, being long out of use, it has no connection with the water below; on the front side are two circular holes, like a pair of great eyes, made for the insertion of the spouts; and, finally, a long-handled iron dish, like a saucepan or warming-pan on a smaller scale, is attached by an iron chain to the stone, by way of drinking-vessel. Altogether, though it may not strike an old Salem resident in that way, it seems to the stranger a very unique, antiquated, and remarkable structure."
[11] Atlantic Monthly, September, 1870, vol. 26, p. 257.
[12] Papyrus Leaves, pp. 261, 262.
[13] A Study of Hawthorne: Chapter, xi., 291, 292.
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