Hawthorne and His Circle. Julian Hawthorne
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finally discovered in The Dolliver Romance, but the author's death prevented its completion.
In this series of posthumous manuscripts there is a unique opportunity for making a study of the esoteric qualities of my father's style and methods, and on a future occasion I hope to present the result of my investigations in this direction. There is, furthermore, in connection with them, a mass of material of a yet more interesting and interior character. While writing the Grimshawe, he was deeply perplexed by certain details of the plot; the meaning of the Pensioner, and his proper function in the story, was one of these stumbling-blocks. But the prosperity of the tale depended directly upon the solution of this problem. Constantly, therefore, in the midst of the composition, he would break off and enter upon a wrestling-match with the difficulty. These wrestling-matches are of an absorbing significance; they reveal to us the very inmost movements of the author's mind. He tries, and tries again, to get at the idea that continues to elude him; he forms innumerable hypotheses; he sets forth on the widest excursions; he gets out of patience with himself and with his Pensioner, and often damns the latter in good set terms; but he will not give up the struggle; his resolve to conquer is adamantine, and the conflict is always renewed. And there it all stands in black and white; one of the most instructive chapters in literary criticism in the world—the battle of a great writer with himself. The final issue, after all, was hardly decisive, for although a tolerable modus vivendi was reached and a truce declared, it is evident that Hawthorne regarded the entire scheme of the story as a mistake, and it is concluded in a perfunctory and indifferent manner.
But it may be doubted whether anything of this sort ever took place in the making of any of the other stories. These depend but in a subordinate degree upon what is called technically plot interest. The author's method was to take a natural, even a familiar incident, and to transmute it into immortal gold by simply elucidating its inner spiritual significance. The Scarlet Letter is a mere plain story of love and jealousy; there is no serious attempt to hide the identity of Roger Chillingworth or the guilt of the minister. The only surprise in The House of the Seven Gables consists in the revelation of the fact that Maule reappears after several generations in the person of his modern descendant. The structure of The Blithedale Romance appears more complicated; but that is mainly because, in a masterly manner, the author keeps the structural lines out of sight and concentrates attention upon the interplay of character. The scaffolding upon which are hung the splendid draperies of The Marble Faun is, again, of the simplest formation, though the nature of the materials is unfamiliar.
This is a digression; the present volume, as I have already stated, is not designed to include—except incidentally-anything in the way of literary criticism.
Blithedale having been finished and published, the question of where to settle down permanently once more came up for an answer. Of course, our sojourn at Mr. Mann's house had been a temporary expedient only; and for that matter, the Manns, following the example of most Americans before and since, had rented the place merely as a stepping-stone to something else. My father's eyes again turned with longing towards the sea-shore; but the fitting nook for him there still failed to offer itself. People are naturally disposed to return to places in which they have formerly lived, and Concord could not but suggest itself to one who had passed some of the happiest years of his life among its serene pastures and piney forests. This suggestion, moreover, was supplemented by the urgent invitations of his old friends there, and Mr. Emerson, who was a practical man as well as a philosopher, substantiated his arguments by throwing into the scale a concrete dwelling. It was an edifice which not even the most imaginative and optimistic of house-agents would have found it easy to picture as a sumptuous country-seat; it was just four wooden walls and a roof, and they had been standing for a hundred years at least. The occupants of this house had seen the British march past from Boston on the 19th of April, 1775, and a few hours later they had seen them return along the same dusty highway at a greatly accelerated pace and under annoying circumstances. There was a legend that a man had once lived there who had announced that death was not an indispensable detail of life, and that he for his part intended never to die; but after many years he had grown weary of the monotony of his success, or had realized that it would take too long a time to prove himself in the right, and rather than see the thing through he allowed himself to depart. The old structure, in its original state, consisted of a big, brick chimney surrounded by four rooms and an attic, with a kitchen tacked on at the rear. It stood almost flush with the side-path along the highway; behind it rose a steep hill-side to a height of about one hundred feet; in front, on the other side of the road, stretched broad meadows with a brook flowing through the midst of them. Such conditions would not seem altogether to favor a man wedded to seclusion.
But the thing was not at this juncture quite so bad as it had been. Mr. Alcott, whose unselfish devotion to the welfare of the human race made it incumbent upon his friends to supply him with the means of earthly subsistence, had been recently domiciled in the house by Mr. Emerson (how the latter came into possession of it I have forgotten, if ever I knew), and he had at once proceeded to wreak upon it his unique architectural talent. At any rate, either he himself or somebody in his behalf had set up a small gable in the midst of the front, thrown out a double bow-window, and added a room on the west side. This interrupted the deadly, four-square uniformity, and suggested further improvements. Mr. Alcott certainly built the summer-house on the hill-side, and terraced the hill, which was also planted with apple-trees. Another summer-house arose in the meadow opposite, which went with the property, and rustic fences separated the domain from the road. The dwelling was now fully as commodious as the red house at Lenox, though it had no Monument Mountain and Stockbridge Bowl to look out upon.
[IMAGE: THE WAYSIDE (Showing Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife)]
The estate, comprising, I think, forty-two acres, all told, including upward of twenty acres of second-growth woodland above the hill, perfectly useless except for kindling-wood and for the sea-music which the pine-trees made, was offered to my father at a reasonable enough figure, to be his own and his heirs' forever. He came over and looked at the place, thought "The Wayside" would be a good name for it, and was perhaps helped to decide upon taking it by the felicity of this appellation. It was close upon the highway, undeniably; but then the highway was so little travelled that it might almost as well not have been there. One might, also, plant a high hedge in place of the fence and make shift to hide behind it. One could enlarge the house as need demanded; an affluent vegetable garden could be laid out in the meadow, and fruit and ornamental trees could be added to the slopes of the hill-side. The village was removed to a distance of a trifle over a mile, so that the roar of its traffic would not invade this retreat; and Mr. Emerson sat radiating peace and wisdom between the village and "The Wayside"; while Mr. Alcott shone with ancillary lustre only a stone's-throw away. Thoreau and Ellery Channing were tramping about in the neighborhood, and Judge Hoar and his beautiful sister dispensed sweetness and light in the village itself. Walden Pond, still secluded as when only the Indians had seen the sky and the trees reflected in it, was within a two-mile walk, and the silent Musketaquid stole on its level way beyond the hill on the other side. Surely, a man might travel far and not find a spot better suited for work and meditation and discreet society than Concord was.
But, of course, the necessity of settling down somewhere was a main consideration. Concord, was inviting in itself, but it was also recommended by the argument of exclusion; no other place so desirable and at the same time so easy of attainment happened to present itself. It did not lie within sound and sight of the ocean; but that was the worst that could be urged against it. A man must choose, and Concord was, finally, Hawthorne's choice.
At this epoch he had not contemplated, save in day-dreams, the possibility of visiting the Old World. His friend, Franklin Pierce, had just become President-elect, but that fact had not suggested to his mind the change in his own fortunes which it was destined to bring about. He was too modest a critic of his own abilities to think that his work would ever bring him money enough for foreign travel, and, therefore, in accepting Concord as his home, he believed that he was fixing the boundaries of his future earthly experience. It was not his ideal; no imaginative man can ever hope to find that; but as soon as we have called a place our Home, it acquires a charm that has nothing to do with material conditions. The best-known song in American poesy has impressed that truth upon Americans—who are the most homeless people in the world.