The Complete Novels. Nathaniel Hawthorne

nevertheless written by a poet. He looks upon all things in a spirit of love and with lively sympathies. A calm, thoughtful face seems to be looking at you from every page; with now and then a pleasant smile, and now a shade of sadness stealing over its features. Sometimes, though not often, it glares wildly at you, with a strange and painful expression, as, in the German romance, the bronze knocker of the Archivarius Lindhorst makes up faces at the student Anselm.... One of the prominent characteristics of these tales is that they are national in their character. The author has wisely chosen his themes among the traditions of New England.... This is the right material for story. It seems as natural to make tales out of old tumble-down traditions as canes and snuff-boxes out of old steeples, or trees planted by great men."

      This hearty utterance of Longfellow's not only was of advantage to the young author publicly, but also doubtless threw a bright ray of encouragement into the morning-dusk which was then the pervading atmosphere of his little study, which he termed his "owl's nest." "I have to-day," he wrote back, "received and read with huge delight, your review of 'Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.' I frankly own that I was not without hopes that you would do this kind office for the book; though I could not have anticipated how very kindly it would be done. Whether or no the public will agree to the praise which you bestow on me, there are at least five persons who think you the most sagacious critic on earth, viz., my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If I doubt the sincerity and earnestness of any of my critics, it shall be of those who censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not have this privilege."

      His pleasant intimacy with the Peabodys went on; the dawn of his new epoch broadened, and he began to see in Miss Sophia Peabody the figure upon which his hopes, his plans for the future converged. Her father's house stood on the edge of the Charter Street Burying-Ground, oldest of the Salem cemeteries. "A three-story wooden house"—thus he has described it—"perhaps a century old, low-studded, with a square front, standing right upon the street, and a small enclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording a glimpse up and down the street through an oval window on each side: its characteristic was decent respectability, not sinking below the level of the genteel." In his "Note-Books" (July 4, 1837) he speaks of the old graveyard. "A slate gravestone round the borders, to the memory of 'Col. John Hathorne Esq.,' who died in 1717. This was the witch-judge. The stone is sunk deep into the earth, and leans forward, and the grass grows very long around it.... Other Hathornes lie buried in a range with him on either side.... It gives strange ideas, to think how convenient to Dr. P——'s family this burial-ground is,—the monuments standing almost within arm's reach of the side-windows of the parlor—and there being a little gate from the back-yard through which we step forth upon those old graves aforesaid. And the tomb of the P—— family is right in front, and close to the gate." Among the other Hathornes interred there are Captain Daniel, the privateersman, and a Mr. John Hathorne, "grandson of the Hon. John Hathorne," who died in 1758. The specification of his grandfather's name, with the prefix, shows that the relentless condemner of witches was still held in honor at Salem, in the middle of the eighteenth century. Dr. Peabody's house and this adjoining burial-ground form the scene of the unfinished "Dolliver Romance," and also supply the setting for the first part of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret." In the latter we find it pictured with a Rembrandtesque depth of tone:—

      "It stood in a shabby by-street and cornered on a graveyard.... Here were old brick tombs with curious sculpture on them, and quaint gravestones, some of which bore puffy little cherubs, and one or two others the effigies of eminent Puritans, wrought out to a button, a fold of the ruff, and a wrinkle of the skull-cap.... Here used to be some specimens of English garden flowers, which could not be accounted for—unless, perhaps, they had sprung from some English maiden's heart, where the intense love of those homely things and regret of them in the foreign land, had conspired together to keep their vivifying principle.... Thus rippled and surged with its hundreds of little billows the old graveyard about the house which cornered upon it; it made the street gloomy so that people did not altogether like to pass along the high wooden fence that shut it in; and the old house itself, covering ground which else had been thickly sown with bodies, partook of its dreariness, because it hardly seemed possible that the dead people should not get up out of their graves and steal in to warm themselves at this convenient fireside."

      This was the place in which Hawthorne conducted his courtship; but we ought not to lose sight of the fact that, in the account above quoted, he was writing imaginatively, indulging his fancy, and dwelling on particular points for the sake of heightening the effect. It is not probable that he associated gloomy fantasies with his own experience as it progressed in these surroundings. Here as elsewhere it is important to bear in mind the distinction which Dr. Loring has made: "Throughout life," he declares, "Hawthorne led a twofold existence—a real and a supernatural. As a man, he was the realest of men. From childhood to old age, he had great physical powers. His massive head sat upon a strong and muscular neck, and his chest was broad and capacious. His strength was great; his hand and foot were large and well made.... In walking, he had a firm step and a great stride without effort. In early manhood he had abounding health, a good digestion, a hearty enjoyment of food. His excellent physical condition gave him a placid and even temper, a cheerful spirit. He was a silent man and often a moody one, but never irritable or morose; his organization was too grand for that. He was a most delightful companion. In conversation he was never controversial, never authoritative, and never absorbing. In a multitude his silence was oppressive; but with a single companion his talk flowed on sensibly, quietly, and full of wisdom and shrewdness. He discussed books with wonderful acuteness, sometimes with startling power, and with an unexpected verdict, as if Shakespeare were discussing Ben Jonson. He analyzed men, their characters and motives and capacity, with great penetration, impartially if a stranger or an enemy, with the tenderest and most touching justice if a friend. He was fond of the companionship of all who were in sympathy with this real and human side of his life." But there was another side of his being, for which we may adopt the name that Dr. Loring has given it, the "supernatural." It was this which gave him his high distinction. "When he entered upon his work as a writer, he left behind him his other and accustomed personality by which he was known in general intercourse. In this work he allowed no interference, he asked for no aid. He was shy of those whose intellectual power and literary fame might seem to give them a right to enter his sanctuary. In an assembly of illustrious authors and thinkers, he floated, reserved and silent, around the margin in the twilight of the room, and at last vanished into the outer darkness; and when he was gone, Mr. Emerson said of him: 'Hawthorne rides well his horse of the night.' The working of his mind was so sacred and mysterious to him that he was impatient of any attempt at familiarity or even intimacy with the divine power within him. His love of personal solitude was a ruling passion, his intellectual solitude was an overpowering necessity.... Hawthorne said himself that his work grew in his brain as it went on, and was beyond his control or direction, for nature was his guide.... I have often thought that he understood his own greatness so imperfectly, that he dared not expose the mystery to others, and that the sacredness of his genius was to him like the sacredness of his love."

      And did not Hawthorne write to his betrothed wife?—"Lights and shadows are continually flitting across my inward sky, and I know not whence they come nor whither they go; nor do I inquire too closely into them. It is dangerous to look too minutely into such phenomena." What we may collect and set down of mere fact about his surroundings and his acts relates itself, therefore, mainly to his outwardly real existence, to the mere shell or mask of him, which was all that anybody could behold with the eyes; and as for the interior and ideal existence, it is not likely that we shall securely penetrate very far, where his own impartial and introverted gaze stopped short. It is but a rough method to infer with brusque self-confidence that we may judge from a few words here and there the whole of his thought and feeling. A fair enough notion may be formed as to the status of his post-collegiate life in Salem, from the data we have, but we can do no more than guess at its formative influence upon his genius. And I should be sorry to give an impression that because his courtship went on in the old house by the graveyard, of which he has written so soberly, there was any shadow of melancholy upon that initiatory period of a new happiness. His reflections concerning the spot had to do with his imaginative, or if one choose, his "supernatural," existence; what actually passed there had to do with the real and the personal, and with the life of the affections.