Memories of Hawthorne Part 26

"Long may it stand, the friendly tree, That blooms in autumn and in spring, Beneath whose shade the humblest bird May safely sit, may gratefully sing.

Time will give it an evergreen name, Axe cannot harm it, frost cannot kill; With Emerson's pine and Th.o.r.eau's oak Will the Hawthorne be loved and honored still!"

My mother's records, moreover, in letters to her husband, refer to the humble labors that almost filled up her devoted year (her daughters tried to imitate her example), and these references indicate the difference we felt between Europe and home:--

Rose raised all the echoes of the county by screaming with joy over her blooming crocuses, which she found in her garden. The spring intoxicates her with "remembering wine." She hugs and kisses me almost to a mummy, with her raptures. Little spots of green gra.s.s choke her with unutterable ecstasy.

September 9, 1860. Julian illuminated till tea-time; and after tea I read to both him and Rose a chapter of Matthew, and told them about Paul.--Rosebud has been drawing wonderfully on the blackboard recognizable portraits of Mr. Bennoch, her beloved Charlotte Marston, and Julian. Ben Mann appeared with a letter from dear Nona [Una]; and with one from Bentley, England, modestly asking of thee a book, to publis.h.!.+--The weeds in the garden now exceed belief. There is not a trace to be seen of the melon or cuc.u.mber vines, or squashes, or of the beans towards the lane. All are completely overtopped by gigantic plants, like the Anakins overrunning the Israelites. Such riot of uninvited guests I never imagined. I shall try to do something, but I fear my puny might will not effect much against such hordes. The wet and heat together produce such growths as I never saw except in Cuba.

There is a real forest at the back door, between the house and the terraces. The greenness is truly English and Irish.--I picked forty ears of corn to-day.--We all met at the Alcotts' at tea-time. It was a clear, frosty air that bit me as I went in through the sunset. We had a delightful visit. Mr. Alcott was sweet and benign as possible, and Mrs. Alcott looked like Jupiter Olympus.--General Hitchc.o.c.k has been gone about an hour. Baby had got me some exquisite roses from Mr. Bull's, of various shades from deep crimson to light pink, and I arranged a flat gla.s.s dish full on the Roman mosaic table, and a tall gla.s.s on the white marble table, and a gla.s.s on the Hawthorne tea-table, while the illuminated crocus [a vase] was splendid with dahlias and tiger-lilies beneath the Transfiguration. So the drawing-room looked lovelily, and a fine rose-odor was diffused. All the blinds were open and the shades up, and a glory of greenness refreshed the eyes outside on the plumy, bowery hill and lawn. In this charming apartment I received my General. The most beautiful light of life beamed from his face at my recognition of his ideas, and at any expression of mine which showed a unity with his; or rather with truth. His quiet eyes have gathered innumerable harvests, and his observations are invaluable because impersonal. [He had made a study of the alchemists, and all mystical philosophy.]--Elizabeth h.o.a.r spent the whole of yesterday morning with me. We talked Roman and Florentine talk. She thought our house the most fascinating of mansions. She is always full of St. Paul's charity. On the Roman table was a gla.s.s dish of exquisite pond-lilies, which Una brought from the river this morning; and out of the centre of the lilies rose a tall gla.s.s of superb cardinal-flowers. On the white table was a gla.s.s dish of balsams of every shade of red, from deep crimson through scarlet to pale pink, over to purple and up to white.--Una returned to-day from Boston. She has had a nice visit, and seen many persons, all of whom expressed to her unbounded adoration of you. "Why mamma, how everybody loves, adores him!" said she. Of course.--I had a call from the dancing-master, a most debonair individual, all smile and bow and curvets. I wish you could have seen the man. It was the broad caricature of elegant manners. How funny things are! I can hear you say, "Natur' is cur'ous."--I looked in upon Edith Emerson's party, and she had a large table spread with flowers, cake, and sugar-plums, beneath the trees, and a dozen children were running and laughing round a "pretty Poll," who scolded at them all. Mrs. Emerson was flitting like the spirit of a Lady Abbess in and out, in winged lace headdress and black silk. Your letter was a bomb of joy to me last evening.--I have taken heaps of your clothes to mend. What a rag-fair your closet was--and you did not tell me! Mrs. Alcott brought me some beer made of spruce only, and it was nice. Thou shalt have thy own beer, when you come home.--Bab went to see Mrs. Alcott, and I resumed weeding. At seven I heard thirteen cannon-shots, and did not understand it. Then I possessed The Wayside all alone till near eight of the evening. Not a sound but birds' last notes was to be heard. It was strange and sweet. I thought of you in a sea-breeze with felicity.

At about eight I heard little feet racing along the Larch Path, and Baby came to view. She read aloud to me some of your "Virtuoso's Collection," and then to bed, celestial.--A letter came from Mr.

Bennoch. He wails like Jeremiah over our war, and longs for a letter from you. He sends cartes de visite of himself and his wife. He looks uncommonly dumpy, with a pair of winged whiskers of astounding effect, and the expression of his face is blandly seraphic.

[From my mother's diary.] January 1, 1862. Letter and wine from General Pierce. I heard Mr. Emerson's lecture on War. Furious wind--There is a lovely new moon; a golden boat.--Papa read "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" aloud in the evening.--I wish I knew whether the lines of my hand are like those of Sir Thomas Browne's.

--My husband has made an anagram of my name: "A hope while in a storm, aha!"--General Pierce arrived at noon. I went to the Town Hall to hear the Quintette Club play the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. Mrs. Alcott came with us. Bright moonlight at midnight. General Pierce remained all night.--My husband made an anagram of the General's name, "Princelie Frank."

--My husband read aloud to me "Sir Launcelot Greaves." Papa read "Anne of Geierstein."--I prepared Julian for acting Bluebeard; and Ellen Emerson lent me the gear. We worked hard all day.--We received the photographs of Una and myself. Mine of course uncomely.--Mr. Ticknor came to dine; and Mr. Burchmore [son of Stephen Burchmore, whose tales at the Custom House were so inimitable] also came.--My husband is not well. I have been very anxious about him; but he is better this evening, thank G.o.d.--My right hand is so bad that I have to bathe it in arnica all the time, for I have worn it out by making shoes [and other ornamented articles for a masquerade to which her children were to go].

[The letters to my father continue.] Ellen and Edith Emerson took tea with Una, and they went home early, at about eight. At ten I heard a man's step and a ring at the door-bell. I went to the door, and not opening it, in a voice of command asked, "Who is it?" No reply. I again fiercely inquired, "WHO IS IT?" "Is Ellen here?" pleaded the surprised, quiet voice of Mr. Emerson! I immediately unlocked my portcullis, and in the lowest tone of woman begged the Sage to excuse my peremptory challenge.--The Masquerade was worth the great trouble taken in preparing for it. Una was quite gorgeous with her glittering embroideries of silver and gold, and her exquisite turban gleaming with precious stones and pearls. The most delicate roses bloomed in her cheeks, and her eyes were like two large radiant stars. She danced with Sir Kenneth of Scotland, personated admirably by Edward Emerson, in armor of black and gold, severe and simple.--[My sister adds her own delighted reference to my mother's.] "Oh, father! I did have the most awfully jolly time at the Masquerade that ever anybody had. It was the most perfectly Arabian Nights' scene, and the Princess Scheherezade [herself] at last saw in very fact one of the scenes that her glowing fancy had painted; but being now freed from the fear of death, her mind had lost its terrific stimulus and returned to its normal condition, or perhaps was a little duller than usual from being so long overtaxed; at all events, she did not compose a new story on the occasion, as might have been expected. A great many people spoke to me of the splendor of my dress. Mamma was so delighted with the becomingness of my black velvet jacket, that she has bought me a splendid dress of the same, and has sent for a bushel of seed-pearls to trim it with. The little bill for these items is awaiting you on your desk. I shall set up for a queen for the rest of my life, and if you are still going to call me Onion, you must find out the Persian for it."

[The diary resumes.] My husband read to me his paper on his visit to Was.h.i.+ngton. Dr. George B. Loring and Mr. Pike [of Salem] came to tea in the evening. Mr. Th.o.r.eau died this morning.--The funeral services were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott read from Mr.

Th.o.r.eau's writings. The body was in the vestibule, covered with wildflowers. We went to the grave. Thence my husband and I walked to the Old Manse and Monument. Then I went to see Annie Fields at Mr.

Emerson's.--Fog and sultry. Brobdingnag dropping from eaves.--Superb morning. My husband transplanted sunflowers [of which he was immensely fond, though lilies-of-the-valley were his favorites].--My husband and Julian went to Boston; and Julian walked home in eight and a half hours [twenty miles].--Una's party took place to-night. Papa illuminated it with his presence.--Pleasant day. Papa magnanimously picked some strawberries.--I went on the hilltop with my husband all the morning [of a Sunday in June].--Our wedding-day. It is very hot and smoky. We think it the smokes of battles.--Very warm and fine. Mr.

Alcott worked all day, lacking three hours [in constructing a rustic seat at the foot of our hill]. I went on the hilltop with my husband for a long time. Ineffable felicity.--A perfectly lovely day. I read "Christ the Spirit." Rose had a discourse from the Sermon on the Mount; the four verses about giving alms. We have very nice discourses [my mother's]. Una went to church.--Mr. George Bradford came to see us. Una and Julian went to the Emersons' in the evening.--Read again "Leamington Spa." Inimitable, fascinating.--Thanksgiving Day. We invited Ellery Channing, but he could not come.--Julian and I went to Boston. When I came home I found my husband looking very ill. Julian has gone on a visit to the Fields's.--My husband quite ill.

Everything seems sad, when he is ill. I sewed all day.--My husband seems much better. He went up on the hill. Papa and the children played whist in the evening, while I read Charles Reade.--Celia cleared the old attic to-day. I found my dear hanging astral, that lighted my husband in his study at the Old Manse, and also Una's baby socks.--Judge h.o.a.r came to invite my husband to tea with Mr. Eustis and Mr. Bemis and Mr. Emerson. He would not go.--I read ominous news of the war, which quite saddened and alarmed me. I read "Christ the Spirit."--I read about Alchemy and Swedenborg. Ellery Channing came to tea and spent the evening. He asked me if he might bring General Barlow to tea on Tuesday.

It was almost immediately after our return home that the first notes of the requiem about to envelop us fell through the sound of daily affairs, at long intervals, because my father, from that year, began to grow less and less vigorous.

There are many references in my mother's diaries and letters to my father's enforced monotony, and also to his gradually failing health, which, by the very instinct of loving alarm, we none of us a.n.a.lyzed as fatal; though, from his expression of face, if for no other reason, I judge he himself understood it perfectly. Death sat with him, at his right hand, long before he allowed his physical decline to change his mode of life. He tried to stem the tide setting against him, because it is the drowning man's part, even if hopeless. He walked a great deal upon the high hill-ridge behind the house, his dark, quietly moving figure pa.s.sing slowly across the dim light of the mingled sky and branches, as seen from the large lawn, around which the embowered terraces rose like an amphitheatre. A friend tells me that, from a neighboring farm, he sometimes watched my father in an occupation which he had undertaken for his health. A cord of wood had been cut upon the hill, and he deliberately dragged it to the lower level of his dwelling, two logs at a time, by means of a rope. Along the ridge and down the winding pine-flanked path he slowly and studiously stepped, musing, looking up, stopping to solve some point of plot or morals; and meanwhile the cord of wood changed its abiding-place as surely as water may wear away a stone. But his splendid vigor paled, his hair grew snowy white, before the end. My mother wrote to him in the following manner from time to time, when he was away for change of scene:--

September 9, 1860. My crown of glory. This morning I waked to clouds and rain, but for myself I did not care, as you were not here to be depressed by it. There was a clear and golden sunset, making the loveliest shadows and lights on the meadows and across my straight path [over the field to the willows, between firs], and now the stars s.h.i.+ne.--The way in which Concordians observe Fast is by loafing about the streets, driving up and down, and dawdling generally. No one seems to mourn over his own or his country's sins. Such behavior must disturb our Puritan fathers even on the other side of the Jordan.--In the evening Julian brought me a letter. "It is from New York," said he, "but not from papa." But my heart knew better, though I did not know the handwriting. I clashed it open, and saw "N. H.,"

and then, "I am entirely well," not scratched out. Thank G.o.d! . . .

The sun has not shone to-day, and there is now a stormy wind that howls like a beast of prey over its dead. It is the most ominous, boding sound I ever heard.

March 15, 1862. The news of your appet.i.te sends new life into me, and immediately increases my own.

July. I am afraid you have been in frightful despair at this rainy day. It has flooded here in sheets, with heavy thunder. But I have s.n.a.t.c.hed intervals to weed. I could see and hear everything growing around me in the warm rain. The army corn has hopped up as if it were parched. The yellow lilies are reeling up to the skies. Pig-weed has become camelopard weed. . . . Alas that you should be insulted with dried-apple pie and mola.s.ses preserves! Oh, horror! I thought that you would have fresh fruit and vegetables. Pray go to a civilized house and have decent fare.--I know it will do you immense good to make this journey. You should oftener make such visits, and then you would "like things" better. Your spirits get below concert pitch by staying in one place so long at a time. I am glad Leutze keeps you on [to paint Hawthorne's portrait]. Do not come home till the middle of September.

Just remember how hot and dead it is here in hot weather, and how you cannot bear it.--I do not think I have a purer pleasure and completer satisfaction, nowadays, than I am conscious of when I get you fairly away from Concord influences. I then sit down and feel rested through my whole const.i.tution. All care seems at an end. I would not have had you here yesterday for all England. It was red-hot from morn to dewy eve. We burned without motion or sound. But you were in Boston, and not under this hill. If you wish me to be happy, you must consent to spend the dog-days at the sea.--After a cool morning followed a red-hot day. It seemed to me more intolerable than any before. You could not have borne such dead weather. The house was a refrigerator in comparison to the outdoor atmosphere.--We have had some intolerably muggy days. That is, they would have been so, if you had not been at the sea.--You have been far too long in one place without change, and I am sure you will get benefit under such pleasant conditions as being the guest of Mr. and Mrs. [Horatio] Bridge, and a witness of such new phases of life as those in Was.h.i.+ngton.--Splendors upon splendors have been heaped into this day. Loads of silky plumed corn or even sheaves of cardinal-flowers cannot be compared to the new suns.h.i.+ne and the magnificent air which have filled the earth from early dawn. The brook that became a broad river in the flood of yesterday made our landscape perfect. It seemed to me that I must dance and sing, and now I know it was because you were writing to me. Rose and I went down the straight path [called later the Cathedral Aisle] to look at the fresh river. I delayed to be embroidered with gold sun over and over, and through and through. At the gate I was arrested by the tower, also ill.u.s.trious with the glory of the atmosphere, and very pretty indeed, lifting its nice, shapely head above the decrepit old ridge-pole of the ancient house.--I took my saw and went on a lovely wander, with a fell intent against all dead and confusing branches. How infinitely sweet it is to have access to this woodland virtue! It does me measureless good; and I am sure such air as we have on these fine days must be the effect of heroic and gentle deeds, and is a pledge that there are not tens only, but tens of thousands of heroes on this earth, keeping it in life and being.--Your letter has kindled us all up into lamps of light to-day. But I am wholly dissatisfied with your boarding-house, so full of deaf women, and violin din, and schoolgirls! Pray change your residence and have peace. You will curse your stars if you have to "bellow" for three weeks, when you so hate to speak even in your natural inward tone.--Mary has just sent me a note, saying that there is a paragraph in the paper about your being at Was.h.i.+ngton, and that the President [Lincoln] received you with especial graciousness. Stay as long as you can, and get great good. I cannot have you return yet.--The President has had a delicious palaver with a deputation of black folk, talking to them as to babies. I suspect the President is a jewel. I like him very well.--If it were not such a bore, I could wish thou mightest be President through this crisis, and show the world what can be done by using two eyes, and turning each thing upside down and inside out, before judging and acting. I should not wonder if thy great presence in Was.h.i.+ngton might affect the moral air and work good. If you like the President, then give him my love and blessing.--The President's immortal special message fills me with unbounded satisfaction. It is so almost superhumanly wise, moderate, fitting, that I am ready to believe an angel came straight from heaven to him with it. He must be honest and true, or an angel would not come to him. Mary Mann says she thinks the message feeble, and not to the point. But I think a man shows strength when he can be moderate at such a moment as this. Thou hadst better give my high regards to the President. I meant to write to him; but that mood has pa.s.sed. I wish to express my obligations for the wisdom of his message.

CHAPTER XV

THE ARTIST AT WORK

I was once asked to write of my father's "literary methods," and the idea struck me as delightfully impossible. I wish I knew just what those methods were--I might hope to write a romance. But as the bird on the tree-bough catches here and there a glimpse of what men are about, although he hardly aspires to plough the field himself, or benefit by human labor until the harvest comes, so I have observed some facts and gathered some notions as to how my father thought out his literary work.

One method of obtaining his end was to devote himself constantly to writing, whether it brought him money or not. He might not have seemed to be working all the time, but to be enjoying endless leisure in walking through the country or the city streets. But even a bird would have had more penetration than to make such a mistake as to think this. Another wise provision was to love and pity mankind more than he scorned them, so that he never created a character which did not possess a soul--the only puppet he ever contrived of straw, "Feathertop," having an excellent soul until the end of the story.

Still another method of gaining his success was to write with a n.o.ble respect for his own best effort, on which account he never felt satisfied with his writing unless he had exerted every muscle of his faculty; unless every word he had written seemed to his severest self-criticism absolutely true. He loved his art more than his time, more than his ease, and could thrust into the flames an armful of ma.n.u.script because he suspected the pages of weakness and exaggeration.

One of his methods of avoiding failure was to be rigorous in the care of his daily existence. A preponderance of frivolous interruption to a modic.u.m of thorough labor at thinking was a system utterly foreign to him. He would not talk with a fool; as a usual thing he would not entertain a bore. If thrown with these common pests, he tried, I think, to study them. And they report that he did so very silently.

But he did not waste his time, either by politely chattering with people whom he meant to sneer at after they had turned their backs, or in indulgences of loafing of all sorts which leave a narcotic stupidity in their wake. He had plenty of time, therefore, for thought, and he could think while walking either in the fresh air, or back and forth in his study. Men of success detest inactivity. It is a hards.h.i.+p for them to be as if dead for a single moment. So, when my father could not walk out-of doors during meditation, he moved back and forth in his room, st.u.r.dily alert, his hands clasped behind him, quietly thinking, his head either bent forward or suddenly lifted upward with a light in his gray eyes.

He wrote princ.i.p.ally in the morning, with that absorption and regularity which characterize the labor of men who are remembered.

When his health began to show signs of giving way, in 1861, it was suggested by a relative, whose intellect, strength of will, and appet.i.te for theories were of equally splendid proportions, that my father only needed a high desk at which to stand when writing, to be restored to all his pristine vigor. With his usual tolerance of possible wisdom he permitted such a desk to be arranged in the tower-study at The Wayside; but with his inexorable contempt for mistakes of judgment he never, after a brief trial, used it for writing. Upon his simple desk of walnut wood, of which he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose--in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned very much on, his left arm while writing, often holding the top of the ma.n.u.script book lovingly with his left hand, quite in the att.i.tude of a boy. At the end of a sentence or two he would sometimes unconsciously bow his head, as if bidding good-by to a thought well rid of for the present in its new garb of ink.

In writing he had little care for paper and ink. To be sure, his large, square ma.n.u.script was firmly bound into covers, and the paper was usually of a neutral blue; and when I say that he had little care for his mechanical materials I mean that he had no servile anxiety as to how they looked to another person, for I am convinced that he himself loved his ma.n.u.script books. There was a certain air of humorous respect about the t.i.tles, which he wrote with a flourish, as compared with the involved minuteness of the rest of the script, and the latter covers every limit of the page in a devoted way. His letters were formed obscurely, though most fascinatingly, and he was almost frolicsome in his indifference to the comfort of the compositor. Still he had none of the frantic reconsiderations of Scott or Balzac. If he made a change in a word it was while it was fresh, and no one could obliterate what he had written with a more fearless blot of the finger, or one which looked more earnest and interesting.

There was no scratching nor quiddling in the manner with which he fought for his art. Each day he thought out the problems he had set himself before beginning to write, and if a word offended him, as he recorded the result, he thrust it back into chaos before the ink had dried. I think that the ma.n.u.script of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret" is an exception, to some extent. There are many written self-communings and changes in it. My father was declining in health while it was being evolved. But yet, in "The Dolliver Romance," the last work of all in process of development, written while he was physically breaking down, we see the effect of will and heroic attempt. It is the most beautiful of his compositions, because his mind was greater at that time than ever, and because death could not frighten him, and in its very face he desired to complete the proof of his whole power, as the dying soldier rises to the greatest act of his life, having given his life-blood for his country's cause. Though the script of this ma.n.u.script is extremely difficult to read, the speculation had evidently been done before taking up the pen. I am not sure but that my father sometimes destroyed first drafts, of which his family knew nothing. Indeed, we have his own word for it that "he pa.s.sed the day in writing stories and the night in burning them." Nevertheless, his tendency we know to have been that of thinking out his plots and scenes and characters, and transcribing them rapidly without further change.

Since he did not write anything wholly for the pleasure of creative writing, but had moral motives and perfect artistic harmony to consider, he could not have indulged in the spontaneous, pa.s.sionate effusions which are the substance of so much other fiction. He was obliged to train his mind to reflection and judgment, and therefore he never tasted luxury of any kind. The mere enjoyment of historical settings in all their charm and richness, rehabilitated for their own sake or for worldly gain; and that of caricatures of the members of the human family, because they are so often so desperately funny; the gloating over realistic pictures of life as it is found, because life as it is found is a more absorbing study than that of geology or chemistry; the tasting of redundant scenes of love and intrigue, which flatter the reader like experiences of his own,--these excesses he was not willing to admit to his art, a magic that served his literary palate with still finer food. He wrote with temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive hope of helping it to know and redeem itself. His quality was philosophy, his style forgiveness. And for this temperate and logical and laconic work--giving nothing to the world for its mere enjoyment, but going beyond all that to enn.o.ble each reader by his perfect renunciation of artistic claptrap and artistic license--for this aim he needed a mental method that could entirely command itself, and, when necessary, weigh and gauge with the laborious fidelity of a coal-surveyor, before the account was rendered with pen and ink upon paper. When he brought within his art the personality of a human devil, he honored its humanity, and proved that the real devil is quite another thing. In fact, perhaps he would not have permitted the above epithet. In one of her letters my mother remarks, "I think no sort of man can be called a devil, unless it be a slanderer."

Though he dealt with romance he never gave the advantage of an inch to the wiles of bizarre witchery, the grotesque masks of wanton caprice in imagination--those elements which exhibit the intoxication of talent. His terrors were those of our own hearts; his playfulness had the merit of the sunlight. In short, he was artistically con-.

secrated, guiding the forces he used with the reins of truth; and he could do this unbrokenly because he governed his character by Christian fellows.h.i.+p. If he shrank from unnecessary interruptions, which jarred the harmony of his artistic life, he nevertheless met courteously any that were to him inevitable. Could he have written with the heart's blood of old Hepzibah if he had failed to put his own shoulder to the domestic wheel, on the plea that it was too deep in the slough of disaster to command his a.s.sistance? He did not dread besmirching his hands with any affairs sent him by G.o.d.

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its joy;" and the joy and the bitterness of creative work are not intermeddled with as much as one might suppose by the outside weather of praise or non-comprehension, if the artist is great enough to keep his private self-respect. I am of the opinion that my father enjoyed his own indifference to his accomplished work, yet knew its value to the minutest ray of the diamond; that he had sharply challenged the enchantment of his first conception, and heard the right watchword, yet recognized that no human conception can fathom the marvels of the superhuman. I believe that the men we admire most, in the small group of great minds, are sufficiently necromantic to look two ways at once--to appreciate and to condemn themselves. So my father heard himself praised with composure, and blamed his skill rejoicingly.

Some pa.s.sages from a copy of an article in "The North British Review"

of Edinburgh during 1851 were capable of filling a wife's heart with exultation, and my mother quotes: "'The most striking features in these tales are the extraordinary skill and masterly care which are displayed in their composition. . . . It would be difficult to pick out a page which could be omitted without loss to the development of the narrative and the idea, which are always mutually ill.u.s.trative to a degree not often attained in any species of modern art. . . . His language, though extraordinarily accurate, is always light and free. . . . We know of nothing equal to it, in its way [the portrayal of Dimmesdale], in the whole circle of English literature;' and much more in the same superlative vein."

But if my father could weigh his artistic success with the precision of a coal-heaver, who will ever be able to weigh and gauge the genius which carries methods and philosophies and aims into an atmosphere of wonderful power, where the sunlight and the color and the lightning and frowning clouds transfigure the familiar things of life in glorious haste and inspiration? While following his rules and habits my father was constantly attended by the rapturous spirit of such a genius, trans.m.u.ting swarming reality into a few symbolic types.

Another way in which he effected telling labor was to conserve his force in the matter of wrangling. He kept his temper. He was not without the fires of life, but he banked them. He did not permit disgust at others or at the adverse destiny of the moment to absorb his vitality, by throwing it off in long harangues of rage, long seasons of the sulks. There are no such good calculators as men of consummate genius. They dread the squandering of energy of an Edgar Allan Poe or of a boiling Walter Savage Landor. Temperateness implies the control of fierce elements; and in all management of volcanic power we perceive sweetness and beauty.

When my father handled sin, it became uncontaminating tragedy; when he handled vulgarity, as in "The Artist of the Beautiful," it became inevitable pathos; when he handled suspicion, as in "The Birthmark"

and "Rappaccini's Daughter," it evolved devoted trust.

The frequent question as to whether Hawthorne drew from his family or friends in portraying human nature shows an unfamiliarity with literary art. Portraiture is not art, in literature, though a great artist includes it, if he chooses, in the category of his productions.

To any one permeated by the atmosphere of art (though not quite of it) as I was, it seems strange that a truly artistic work should be thought to be an imitation of individual models. The distance of inspiration is the distance of a heavenly fair day, or of a night made luminous by mystery, giving a new quality and a new species of delight to facts about us. In reading the sympathetic merriment of the introduction to "The Scarlet Letter," and then the story itself, we perceive the difference between the charm of a Dutch-like realism and the thrill of imaginative creation, which uses material made incomprehensibly wonderful by G.o.d in order to make it comprehensibly wonderful to men. But, of course, the material thus trans.m.u.ted by the distance of inspiration is only new and fine to men who have ears to hear and eyes to see. My father never imitated the men and women he met, nor man nor woman, and such conceptions of his way would bring us to a dense forest of mistake.

In the afternoon my father went, if practicable, into the open s.p.a.ces of nature, or at least into the fresh air, to gather inspiration for his work. He had no better or stronger or more lavish aids than air and landscape, unless I except his cigar. He never, I think, smoked but one cigar a day, but it was of a quality to make up for this self-denial, and I am sure that he reserved his most puzzling literary involutions for the delicious half-hour of this dainty enjoyment.

In 1861 and thereafter he traversed, as has been said, the wooded hilltop behind his home, which was reached by various pretty climbing paths that crept under larches and pines, and scraggy, goat-like apple-trees. We could catch sight of him going back and forth up there, with now and then a pale blue gleam of sky among the trees, against which his figure pa.s.sed clear. Along this path, made by his own steps only, he thought out the tragedy of "Septimius Felton," who buried the young English officer at the foot of one of the large pines which my father saw at each return. At one end of the hilltop path was a thicket of birch and maple trees; and at the end towards the west and the village was the open brow of the hill, sloping rapidly to the Lexington Road, and overlooking meadows and distant wood-ranges, some of the cottages of humble folk, and the neighboring huge, owlet-haunted elms of Alcott's lawn. Along this path in spring huddled pale blue violets, of a blue that held sunlight, pure as his own eyes.

Ma.s.ses also of sweet-fern grew at the side of these abundant bordering violets, and s.p.a.cious apartments of brown-floored pine groves flanked the sweet-fern, or receded a little before heaps of blackberry branches and simple flowers. My father's violets were the wonder of the year to us. We never saw so many of these broad, pale-petaled ones anywhere else, until the year of his death, when they greeted him with their celestial color as he was borne into Sleepy Hollow, as if in remembrance of his long companions.h.i.+p on The Wayside hill.

It is well with those who forget themselves in generous interest for the hopes, possibilities, and spiritual loftiness of human beings all over the world. Such men may remain poor, may never in life have the full praise of their fellows; but they could easily give testimony as to the delights of praise from G.o.d,--that which comes to our lips after little spiritual victories, like spring water on a hot day, and of which the workers in n.o.ble thought or adventure drink so deep.

These representative men, if they cheer their fancy with fair thoughts of wide public approbation, choose the undying sort, that blooms like the edelweiss beyond the dust of sudden success. Hawthorne worked hard and n.o.bly. Not even the mechanic who toils for his family all day, all week-days of the year, and never swears at wife or child, toils more n.o.bly than this sensitive, warm-hearted, brave, recluse, much-seeing man. He teaches the spiritual greatness of the smallest fidelity, and the spiritual destruction in the most familiar temptations. The b.u.t.terfly which he describes floats everywhere through his pages, and it is broken wherever the heart of one of his characters breaks, for there sin has clutched its victim. It floats about us lovingly to attract our attention to higher things; and I am sure the radiant delicacy of the winged creature throbbed on a flower near David Swan, as he slept honestly through the perils of evil.

Every touch of inner meaning that he gives speaks of his affection, his desire to bring us accounts of what he has learned of G.o.d's benevolence, in his long walks on the thoroughfares and in the byways, and over the uncontaminated open country, of human hope. Poverty, trouble, sin, fraudulent begging, stupidity, conceit,--nothing forced him absolutely to turn away his observation of all these usual rebuffs to sympathy, if his inconvenience could be made another's gain. But he was firm with a manliness that was uncringing before insolence, and did not shrink from speaking home truths that pruned the injurious branches of the will; yet he never could be insulting, because he had no selfish end. As a comrade he led to higher perceptions and moods.

The men who chatted with him in the Salem Custom House, the Liverpool Consulate, and elsewhere, never forgot that he was the most inspiring man they had known. All this was work. The idle man, lazy in a drunken carouse, is in a world of his own. His sphere stretches out no connecting tendrils to the spheres of others; he seems to Us dead in spirit; he will tell you he believes in no one's true friends.h.i.+p, and wishes for no companions.h.i.+p; we do not know how to touch his heart, nor in what language to make him hear when we call,--he is in Mars.

But the sentinel, still as marble, or moving like a well-adjusted machine that will not defy law--he stirs us by his energy, his laboring vigilance. His care for others would make him surrender his life at once. The trusted soldier has left selfishness and cowardice on the first tenting-ground, and works hard, though he stands statue-like. It is his business to be of use, and he is never useless. So with a great artist. He is brother to gentleman or churl.

Hawthorne had not an atom of the poison of contempt. As I have said before, if he did not love stupidity, he forgave it.

He was fond of using his hands for work, too; and he had skill in whatever he did. His activity of this manual sort may be inferred from the fact that when a young man he gradually whittled away one of the leaves of his writing-table, while musing over his stories. He did not know, unpleasantly, that he was doing it. What fun he must have had!

Think of the rich scenery of thought that spread about him, the people, the subtle motives, the eerie truths, the entrancing outlooks into divine beauty, that entertained him as his sharp blade carved and sliced his table, which gladly gave itself up to such destruction!

When he was writing "The Scarlet Letter," as Julian's nurse Dora long delighted to tell, his wife with her dainty care in sewing was making the little boy a s.h.i.+rt of the finest linen, and was putting in one sleeve, while the other lay on the table. Dora saw Hawthorne, who was reading, lay down his book and take up something which he proceeded to cut into shreds with some small scissors that exactly suited him.

"Where can the little sleeve be which I finished, and wished to sew in here, my love?" said his blissful wife. Hawthorne (blissfully thinking of his novel) only half heard the question; but on the table was a heap of delicate linen shavings, and the new scissors testified over them.