CHAPTER X: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Sainte-Beuve says somewhere that it is impossible to speak of "The GermanClassics." Perhaps he would not have allowed us to talk of the Americanclassics. American literature is too nearly contemporary. Time has nottried it. But, if America possesses a classic author (and I am notdenying that she may have several), that author is decidedly Hawthorne.His renown is unimpeached: his greatness is probably permanent, becausehe is at once such an original and personal genius, and such a judiciousand determined artist.
Hawthorne did not set himself to "compete with life." He did not makethe effort--the proverbially tedious effort--to say everything. To hismind, fiction was not a mirror of commonplace persons, and he was not theanalyst of the minutest among their ordinary emotions. Nor did he make amoral, or social, or political purpose the end and aim of his art. Moralas many of his pieces naturally are, we cannot call them didactic. Hedid not expect, nor intend, to better people by them. He drew the Rev.Arthur Dimmesdale without hoping that his Awful Example would persuadereaders to "make a clean breast" of their iniquities and their secrets.It was the moral situation that interested him, not the edifying effectof his picture of that situation upon the minds of novel-readers.
He set himself to write Romance, with a definite idea of what Romance-writing should be; "to dream strange things, and make them look liketruth." Nothing can be more remote from the modern system of reportingcommonplace things, in the hope that they will read like truth. As allpainters must do, according to good traditions, he selected a subject,and then placed it in a deliberately arranged light--not in the fullglare of the noonday sun, and in the disturbances of wind, and weather,and cloud. Moonshine filling a familiar chamber, and making itunfamiliar, moonshine mixed with the "faint ruddiness on walls andceiling" of fire, was the light, or a clear brown twilight was the lightby which he chose to work. So he tells us in the preface to "The ScarletLetter." The room could be filled with the ghosts of old dwellers in it;faint, yet distinct, all the life that had passed through it came back,and spoke with him, and inspired him. He kept his eyes on these figures,tangled in some rare knot of Fate, and of Desire: these he painted, notattending much to the bustle of existence that surrounded them, notpermitting superfluous elements to mingle with them, and to distract him.
The method of Hawthorne can be more easily traced than that of mostartists as great as himself. Pope's brilliant passages and disconnectedtrains of thought are explained when we remember that "paper-sparing," ashe says, he wrote two, or four, or six couplets on odd, stray bits ofcasual writing material. These he had to join together, somehow, andbetween his "Orient Pearls at Random Strung" there is occasionally "toomuch string," as Dickens once said on another opportunity. Hawthorne'smethod is revealed in his published note-books. In these he jotted thegerm of an idea, the first notion of a singular, perhaps supernaturalmoral situation. Many of these he never used at all, on others he woulddream, and dream, till the persons in the situations became characters,and the thing was evolved into a story. Thus he may have invented such aproblem as this: "The effect of a great, sudden sin on a simple andjoyous nature," and thence came all the substance of "The Marble Faun"("Transformation"). The original and germinal idea would naturallydivide itself into another, as the protozoa reproduce themselves. Anotheridea was the effect of nearness to the great crime on a pure and spotlessnature: hence the character of Hilda. In the preface to "The ScarletLetter," Hawthorne shows us how he tried, by reflection and dream, towarm the vague persons of the first mere notion or hint into such life ascharacters in romance inherit. While he was in the Civil Service of hiscountry, in the Custom House at Salem, he could not do this; he neededfreedom. He was dismissed by political opponents from office, andinstantly he was himself again, and wrote his most popular and, perhaps,his best book. The evolution of his work was from the prime notion(which he confessed that he loved best when "strange") to the shortstory, and thence to the full and rounded novel. All his work wasleisurely. All his language was picked, though not with affectation. Hedid not strive to make a style out of the use of odd words, or offamiliar words in odd places. Almost always he looked for "a kind ofspiritual medium, seen through which" his romances, like the Old Manse inwhich he dwelt, "had not quite the aspect of belonging to the materialworld."
The spiritual medium which he liked, he was partly born into, and partlyhe created it. The child of a race which came from England, robust andPuritanic, he had in his veins the blood of judges--of those judges whoburned witches and persecuted Quakers. His fancy is as much influencedby the old fanciful traditions of Providence, of Witchcraft, of hauntingIndian magic, as Scott's is influenced by legends of foray and feud, byballad, and song, and old wives' tales, and records of conspiracies, fire-raisings, tragic love-adventures, and border wars. Like Scott, Hawthornelived in phantasy--in phantasy which returned to the romantic past,wherein his ancestors had been notable men. It is a commonplace, but aninevitable commonplace, to add that he was filled with the idea ofHeredity, with the belief that we are all only new combinations of ourfathers that were before us. This has been made into a kind of pseudo-scientific doctrine by M. Zola, in the long series of his Rougon-Macquartnovels. Hawthorne treated it with a more delicate and a serener art in"The House of the Seven Gables."
It is curious to mark Hawthorne's attempts to break away fromhimself--from the man that heredity, and circumstance, and the divinegift of genius had made him. He naturally "haunts the mouldering lodgesof the past"; but when he came to England (where such lodges areabundant), he was ill-pleased and cross-grained. He knew that a longpast, with mysteries, dark places, malisons, curses, historic wrongs, wasthe proper atmosphere of his art. But a kind of conscientious desire tobe something other than himself--something more ordinary and popular--makehim thank Heaven that his chosen atmosphere was rare in his native land.He grumbled at it, when he was in the midst of it; he grumbled inEngland; and how he grumbled in Rome! He permitted the American Eagle tomake her nest in his bosom, "with the customary infirmity of temper thatcharacterises this unhappy fowl," as he says in his essay "The CustomHouse." "The general truculency of her attitude" seems to "threatenmischief to the inoffensive community" of Europe, and especially ofEngland and Italy.
Perhaps Hawthorne travelled too late, when his habits were too muchfixed. It does not become Englishmen to be angry because a voyager isannoyed at not finding everything familiar and customary in lands whichhe only visits because they are strange. This is an inconsistency towhich English travellers are particularly prone. But it is, inHawthorne's case, perhaps, another instance of his conscientious attemptsto be, what he was not, very much like other people. His unexpectedexplosions of Puritanism, perhaps, are caused by the sense of being toomuch himself. He speaks of "the Squeamish love of the Beautiful" as ifthe love of the Beautiful were something unworthy of an able-bodiedcitizen. In some arts, as in painting and sculpture, his taste was veryfar from being at home, as his Italian journals especially prove. Inshort, he was an artist in a community for long most inartistic. Hecould not do what many of us find very difficult--he could not takeBeauty with gladness as it comes, neither shrinking from it as immoral,nor getting girlishly drunk upon it, in the aesthetic fashion, andscreaming over it in an intoxication of surprise. His tendency was to berather shy and afraid of Beauty, as a pleasant but not immaculatelyrespectable acquaintance. Or, perhaps, he was merely deferring to Anglo-Saxon public opinion.
Possibly he was trying to wean himself from himself, and from his owngenius, when he consorted with odd amateur socialists in farm-work, andwhen he mixed, at Concord, with the "queer, strangely-dressed,oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves to be importantagents of the world's destiny, yet were simple bores of a very intensewater." They haunted Mr. Emerson as they haunted Shelley, and Hawthornehad to see much of them. But they neither made a convert of him, norirritated him into resentment. His long-enduring kindness to theunfortunate
Miss Delia Bacon, an early believer in the nonsense aboutBacon and Shakespeare, was a model of manly and generous conduct. Hewas, indeed, an admirable character, and his goodness had the bloom on itof a courteous and kindly nature that loved the Muses. But, as one hasventured to hint, the development of his genius and taste was hamperednow and then, apparently, by a desire to put himself on the level of thegeneral public, and of their ideas. This, at least, is how one explainsto oneself various remarks in his prefaces, journals, and note-books.This may account for the moral allegories which too weirdly haunt some ofhis short, early pieces. Edgar Poe, in a passage full of very honest andwell-chosen praise, found fault with the allegorical business.
Mr. Hutton, from whose "Literary Essays" I borrow Poe's opinion, says:"Poe boldly asserted that the conspicuously ideal scaffoldings ofHawthorne's stories were but the monstrous fruits of the badtranscendental atmosphere which he breathed so long." But I hope thisway of putting it is not Poe's. "Ideal scaffoldings," are odd enough,but when scaffoldings turn out to be "fruits" of an "atmosphere," andmonstrous fruits of a "bad transcendental atmosphere," the brain reels inthe fumes of mixed metaphors. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, "get abottle of visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott," and,in fact, write about things less impalpable, as Mr. Mallock's heroinepreferred to be loved, "in a more human sort of way."
Hawthorne's way was never too ruddily and robustly human. Perhaps, evenin "The Scarlet Letter," we feel too distinctly that certain charactersare moral conceptions, not warmed and wakened out of the allegorical intothe real. The persons in an allegory may be real enough, as Bunyan hasproved by examples. But that culpable clergyman, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale,with his large, white brow, his melancholy eyes, his hand on his heart,and his general resemblance to the High Church Curate in Thackeray's "OurStreet," is he real? To me he seems very unworthy to be Hester's lover,for she is a beautiful woman of flesh and blood. Mr. Dimmesdale was notonly immoral; he was unsportsmanlike. He had no more pluck than a church-mouse. His miserable passion was degraded by its brevity; how could hesee this woman's disgrace for seven long years, and never pluck up hearteither to share her shame or _peccare forliter_? He is a lay figure,very cleverly, but somewhat conventionally made and painted. Thevengeful husband of Hester, Roger Chillingworth, is a Mr. Casaubon stunginto jealous anger. But his attitude, watching ever by Dimmesdale,tormenting him, and yet in his confidence, and ever unsuspected, remindsone of a conception dear to Dickens. He uses it in "David Copperfield,"where Mr. Micawber (of all people!) plays this trick on Uriah Heep; heuses it in "Hunted Down"; he was about using it in "Edwin Drood"; he usedit (old Martin and Pecksniff) in "Martin Chuzzlewit." The person ofRoger Chillingworth and his conduct are a little too melodramatic forHawthorne's genius.
In Dickens's manner, too, is Hawthorne's long sarcastic address to JudgePyncheon (in "The House of the Seven Gables"), as the judge sits dead inhis chair, with his watch ticking in his hand. Occasionally a chanceremark reminds one of Dickens; this for example: He is talking of large,black old books of divinity, and of their successors, tiny books,Elzevirs perhaps. "These little old volumes impressed me as if they hadbeen intended for very large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted atan early stage of their growth." This might almost deceive the elect asa piece of the true Boz. Their widely different talents did reallyintersect each other where the perverse, the grotesque, and the terribledwell.
To myself "The House of the Seven Gables" has always appeared the mostbeautiful and attractive of Hawthorne's novels. He actually gives us alove story, and condescends to a pretty heroine. The curse of "Maule'sBlood" is a good old romantic idea, terribly handled. There is more oflightness, and of a cobwebby dusty humour in Hepzibah Pyncheon, thedecayed lady shopkeeper, than Hawthorne commonly cares to display. Doyou care for the "first lover," the Photographer's Young Man? It may beconventional prejudice, but I seem to see him going about on a tricycle,and I don't think him the right person for Phoebe. Perhaps it is reallythe beautiful, gentle, oppressed Clifford who haunts one's memory most, akind of tragic and thwarted Harold Skimpole. "How pleasant, howdelightful," he murmured, but not as if addressing any one. "Will itlast? How balmy the atmosphere through that open window! An openwindow! How beautiful that play of sunshine. Those flowers, how veryfragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, how blooming. A flowerwith the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dewdrops . . . " This comparisonwith Skimpole may sound like an unkind criticism of Clifford's characterand place in the story--it is only a chance note of a chance resemblance.
Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was aware of the resemblance."An individual of Clifford's character," he remarks, "can always bepricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmoniousthan through his heart." And he suggests that, if Clifford had not beenso long in prison, his aesthetic zeal "might have eaten out or filed awayhis affections." This was what befell Harold Skimpole--himself "inprisons often"--at Coavinses! The Judge Pyncheon of the tale is also amasterly study of swaggering black-hearted respectability, and then, inaddition to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his hauntedair, Hawthorne favours us with a brave conclusion of the good sort, theold sort. They come into money, they marry, they are happy ever after.This is doing things handsomely, though some of our modern noveliststhink it coarse and degrading. Hawthorne did not think so, and they arenot exactly better artists than Hawthorne.
Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I do not mean his nottelling us what it was that Roger Chillingworth saw on ArthurDimmesdale's bare breast. To leave that vague is quite legitimate. Butwhat had Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done? Who was thespectre? What did he want? To have told all this would have been betterthan to fill the novel with padding about Rome, sculpture, and the Ethicsof Art. As the silly saying runs: "the people has a right to know" aboutMiriam and her ghostly acquaintance. {10} But the "Marble Faun" is notof Hawthorne's best period, beautiful as are a hundred passages in thetale.
Beautiful passages are as common in his prose as gold in the richestquartz. How excellent are his words on the first faint but certainbreath of Autumn in the air, felt, perhaps, early in July. "And thencame Autumn, with his immense burthen of apples, dropping themcontinually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged along." Keatsmight have written so of Autumn in the orchards--if Keats had beenwriting prose.
There are geniuses more sunny, large, and glad than Hawthorne's, nonemore original, more surefooted, in his own realm of moonlight andtwilight.