Journeys Through Bookland Volume Iv Part 16

(b) He was gay and joyful, for he smiled as he dismounted from his horse, and he smiled as he fell dead.

(c) That he was strong-willed, we know; for his tightly compressed lips held back the blood, and he concealed his suffering.

(d) He was courageous: he put the flag in the market place, as we are told in the fourth stanza.

(e) He was ambitious, we know; for it satisfied his heart's desire to win Ratisbon.

(f) He was proud, else he would not have noticed that the emperor called him wounded. Had it been a mere wound, he would never have fallen.

2. At different places in the poem, we find that Napoleon was _ambitious_, yet _anxious_ over the outcome of the battle; that he was _thoughtful_ and _resourceful_; that while he _rejoiced_ in his victory, he _sympathized_ with the wounded boy.

IV. THE STAGE

The poem is like a little drama or play in one scene. Place Napoleon in his uniform on a little mound, and see him standing there with his head thrust forward, looking at the storming of a city a mile or so away.

Things are indistinct in the background because the smoke of the battle obscures the walls and towers of the city. However, Napoleon is not so far away but that he hears the roar, and sees the denser clouds rise at each new discharge of battery guns. From between the clouds comes the single horse with its youthful rider galloping at full speed, without an instant's pause, until the mound is reached. We see the young man leap from his horse and grasp its mane to keep himself from falling, but though his lips are compressed, we see his eyes smiling brightly as he tells the emperor the great news.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

_By_ GHACE E. SELLON

One of the most daring of those who engaged in the sea-fights of the American Revolution was Daniel Hawthorne, commander of a privateer, a man whose courage and enterprise won for him the t.i.tle of "Bold Daniel." He came of one of the earliest American families, one that had been established in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1637, and had contributed not a little to the fame of that seaport, for his ancestors had been leaders among those whose stern and narrow views of justice had led them to persecute the Quakers and later to put to death innocent people during the awful period of the Salem witchcraft. Yet the same hardihood and fearless uprightness that had won esteem for Daniel Hawthorne had distinguished the family from the very first, and was pa.s.sed on to the brave commander's descendants. His son Nathaniel, like the long line of notable men who had gone before him, possessed a strict sense of right and wrong, much courage and an especial fondness for the adventurous life on the sea. Though he contributed nothing to the celebrity of his forefathers, his son and namesake, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, born in Salem, on July 4, 1804, gained for the old New England family a glory that will last.

It was in the home built by his father's father that Nathaniel was born and that he spent the first four years of his life. Yet he was never privileged to hear from the old captain's lips of the exciting sea- skirmishes in which the "Fair America," under the command of "Bold Daniel," had encountered and held her own against British vessels, for his grandfather had died many years before. Nor did the young boy ever know the pleasure of companionship with his father, who died in South America in 1808. In a great measure, too, he was deprived of a.s.sociation with his mother from the time when, following her husband's death, she removed with her children to her father's home, in another part of Salem. So deeply did she feel her loss that she shut herself away from the world during the remainder of her lifetime, and kept such strict privacy that she did not even take her meals with her family.

The children were naturally quiet and reserved, and with the example of their mother's seclusion always before them, they took little part in the life outside of their home. Nathaniel did not like school, and, being under the care of relatives who allowed him much freedom, he missed a considerable part of the early school training that most boys receive. Yet his time was not wasted, for there were good books in his home, and these he read of his own free will.

When he was about eight or nine years of age, his mother took her children to live for a time upon property owned by her family on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Sebago, in Maine. Then began a period of great delight for the young boy and his sisters. As the land was mostly covered with woods and the settlements were far apart, there were endless opportunities for fishing and hunting and roaming about the woods or spending long, uninterrupted hours with favorite authors. In the winter Nathaniel pa.s.sed much time in skating on Lake Sebago, feeling wholly free and at home in the midst of the wild life of nature.

So far as the boy's wishes were concerned, these days in Maine might have continued indefinitely; but his mother, feeling that he needed the discipline of regular study, sent him back to Salem to be prepared by a private teacher for entrance into Bowdoin College. The result of this training was that when he was about eighteen he became a member of the cla.s.s at Bowdoin to which Longfellow and Horatio Bridge belonged, and thus began a career at college in which he proved himself a somewhat wayward student. The grind and drudgery of courses uninteresting to him he shunned, yet he would not let himself fail in any work that he undertook. Subjects that he liked he mastered readily.

Though he found no pleasure in breaking college rules, yet he made no pretensions to being a model student. He played cards in his room when he might have been studying, and would go off on a fishing trip when the fancy took him, without much regard for unfinished lessons. He looked forward with undisguised pleasure to his vacations spent at home, and on one occasion was so overcome by his desire to bring his studies to an end and leave Brunswick that, a short time before the close of the term, he wrote to his sister Louisa demanding that she invent an excuse for his return home. After stating five reasons for thus quitting Bowdoin, he continued:

"If you are at a loss for an excuse, say that mother is out of health; or that Uncle R. is going a journey on account of his health, and wishes me to attend him; or that Elizabeth is on a visit at some distant place, and wishes me to come and bring her home; or that George Archer has just arrived from sea, and is to sail again immediately, and wishes to see me before he goes; or that some of my relations are to die or be married, and my presence is necessary on the occasion. And lastly, if none of these excuses will suit you, and you can think of no other, write and order me to come home without any. If you do not, I shall certainly forge a letter, for I will be at home within a week.

Write the very day you receive this. If Elizabeth were at home, she would be at no loss for a good excuse. If you will do what I tell you, I shall be Your affectionate brother, NATH. HAWTHORNE.

"My want of decent clothes will prevent my calling at Mrs. Sutton's.

Write immediately, write immediately, write immediately.

"Haste, haste, post-haste, ride and run, until these shall be delivered. You must and shall and will do as I desire. If you can think of a true excuse, send it; if not, any other will answer the same purpose. If I do not get a letter by Monday, or Tuesday at farthest, I will leave Brunswick without liberty."

It is an interesting fact that this impetuous young student was regarded as the finest-looking man at Bowdoin. He was not much less than six feet tall, and was strong, supple and well proportioned. His dark hair waved back from a handsomely formed face; and his deep blue eyes, under their heavy brows, impressed one with their remarkable brightness and expressiveness.

Though it may seem surprising, it is true that Nathaniel Hawthorne was not at all conscious in his early youth of the great possibilities that lay in him to become a writer, and that not until he had advanced in his college course did he form the purpose of making literature a profession. As early as sixteen years of age he had written verses that had been published; yet he was far from believing that he had poetic power. That he did not at this time take very seriously his ability as a writer, may be judged from this pa.s.sage in a letter to his mother written in March, 1821:

"I am quite reconciled to going to college, since I am to spend the vacations with you. Yet four years of the best part of my life is a great deal to throw away. I have not yet concluded what profession I shall have.

"The being a minister is of course out of the question. I should not think that even you could desire me to choose so dull a way of life.

Oh, no, mother, I was not born to vegetate forever in one place, and to live and die as calm and tranquil as--a puddle of water.

"As to lawyers, there are so many of them already that one half of them (upon a moderate calculation) are in a state of actual starvation.

"A physician, then, seems to be 'Hobson's choice;' but yet I should not like to live by the diseases and infirmities of my fellow-creatures.

And it would weigh very heavily on my conscience, in the course of my practice, if I should chance to send any unlucky patient 'ad inferum,'

which being interpreted is, 'to the realms below.' Oh that I was rich enough to live without a profession!

"What do you think of my becoming an author, and relying for support upon my pen? Indeed, I think the illegibility of my handwriting is very author-like. How proud you would feel to see my works praised by the reviewers, as equal to the proudest productions of the scribbling sons of John Bull. But authors are always poor devils, and therefore Satan may take them. I am in the same predicament as the honest gentleman in 'Espriella's Letters,'--

'I am an Englishman, and naked I stand here, A-musing in my mind what garment I shall wear.'"

However, by the time of his graduation from Bowdoin College he had laid aside his jesting and doubt, and in the following period of remarkable seclusion spent in his mother's home in Salem he gave himself to the work of composition. Thirteen years he pa.s.sed thus in a sort of ideal world, so shut away from his neighbors that they scarcely knew of his existence.

Hawthorne always felt that these years of seclusion were peculiarly significant in his life, in that they enabled him to keep, as he said, "the dews of his youth and the freshness of his heart." Still, he realized that he had been much deceived in fancying that there, in his solitary chamber, he could imagine all pa.s.sions, all feelings and states of the heart and mind.

Of all that was written in these years the author gave out for publication only the romance _Fanshawe,_ which he regarded later as a very inferior production, and the various stories published at length in the collection known as _Twice Told Tales._ Fame came very slowly. Though the worth of these writings was discovered by people of good literary judgment, it was not of the kind to make them widely popular. Sometimes the young author was so overcome by discouragement that it would seem as if only the confidence in his final success felt by his friends could save him from despair.

Relief from this situation came in a most wholesome way. In 1839 George Bancroft secured for Hawthorne a position as weigher and gauger in the Boston Customhouse, and thus his lonely life of brooding came to an end. In discharging his duties he came into much-needed everyday contact with practical men and affairs. This office he held for two years until the Whigs won the presidential election and the Democrats went out of power. Meanwhile he had written _Grandfather's Chair,_ a collection of children's stories concerning early New England history.

Somewhat previous to the appointment to the office in the Customhouse had taken place an event which was even more full of important meaning.

While he was living in Salem he had become acquainted with the Peabody family and in their home had met the young woman who later became his wife, and who brought into his life the powerful influence for good that more than anything else developed the fine qualities of his nature and drew forth his powers as a writer. He had preferred to live hidden away from every one if he must give up the beauty and purity of the thought-world for the harshness and ugliness of the actual world without. But in his a.s.sociation with Sophia Peabody his faith in the reality that lay back of his beautiful visions was so strengthened that he felt a deep peace and joy never known to him before. The loveliness of her character is shown in her letters, and it is not surprising that Hawthorne should on one occasion write, in response to a letter from her, "I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace overflows from your heart into mine. Then I feel that there is a Now, and that Now must be always calm and happy, and that sorrow and evil are but phantoms that seem to flit across it."

In the summer of 1842 Hawthorne and Miss Peabody were married and went to live in the "Old Manse," in Concord. In the preceding year he had unfortunately invested money in a settlement known as the Brook Farm, where people of different cla.s.ses of society were to live together on an equality, all sharing alike the duties of the farm life, and all contributing to the expenses of the common living. The experiment proved a failure and Hawthorne withdrew disgusted. With this hope of providing for himself and his wife destroyed, he found it necessary to work industriously, and as a result a new series of stories for children, the _Mosses from an Old Manse_, appeared in 1846.

In the same year he was made surveyor of the collection of revenue at the Salem Customhouse. Then for a time he ceased to write, until his discovery among some rubbish in the customhouse of an old ma.n.u.script that gave him excellent material for a greater work of fiction than he had ever before attempted, called him back to literary effort. The actual composition of the book was not begun, however, until the day on which Hawthorne lost his position as surveyor.

When he made known this unfortunate event to his wife, instead of becoming depressed, she exclaimed joyfully, "Oh, then, you can write your book!" and a little later, pulling open a drawer, showed him a considerable sum of money that she had been saving all unknown to him.

Thus it became possible for him to devote himself to the work that proved to be his masterpiece, _The Scarlet Letter,_ published in 1850.

The unusual excellence of the romance brought to the writer far-spread praise and popularity, and he became at length recognized as a foremost American man of letters.

The Hawthornes now went to live at Lenox, in the mountains of western Ma.s.sachusetts. In their delightful home in this place the novelist produced a second great romance, _The House of the Seven Gables,_ and then gave up four months to rest. This vacation was largely a playtime spent with his two older children, Una and Julian, the younger daughter Rose being then only a baby. He had worked so hard that he was ready for plenty of fun, and this he and his two young playfellows found in excursions for wild flowers or nuts, in bathing in the lake or sending over its surface home-made toy sail-boats, in romping through the woods or reading or story-telling. After this happy period it is not surprising that Hawthorne should have written easily and with enjoyment the _Wonder Book_ for children, a simple and entertaining series of stories in which old legends are put into attractive new forms.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAYSIDE, HAWTHORNE'S HOME AT CONCORD]

After the removal from Lenox in 1851, the family stayed for a short time in West Newton, where _The Blithedale Romance_ was written, and then settled at the Wayside, the second of the famous homes of Hawthorne in Concord. Not long afterward were published the _Tanglewood Tales_, which continue the _Wonder Book_ series; and a biography of his intimate friend, Franklin Pierce. When in 1853 Pierce became president of the United States, he appointed Hawthorne to be the consul at Liverpool, England, and thus came to an end the quiet life at Concord.

The publicity into which Hawthorne's duties as consul brought him was very disagreeable to one of his retiring disposition. He could feel at ease only among those whose gentle and sensitive natures responded to his own; hence attendance at formal dinners, speech making and other social obligations that forced him often into the company of more or less uncongenial people, seemed scarcely bearable to him. It was with relief then, that he resigned the consulate in 1857 and went to live in southern Europe. The greater part of his time until his return to America in 1860 was pa.s.sed in Italy, and near Florence was written the last of his celebrated romances, _The Marble Faun_.

During the four remaining years of his life, spent at the Wayside, in Concord, Hawthorne's strength gradually ebbed away. Nevertheless, he was able to produce _Our Old Home,_ in which he described scenes from English life, as well as _Septimus Felton_ and parts of two other romances. In 1864, while traveling for his health through southern New Hampshire with his friend Franklin Pierce, Hawthorne died in the quiet, sudden way in which he had hoped that he should pa.s.s from earth. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where a simple headstone marks his grave.

As the cheerfulness and simple beauty of Hawthorne's stories for children are as light among the gloom and sadness that overshadowed his works for older people, so his love for children and his delight in their companionship illumine his character and bring into view his rare gentleness and purity of nature. In recalling the days when she was a little girl, his daughter Rose has told us:

"My father's enjoyment of frolicking fun was as hilarious as that accorded by some of us to wildest comic opera. He had a delicate way of throwing himself into the scrimmage of laughter, and I do not for an instant attempt to explain how he managed it. I can say that he lowered his eyelids when he laughed hardest, and drew in his breath half a dozen times with dulcet sounds and a murmur of mirth between. Before and after this performance he would look at you straight from under his black brows, and his eyes seemed dazzling. I think the hilarity was revealed in them, although his cheeks rounded in ecstasy. I was a little roguish child, but he was the youngest and merriest person in the room when he was amused."

Though the suffering and wrong that he saw in the world deeply perplexed and saddened him, yet he found so much of happier meaning in life and expressed this with such marvelous power and grace that no one to-day holds a worthier place in American literature. That no successor can take this place nor imitate the subtle beauty of his style, we feel to be true as we read the lines written by the poet Longfellow, just after the death of Hawthorne:

"Now I look back, and meadow, manse and stream Dimly my thought defines; I only see--a dream within a dream-- The hill-top hea.r.s.ed with pines.