Memories of Hawthorne Part 14

A. BRONSON ALCOTT.

P. S. I have read Carlyle's "Schiller." You re-utter my conceptions at the time. You are very kind to propose copying the Young Christ [for Mr. Alcott's schoolroom]. The original is a borrowed one, and a copy would be useful.

September 12, 1836.

DEAR FRIEND,--I was glad to hear from you again, for I find my thoughts often dwelling on you. The sympathy of spirits is the heart's undersong, and its warblings are heard in the quiet hours of solitude, as if they were from the soft voices of celestial choirs. Music reaches us from the distance, amid the discordant noises of the External. Your remarks on de Maistre have interested me in the book.'

Mr. Brownson [afterwards famous as a Catholic writer] takes it to-day, and I shall have the interesting pa.s.sages from him. If you have a copy of the "Valley of Solitude" [one of my mother's original allegories]

will you send it? I am under the impression that you preserved portions of the "Valley," and intended to recall and write out the remainder at your leisure. Now, don't attempt this, because Mr.

Thacher wants it for his "Boston Book," but simply tell me how much is preserved. . . . Have you seen Mr. Emerson's "Nature"? If you have not, let me send you a copy. It is a divine poem on the External. It is just to your taste. . . . It reminds me more of Sampson Reid's "Growth of the Mind" than any work of modern date. But it is unlike any other work. I send you Mr. Brownson's notice of it. Mr. Brownson gave us two splendid discourses lately. Surely this man is a terror to pseudo-ministers and would-be philosophers. He is one of the most eloquent preachers. He grapples with the highest truths and deepest wants of our being, and spreads these before the reason as with a light from heaven. He will write to you soon. With great regard,

A. BRONSON ALCOTT.

Emerson in the same year responded to a gift of some drawings which my mother had made for him, in these kind and thoughtful sentences:--

MY DEAR MISS SOPHIA,--I beg you to accept my thanks for the beautiful drawings you have sent me. . . . I shall keep them as a treasure to be shown to all my friends who have good or capable eyes, that they may rejoice with me in the power of the artist. From these fair forms I hope to receive many a wise suggestion, many a silent reproof. . . .

Your obliged friend and servant, R. WALDO EMERSON.

And later:--

CONCORD, January 20, 1838.

You make me heartily ashamed, my kind friend, by the excess of your praise of two such little books. I could not possibly recognize anything of me in your glowing and pictorial words. So I take it for granted that as a true artist you have the beauty-making eye, which transfigures the landscape and the heads it looks upon, and can read poetry out of dull prose. I am not the less glad to have been the occasion to you of pleasant thoughts, and I delight in the genuine admiration you express of that ideal beauty which haunts us ever and makes actual life look sometimes like the coa.r.s.est caricature. I like very well what you say of Flaxman, and shall give him the greater heed. And indeed who can see the works of a great artist without feeling that not so much the private as the common wealth is by him indicated. I think the true soul--humble, rapt, conspiring with all, regards all souls as its lieutenants and proxies--itself in another place--and saith of the Parthenon, of the picture, of the poem,--It is also my work. I can never quarrel with your state of mind concerning original attempts in your own art. I admire it rather. And I am pained to think of the grievous resistance which your genius has been so long tasked to overcome, of bodily suffering.

You ask for my lectures. I wish they were fit to send. They should go immediately to Salem if they were. I have not allowed one of them to go in ma.n.u.script out of my family. The first one of the course, which is the most presentable, I will cheerfully lend you whenever I can get time to patch his coat a little. It is, however, already promised to two persons.

I thank you for the beautiful little drawing you sent me of Perseus.

It is admired of all beholders. Tell your sister Elizabeth that her account of Mr. Very interested me much, and I have already begged Mr.

Whiting to bring him to our Lyceum, and he promised his good offices to get him here.

R. W. EMERSON.

A letter mentions a medallion which Mrs. Hawthorne had made of Charles Emerson, after his death:--

CONCORD, May 18, 1840.

MY DEAR Miss SOPHIA,--I have begged Mr. Garey to call on you to-day for the medallion to go to Waterford, and the one for New York, if ready . . . one of which I wish to send to Mr. Abel Adams.

Elizabeth [h.o.a.r] is very well content with the cast, though she thinks it has lost some of the precision, as well as the agreeable tint, of the clay. All our friends find the likeness--some of them slowly--but all at last. We all count it a beautiful possession; the gift of a Muse, and not the less valuable that it was so unexpected. You must now gratify us all by fixing a time when you will come to Concord and hear what we have to say of it.

Will you not come hither the last week of this month, or the second week in June? If neither of these dates suits you, you shall choose any day thereafter, only do not fail us.

Your friend and servant,

R. W. EMERSON.

When arranging to escort the young artist to Concord for the proposed visit, he proceeds:--

. . . In regard to certain expressions in your letter, I ought to say, you will presently be undeceived. Though I am fond of writing, and of public speaking, I am a very poor talker and for the most part very much prefer silence. Of Charles's beautiful talent in that art I have had no share; but our common friend, Mr. Alcott, the prince of conversers, lives little more than a mile from our house, and we will call in his aid, as we often do, to make amends for our deficiency, when you come. . . . Will you say to your sister Elizabeth that I received her kind letter relating to certain high matters, which I have not yet been in the vein to answer,--indeed, I dream that she knows all my answer to that question,--has it ready in her rich suggestion, and only waits for mine to see how well they will tally. I have laid the letter by, shall presently read it again, and if I have anything material, I will write. With great regard, yours,

R. W. EMERSON.

CONCORD, April 20, 1841.

MY DEAR Miss SOPHIA,--Will you accept from my sister Elizabeth h.o.a.r and me the few accompanying prints?

A word of apology must go with them. Elizabeth and I sent, last summer, by a gentleman who was going to Europe, an order for a few prints of pictures of Raffaelle and Michel Angelo (specifying particularly the Prophets and Sibyls of Michel), with the hope that we might receive something fit to send you. Our agent was less acquainted with these matters than we supposed; still, we hope they will not be quite without value in your studio, as we have both of us found something to admire in these stern drawings. The Transfiguration is a more spirited copy than most that I have seen, though the princ.i.p.al figure seems never to be quite well copied. Here is a Virgin of Leonardo da Vinci and one from Correggio.

Will you have the goodness to thank your sister Elizabeth for the fine statement she has given the Englishwoman [Miss Martineau] of the enterprise we are all so proud of; and I can easily suppose the colonists were content with the portrait. She has in a note propounded to me certain questions which and the like of which I always fancy one can answer with a word, as they arise;--but to answer them with the pen, one must sit like Simmides from month to month, from year to year. With great regard,

Your friend and servant,

R. WALDO EMERSON.

Elizabeth h.o.a.r wishes to keep the Martineau letter a day or two longer. I am also to thank your sister Elizabeth for the summons to the torchlight exhibition, which however I could not easily obey.

A fragment, of most informal import, but exemplifying Emerson's quaint agility of expression, written about 1843, runs:--

Do not be chagrined, and excellent lady, if I should demand interest in advance for my loan; but if possibly I can get my errands ready, I shall stop the pa.s.sing coach, and load you with freight and commissions; not compliments and congratulations, merely. Do not misconceive me--but messages relative to merest ch.o.r.es. And so with thanks,

Yours, R. W. E.

Margaret Fuller d'Ossoli expresses herself, at the time of my parents'

marriage, as thoughtfully as the rest. Her personality never ceased to hover about Concord, even after her death. She is a part of its fascination:--

MY DEAR SOPHIA,--After reading your letter I wanted to write a few lines, as are not in such a hasty, interrupted fashion. Yet not much have I to say, for great occasions of bliss, of bane,--tell their own story, and we would not by unnecessary words come limping after the true sense. If ever mortal was secure of a pure and rational happiness which shall grow and extend into immortal life, I think it is you, for the love that binds you to him you love is wise and pure and religious; it is a love given not chosen, and the growth not of wants and wishes, but of the demands of character. Its whole scope and promise is very fair in my eyes; and in daily life as well as in the long account I think there will be great happiness; for if ever I saw a man who combined delicate tenderness to understand the heart of a woman, with quiet depth and manliness enough to satisfy her, it is Mr.

Hawthorne. . . . To one who cannot think of love merely in the heart, or even in the common destiny of two souls, but as necessarily comprehending intellectual friendship too, it seems the happiest lot imaginable that lies before you. . . . The whole earth is decked for a bridal. I see not a spot upon her full and gold-bespangled drapery.

All her perfumes breathe, and her eye glows with joy. . . . My affectionate remembrances to your friend. You rightly felt how glad I should be to be thought of in the happy hour. As far as bearing an intelligent heart, I think I deserve to be esteemed a friend. And thus in affection and prayer, dear Sophia,

Yours, MARGARET F.

A year or two later my father received the following letter from her:--

DEAR MR. HAWTHORNE,--You must not think I have any black design against your domestic peace. Neither am I the agent of any secret tribunal of the dagger and cord; nor am I commissioned by the malice of some baffled lover to make you wretched. Yet it may look so, when you find me once again, in defiance of my failure last summer, despite your letter of full exposition, once more attempting to mix a foreign element in your well compounded cup. But indeed, oh severest and most resolute man, these propositions are none of mine. How can I help it, if gentle souls, ill at ease elsewhere, wish to rest with you upon the margin of that sleepy stream? How can I help it if they choose me for an interpreter? [A suggestion is then made, for the second time, that my parents should admit a friend into the Old Manse as a boarder. The notion was sometimes alluded to by my mother in after-years with unfading horror.] I should like much to hear something about yourselves; what the genius loci says, whether through voice of ghost, or rat, or winter wind, or kettle-singing symphony to the happy duet; and whether by any chance you sometimes give a thought to your friend

MARGARET.