The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne Part 19

Petersburg, and a thorough artistic a.n.a.lysis of it is still one of the _desiderata_. The difference in expression, however, would seem to be in favor of the "Venus de Medici," as more in accordance with the ruling motive of the figure.

Miss Una Hawthorne had not sufficiently recovered to travel until the last of May, when they all set forth northward by way of Genoa and Ma.r.s.eilles, in which latter place we find them on the 28th, enjoying the comfort and elegance of a good French hotel. Thence they proceeded to Avignon, but did not find much to admire there except the Rhone; so they continued to Geneva, the most pleasant, homelike resting place in Europe, but quite deficient in other attractions.

It seems as if Hawthorne's Roman friends were somewhat remiss in not giving him better advice in regard to European travelling. At Geneva he was within a stone's throw of Chamounix, and hardly more than that of Strasburg Cathedral, and yet he visited neither. Why did he go out of his way to see so little and to miss so much? He went across the lake to visit Lausanne and the Castle of Chillon, and he was more than astonished at the view of the Pennine Alps from the deck of the steamer.

He had never imagined anything like it; and he might have said the same if he had visited Cologne Cathedral. Instead of that, however, he hurried through France again, with the intention of sailing for America the middle of July; but after reaching London he concluded to remain another year in England, to write his "Romance of Monte Beni," and obtain an English copyright for it.

He left Geneva on June 15, and as he turned his face northward, he felt that Henry Bright and Francis Bennoch were his only real friends in Great Britain. There could hardly have been a stronger contrast than these two. Bright was tall, slender, rather pale for an Englishman, grave and philosophical. Bennoch was short, plump, lively and jovial, with a ready fund of humor much in the style of d.i.c.kens, with whom he was personally acquainted. Yet Hawthorne recognized that Bright and Bennoch liked him for what he was, in and of himself, and not for his celebrity alone.

Bright was in London when Hawthorne reached there, and proposed that they should go together to call on Sumner, [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 223.] who had been cured from the effects of Brooks's a.s.sault by an equally heroic treatment; but Hawthorne objected that as neither of them was Lord Chancellor, Sumner would not be likely to pay them much attention; to which Bright replied, that Sumner had been very kind to him in America, and they accordingly went. Sumner was kind to thousands,--the kindest as well as the most upright man of his time,--and no one in America, except Longfellow, appreciated Hawthorne so well; but he was the champion of the anti-slavery movement and the inveterate opponent of President Pierce. I suppose a man's mind cannot help being colored somewhat by such conditions and influences.

Hawthorne wished for a quiet, healthful place, where he could write his romance without the disturbances that are incident to celebrity, and his friends recommended Redcar, on the eastern coast of Yorkshire, a town that otherwise Americans would not have heard of. He went there about the middle of July, remaining until the 5th of October, but of his life there we know nothing except that he must have worked a.s.siduously, for in that s.p.a.ce of time he nearly finished a book containing almost twice as many pages as "The Scarlet Letter." Meanwhile Mrs. Hawthorne entertained the children and kept them from interfering with their father (in his small cottage), by making a collection of sea-mosses, which Una and Julian gathered at low tides, and which their mother afterward dried and preserved on paper. On October 4th Una Hawthorne wrote to her aunt, Elizabeth Peabody:

"Our last day in Redcar, and a most lovely one it is. The sea seems to reproach us for leaving it. But I am glad we are going, for I feel so homesick that I want constant change to divert my thoughts. How troublesome feelings and affections are."

[Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 35 a.]

One can see that it was a pleasant place even after the days had begun to shorten, which they do very rapidly in northern England. From Redcar, Hawthorne went to Leamington, where he finished his romance about the first of December, and remained until some time in March, living quietly and making occasional pedestrian tours to neighboring towns. He was particularly fond of the walk to Warwick Castle, and of standing on the bridge which crosses the Avon, and gazing at the walls of the Castle, as they rise above the trees--"as fine a piece of English scenery as exists anywhere; the gray towers and long line of windows of the lordly castle, with a picturesquely varied outline; ancient strength, a little softened by decay." It is a view that has often been sketched, painted and engraved.

The romance was written, but had to be revised, the least pleasant portion of an author's duties,--unless he chooses to make the index himself. This required five or six weeks longer, after which Hawthorne went to London and arranged for its publication with Smith & Elder, who agreed to bring it out in three volumes--although two would have been quite sufficient; but according to English ideas, the length of a work of fiction adds to its importance. Unfortunately, Smith & Elder also desired to cater to the more prosaic cla.s.s of readers by changing the name of the romance from "The Marble Faun" to "Transformation," and they appear to have done this without consulting Hawthorne's wishes in the matter. It was simply squeezing the t.i.tle dry of all poetic suggestions; and it would have been quite as appropriate to change the name of "The Scarlet Letter" to "The Clergyman's Penance," or to call "The Blithedale Romance" "The Suicide of a Jilt." If Smith & Elder considered "The Marble Faun" too recondite a t.i.tle for the English public, what better name could they have hit upon than "The Romance of Monte Beni"? Would not the Count of Monte Beni be a cousin Italian, as it were, to the Count of Monte Cristo? We are thankful to observe that when Hawthorne published the book in America, he had his own way in regard to this point.

It was now that a new star was rising in the literary firmament, not of the "shooting" or transitory species, and the genius of Marian Evans (George Eliot) was casting its genial penetrating radiance over Great Britain and the United States. She was as difficult a person to meet with as Hawthorne himself, and they never saw one another; but a friend of Mr. Bennoch, who lived at Coventry, invited the Hawthornes there in the first week of February to meet Bennoch and others, and Marian Evans would seem to have been the chief subject of conversation at the table that evening. What Hawthorne gathered concerning her on that occasion he has preserved in this compact and discriminating statement:

"Miss Evans (who wrote 'Adam Bede') was the daughter of a steward, and gained her exact knowledge of English rural life by the connection with which this origin brought her with the farmers. She was entirely self-educated, and has made herself an admirable scholar in cla.s.sical as well as in modern languages. Those who knew her had always recognized her wonderful endowments, and only watched to see in what way they would develop themselves. She is a person of the simplest manners and character, amiable and unpretending, and Mrs. B---- spoke of her with great affection and respect."

There is actually more of the real George Eliot in this summary than in the three volumes of her biography by Mr. Cross.

Thorwaldsen's well-known simile in regard to the three stages of sculpture, the life, the death and the resurrection, also has its application to literature. The ma.n.u.script is the birth of an author's work, and its revision always seems like taking the life out of it; but when the proof comes, it is like a new birth, and he sees his design for the first time in its true proportions. Then he goes over it as the sculptor does his newly-cast bronze, smoothing the rough places and giving it those final touches which serve to make its expression clearer. Hawthorne was never more to be envied than while correcting the proof of "The Marble Faun" at Leamington. The book was given to the public at Easter-time; and there seems to have been only one person in England that appreciated it, even as a work of art--John Lothrop Motley.

The most distinguished reviewers wholly failed to catch the significance of it; and even Henry Bright, while warmly admiring the story, expressed a dissatisfaction at the conclusion of it,--although he could have found a notable precedent for that in Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister."

The _Sat.u.r.day Review_, a publication similar in tone to the New York _Nation_, said of "Transformation:"

[Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 250.]

"A mystery is set before us to unriddle; at the end the author turns round and asks us what is the good of solving it. That the impression of emptiness and un-meaningness thus produced is in itself a blemish to the work no one can deny. Mr. Hawthorne really trades upon the honesty of other writers. We feel a sort of interest in the story, slightly and sketchily as it is told, because our experience of other novels leads us to a.s.sume that, when an author pretends to have a plot, he has one."

The _Art Journal_ said of it: [Footnote: J. Hawthorne, ii. 249.]

"We are not to accept this book as a story; in that respect it is grievously deficient. The characters are utterly untrue to nature and to fact; they speak, all and always, the sentiments of the author; their words also are his; there is no one of them for which the world has furnished a model."

And the London _Athenaeum_ said: [Footnote: Ibid., ii. 244.]

"To Mr. Hawthorne truth always seems to arrive through the medium of the imagination.... His hero, the Count of Monte Beni, would never have lived had not the Faun of Praxiteles stirred the author's admiration....

The other characters, Mr. Hawthorne must bear to be told, are not new to a tale of his. Miriam, the mysterious, with her hideous tormentor, was indicated in the Zen.o.bia of 'The Blithedale Romance.' Hilda, the pure and innocent, is own cousin to Phoebe in 'The House of the Seven Gables'."

If the reviewer is to be reviewed, it is not too much to designate these criticisms as miserable failures. They are not even well written. Henry Bright seemed to be thankful that they were no worse, for he wrote to Hawthorne: "I am glad that sulky _Athenaeum_ was so civil; for they are equally powerful and unprincipled." The writer in the _Athenaeum_ evidently belonged to that cla.s.s of domineering critics who have no literary standing, but who, like bankers' clerks, arrogate to themselves all the importance of the establishment with which they are connected.

Fortunately, there are few such in America. No keen-witted reader would ever confound the active, rosy, domestic Phoebe Pyncheon with the dreamy, sensitive, and strongly subjective Hilda of "The Marble Faun;"

and Hawthorne might have sent a communication to the _Athenaeum_ to refresh the reviewer's memory, for it was not Zen.o.bia in "The Blithedale Romance" who was dogged by a mysterious persecutor, but her half-sister--Priscilla. Shakespeare's Beatrice and his Rosalind are more alike (for Brandes supposes them to have been taken from the same model) than Zen.o.bia and Miriam; and the difference between the persecutors of Priscilla and Miriam, as well as their respective methods, is world-wide; but there are none so blind as those who are enveloped in the turbid medium of their self-conceit.

The pure-hearted, chivalrous Motley read these reviews, and wrote to Hawthorne a vindication of his work, which must have seemed to him like a broad belt of New England sunshine in the midst of the London fog. In reference to its disparagement by so-called authorities, Motley said: [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 408.]

"I have said a dozen times that n.o.body can write English but you. With regard to the story which has been slightingly criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom which is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which the story is indicated rather than revealed. The outlines are quite definite enough, from the beginning to the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those who complain---

"I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an everyday novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the book in which I revel."

The calm face of Motley, with his cla.s.sic features, rises before us as we read this, illumined as it were by "the mild radiance of a hidden sun." He also had known what it was to be disparaged by English periodicals; and if it had not been for Froude's spirited a.s.sertion in his behalf, his history of the Dutch Republic might not have met with the celebrity it deserved. He was aware of the difference between a Hawthorne and a Reade or a Trollope, and knew how unfair it would be to judge Hawthorne even by the same standard as Thackeray. He does not touch in this letter on the philosophical character of the work, although that must have been evident to him, for he had said enough without it; but one could wish that he had printed the above statement over his own name, in some English journal.

American reviewers were equally puzzled by "The Marble Faun," and, although it was generally praised here, the literary critics treated it in rather a cautious manner, as if it contained material of a dangerous nature. The _North American_, which should have devoted five or six pages to it, gave it less than one; praising it in a conventional and rather unsympathetic tone. Longfellow read it, and wrote in his diary, "A wonderful book; but with the old, dull pain in it that runs through all Hawthorne's writings." There was always something of this dull pain in the expression of Hawthorne's face.

a.n.a.lYSIS OF "THE MARBLE FAUN"

It is like a picture, or a succession of pictures, painted in what the Italians call the _sfumato_, or "smoky" manner. The book is pervaded with the spirit of a dreamy pathos, such as const.i.tutes the mental atmosphere of modern Rome; not unlike the haze of an Indian summer day, which we only half enjoy from a foreboding of the approach of winter.

All outlines are softened and partially blurred in it, as time and decay have softened the outlines of the old Roman ruins. We recognize the same style with which we are familiar in "The Scarlet Letter," but influenced by a change in Hawthorne's external impressions.

It is a rare opportunity when the work of a great writer can be traced back to its first nebulous conception, as we trace the design of a pictorial artist to the first drawing that he made for his subject.

Although we cannot witness the development of the plot of this romance in Hawthorne's mind, it is much to see in what manner the different elements of which it is composed, first presented themselves to him, and how he adapted them to his purpose.

The first of these in order of time was the beautiful Jewess, whom he met at the Lord Mayor's banquet in London; who attracted him by her _tout ensemble_, but at the same time repelled him by an indefinable impression, a mysterious something, that he could not a.n.a.lyze. There would seem, however, to have been another Jewess connected with the character of Miriam; for I once heard Mrs. Hawthorne narrating a story in which she stated that she and her husband were driving through London in a cab, and pa.s.sing close to the sidewalk in a crowded street they saw a beautiful woman, with black hair and a ruddy complexion, walking with the most ill-favored and disagreeable looking Jew that could be imagined; and on the woman's face there was an expression of such deep-seated unhappiness that Hawthorne and his wife turned to each other, and he said, "I think that woman's face will always haunt me."

I did not hear the beginning of Mrs. Hawthorne's tale, but I always supposed that it related to "The Marble Faun," and it would seem as if the character of Miriam was a composite of these two daughters of Israel, uniting the enigmatical quality of one with the unfortunate companionship of the other, and the beauty of both.

As previously noticed, the portrait of Beatrice Cenci excited a deeply penetrating interest in Hawthorne, and his reflections on it day after day would naturally lead him to a similar design in regard to the romance which he was contemplating. The attribution of a catastrophe like Beatrice's to either of the two Jewesses, would of course be advent.i.tious, and should be considered in the light of an artistic privilege.

The "Faun" of Praxiteles in the museum of the Capitol next attracted his attention. This is but a poor copy of the original; but he penetrated the motive of the sculptor with those deep-seeing eyes of his, and there is no a.n.a.lysis of an ancient statue by Brunn or Furtw.a.n.gler that equals Hawthorne's description of this one. It seems as if he must have looked backward across the centuries into the very mind of Praxiteles, and he was, in fact, the first critic to appreciate its high value. The perfect ease and simple beauty of the figure belong to a higher grade of art than the Apollo Belvedere, and Hawthorne discovered what Winckelmann had overlooked. He immediately conceived the idea of bringing the faun to life, and seeing how he would behave and comport himself in the modern world--in brief, to use the design of Praxiteles as the mainspring of a romance. In the evening of April 22, 1858, he wrote in his journal:

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF PRAXITELES' RESTING FAUN, WHICH HAWTHORNE HAS DESCRIBED AND BROUGHT TO LIFE IN THE CHARACTER OF DONATELLO]

"I looked at the Faun of Praxiteles, and was sensible of a peculiar charm in it; a sylvan beauty and homeliness, friendly and wild at once.

It seems to me that a story, with all sorts of fun and pathos in it, might be contrived on the idea of their species having become intermingled with the human race; a family with the faun blood in them, having prolonged itself from the cla.s.sic era till our own days. The tail might have disappeared, by dint of constant intermarriages with ordinary mortals; but the pretty hairy ears should occasionally reappear in members of the family; and the moral instincts and intellectual characteristics of the faun might be most picturesquely brought out, without detriment to the human interest of the story."

This statue served to concentrate the various speculative objects which had been hovering before Hawthorne's imagination during the past winter, and when he reached Florence six weeks later, the chief details of the plot were already developed in his mind.

Hilda and Kenyon are, of course, subordinate characters, like the first walking lady and the first walking gentleman on the stage. They are the sympathetic friends who watch the progress of the drama, continually hoping to be of service, but still finding themselves powerless to prevent the catastrophe. It was perhaps their unselfish interest in their mutual friends that at length taught them to know each other's worth, so that they finally became more than friends to one another.

True love, to be firmly based, requires such a mutual interest or common ground on which the parties can meet,--something in addition to the usual attraction of the s.e.xes. Mrs. Hawthorne has been supposed by some to have been the original of Hilda; and by others her daughter Una.

Conway holds an exceptional opinion, that Hilda was the feminine counterpart of Hawthorne himself; but Hilda is only too transparent a character, while Hawthorne always was, and still remains, impenetrable; and there was enough of her father in Miss Una, to render the same objection applicable in her case. Hilda seems to me very much like Mrs.

Hawthorne, as one may imagine her in her younger days; like her in her mental purity, her conscientiousness, her devotion to her art,--which we trust afterwards was transformed into a devotion to her husband,--her tendency to self-seclusion, her sensitiveness and her lack of decisive resolution. She is essentially what they call on the stage an _ingenue_ character; that is, one that remains inexperienced in the midst of experience; and it is in this character that she contributes to the catastrophe of the drama.

If Hawthorne appears anywhere in his own fiction, it is not in "The Blithedale Romance," but in the role of Kenyon. Although Kenyon's profession is that of a sculptor, he is not to be confounded with the gay and versatile Story. Neither is he statuesque, as the English reviewer criticised him. He is rather a shadowy character, as Hawthorne himself was shadowy, and as an author always must be shadowy to his readers; but Kenyon is to Hawthorne what Prospero is to Shakespeare, and if he does not make use of magic arts, it is because they no longer serve their purpose in human affairs. He is a wise, all-seeing, sympathetic mind, and his active influence in the play is less conspicuous because it is always so quiet, and so correct.

It will be noticed that the first chapter and the last chapter of this romance have the same t.i.tle: "Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello." This is according to their respective ages and s.e.xes; but it is also the terms of a proportion,--as Miriam is to Hilda, so is Kenyon to Donatello.

As the experienced woman is to the inexperienced woman, so is the experienced man to the inexperienced man. This seems simple enough, but it has momentous consequences in the story. Donatello, who is a type of natural but untried virtue, falls in love with Miriam, not only for her beauty, but because she has acquired that worldly experience which he lacks. Hilda, suddenly aroused to a sense of her danger in the isolated life she is leading, accepts Kenyon as a protector. The means in this proportion come together and unite, because they are the mean terms, and pursue a medium course. The extremes fly apart and are separated, simply because they are extremes. But there is a spiritual bond between them, invisible, but stronger than steel, which will bring them together again--at the Day of Judgment, if not sooner.

All tragedy is an investigation or exemplification of that form of human error which we call sin; a catastrophe of nature or a simple error of judgment may be tragical, but will not const.i.tute a tragedy without the moral or poetic element.

In "The Scarlet Letter," we have the sin of concealment and its consequences. The first step toward reformation is confession, and without that, repentance is little more than a good intention.

In "The House of the Seven Gables," Hawthorne has treated the sin of hypocrisy--a smiling politician who courts popularity and pretends to be everybody's friend, and agrees with everybody,--only with a slight reservation. There may be occasions on which hypocrisy is a virtue; but the habit of hypocrisy for personal ends is like a dry rot in the heart of man.

In "The Blithedale Romance," we find the sin of moral affectation.

Neither Hollingsworth nor Zen.o.bia is really what they pretend themselves to be. Their morality is a hollow sh.e.l.l, and gives way to the first effective temptation. Zen.o.bia betrays Priscilla; and is betrayed in turn by Hollingsworth,--as well as the interests of the a.s.sociation which had been committed to his charge.