The House of the Seven Gables

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  XII The Daguerreotypist

  IT must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally soactive as Phoebe could be wholly confined within the precincts of theold Pyncheon House. Clifford's demands upon her time were usuallysatisfied, in those long days, considerably earlier than sunset. Quietas his daily existence seemed, it nevertheless drained all theresources by which he lived. It was not physical exercise thatoverwearied him,--for except that he sometimes wrought a little with ahoe, or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy weather, traversed a largeunoccupied room,--it was his tendency to remain only too quiescent, asregarded any toil of the limbs and muscles. But, either there was asmouldering fire within him that consumed his vital energy, or themonotony that would have dragged itself with benumbing effect over amind differently situated was no monotony to Clifford. Possibly, hewas in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantlyassimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from sights,sounds, and events which passed as a perfect void to persons morepractised with the world. As all is activity and vicissitude to thenew mind of a child, so might it be, likewise, to a mind that hadundergone a kind of new creation, after its long-suspended life.

  Be the cause what it might, Clifford commonly retired to rest,thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams were still melting through hiswindow-curtains, or were thrown with late lustre on the chamber wall.And while he thus slept early, as other children do, and dreamed ofchildhood, Phoebe was free to follow her own tastes for the remainderof the day and evening.

  This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character solittle susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The oldhouse, as we have already said, had both the dry-rot and the damp-rotin its walls; it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere than that.Hepzibah, though she had her valuable and redeeming traits, had grownto be a kind of lunatic by imprisoning herself so long in one place,with no other company than a single series of ideas, and but oneaffection, and one bitter sense of wrong. Clifford, the reader mayperhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on hisfellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations withhim. But the sympathy or magnetism among human beings is more subtileand universal than we think; it exists, indeed, among different classesof organized life, and vibrates from one to another. A flower, forinstance, as Phoebe herself observed, always began to droop sooner inClifford's hand, or Hepzibah's, than in her own; and by the same law,converting her whole daily life into a flower fragrance for these twosickly spirits, the blooming girl must inevitably droop and fade muchsooner than if worn on a younger and happier breast. Unless she hadnow and then indulged her brisk impulses, and breathed rural air in asuburban walk, or ocean breezes along the shore,--had occasionallyobeyed the impulse of Nature, in New England girls, by attending ametaphysical or philosophical lecture, or viewing a seven-milepanorama, or listening to a concert,--had gone shopping about the city,ransacking entire depots of splendid merchandise, and bringing home aribbon,--had employed, likewise, a little time to read the Bible in herchamber, and had stolen a little more to think of her mother and hernative place--unless for such moral medicines as the above, we shouldsoon have beheld our poor Phoebe grow thin and put on a bleached,unwholesome aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic ofold-maidenhood and a cheerless future.

  Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly to be regretted,although whatever charm it infringed upon was repaired by another,perhaps more precious. She was not so constantly gay, but had hermoods of thought, which Clifford, on the whole, liked better than herformer phase of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood himbetter and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted him tohimself. Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and deeper; so deep, atsome silent moments, that they seemed like Artesian wells, down, down,into the infinite. She was less girlish than when we first beheld heralighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman.

  The only youthful mind with which Phoebe had an opportunity of frequentintercourse was that of the daguerreotypist. Inevitably, by thepressure of the seclusion about them, they had been brought into habitsof some familiarity. Had they met under different circumstances,neither of these young persons would have been likely to bestow muchthought upon the other, unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarityshould have proved a principle of mutual attraction. Both, it is true,were characters proper to New England life, and possessing a commonground, therefore, in their more external developments; but as unlike,in their respective interiors, as if their native climes had been atworld-wide distance. During the early part of their acquaintance,Phoebe had held back rather more than was customary with her frank andsimple manners from Holgrave's not very marked advances. Nor was sheyet satisfied that she knew him well, although they almost daily metand talked together, in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be afamiliar way.

  The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Phoebe something ofhis history. Young as he was, and had his career terminated at thepoint already attained, there had been enough of incident to fill, verycreditably, an autobiographic volume. A romance on the plan of GilBlas, adapted to American society and manners, would cease to be aromance. The experience of many individuals among us, who think ithardly worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of theSpaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success, or the pointwhither they tend, may be incomparably higher than any that a novelistwould imagine for his hero. Holgrave, as he told Phoebe somewhatproudly, could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedinglyhumble, nor of his education, except that it had been the scantiestpossible, and obtained by a few winter-months' attendance at a districtschool. Left early to his own guidance, he had begun to beself-dependent while yet a boy; and it was a condition aptly suited tohis natural force of will. Though now but twenty-two years old(lacking some months, which are years in such a life), he had alreadybeen, first, a country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a countrystore; and, either at the same time or afterwards, the political editorof a country newspaper. He had subsequently travelled New England andthe Middle States, as a peddler, in the employment of a Connecticutmanufactory of cologne-water and other essences. In an episodical wayhe had studied and practised dentistry, and with very flatteringsuccess, especially in many of the factory-towns along our inlandstreams. As a supernumerary official, of some kind or other, aboard apacket-ship, he had visited Europe, and found means, before his return,to see Italy, and part of France and Germany. At a later period he hadspent some months in a community of Fourierists. Still more recentlyhe had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for which science (as heassured Phoebe, and, indeed, satisfactorily proved, by puttingChanticleer, who happened to be scratching near by, to sleep) he hadvery remarkable endowments.

  His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no more importance inhis own view, nor likely to be more permanent, than any of thepreceding ones. It had been taken up with the careless alacrity of anadventurer, who had his bread to earn. It would be thrown aside ascarelessly, whenever he should choose to earn his bread by some otherequally digressive means. But what was most remarkable, and, perhaps,showed a more than common poise in the young man, was the fact that,amid all these personal vicissitudes, he had never lost his identity.Homeless as he had been,--continually changing his whereabout, and,therefore, responsible neither to public opinion nor toindividuals,--putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to besoon shifted for a third,--he had never violated the innermost man, buthad carried his conscience along with him. It was impossible to knowHolgrave without recognizing this to be the fact. Hepzibah had seenit. Phoebe soon saw it likewise, and gave him the sort of confidencewhich such a certainty inspires. She was startled, however, andsometimes repelled,--not by any doubt of his integrity to whatever lawhe acknowledged, but by a sense that his law differed from her own. Hemade her uneasy, and seemed to unsettle everything around her, by hislack of reverence for what was fixed, unless, at a moment'
s warning, itcould establish its right to hold its ground.

  Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in his nature.He was too calm and cool an observer. Phoebe felt his eye, often; hisheart, seldom or never. He took a certain kind of interest in Hepzibahand her brother, and Phoebe herself. He studied them attentively, andallowed no slightest circumstance of their individualities to escapehim. He was ready to do them whatever good he might; but, after all,he never exactly made common cause with them, nor gave any reliableevidence that he loved them better in proportion as he knew them more.In his relations with them, he seemed to be in quest of mental food,not heart-sustenance. Phoebe could not conceive what interested him somuch in her friends and herself, intellectually, since he cared nothingfor them, or, comparatively, so little, as objects of human affection.

  Always, in his interviews with Phoebe, the artist made especial inquiryas to the welfare of Clifford, whom, except at the Sunday festival, heseldom saw.

  "Does he still seem happy?" he asked one day.

  "As happy as a child," answered Phoebe; "but--like a child, too--veryeasily disturbed."

  "How disturbed?" inquired Holgrave. "By things without, or by thoughtswithin?"

  "I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?" replied Phoebe with simplepiquancy. "Very often his humor changes without any reason that can beguessed at, just as a cloud comes over the sun. Latterly, since I havebegun to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right to lookclosely into his moods. He has had such a great sorrow, that his heartis made all solemn and sacred by it. When he is cheerful,--when thesun shines into his mind,--then I venture to peep in, just as far asthe light reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the shadowfalls!"

  "How prettily you express this sentiment!" said the artist. "I canunderstand the feeling, without possessing it. Had I youropportunities, no scruples would prevent me from fathoming Clifford tothe full depth of my plummet-line!"

  "How strange that you should wish it!" remarked Phoebe involuntarily."What is Cousin Clifford to you?"

  "Oh, nothing,--of course, nothing!" answered Holgrave with a smile."Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible world! The more I lookat it, the more it puzzles me, and I begin to suspect that a man'sbewilderment is the measure of his wisdom. Men and women, andchildren, too, are such strange creatures, that one never can becertain that he really knows them; nor ever guess what they have beenfrom what he sees them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! Clifford! What acomplex riddle--a complexity of complexities--do they present! Itrequires intuitive sympathy, like a young girl's, to solve it. A mereobserver, like myself (who never have any intuitions, and am, at best,only subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray."

  The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than thatwhich they had touched upon. Phoebe and he were young together; norhad Holgrave, in his premature experience of life, wasted entirely thatbeautiful spirit of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heartand fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all asbright as on the first day of creation. Man's own youth is the world'syouth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth'sgranite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mouldinto whatever shape he likes. So it was with Holgrave. He could talksagely about the world's old age, but never actually believed what hesaid; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon theworld--that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, withoutbeing venerable--as a tender stripling, capable of being improved intoall that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotestpromise of becoming. He had that sense, or inward prophecy,--which ayoung man had better never have been born than not to have, and amature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,--that weare not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but that, thisvery now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era, to beaccomplished in his own lifetime. It seemed to Holgrave,--as doubtlessit has seemed to the hopeful of every century since the epoch of Adam'sgrandchildren,--that in this age, more than ever before, the moss-grownand rotten Past is to be torn down, and lifeless institutions to bethrust out of the way, and their dead corpses buried, and everything tobegin anew.

  As to the main point,--may we never live to doubt it!--as to the bettercenturies that are coming, the artist was surely right. His error layin supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, isdestined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a newsuit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; inapplying his own little life-span as the measure of an interminableachievement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anythingto the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it oragainst it. Yet it was well for him to think so. This enthusiasm,infusing itself through the calmness of his character, and thus takingan aspect of settled thought and wisdom, would serve to keep his youthpure, and make his aspirations high. And when, with the years settlingdown more weightily upon him, his early faith should be modified byinevitable experience, it would be with no harsh and sudden revolutionof his sentiments. He would still have faith in man's brighteningdestiny, and perhaps love him all the better, as he should recognizehis helplessness in his own behalf; and the haughty faith, with whichhe began life, would be well bartered for a far humbler one at itsclose, in discerning that man's best directed effort accomplishes akind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.

  Holgrave had read very little, and that little in passing through thethoroughfare of life, where the mystic language of his books wasnecessarily mixed up with the babble of the multitude, so that both oneand the other were apt to lose any sense that might have been properlytheir own. He considered himself a thinker, and was certainly of athoughtful turn, but, with his own path to discover, had perhaps hardlyyet reached the point where an educated man begins to think. The truevalue of his character lay in that deep consciousness of inwardstrength, which made all his past vicissitudes seem merely like achange of garments; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that he scarcely knewof its existence, but which gave a warmth to everything that he laidhis hand on; in that personal ambition, hidden--from his own as well asother eyes--among his more generous impulses, but in which lurked acertain efficacy, that might solidify him from a theorist into thechampion of some practicable cause. Altogether in his culture and wantof culture,--in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and thepractical experience that counteracted some of its tendencies; in hismagnanimous zeal for man's welfare, and his recklessness of whateverthe ages had established in man's behalf; in his faith, and in hisinfidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked,--the artist mightfitly enough stand forth as the representative of many compeers in hisnative land.

  His career it would be difficult to prefigure. There appeared to bequalities in Holgrave, such as, in a country where everything is freeto the hand that can grasp it, could hardly fail to put some of theworld's prizes within his reach. But these matters are delightfullyuncertain. At almost every step in life, we meet with young men ofjust about Holgrave's age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, butof whom, even after much and careful inquiry, we never happen to hearanother word. The effervescence of youth and passion, and the freshgloss of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a falsebrilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people. Likecertain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely in theirfirst newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a verysober aspect after washing-day.

  But our business is with Holgrave as we find him on this particularafternoon, and in the arbor of the Pyncheon garden. In that point ofview, it was a pleasant sight to behold this young man, with so muchfaith in himself, and so fair an appearance of admirable powers,--solittle harmed, too, by the many tests that had tried his metal,--it waspleasant to see him in his kindly intercourse with Phoebe. Her thoughthad scarcely done him justice when it pronounced him cold; or, if so,he had grown warmer now. Without such purpose on her part, andunconsciously on hi
s, she made the House of the Seven Gables like ahome to him, and the garden a familiar precinct. With the insight onwhich he prided himself, he fancied that he could look through Phoebe,and all around her, and could read her off like a page of a child'sstory-book. But these transparent natures are often deceptive in theirdepth; those pebbles at the bottom of the fountain are farther from usthan we think. Thus the artist, whatever he might judge of Phoebe'scapacity, was beguiled, by some silent charm of hers, to talk freely ofwhat he dreamed of doing in the world. He poured himself out as toanother self. Very possibly, he forgot Phoebe while he talked to her,and was moved only by the inevitable tendency of thought, when renderedsympathetic by enthusiasm and emotion, to flow into the first safereservoir which it finds. But, had you peeped at them through thechinks of the garden-fence, the young man's earnestness and heightenedcolor might have led you to suppose that he was making love to theyoung girl!

  At length, something was said by Holgrave that made it apposite forPhoebe to inquire what had first brought him acquainted with her cousinHepzibah, and why he now chose to lodge in the desolate old PyncheonHouse. Without directly answering her, he turned from the Future,which had heretofore been the theme of his discourse, and began tospeak of the influences of the Past. One subject, indeed, is but thereverberation of the other.

  "Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?" cried he, keeping up theearnest tone of his preceding conversation. "It lies upon the Presentlike a giant's dead body In fact, the case is just as if a young giantwere compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpseof the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and onlyneeds to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startleyou to see what slaves we are to bygone times,--to Death, if we givethe matter the right word!"

  "But I do not see it," observed Phoebe.

  "For example, then," continued Holgrave: "a dead man, if he happens tohave made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he dieintestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men muchlonger dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; andliving judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read indead men's books! We laugh at dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men'spathos! We are sick of dead men's diseases, physical and moral, and dieof the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! Weworship the living Deity according to dead men's forms and creeds.Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a dead man's icy handobstructs us! Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man's white,immitigable face encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And wemust be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influenceon our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the worldof another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right tointerfere. I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men'shouses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven Gables!"

  "And why not," said Phoebe, "so long as we can be comfortable in them?"

  "But we shall live to see the day, I trust," went on the artist, "whenno man shall build his house for posterity. Why should he? He mightjust as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,--leather, orguttapercha, or whatever else lasts longest,--so that hisgreat-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut preciselythe same figure in the world that he himself does. If each generationwere allowed and expected to build its own houses, that single change,comparatively unimportant in itself, would imply almost every reformwhich society is now suffering for. I doubt whether even our publicedifices--our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, andchurches,--ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone orbrick. It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twentyyears, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into andreform the institutions which they symbolize."

  "How you hate everything old!" said Phoebe in dismay. "It makes medizzy to think of such a shifting world!"

  "I certainly love nothing mouldy," answered Holgrave. "Now, this oldPyncheon House! Is it a wholesome place to live in, with its blackshingles, and the green moss that shows how damp they are?--its dark,low-studded rooms--its grime and sordidness, which are thecrystallization on its walls of the human breath, that has been drawnand exhaled here in discontent and anguish? The house ought to bepurified with fire,--purified till only its ashes remain!"

  "Then why do you live in it?" asked Phoebe, a little piqued.

  "Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, however," repliedHolgrave. "The house, in my view, is expressive of that odious andabominable Past, with all its bad influences, against which I have justbeen declaiming. I dwell in it for a while, that I may know the betterhow to hate it. By the bye, did you ever hear the story of Maule, thewizard, and what happened between him and your immeasurablygreat-grandfather?"

  "Yes, indeed!" said Phoebe; "I heard it long ago, from my father, andtwo or three times from my cousin Hepzibah, in the month that I havebeen here. She seems to think that all the calamities of the Pyncheonsbegan from that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him. And you, Mr.Holgrave look as if you thought so too! How singular that you shouldbelieve what is so very absurd, when you reject many things that are agreat deal worthier of credit!"

  "I do believe it," said the artist seriously; "not as a superstition,however, but as proved by unquestionable facts, and as exemplifying atheory. Now, see: under those seven gables, at which we now lookup,--and which old Colonel Pyncheon meant to be the house of hisdescendants, in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch far beyondthe present,--under that roof, through a portion of three centuries,there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly defeatedhope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, a strange form of death,dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace,--all, or most of which calamity Ihave the means of tracing to the old Puritan's inordinate desire toplant and endow a family. To plant a family! This idea is at thebottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is,that, once in every half-century, at longest, a family should be mergedinto the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about itsancestors. Human blood, in order to keep its freshness, should run inhidden streams, as the water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterraneanpipes. In the family existence of these Pyncheons, forinstance,--forgive me Phoebe, but I cannot think of you as one ofthem,--in their brief New England pedigree, there has been time enoughto infect them all with one kind of lunacy or another."

  "You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred," said Phoebe, debatingwith herself whether she ought to take offence.

  "I speak true thoughts to a true mind!" answered Holgrave, with avehemence which Phoebe had not before witnessed in him. "The truth isas I say! Furthermore, the original perpetrator and father of thismischief appears to have perpetuated himself, and still walks thestreet,--at least, his very image, in mind and body,--with the fairestprospect of transmitting to posterity as rich and as wretched aninheritance as he has received! Do you remember the daguerreotype, andits resemblance to the old portrait?"

  "How strangely in earnest you are!" exclaimed Phoebe, looking at himwith surprise and perplexity; half alarmed and partly inclined tolaugh. "You talk of the lunacy of the Pyncheons; is it contagious?"

  "I understand you!" said the artist, coloring and laughing. "I believeI am a little mad. This subject has taken hold of my mind with thestrangest tenacity of clutch since I have lodged in yonder old gable.As one method of throwing it off, I have put an incident of thePyncheon family history, with which I happen to be acquainted, into theform of a legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine."

  "Do you write for the magazines?" inquired Phoebe.

  "Is it possible you did not know it?" cried Holgrave. "Well, such isliterary fame! Yes. Miss Phoebe Pyncheon, among the multitude of mymarvellous gifts I have that of writing stories; and my name hasfigured, I can assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey, making asrespectable an appearance, for aught I could see, as any of thecanonized bead-roll with which it
was associated. In the humorousline, I am thought to have a very pretty way with me; and as forpathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion. But shall I read youmy story?"

  "Yes, if it is not very long," said Phoebe,--and addedlaughingly,--"nor very dull."

  As this latter point was one which the daguerreotypist could not decidefor himself, he forthwith produced his roll of manuscript, and, whilethe late sunbeams gilded the seven gables, began to read.