Note 3. Author's note. — ”Crusty Hannah is a mixture of Indian and negro.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”It is understood from the first that the children are not brother and sister. — Describe the children with really childish traits, quarrelling, being naughty, etc. — The Doctor should occasionally beat Ned in course of instruction.”
Note 5. In order to show the manner in which Hawthorne would modify a passage, which was nevertheless to be left substantially the same, I subjoin here a description of this graveyard as it appears in the earlier draft: “The graveyard (we are sorry to have to treat of such a disagreeable piece of ground, but everybody's business centres there at one time or another) was the most ancient in the town. The dust of the original Englishmen had become incorporated with the soil; of those Englishmen whose immediate predecessors had been resolved into the earth about the country churches, — the little Norman, square, battlemented stone towers of the villages in the old land; so that in this point of view, as holding bones and dust of the first ancestors, this graveyard was more English than anything else in town. There had been hidden from sight many a broad, bluff visage of husbandmen that had ploughed the real English soil; there the faces of noted men, now known in history; there many a personage whom tradition told about, making wondrous qualities of strength and courage for him; — all these, mingled with succeeding generations, turned up and battened down again with the sexton's spade; until every blade of grass was human more than vegetable, — for an hundred and fifty years will do this, and so much time, at least, had elapsed since the first little mound was piled up in the virgin soil. Old tombs there were too, with numerous sculptures on them; and quaint, mossy gravestones; although all kinds of monumental appendages were of a date more recent than the time of the first settlers, who had been content with wooden memorials, if any, the sculptor's art not having then reached New England. Thus rippled, surged, broke almost against the house, this dreary graveyard, which made the street gloomy, so that people did not like to pass the dark, high wooden fence, with its closed gate, that separated it from the street. And this old house was one that crowded upon it, and took up the ground that would otherwise have been sown as thickly with dead as the rest of the lot; so that it seemed hardly possible but that the dead people should get up out of their graves, and come in there to warm themselves. But in truth, I have never heard a whisper of its being haunted.”
Note 6. Author's note. — ”The spiders are affected by the weather and serve as barometers. — It shall always be a moot point whether the Doctor really believed in cobwebs, or was laughing at the credulous.”
Note 7. Author's note. — ”The townspeople are at war with the Doctor. — Introduce the Doctor early as a smoker, and describe. — The result of Crusty Hannah's strangely mixed breed should be shown in some strange way. — Give vivid pictures of the society of the day, symbolized in the street scenes.”
CHAPTER II.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Read the whole paragraph before copying any of it.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Crusty Hannah teaches Elsie curious needlework, etc.”
Note 3. These two children are described as follows in an early note of the author's: “The boy had all the qualities fitted to excite tenderness in those who had the care of him; in the first and most evident place, on account of his personal beauty, which was very remarkable, — the most intelligent and expressive face that can be conceived, changing in those early years like an April day, and beautiful in all its changes; dark, but of a soft expression, kindling, melting, glowing, laughing; a varied intelligence, which it was as good as a book to read. He was quick in all modes of mental exercise; quick and strong, too, in sensibility; proud, and gifted (probably by the circumstances in which he was placed) with an energy which the softness and impressibility of his nature needed. — As for the little girl, all the squalor of the abode served but to set off her lightsomeness and brightsomeness. She was a pale, large-eyed little thing, and it might have been supposed that the air of the house and the contiguity of the burial-place had a bad effect upon her health. Yet I hardly think this could have been the case, for she was of a very airy nature, dancing and sporting through the house as if melancholy had never been made. She took all kinds of childish liberties with the Doctor, and with his pipe, and with everything appertaining to him except his spiders and his cobwebs.” — All of which goes to show that Hawthorne first conceived his characters in the mood of the “Twice-Told Tales,” and then by meditation solidified them to the inimitable flesh-and-blood of “The House of the Seven Gables” and “The Blithedale Romance.”
CHAPTER III.
Note 1. An English church spire, evidently the prototype of this, and concerning which the same legend is told, is mentioned in the author's “English Mote-Books.”
Note 2. Leicester Hospital, in Warwick, described in “Our Old Home,” is the original of this charity.
Note 3. Author's note. — ”The children find a gravestone with something like a footprint on it.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”Put into the Doctor's character a continual enmity against somebody, breaking out in curses of which nobody can understand the application.”
CHAPTER IV.
Note 1. The Doctor's propensity for cobwebs is amplified in the following note for an earlier and somewhat milder version of the character: “According to him, all science was to be renewed and established on a sure ground by no other means than cobwebs. The cobweb was the magic clue by which mankind was to be rescued from all its errors, and guided safely back to the right. And so he cherished spiders above all things, and kept them spinning, spinning away; the only textile factory that existed at that epoch in New England. He distinguished the production of each of his ugly friends, and assigned peculiar qualities to each; and he had been for years engaged in writing a work on this new discovery, in reference to which he had already compiled a great deal of folio manuscript, and had unguessed at resources still to come. With this suggestive subject he interwove all imaginable learning, collected from his own library, rich in works that few others had read, and from that of his beloved University, crabbed with Greek, rich with Latin, drawing into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men had thought hitherto, and combining them anew in such a way that it had all the charm of a racy originality. Then he had projects for the cultivation of cobwebs, to which end, in the good Doctor's opinion, it seemed desirable to devote a certain part of the national income; and not content with this, all public-spirited citizens would probably be induced to devote as much of their time and means as they could to the same end. According to him, there was no such beautiful festoon and drapery for the halls of princes as the spinning of this heretofore despised and hated insect; and by due encouragement it might be hoped that they would flourish, and hang and dangle and wave triumphant in the breeze, to an extent as yet generally undreamed of. And he lamented much the destruction that has heretofore been wrought upon this precious fabric by the housemaid's broom, and insisted upon by foolish women who claimed to be good housewives. Indeed, it was the general opinion that the Doctor's celibacy was in great measure due to the impossibility of finding a woman who would pledge herself to co- operate with him in this great ambition of his life, — that of reducing the world to a cobweb factory; or who would bind herself to let her own drawing-room be ornamented with this kind of tapestry. But there never was a wife precisely fitted for our friend the Doctor, unless it had been Arachne herself, to whom, if she could again have been restored to her female shape, he would doubtless have lost no time in paying his addresses. It was doubtless the having dwelt too long among the musty and dusty clutter and litter of things gone by, that made the Doctor almost a monomaniac on this subject. There were cobwebs in his own brain, and so he saw nothing valuable but cobwebs in the world around him; and deemed that the march of created things, up to this time, had been calculated by foreknowledge to produce them.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Ned m
ust learn something of the characteristics of the Catechism, and simple cottage devotion.”
CHAPTER V.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Make the following scene emblematic of the world's treatment of a dissenter.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Yankee characteristics should be shown in the schoolmaster's manners.”
CHAPTER VI.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”He had a sort of horror of violence, and of the strangeness that it should be done to him; this affected him more than the blow.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Jokes occasionally about the schoolmaster's thinness and lightness, — how he might suspend himself from the spider's web and swing, etc.”
Note 3. Author's note. — ”The Doctor and the Schoolmaster should have much talk about England.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”The children were at play in the churchyard.”
Note 5. Author's note. — ”He mentions that he was probably buried in the churchyard there.”
CHAPTER VII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Perhaps put this narratively, not as spoken.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”He was privately married to the heiress, if she were an heiress. They meant to kill him in the wood, but, by contrivance, he was kidnapped.”
Note 3. Author's note. — ”They were privately married.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”Old descriptive letters, referring to localities as they existed.”
Note 5. Author's note. — ”There should be symbols and tokens, hinting at the schoolmaster's disappearance, from the first opening of the scene.”
CHAPTER VIII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”They had got up in remarkably good case that morning.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”The stranger may be the future master of the Hospital. — Describe the winter day.”
Note 3. Author's note. — ”Describe him as clerical.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”Represent him as a refined, agreeable, genial young man, of frank, kindly, gentlemanly manners.”
Note 5. Alternative reading: “A clergyman.”
CHAPTER IX.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Make the old grave-digger a laudator temporis acti, — especially as to burial customs.”
Note 2. Instead of “written,” as in the text, the author probably meant to write “read.”
Note 3. The MS. has “delight,” but “a light” is evidently intended.
Note 4. Author's note. — ”He aims a blow, perhaps with his pipe, at the boy, which Ned wards off.”
CHAPTER X.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”No longer could play at quarter-staff with Ned.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Referring to places and people in England: the Bloody Footstep sometimes.”
Note 3. In the original the following occurs, but marked to indicate that it was to be omitted: “And kissed his hand to her, and laughed feebly; and that was the last that she or anybody, the last glimpse they had of Doctor Grimshawe alive.”
Note 4. Author's notes. — ”A great deal must he made out of the spiders, and their gloomy, dusky, flaunting tapestry. A web across the orifice of his inkstand every morning; everywhere, indeed, except across the snout of his brandy-bottle. — Depict the Doctor in an old dressing-gown, and a strange sort of a cap, like a wizard's. — The two children are witnesses of many strange experiments in the study; they see his moods, too. — The Doctor is supposed to be writing a work on the Natural History of Spiders. Perhaps he used them as a blind for his real project, and used to bamboozle the learned with pretending to read them passages in which great learning seemed to be elaborately worked up, crabbed with Greek and Latin, as if the topic drew into itself, like a whirlpool, all that men thought and knew; plans to cultivate cobwebs on a large scale. Sometimes, after overwhelming them with astonishment in this way, he would burst into one of his laughs. Schemes to make the world a cobweb-factory, etc., etc. Cobwebs in his own brain. Crusty Hannah such a mixture of persons and races as could be found only at a seaport. There was a rumor that the Doctor had murdered a former maid, for having, with housewifely instinct, swept away the cobwebs; some said that he had her skeleton in a closet. Some said that he had strangled a wife with web of the great spider.”
— ”Read the description of Bolton Hall, the garden, lawn, etc., Aug. 8, '53. — Bebbington church and churchyard, Aug. 29, '53. — The Doctor is able to love, — able to hate; two great and rare abilities nowadays. — Introduce two pine trees, ivy-grown, as at Lowwood Hotel, July 16, '58. — The family name might be Redclyffe. — Thatched cottage, June 22, '55. — Early introduce the mention of the cognizance of the family, — the Leopard's Head, for instance, in the first part of the romance; the Doctor may have possessed it engraved as coat of arms in a book. — The Doctor shall show Ned, perhaps, a drawing or engraving of the Hospital, with figures of the pensioners in the quadrangle, fitly dressed; and this picture and the figures shall impress themselves strongly on his memory.”
The above dates and places refer to passages in the published “English
Note-Books.”
CHAPTER XI.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Compare it with Spenser's Cave of Despair. Put instruments of suicide there.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Once, in looking at the mansion, Redclyffe is struck by the appearance of a marble inserted into the wall, and kept clear of lichens.”
Note 3. Author's note. — ”Describe, in rich poetry, all shapes of deadly things.”
CHAPTER XII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Conferred their best qualities”: an alternative phrase for “done their utmost.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Let the old man have a beard as part of the costume.”
CHAPTER XIII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Describe him as delirious, and the scene as adopted into his delirium.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”Make the whole scene very dreamlike and feverish.”
Note 3. Author's note. — ”There should be a slight wildness in the patient's remark to the surgeon, which he cannot prevent, though he is conscious of it.”
Note 4. Author's note. — ”Notice the peculiar depth and intelligence of his eyes, on account of his pain and sickness.”
Note 5. Author's note. — ”Perhaps the recognition of the pensioner should not be so decided. Redclyffe thinks it is he, but thinks it as in a dream, without wonder or inquiry; and the pensioner does not quite acknowledge it.”
Note 6. The following dialogue is marked to be omitted or modified in the original MS.; but it is retained here, in order that the thread of the narrative may not be broken.
Note 7. Author's note. — ”The patient, as he gets better, listens to the feet of old people moving in corridors; to the ringing of a bell at stated periods; to old, tremulous voices talking in the quadrangle; etc., etc.”
Note 8. At this point the modification indicated in Note 5 seems to have been made operative: and the recognition takes place in another way.
CHAPTER XIV.
Note 1. This paragraph is left incomplete in the original MS.
Note 2. The words “Rich old bindings” are interlined here, indicating, perhaps, a purpose to give a more detailed description of the library and its contents.
CHAPTER XV.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”I think it shall be built of stone, however.”
Note 2. This probably refers to some incident which the author intended to incorporate in the former portion of the romance, on a final revision.
CHAPTER XVI.
Note 1. Several passages, which are essentially reproductions of what had been previously treated, are omitted from this chapter. It belongs to an earlier version of the romance.
CHAPTER XVII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”Redclyffe shows how to find, under the surface of the village green, an old cross.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”A circular seat around the tree.”
&
nbsp; Note 3. The reader now hears for the first time what Redclyffe recollected.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Note 1. Author's note. — ”The dinner is given to the pensioners, as well as to the gentry, I think.”
Note 2. Author's note. — ”For example, a story of three brothers, who had a deadly quarrel among them more than two hundred years ago for the affections of a young lady, their cousin, who gave her reciprocal love to one of them, who immediately became the object of the deadly hatred of the two others. There seemed to be madness in their love; perhaps madness in the love of all three; for the result had been a plot to kidnap this unfortunate young man and convey him to America, where he was sold for a servant.”
CHAPTER XIX.
Note 1. The following passage, though it seems to fit in here chronologically, is concerned with a side issue which was not followed up. The author was experimenting for a character to act as the accomplice of Lord Braithwaite at the Hall; and he makes trial of the present personage, Mountford; of an Italian priest, Father Angelo; and finally of the steward, Omskirk, who is adopted. It will be noticed that Mountford is here endowed (for the moment) with the birthright of good Doctor Hammond, the Warden. He is represented as having made the journey to America in search of the grave. This alteration being inconsistent with the true thread of the story, and being, moreover, not continued, I have placed this passage in the Appendix, instead of in the text.
Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) Page 185
