Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)

by Hawthorne, Nathaniel

  To many this appeared like a Quixotic adventure, but now we can see that it was not, and that it was necessary in its way to prove the generosity of Hawthorne. We can readily infer from it what he might have done with ampler means, and what he must often have wished to do. To be sure, the truest kindness to Delia Bacon would have been to have purchased a ticket on a Cunard steamer for her, after her own funds had given out, and to have persuaded her to return to her own country; but those who have dealt with persons whose whole vitality is absorbed in a single idea, can testify how difficult, if not impossible, this would have been. It redounds the more to Hawthorne's credit that although Elizabeth Peabody was converted to Delia Bacon's theory, Hawthorne himself never entertained misgivings as to the reality of Shakespeare as a poet and a dramatist.

  He had doubts, however, and I felt the same in regard to the authenticity of the verses on Shakespeare's marble slab. It is fortunate that Miss Bacon's purpose of opening the tomb at Stratford was not carried out, but that is no reason why it should not be opened in a properly conducted manner, for scientific purposes — in order to discover all that is possible concerning so remarkable and mysterious a personality. Raphael's tomb has been opened, and why should not Shakespeare's be also?

  At the Democratic convention in 1856 the Southern delegates wished to renominate Franklin Pierce, but the Northern delegates refused their agreement to this, because they knew that in such a case they would be liable to defeat in their own districts. James Buchanan was accordingly nominated, and Pierce's fears in regard to him were fully realized. He was elected in November, and the following June appointed Beverly Tucker to succeed Hawthorne as consul at Liverpool. Hawthorne resigned his office on July 1, 1857, and went with his family on a long tour in Scotland. Two weeks earlier he had written a memorial to the Secretary of State concerning the maltreatment of a special class of seamen, which deserved more consideration than it received from the government at Washington.

  The gold discoveries in California had induced a large immigration to America from the British Isles, and many who went thither in hopes of bettering their fortunes became destitute from lack of employment, and attempted to work their passage back to Liverpool in American sailing vessels. It is likely that they often represented themselves as more experienced mariners than they actually were, and there were also a good many stowaways who might expect little mercy; but there was no court in England that could take cognizance of their wrongs, — in order to obtain justice they would have to return to America, — and it cannot be doubted that the more brutal sort of officers took advantage of this fact. The evil became so notorious that the British minister at Washington requested Pierce's administration to have legislation enacted that would cover this class of cases, but the President declined to interfere. This may have been prudent policy, but Hawthorne felt for the sufferers, and the memorial that he submitted to our government on their account has a dignity, a clearness and cogency of statement, worthy of Blackstone or Marshall. It is in marked contrast to the evasive reply of Secretary Cass, both for its fine English and for the directness of its logic. It is published at length in Julian Hawthorne's biography of his father, and is unique for the insight which it affords as to Hawthorne's mental ability in this direction. We may infer from it that if he had made a study of jurisprudence, he might have risen to the highest position as a writer on law.

  Hawthorne's English Note-books are the least interesting of that series, on account of the literal descriptions of castles, abbeys, scenery and palaces, with which they abound. The perfectly cultivated condition of England and Scotland, so far as he went in the latter country, is not stimulating to the imagination; for, as he says somewhere, even the trees seemed to be thoroughly domesticated. They are excellent reading for Americans who have never been to England, or for those who wish to renew their memories in regard to certain places there — perhaps better for the latter than for the former; and there are fine passages in them, especially his descriptions of the old abbeys and Gothic cathedrals, which seem to have delighted him more than the gardens at Blenheim and Eton, and to have brought to the surface a rare quality in his nature, or otherwise hidden in its depths, — his enthusiasm. Never before did words fail him until he attempted to describe the effect of a Gothic cathedral, — the time-honored mystery of its arches, the sober radiance of its stained windows, and the solemn aspiration of its lofty vault. As Schiller says, they are the monuments of a mighty civilization of which we know only too little.

  Hawthorne's object in writing these detailed accounts of his various expeditions becomes apparent from a passage in his Note-book, of the date of August 21, 1856, in which he says: “In my English romance, an American might bring a certain tradition from over the sea, and so discover the cross which had been long since forgotten.” It may have been his intention from the first to write a romance based on English soil, but that soil was no longer productive of such intellectual fruit, except in the form in which Dickens dug it up, like peat, out of the lower classes. We find Francis Bennoch writing to Hawthorne after his return to America, [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 310.] hoping to encourage him in this direction, but without apparent effect. Instead of a romance, he made a collection of essays from those portions of his diary which were most closely connected together, enlarging them and rounding them out, which he published after his return to America, in the volume we have often referred to as “Our Old Home.” But as truthful studies of English life and manners Mrs. Hawthorne's letters, though not always sensible, are much more interesting than her husband's diary.

  When Doctor Johnson was inquired of by a lady why he defined “pastern” in his Dictionary as the knee of a horse, he replied, “Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance;” and if Hawthorne had been asked a year afterwards why he went to Scotland in the summer of 1857, instead of to the Rhine and Switzerland, he might have given a similar excuse. In this way he missed the grandest and some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe. He could not, however, have been ignorant of the attractions of Paris, and yet he lingered in England until the following January, and then went over to that metropolis of fashion at a most unseasonable time. He had, indeed, planned to leave England in October, [Footnote: English Note-book, December, 1857.] and does not explain why he remained longer. He made a last visit to London in November, where he became reconciled to his fellow-townsmen of Salem, in the person of Edward Silsbee, of whom he writes as “a man of great intelligence and true feeling, absolutely brimming over with ideas.” Mr. Silsbee was an amateur art critic and connoisseur, who often made himself serviceable to American travellers in the way of a gentleman-cicerone. He went with the Hawthorne family to the Crystal Palace, where there were casts of all famous statues, models of architecture, and the like, and gave Hawthorne his first lesson in art criticism. Hawthorne indicated a preference for Michel Angelo's statue of Giuliano dé Medici, called “Il Pensero;” also for the “Perseus” of Cellini, and the Gates of the Florentine Baptistery by Lorenzo Ghiberti. If we except the other statues of Michel Angelo, these are the most distinguished works in sculpture of the modern world.

  CHAPTER XIV

  ITALY

  Hawthorne went to Italy as naturally as the salmon ascends the rivers in spring. His artistic instinct drew him thither as the original home of modern art and literature, and perhaps also his interest in the Latin language, the single study which he cared for in boyhood. Does not romance come originally from Roma, — as well as Romulus? He wished to stand where Cæsar stood, to behold the snowy Soracte of Horace, and to read Virgil's description of an Italian night on Italian ground. It is noticeable that he cared little or nothing for the splendors of Paris, the glittering peaks of Switzerland, medical-musical Vienna, or the grand scholarship and homely sweetness of old Germany.

  Of all the Anglo-Saxon writers who have celebrated Italy, Byron, Shelley, Rogers, Ruskin and the two Brownings, none were more admirably equipped for it than Hawthorne. We cannot read “The Romance of Monte Beni” witho
ut recognizing a decidedly Italian element in his composition, — not the light-hearted, subtle, elastic, fiery Italian, such as we are accustomed to think them, but the tenderly feeling, terribly earnest Tuscan, like Dante and Savonarola. The myrtle and the cypress are both emblematic of Italian character, and there was more of the latter than the former, though something of either, in Hawthorne's own make-up.

  The Hawthornes left London on January 6, and, reaching Paris the following day, they made themselves comfortable at the Hotel du Louvre. However, they only remained there one week, during which it was so cold that they saw little and enjoyed little. They went to Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Madeleine, and the Champs Elysees, but without being greatly impressed by what they beheld. Hawthorne does not mention a single painting or statue among the art treasures of the Louvre, which if rivalled elsewhere are certainly unsurpassed; but Hawthorne began his studies in this line by an examination of the drawings of the old masters, and confesses that he was afterward too much fatigued to appreciate their finished paintings.

  On January 19 they reached Marseilles, and two days later they embarked on that dreary winter voyage, so pleasant at an earlier season, for Civita Vecchia; and on the 20th they rolled into the Eternal City, with such sensations as one may imagine. On the 24th they located themselves for the season in the Palazzo Larazani, Via Porta Pinciana. [Footnote. Italian Note-book.]

  Nemo similis Homeri. — There is nothing like the charm of a first visit to Rome. The first sight of the Forum, with its single pathetic column, brings us back to our school-days, to the study of Cæsar and the reading of Plutarch; and the intervening period drops out of our lives, taking all our care and anxiety with it. In England, France, Germany, we feel the weight of the present, but in Rome the present is like a glass window through which we view the grand procession of past events. What is, becomes of less importance than what was, and for the first time we feel the true sense of our indebtedness to the ages that have gone before. We bathe deep in the spirit of classical antiquity, and we come out refreshed, enlarged and purified. We return to the actualities of to-day with a clearer understanding, and better prepared to act our part in them.

  Hawthorne did not feel this at first. He arrived in inclement weather, and it was some weeks before he became accustomed to the climatic conditions — so different from any northern atmosphere. He hated the filth of the much-neglected city, the squalor of its lower classes, the narrowness of its streets, and the peculiar pavement, which, as he says makes walking in Rome a penitential pilgrimage. He goes to the carnival, and his penetrating glance proves it to be a sham entertainment.

  But in due course he emerges from this mood; he rejoices in the atmospheric immensity of St. Peter's; he looks out from the Pincian hill, and sees Nivea Soracte as Horace beheld it; and he is overawed (if Hawthorne could be) by the Forum of Trajan and the Column of Antoninus. He makes a great discovery, or rediscovery, that Phidias's colossal statues of Castor and Pollux on the Monte Cavallo are the finest figures in Rome. They are late Roman copies, but probably from Phidias, — not by Lysippus or Praxiteles; and he felt the presence of Michel Angelo in the Baths of Diocletian. It is not long before he goes to the Pincian in the afternoon to play at jack-stones with his youngest daughter.

  William W. Story, the American sculptor, would seem to have been a former acquaintance. His father, the famous law lecturer, lived in Salem during Hawthorne's youth, but afterward removed to Cambridge, where the younger Story was educated, and there married an intimate friend of Mrs. James Russell Lowell. This brought him into close relations with Lowell, Longfellow, and their most intimate friends. He was something of a poet, and more of a sculptor, but, inheriting an independent fortune and living in the Barberini Palace, he soon became more of an Englishman than an American, a tendency which was visibly increased by a patent of nobility bestowed on him by the King of Naples.

  Hawthorne soon renewed William Story's acquaintance, and found him modelling the statue of Cleopatra, of which Hawthorne has given a somewhat idealized description in “The Marble Faun.” This may have interested him the more from the fact that he witnessed its development under the sculptor's hands, and saw that distinguished historical person emerge as it were out of the clay, like a second Eve; but he makes a mental reservation that it would be better if English and American sculptors would make a freer use of their chisels — of which more hereafter. Story was a light-hearted, discursive person, with a large amount of bric-à-brac information, who could appreciate Hawthorne either as a genius or as a celebrity. He soon became Hawthorne's chief companion and social mainstay in Rome, literally a vade mecum, and we may believe that he exercised more or less influence over Hawthorne's judgment in matters of art.

  Hawthorne listened to Story, and read Mrs. Jameson, although Edward Silsbee had warned him against her as an uncertain authority; but Hawthorne depended chiefly on his own investigations. He and his wife declined an invitation to Mrs. Story's masquerade, and lived very quietly during this first winter in Rome, making few acquaintances, but seeing a good deal of the city. They went together to all the principal churches and the princely galleries; and beside this Hawthorne traversed Rome from one end to the other, and across in every direction, sometimes alone, or in company with Julian, investigating everything from the Mamartine prison, in which Jugurtha was starved, to the catacombs of St. Calixtus and the buffaloes on the Campagna. The impression which Conway gives, that he went about sight-seeing and drinking sour wine with Story and Lothrop Motley, is not quite correct, for Motley did not come to Rome until the following December, and then only met Hawthorne a few times, according to his own confession. [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 406.] We must not forget, however, that excellent lady and skilful astronomer, Miss Maria Mitchell, who joined the Hawthorne party in Paris, and became an indispensable accompaniment to them the rest of the winter.

  Hawthorne also became acquainted with Buchanan Read, who afterward painted that stirring picture of General Sheridan galloping to the battle of Cedar Run; and on March 12 Mr. Read gave a party, at his Roman dwelling, of painters and sculptors, which Hawthorne attended, and has entered in full, with the moonlight excursion afterward, in “The Marble Faun.” There Hawthorne met Gibson, to whom he refers as the most distinguished sculptor of the time. So he was, in England, but there were much better sculptors in France and in Germany. Gibson's personality interested Hawthorne, as it well might, but he saw clearly that Gibson was merely a skilful imitator of the antique, or, as he calls him, a pagan idealist. He also made acquaintance with two American sculptors, a Yankee and a girlish young woman, whose names are prudently withheld; for he afterward visited their studios, and readily discovered that they had no real talent for their profession.

  If we feel inclined to quarrel with Hawthorne anywhere, it is in his disparagement of Crawford. There might be two opinions in regard to the slavery question, but there never has been but one as to the greatest of American artists. It was a pity that his friend Hillard could not have been with Hawthorne at this time to counteract the jealous influences to which he was exposed. He writes no word of regret at the untimely death of Crawford, but goes into his studio after that sad event and condemns his work. Only the genre figure of a boy playing marbles, gives him any satisfaction there; although a plea of extenuation might be entered in Hawthorne's favor, for statues of heroic size could not be seen to greater disadvantage than when packed together in a studio. The immense buttons on the waistcoats of our revolutionary heroes seem to have startled him on his first entrance, and this may be accepted as an indication of the rest. Yet the tone of his criticism, both in the “Note-book” and in “The Marble Faun,” is far from friendly to Crawford. He does not refer to the statue of Beethoven, which was Crawford's masterpiece, nor to the statue of Liberty, which now poses on the lantern of the Capitol at Washington, — much too beautiful, as Hartmann says, for its elevated position, and superior in every respect to the French statue of Liberty in New York harbor.

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sp; Hawthorne had already come to the conclusion that there was a certain degree of poison in the Roman atmosphere, and in April he found the climate decidedly languid, but he had fallen in love with this pagan capital and he hated to leave it. Mrs. Anna Jameson arrived late in April; a sturdy, warm-hearted Englishwoman greatly devoted to art, for which her books served as elementary treatises and pioneers to the English and Americans of those days. She was so anxious to meet Hawthorne that she persuaded William Story to bring him and his wife to her lodgings when she was too ill to go forth. They had read each other's writings and could compliment each other in all sincerity, for Mrs. Jameson had also an excellent narrative style; but Hawthorne found her rather didactic, and although she professed to be able “to read a picture like a book,” her conversation was by no means brilliant. She had contracted an unhappy marriage early in life, and found an escape from her sorrows and regrets in this elevated interest.