The bright greens of England seem to be lined with gold; and in the autumn, the leaves merely turn their golden linings.
The approach to the domain of Kenilworth is through roads with trees, winding along, and also across a narrow river, which we should call a brook, glimpses of the castle towers appearing at every turn.
The grass was very wet, and I had no india-rubbers, and Mr. Hawthorne went off with Una to buy me some, being resolved to make them, I believe, if he could not find any in the only shop not explored, for we had already tried for them. He returned with the only pair in Kenilworth that would fit me — and the last pair the shopman had left in his box. . . . The ivy, after climbing up the sides of the Castle in a diffusive embrace, reaches the crumbling battlements; and to conceal the gnawing teeth of time there, it rises into perfect trees, full and round, where it does not find it lovelier to trail over and hang in festoons and wreaths and tassels. Ivy and time contend for the mastery, and have a drawn battle of it. Enormous hawthorn-trees, large as our largest horse-chestnuts, also abound around the Castle, and are now made rich and brilliant with scarlet haws. Mr. Hawthorne and I were filled with amazement at their size. Instead of the rich silk hangings which graced the walls when Elizabeth entered the banqueting-room, now waved the long wreaths of ivy, and instead of gold borders, was sunshine, and for music and revel — SILENCE — profound, not even a breeze breaking it. For we had again one of those brooding, still days which we have so often been fortunate enough to have among ruined castles and abbeys. Bare stone seats are still left around Elizabeth's boudoir, upon which, when softly cushioned with gold, she sat, and saw a fair prospect. The park and chase extended twenty miles!
Nothing but music can ever equal or surpass architecture in variety of utterance. Music is poetry to the ear, architecture to the eye, and poetry is music and architecture to the soul, for it can reproduce both. Music, however, seems to be freer from all shackles than any other art; and I remember that in one of my essays for Margaret Fuller, I made it out to my own satisfaction to be the apex of expression. The old Glasgow verger of whom I wrote you had not got so far as to see that it needed the “Kist of Whistles,” as he called the organ, to make his beloved Cathedral soar and glow with life and praise to its utmost capacity. But I cannot say that it does not sing, even without a sound, in its immortal curves, as Ruskin calls those curves that return in no conceivable time or space. Cathedrals sing, and they also pray, with pointed arches for folded hands. Julian liked these ruins better than any he had seen, he said; and he climbed up on the dismantled turret of Leicester's buildings, and settled himself among the ivy like some rare bird with wonderful eyes. His hair had grown very long, and clustered round his head in hyacinthine fashion, and I think my lord would have been glad to call him his princely boy. [Such things he never allowed himself to say.] All the princeliness that lies in clustering curls Julian has lost to-day, for a hair-dresser has cropped him like a Puritan.
As for myself, fine weather, flower-filled lanes, sturdy walks, and the zest of environs that aroused the rest of the family through association as well as loveliness, seemed to awaken in my mind a vivid era that was exciting if laborious. I had night-vigils which were delightfully entertained by a faculty for hearing quite splendid music, — music that my imagination composed with a full orchestra of admirable brilliancy; and I was also able to see in perfect distinctness a splendid bazaar, filled with any quantity of toys, which I could summon at will. But this pastime required a great deal of will-power, a peculiar subtlety of condition, and could only be kept up for a few moments at a time; and in the course of several months the charming capacity was modified to that of being able to evoke most clearly scenes where imaginary characters, more real than actual companions, leaped into being, and talked and moved to any extent. I suppose numbers of people have this faculty, and it is a sovereign protection against ennui; or would be, if remedies could always be relied upon. I mention these matters to prove that I moderately possessed artistic perception. I can see, nevertheless, quite well, that I must have been a very stupid child most of the time, and that the befogged state of my mind was certainly a pity and perhaps a shame. Yet there was a sort of advantage in it: fogs choose with much good sense what they will emphasize; and the intellect bereft of fussy clearness may have a startling grasp that reminds one of occult methods. My observations could not pretend to so much, but they caught truths not very often stared into capture by a little girl; and my father interested me more, and was more frequently the subject of my meditations, than any one else.
In Leamington there seemed to be some opportunity for quiet pursuits. In the first place, there were great preparations for Christmas; which means, that my sister Una made a few little hand-worked presents in complete secrecy, and there was a breathless spending of a few sixpences. If a good deal of money was used by my parents, it was never distributed with freedom, but for those luxuries which would gather the least rust; and not a little was exchanged for heavenly treasure itself, in charity that answered appeals too pathetic to disregard. And we children learned — though we did not learn to save money, because our parents could not — to go without the luxuries money oftenest brings; a lesson that comes to happy fruition in maturer life, if there is need of it. I say happy, because we look back with joy to the hours spent in toughening the sinews of endurance. I remember that long and Penelope-like were my own Christmas preparations; but what they evolved is a matter as lost to thought as a breeze on the desert, in spite of the clearness with which I remember the gifts from my sister and our genteel Nurse, Fanny, who was with us again, and shone more sweetly than ever in Leamington. The handsomest objects we had were given us by Fanfan, or Fancy, as my mother called her. My mother writes, “Our Twelfth Cake was a superb little illuminated Book of Ruth, which never can be eaten up, and will be a joy forever to all our posterity after us, and to our contemporaries.”
I will insert here an account of how perfect the smoothness of English mechanism may be: —
13 CHARLES STREET, BATH.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH, — We asked the porter at the depot to tell us of a good hotel, and he sent us to York House. After being deposited in it, with our stones round our necks (as I call our luggage), we found it was not only the first hotel in Bath, but one famous throughout the land. A terrible fear came over me that a year's income would scarcely defray our expenses even for one day and night; but as we did not arrive till five, we could not leave till the next day. So we had nothing to do but to take it grandly. We were put in possession of a lordly sitting-room, hung with crimson. There was nothing gaudy, but a solid richness. Papa and Mamma were the Duke and Duchess of Maine [in remembrance of a lordly claim at Raymond], Julian was Lord Waldo, and Una, Lady Raymond. The finest cut crystal, and knives and forks with solid silver handles, and spoons too heavy to lift easily, delicate rose and gold china, and an entire service of silver dishes, came upon the table. Our attendants were the Sublime and the Pensive, in the form of two men. The Sublime had a bosom full of linen lilies in peculiarly wide bloom; while the Pensive was adorned rather with snowdrops. Their footfalls were descending snowflakes, their manners devout, solemn, and stately. It was really quite delicious, just for a short time; and it was impossible not to be convinced that we at least came over with William the Conqueror; or we might be descended in a straight line from Prince Bladud, who flourished in Bath eight hundred years before the Christian era. At all events, we were the noblest in the land, and received the salaams of the Sublime and the Pensive as obviously due to our exalted rank. As I looked at my husband, so kingly in aspect by nature, of such high courtesy in manner; and at Una, princesslike, with her sweet dignity, I did not at all wonder at the stolen glances of our waiters; that looking without looking for which a thorough-bred English waiter is so remarkable. Lord Waldo also “bore it well;” and as to the Lady Rose, she might have bloomed in a royal conservatory. Sumptuous wax candles, in richly chased silver candlesticks, lighted us up in the
evening. Whenever I left the sitting-room for my chamber, the Sublime was suddenly at the door to open and shut it for me, bowing down with all his lilies. Ah, me! But how can I describe the York House table! Such Apician food, so delicately touched with fire! And who can ever sing adequately the graceful curves in which the Pensive swept off the covers, at the sound of some inaudible music — inaudible except to his ear — as soon as we were all seated! I felt so grand that I was ready to shout with laughter — having gone full circle from the sublime to the ridiculous several times. I felt the ducal coronet on my brow, flashing fine flames from diamonds and emeralds. His Grace's diadem put my eyes out (as it often does, even when not in York House, and we not all in full dress). The weather was dull and cold, and a glorious fire blazed in the large grate, fed and tended by a third noiseless apparition, the Soft, in the shape of a boy, who gently deposited black boulders of coal without raising any dust, and with a brush delicately invited away the ashes from the bars and the hearth, and poked as one would kiss a sleeping babe. The eyes of the Soft did not wander; they were kept snug beneath their lids with well-trained reverence; and this genius of the fire always appeared as soon as the glow began to fade, as if by inspiration. In my large chamber, draped with white muslin over rose color and drab damask, a superb fire glowed. I must make an end of this nonsense.
The next day I drove about Bath to get apartments, — the first hour in vain; and everybody said the city was full, and we should not succeed. The children cried out to stay in York House, enjoying the luxury. But again I took a Bath chair, and with Fanny the nurse at my side to talk for me, and Rosebud to look out for signs of “To Let,” we tried again, and found this modest house; where, such is the simplicity of my nature, I am ten times as comfortable and at home as at even York House, with its shaded grandeur. Yet I am very fond of splendor, I have to confess; and, moreover, our surprise was great when, upon demanding the account, the Sublime brought on a silver salver charges actually more moderate than those of many inferior hotels all about England.
I will proceed here with our visit to Redcar, though that occurred in 1859, when we had returned from Rome.
Redcar is in the midst of a stately region, grand with an outline of hard-bosomed, endless beach and vast sky, of sea and sand-hills, where my father stands forth very distinctly in my memory. When he went out at fixed hours of the day, between the hours for writing, he walked over the long, long beach, and very often with my brother and myself; stopping now and then in his firm, regal tread to look at what nature could do in far-stretching color and beckoning horizon line. Along the sand-hills, frolicking in the breeze or faithfully clinging in the strong wind to their native thimbleful of earth, hung the cerulean harebells, to which I ardently clambered, listening for their chimes. In the preface to “Monte Beni,” the compliment paid to Redcar is well hidden. My father speaks of reproducing the book (sketched out among the dreamy interests of Florence) “on the broad and dreary sands of Redcar, with the gray German Ocean tumbling in upon me, and the northern blast always howling in my ears.” Nothing could have pleased him better as an atmosphere for his work; all that the atmosphere included he did not mean to admit, just then. And London was not so very far away.
On September 9, 1859, my mother says in her diary, “My husband gave me his manuscript to read.” There are no other entries on that clay or the next, except, “Reading manuscript.” On the 11th she says, “Reading manuscript for the second time.” The diary refers to reading the manuscript on the third day, but on the two following days, in which she was to finish as much of the romance as was ready, there are wholly blank spaces. These mean more than words to me, who know so well how she never set aside daily rules, and how unbrokenly her little diaries flow on. She writes home: —
“Mr. Hawthorne has about finished his book. More than four hundred pages of manuscripts are now in the hands of the publishers. I have read as much as that, but do not yet know the denouement. He is very well, and in very good spirits, despite all his hard toil of so many months. As usual, he thinks the book good for nothing, and based upon a very foolish idea which nobody will like or accept. But I am used to such opinions, and understand why he feels oppressed with disgust of what has so long occupied him. The true judgment of the work was his first idea of it, when it seemed to him worth the doing. He has regularly despised each one of his books immediately upon finishing it. My enthusiasm is too much his own music, as it were. It needs the reverberation of the impartial mind to reassure him that he has not been guilty of a betise.
“Mr. Hawthorne had no idea of portraying me in Hilda. Whatever resemblance one sees is accidental.”
On November 8 (we were then in Leamington once more) she records in very large script, “My husband to-day finished his book, 'The Romance of Monte Beni.'“
My mother was especially fortunate in finding the smallest rose-tinted and most gleaming among the shells which we came across upon the sands, and of these a few superlative but almost invisible specimens were long the cherished possession of her English work-box. She often went with me to the sands, spending much time there; her diary saying: “Superb, calm day. I went on sands with Rosebud to gather shells. Stayed three hours.” Or: “Most superb day possible. I went on the sands with Rose, and sat all the morning in a sand-chair, reading, while Rose played. It was a divine day; the air like rose petals, the sky cerulean, the sea sapphire. I felt so serene and quiet; — a great calm.” Then comes the inevitable contrast: “Tremendous sea. Rose and I went on the sands to gather shells.” These shells, which we could none of us find in so perfect a state as my mother could, were object-lessons to me in the refinements of art, as the harebells were in the refinements of nature; for were not the dancing flowers alive, and the stirless shells the passive work of thought?
Sometimes she read Disraeli's “Sibyl,” while I built a sand fortress round her; or she read “Venetia,” “Oliver Twist,” “The Life of Mary II.,” “Romany Rye,” and “The Lives of the Last Four Popes.” She remembered Pio Nono with unflagging interest, and mentions his serious illness, and then his recovery. She read “a queer biography of Wordsworth by Hood,” and she regarded Carlyle's diction in the “French Revolution” as “rubbishy.”
Besides the pilgrimages in search of shells, another pursuit was inaugurated by my mother, in her breathlessly calm way, which was the finding of multitudinous seaweeds of every eccentricity of style. The Yankee elm, the English oak, the kitchen-garden herb, or Italian stone-pine, the fern, and tresses, as they seemed, of women's fair or dusky hair, were all so cleverly imitated by the seaweeds that one might have supposed them to be the schoolbooks of the sea; or the latest news there, regarding the nature of the dry world. Many spare moments were given to mounting these pretty living pictures of growths. My lack of success in producing a single very neat specimen was, I grieve to admit, hardly bettered by any of us; my father joining in the scientific excess only so far as to turn his luminous eyes upon our enthusiasm, with his genial “h'm-m” of permission.
Excursions were made to Whitby, Wilton Castle, and other places; and I made an excursion on my own account, which kept me lame for some time. “Rose fell and hurt her knees and elbow, following a monkey.” But my most considerate mother would never have let me perceive the humorous and possibly unintelligent aspect of my adventurous spirit; and the next day she tenderly inscribes the historical fact, “Poor baby lame.”
Here are a few words of testimony, from my sister, to the charm of this shore: —
REDCAR, October 4, 1859.
Our last day in Redcar, dearest aunt Lizzie; 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! When one ought to forget, they are strongest.
Your loving niece,
U. H.
I thought that the petty lodging in which we were established was an odd nook for my father
to be in. I liked to get out with him upon the martial plain of sand and tremendous waves, where folly was not, by law of wind and light of Titan power, and where the most insignificant ornament was far from insignificant: the whorl of an exquisite shell, beautiful and still, as if just dead; or the seaweeds, that are so like pictures of other growths. I felt that this scene was a worthy one for the kind but never familiar man who walked and reflected there. We enjoyed a constant outdoor life. But in those uninspired hours when there was no father in sight, and my mother was resting in seclusion, I played at grocer's shop on the sands with a little girl called Hannah, whom I then despised for her name, her homely neat clothes, her sweetness and silence, and in retrospect learned to love. As we pounded brick, secured sugary-looking sands of different tints, and heaped up minute pebbles, a darkly clad, tastefully picturesque form would approach, — a form to which I bowed down in spirit as, fortunately for me, my father. He would look askance at my utterly useless, time-frittering amusement, which I already knew was withering my brain and soul. In his tacit reproach my small intellect delighted, and loftier thoughts than those of the counter would refresh me for the rest of the day; and I thankfully returned to the heights and lengths of wide nature, full of color and roaring waves.
CHAPTER XII
ITALIAN DAYS: I
My first frequent companionship with my father began in Italy, when I was seven years old. We entered Rome after a long, wet, cold carriage journey that would have disillusionized a Dore. As we jolted along, my mother held me in her arms, while I slept as much as I could; and when I could not, I blessed the patient, weary bosom upon which I lay exhausted. It was a solemn-faced load of Americans which shook and shivered into the city of memories that night. In “Monte Beni,” as he preferred to call “The Marble Faun,” my father speaks of Rome with mingled contempt for its discomforts and delighted heartiness for its outshining fascinations. “The desolation of her ruin” does not prevent her from being “more intimately our home than even the spot where we were born.” A ruin or a picture could not satisfy his heart, which accepted no yoke less strong than spiritual power. Rome supplies the most telling evidence of human failure, because she is the theatre of the greatest human effort, both in the ranks of Satan and of God; and she visibly mourns her sins of mistake at the feet of spiritual victory, Saints Peter and Paul. (As a Catholic, I could hardly win the respect of the gentle reader if I were so un-American as to fear to stand by my belief.) And while the observer in Rome may well feel sad in the midst of reminders of the enormous sins of the past, there is an uplifting, for the soul eager to perceive the truth, in all her assurances of that mercy which is the cause of religion. If the Holy See was established in Rome because it was the city where the worst wickedness upon earth, because the most intelligent, was to be found, we may conclude that the old emperors, stormy and grotesque, are responsible for its melancholy “atmosphere of sin,” to which Hilda alludes as a condition of the whole planet; and not the popes who have prayed in Rome, nor the people who believe there. In printed remarks about Italy both my parents say that she most reminds them of what is highest.
Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) Page 684
