He is enchanted with The Wayside.
You know Mr. Hawthorne is a sort of load-stone, which attracts all men's confidences without a word of question, and scarcely any answer; and so Mr. Miller tells his whole life and thoughts. If he has the national reservedness generally, it certainly vanishes in my husband's presence, for it seems as if he could not tell enough. On Monday and Tuesday we expected to have Mr. Ticknor here, whom Mr. Hawthorne wished to see about his book, but he did not come.
Mr. Hawthorne feels better now, and looks natural, with living color. [He had been terribly shocked and overcome by the death, by drowning from a burning vessel, of his sister Louisa.] Poor, dear Louisa! It is harder and harder for me to realize that I shall not see her again. And she had such a genuine joy in the children. But it is a positive bliss to me to contemplate Louisa and her mother together. If there is anything immortal in life it is the home relations, and heaven would be no heaven without them. God never has knit my soul with my husband's soul for such a paltry moment as this human life! I have not loved my mother for one short day! My children do not thrill my heart-strings with less than an eternal melody. We know that God cannot trifle! This is all more real to me than what my human eye rests on. I heard one of the truly second-sighted say once, that in a trance he saw the spiritual world; and while gazing enraptured on its green pastures, a spirit whispered to him, "Out of this greenness your earthly pastures are green."
Yesterday afternoon Mr. Miller left us. Oh, dear, how the little man talked! I do not know as the Cataract of Lodore is an adequate exemplification, for that has some airy, fairy jets and overfalls. But the good faith and earnestness with which Mr. Miller coined the air into words were more like the noise and pertinacity of a manufactory. He was certainly a new phase of man to me. When he finally vanished, with his portfolio under his arm, my wings sprang up as if an iron band had been holding them down. It was with a truly divine patience that my husband gave ear to this personated Paper-Mill, because he saw that he was good and true and honest. (I might have only said "good.") Into those depths of misty gray light which stand for eyes under my husband's brow, the little man was drawn as by a line. Miss Bremer said to me of Mr. Hawthorne's eyes, "Wonderful, wonderful eyes! They give, but receive not." But they do draw in. Mr. Miller kept his face turned to him, as the sunflower to the sun; and when I spoke, and he tried to turn to me, his head whirled back again. It really is marvelous, how the mighty heart, with its charities, and comprehending humanity, which glows and burns beneath the grand intellect, as if to keep warm and fused the otherwise cold abstractions of thought,—it is marvelous how it opens the bosoms of men. I have seen it so often, in persons who have come to him. So Mr. Melville, generally silent and incommunicative, pours out the rich floods of his mind and experience to him, so sure of apprehension, so sure of a large and generous interpretation, and of the most delicate and fine judgment. Thus only could the poetic insight and far-searching analytic power be safely intrusted to him. To him only who can tenderly sympathize must be given the highest and profoundest insight.
How wonderfully it is arranged, that in the very person who most imperiously demands absolute beauty and perfection (for so does Mr. Hawthorne), in this very person is found the subtlest and widest appreciation of human shortcomings, and the pleadings of weakness and failure. In "Blithedale" I think one feels this tender humanity. It will come out more and more.
Shall I tell you where I am? I am sitting in our acacia grove, on the hill, with a few pines near enough for me to hear their oceanic murmur. It is only necessary for me to shut my eyes, to hear every variety of water sounds. The pine gives me the long, majestic swell and retreat of the sea waves; the birch, the silvery tinkle of a pebbly brook; the acacia, the soft fall of a cascade; and all mingled together, a sound of many waters most refreshing to the sense. I thank heaven that we possess a hilltop. No amount of plains could compete with the value of this. To look down on the world actually is typical of looking down spiritually, and so it is good. Una and Julian are wandering around; Una having been reading to Julian. Rosebud is asleep. Oh, she enjoys a summer day so much! This morning I set her down on the green grass. Without looking at me, the happiest smile began to dawn over her face; and then she suddenly waved her hands like wings, and set forth. To fall down seemed a new joy. Julian undertook to be her escort. It was a charming picture—the two figures grouped together; the fair little blue-eyed face turned up to the great brown, loving eyes, and all sorts of dulcet sounds responding to one another. I could not help smiling to read in your letter that you would have a rug spread for her. I should as soon think of keeping an untamed bird on a rug as baby. I assure you that since she has had the use of her feet she does not pause in the race of life. . . . It is good to see such an expression of immense satisfaction as dwells upon her face. Most lovingly your child,
SOPHIECHEN.
September 19.
MY DEAR MOTHER,—On Friday Mr. Hawthorne returned from nearly a three weeks' visit to the Isles of Shoals. I did not tell you about it while he was there, because your heart is so tender I knew you would have no peace, and you would all the time be thinking that he was separated from us by water. But here he is, looking in splendid health, all safe and sound. General Pierce, and some other dignitaries with their wives, met Mr. Hawthorne for a day or two; and the rest of the time he had all to himself. I must tell you a story, by which you will be enabled to see into political slander. An officer of the army, resident at Baltimore, told the editor of a paper friendly to General Pierce, that while in Mexico General Pierce was at a gambling-table with another officer; and, a squabble ensuing, this officer struck General Pierce in the face, and that the General took it without a word. He told the editor also that the officer who offered this insult was in California, making it difficult to have a word from him upon the subject. The editor, in perplexity, sent the paragraph to General Pierce, who was at a loss how to prove the utter falsity of the whole story. But, behold, the next thing which he laid his hand upon, on his table, was a letter postmarked "California." He opened it, and it was from the very officer who was said to have insulted him so foully, and was an expression of the highest admiration and respect, and congratulations upon his present position. This was an unanswerable denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not considered a military grace.
Mr. Hawthorne went to Brunswick, having been cordially invited by the President of the College. He met his classmates there. On account of the heavy rains he was detained so many hours on his way thither that he did not arrive till noon of the day, and thus providentially escaped hearing himself orated and poetized about in the morning. Brunswick was so full that he had to go to Bath to sleep; and there he had funny adventures, some old sea-captains insisting upon considering him a brother, and calling him all the time "Cap'n Hathorne." At the Isles of Shoals he had the ocean all to himself; but when he wished to see human beings, he found Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter very pleasant. Mrs. Thaxter sent Una a necklace of native shells with a gold and coral clasp, Julian a plume made of white owl feathers, and Rosebud a most exquisite wreath of sea-moss upon a card. I kept a journal for my husband, according to his express injunction. The children missed papa miserably, and I could not bear the trial very well. I could not eat, sitting opposite his empty chair at table, and I lost several pounds of flesh.
To-day, when baby waked from a nap of four hours and a half, she called for the first time, "Mamma!" I ran up, and she was smiling like a constellation of stars. She mourned after papa a great deal, and sometimes would hold a long discourse about him, pointing all the while at the portrait. One day a neighbor sent me, to cheer my loneliness, the most superb bouquet of rare and costly rosebuds that I ever saw. I put them in the Study, in a pretty champagne-glass [the tall, old-fashioned kind], and they filled the room with fragrance. I tended them very carefully; but they bloomed too fully at last. Yet just at that moment, the lady gave me a fresh supply—the very day before Mr. Hawthorne's return; and on that bright Friday afternoon I put the vase of delicious rosebuds, and a beautiful China plate of peaches and grapes, and a basket of splendid golden Porter apples on his table; and we opened the western door [leading from the Study to the lawn] and let in a flood of sunsetting. Apollo's "beautiful disdain" seemed kindled anew. Endymion smiled richly in his dream of Diana. Lake Como was wrapped in golden mist. The divine form in the Transfiguration floated in light. I thought it would be a pity if Mr. Hawthorne did not come that moment. As I thought this, I heard the railroad-coach—and he was here. He looked, to be sure, as he wrote in one of his letters, "twice the man he was." Dear little Una went to the village with the mail-bag, just before it was time to expect her father, and I told her I hoped she would drive home with him. She met him, caught a glance, and he was gone. It surprised me that her sense of duty prevented her from turning back at once. I asked her why she did not, as the letters were not of so much importance, since papa had come. "Oh," said she, "I did not know but it would be wrong to go back only because I wanted to." At last she came. She entered the Study in a very quiet way (apparently), received his loving greeting, and then, taking off her hat, sat down at my feet to look at him, and hear him. When she went to bed, she said, "Oh, mamma, my head has tingled so, ever since I saw papa, that I could hardly bear the pain! Do not tell him, for it might trouble him." Was it not sweet and heroic in her to keep so quiet for two hours? This is a good specimen of Una's powers of self-sacrifice. It has sometimes made me wish to weep over her delicious tears.
Sunday, October 24, 1852.
MY DEAREST MOTHER,—To-day we all went into the woods above and behind our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace. My husband, at full length on the carpet of withered pine, presented no hindrance to the tides of divine life that are ready to flow through us, if we will. There are no Words to describe such enjoyment; but you can understand it well. It is the highest wisdom, I think, to sometimes do nothing; but only keep still, and reverently be happy, and receptive of the great omnipresence. How studiously we mortals keep it out of our eternal business. There should be no business at least once a week. I rather think it is the best proof that Moses was inspired that he instituted a Sabbath of rest from labor. God needs not, but man needs, rest.
Sunset. I left you to go out again and join my husband on the hilltop, while the children's voices kept us advised of their welfare somewhere about the place. My husband and I sat on a terrace on the side of the hill, both looking off upon the tranquil horizon, beginning to be veiled with a dim blue haze. Una ran up, calling out that Mr. Hosmer wished to see papa and mamma. So we descended, and met the old gentleman on a lower terrace, where I invited him to sit on the green sofa; and we grouped about him. Julian at first went rushing through our ranks like a young Olympian exercising heroic games, and finally extended himself on the grass to listen to the palaver. Mr. Hosmer began with the Great Daniel [Webster], who died at three o'clock this morning. He expressed admiration of him, as we all did; and I thought his death an immense loss. Mr. Hosmer was very glad that he died in the fullness of his power of mind, and not sunken in the socket. He discoursed upon the massive grandeur of his speeches, his wonderful letters, and of all that was mighty in him. Also of his shortcomings and their retribution. You would have liked to have heard Mr. Hosmer glorify John Adams—even his appearance. He said that at eighty-three (when he sat near him every Sunday at church) he was a "perfect beauty;" that his cheeks were as unwrinkled as a girl's, and as fair and white, and his head was a noble crown; and that any woman would fall in love with him. So we talked of great men, till I came in to watch baby's sleep. She soon waked, all smiles and love; and then Mr. Hawthorne and Mr. Hosmer came in, still upon the theme of great men. Mr. Hosmer thought Oliver Cromwell greatest of all, I believe. Una and I made you a wreath of richly tinted oak leaves to-day, and when I go to Newton I will take it. I wish you could hear her repeat poetry in her dulcet, touching tones. I never heard any one repeat poetry so much to my mind.
Evening. Mr. Hawthorne is drawn forcibly out of doors by the moon's rays, they are so clear and superb to-night. He looked out and sighed, for he did not really want to go; but he felt under a moral necessity. I walk out in him, being mamma and nurse [Rosebud was still up]. When you write to Mr. Plumly, bless him for me for the mantle [his gift to Mrs. Peabody] and his beautiful, refreshing letter about it. I had a great mind to write to him myself of his appreciation of you and of my husband. What a noble, lovely person he is!
Your child, SOPHY.
April 14, 1853.
My husband went off in a dark rain this morning, on his way to Washington. Mary Herne called to baby to come and take care of her dolly, who was upon the floor in the kitchen. Rose rushed in a breakneck manner across the parlor, exclaiming as if in the utmost maternal distress, "Oh, mershy, mershy!" and rescued Dolly from her peril. She was quite happy and still in the kitchen; and then I heard her shout, "I like it—I like it motch!" I asked Mary what it was that baby liked so "motch." When Mary got up to investigate, she found baby in the closet at the molasses jug, still crying, "I like it—I like it motch!" She was very much diverted by our consternation; and when, at tea-time, I was speaking of it, she burst into inextinguishable laughter; and as soon as she could speak, said, "I glad! Was ever such a mischief?" Twice to-day she began to go into the Study for "papa take her." I sent Julian to the village at five, and he returned in a pouring rain. His sack kept him dry, but he thought he was soaked to the skin because his nose was wet. He brought a letter from Charlotte Bridge, inclosing two notes to my husband from Mr. Bridge. To-day I found nothing in the post-office but Mr. Emerson. He walked along with me and said he had a letter from Mr. Synge [whom Hawthorne met, later, in England], an attache of the British Legation, asking for an autograph of Mr. Hawthorne. Grandpapa, baby, and I sat in the parlor in the afternoon, and baby was in the highest spirits, and conversed for the first time in the most facetious manner, casting side glances, and laughing with a great pretense of being vastly amused, and of superior insight into the bearing of things.
April 19. The great day of the Concord fight. I was awakened by cannon and the ringing of bells. The cannon thundered all around the welkin, in a very grand, stately, and leisurely manner. I read the history of the day to the children. What made the morning beautiful and springlike to me was a letter which Julian brought from my husband.
April 21. A day like a dulcimer. It was so charming to rake and plant and prune that I remained out a long time, and tore my hands nicely.
Julian requested to go and take a quiet walk in the woods, and returned just as I was becoming anxious about him, shouting, with a sweet-brier bush which he had pulled up by the roots in the wood. I took a spade, and dug a great cave, and planted it beneath his western window; and I am sure it must grow for him, for he sent sunshine down into the earth from his eyes upon the roots while I was setting it out.
The stage-coach drove up and brought me Mrs. S. G. Ward and Sarah Clarke. Mrs. Ward was cruelly disappointed not to see Mr. Hawthorne; and I told her that he would probably tear his hair when he came back and found what he had lost. "Tell him," said she, "that I tore out all mine." She was splendid and radiant beyond my power to tell; dressed in rich green and a rose-colored bonnet, and her beautiful hair curling round her wonderful face. I do not believe there is another such woman in the world. When she had stepped from the house, Julian begged me to run after her, and tell her she must go to England [whither the family now expected to journey]; and with the most enchanting grace she laughed, and said, "Tell him I certainly shall!"
Sunday. At ten, my little flock gathered [Mrs. Hawthorne taught reading, geography, drawing, etc., to several children besides her own, for love, and gave them Sunday-school lessons also]; and I read them the story of Balaam's ass, and about the death of Moses. They were much afflicted that Moses was not allowed to go to the Promised Land. I read that he looked down from Mount Pisgah and saw Canaan and the City of Palms, and showed them my Cuban sketch of a palm, describing exactly how they looked and grew; and the vision of the City of Palms became very beautiful to them. Poor little Mary Ellen felt ill, but she was so interested that I could not persuade her to go home.
April 26. I met Mr. Rockwood Hoar, who congratulated us upon our expected residence in England, which he said was "the only place fit to live in out of America."
April 29. A neighbor came yesterday with an English white rose, and set out the tree for me. He said it was for Rosebud. We are getting to look quite nice, but all will look black and bare to my husband, after being at the South. Baby is filled with joy to be out in such lovely weather, and makes no hesitation to take the heaviest tools, and dig and rake and hoe. She will not come in even to drink her milk. Some documents came this morning from the State Department, relating to the Consulate at Liverpool. The peach-trees are all in bloom, and the cherry-trees also. I looked about, as I sat down in our pine grove, and tried to bear my husband's absence but it is desolation without him. This is the sweetest place—I really cannot bear to leave it. My scholars drew flowers, this morning. Mr. Emerson and Ellery Charming passed along; and Mr. Emerson asked Julian to go with the children to Fairy Land [in Walden woods]. He went, in a state of ecstatic bliss. He brought me home, in a basket, cowslips, anemones, and violets.
In June the voyage to England, as Hawthorne was appointed Consul at Liverpool by President Pierce, was undertaken, and pleasantly accomplished.
Hawthorne's "English Note-Books," as well as the elaborated papers that make up "Our Old Home," disclose something of his daily life in England during his consulship; but it was in the rapid, familiar letters of my mother to her family that his life was most freely narrated. I have preserved these letters, and shall give extracts from them in the pages that follow, prefacing and interpolating a few girlish memories of my father and of the places in which I saw him, although they are trivial and meagre in incident. He died the day before my thirteenth birthday, and as my existence had begun at a time when his quiet life was invaded (if we may use that term in connection with a welcome guest) by fame, with its attendant activity in the outside world, my intercourse with him was both juvenile and brief. In England, he mingled more than ever before with the members of literary and fashionable society. I, who in 1853 was but two years old, had to be satisfied with a glance and a smile, which were so much less than he had been able to give to my brother and sister in their happier childhood days, for they had enjoyed hours of his companionship as a constant pastime. I was, moreover, much younger than the others, and was never allowed to grow, as I wished, out of the appellations of Rosebud, Baby, and Bab (as my father always called me), and all the infantine thought which those pet names imply. I longed myself to hear the splendidly grotesque fairy tales, sprung from his delicious jollity of imagination, which Una and Julian had reveled in when our father had been at leisure in Lenox and Concord; and the various frolics about which I received appetizing hints as I grew into girlhood made me seem to myself a stranger who had come too late. But a stranger at Hawthorne's side could be very happy, and, whatever my losses, I knew myself to be rich.
In the early years of our stay in England his personality was most radiant. His face was sunny, his aspect that of shining elegance. There was the perpetual gleam of a glad smile on his mouth and in his eyes. His eyes were either a light gray or a violet blue, according to his mood. His hair was brown and waved loosely (I take it very hard when people ask me if it was at all red!), and his complexion was as clear and luminous as his mother's, who was the most beautiful woman some people have ever seen. He was tall, and with as little superfluous flesh and as much sturdy vigor as a young athlete; for his mode of life was always athletic, simple, and abstemious. He leaned his head a little to one side, often, in a position indicating alert rest, such as we find in many Greek statues,—so different from the straight, dogged pose of a Roman emperor. He was very apt to make an assent with an upward movement of the head, a comfortable h'm-m, and a half-smile. Sympathetic he was, indeed, and warm with the fire that never goes out in great natures. He had much dignity; so much that persons in his own country sometimes thought him shy and reticent to the verge of morbidness. But it was merely the gentlemanliness of the man, who was jocund with no one but his intimate friends, and never fierce except with rascals, as I observed on one or two occasions. Those who thought him too silent were bores whom he desired not to attract. Those who thought him unphilosophical (and some philosophers thought that) were not artists, and could not analyze his work. Those who knew him for a man and a friend were manly and salubrious of soul themselves. They have given plenty of testimony as to the good-fellowship of a nature which could be so silent at will.
He was usually reserved, but he was ready for action all the time. His full, smooth lips, sensitive as a child's, would tell a student of facial lines how vivid was his life, though absolutely under his cool command. He was a delightful companion even when little was said, because his eyes spoke with a sort of apprehension of your thought, so that you felt that your expression of face was a clear record for him, and that words would have been a sort of anticlimax. His companionship was exquisitely restful, since it was instinctively sympathetic. He did not need to exert himself to know you deeply, and he saw all the good in you there was to know; and the weakness and the wrong of any heart he weighed as nicely in the balance of tender mercy as we could do in pity for ourselves. I always felt a great awe of him, a tremendous sense of his power. His large eyes, liquid with blue and white light and deep with dark shadows, told me even when I was very young that he was in some respects different from other people. He could be most tender in outward action, but he never threw such action away. He knew swine under the cleverest disguise. I speak of outward acts of tenderness. As for his spirit, it was always arousing mine, or any one's, and acting towards one's spiritual being invisibly and silently, but with gentle earnestness. He evinced by it either a sternly sweet dignity of tolerance, or an approbation generous as a broad meadow, or a sadly glanced, adverse comment that lashed one's inner consciousness with remorse. He was meditative, as all those are who care that the world is full of sorrow and sin, but cheerful, as those are who have the character and genius to see the finite beauty and perfection in the world, which are sent to the true-hearted as indications of heaven. He could be full of cheer, and at the same time never lose the solemnity of a perception of the Infinite,—that familiar fact which we, so many of us, have ceased to fear, but which the greatest men so remember and reverence. He never became wholly merged in fun, however gay the games in which he joined with us children; just as a man of refinement who has been in war never quite throws aside the dignity of the sorrow which he has seen. He might seem, at a superficial glance, to be the merriest of us all, but on second thoughts he was not. Of course, there were times when it was very evident to me that my father was as comfortable and happy as he cared to be. When he stood upon the hearth-rug, before the snapping, blushing English fire (always poked into a blaze towards evening, as he was about to enter the parlor),—when he stood there with his hands clasped behind him, swaying from side to side in a way peculiar to him, and which recalled the many sea-swayed ancestors of his who had kept their feet on rolling decks, then he was a picture of benevolent pleasure. Perhaps, for this moment, the soldier from the battlefields of the soul ceased to remember scenes of cruelty and agony. He swayed from side to side, and raised himself on his toes, and creaked his slippered heels jocosely, and smiled upon me, and lost himself in agreeable musings. He was very courteous, entirely sincere, and quiet with fixed principles as a great machine with consistent movement. He treated children handsomely; harshness was not in him to be subdued, and scorn of anything that was honestly developing would have seemed to him blasphemy. He stooped to my intelligence, and rejoiced it. We were usually a silent couple when off for a walk together, or when we met by chance in the household. I suppose that we were seeing which could outdo the other at "holding the tongue." But still, our intercourse, as I remarked before, might be complete. I knew him very well indeed,—' his power, his supremacy of honesty, his wealth of refinement. And he, I was fully aware, could see through me as easily as if I were a soul in one of his own books.
Even as a child, knowing that he could not think me a remunerative companion, I realized how remarkable it was that in all his being there was not an atom of the poison of contempt. If he did not love stupidity, he forgave it. If he was strong with analysis and the rejection of all sham and wrong, his hand was ready to grasp s any hand, because it was a human creature's, whose destiny was a part of every destiny—even Christ's. This sympathy, which caused the choice he had made of his character-studies, and brought many confessions to his judgment from bewildered men and women, was with him so entire that it showed itself in the little things of existence, as a whole garden-path is noble with the nature of the rose that stands blooming there.
His aspect avoided, as did that of his art, which exactly reproduced his character, anything like self-conscious picturesqueness. It is pleasant to have the object of our regard unconscious of himself. He had a way of ignoring, while observing automatically, all accessories, which reminded us that his soul was ever awake, and waiting to be made free of earthly things and common ideas.
During our European life he frequently wore a soft brown felt hat and a brown talma of finest broadcloth, whose Greek-like folds and double-decked effect were artistic, but did not tempt him to pose or remember his material self. He was as forgetful of his appearance as an Irishman of the true quality, who may have heard something about his coat or his hair, but has let slip from his mind what it was, and cares not, so long as the song of his comrades is tender and the laughter generous. In some such downright way, I was convinced, my father regarded the beauty and stateliness which were his, and for which he had been praised all through his existence. He forgot himself in high aims, which are greater than things seen, no matter how fine soever.
We made a very happy family group as we gladly followed and looked upon him when he took ship to start for the Liverpool Consulate; and of this journey and the new experiences which ensued my mother writes to Dr. Peabody as follows:—