Under the date of August 9, 1851, Hawthorne gives his own version of the thunderstorm episode, in marked contrast with the condescending remarks of his hopeful son. It reveals the difference between parent and child.
“The rain was pouring down,” says Hawthorne senior, “and from all the hillsides mists were steaming up, and Monument Mountain seemed to be enveloped as if in the smoke of a great battle. During one of the heaviest showers of the day there was a succession of thundering knocks at the front door. On opening it, there was a young man on the doorstep, and a carriage at the gate, and Mr. James thrusting his head out of the carriage window, and beseeching shelter from the storm! So here was an invasion. Mr. and Mrs. James, their eldest son, their daughter, their little son Charles, their maid-servant, and their coachman;—not that the coachman came in; and as for the maid, she stayed in the hall.[[62]] Dear me! where was Phoebe in this time of need? All taken aback as I was, I made the best of it. Julian helped me somewhat, but not much. Little Charley is a few months younger than he, and between them they at least furnished subject for remark. Mrs. James, luckily, happened to be very much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as these were loud and sharp, she might be considered hors de combat. The son, who seemed to be about twenty, and the daughter, of seventeen or eighteen, took the part of saying nothing, which I suppose is the English fashion as regards such striplings. So Mr. James was the only one to whom it was necessary to talk, and we got along tolerably well. He said that this was his birthday, and that he was keeping it by a pleasure excursion, and that therefore the rain was a matter of course.[[63]] We talked of periodicals, English and American, and of the Puritans, about whom we agreed pretty well in our opinions; and Mr. James told how he had recently been thrown out of his wagon, and how the horse ran away with Mrs. James; and we talked about green lizards and red ones. And Mr. James told Julian how, when he was a child, he had twelve owls at the same time; and, at another time, a raven, who used to steal silver spoons and money. He also mentioned a squirrel, and several other pets; and Julian laughed most obstreperously. As to little Charles, he was much interested with Bunny (who had been returned to us from the Tappans, somewhat the worse for wear), and likewise with the rocking-horse, which luckily happened to be in the sitting-room. He examined the horse most critically, and finally got upon his back, but did not show himself quite as good a rider as Julian. Our old boy hardly said a word. Finally the shower passed over, and the invaders passed away; and I do hope that on the next occasion of the kind my wife will be there to see.”[[64]]
I give the story in full, not only because of its relation to James and his family, but for its revelation of Hawthorne himself; the little touch of parental pride is amusing as well as affecting. What Nathaniel Hawthorne thought of James in those days is far more important than what Julian Hawthorne thinks of him now.
Mr. Charles L. James writes to me:
“Yes, I have read Hawthorne’s account of our visit in a thunderstorm; and what is more, I remember the occurrence. I was little Charley, whom he mentions. I remember not only getting upon Julian’s rocking-horse, but pulling out his tail and being aghast at what I had done, for I did not possess a wooden horse and it had not occurred to me that the tail was movable.”
I am glad that Charles pulled out that tail; perhaps the memory of the outrage inspired the owner of the steed when he wrote his little story.
Longfellow regarded James with a degree of kindness and esteem quite comparable to that with which Hawthorne looked upon him. In his Journal for September 17, 1850, he says, after mentioning several visitors: “Then Fields, with G. P. R. James, the novelist, and his son. He is a sturdy man, fluent and rapid, and looking quite capable of fifty more novels.”[[65]] Later, on November 17, he says: “James, the novelist, came out to dinner with Sumner. He is a manly, middle-aged man, tirant sur le grison, as Lafontaine has it, with a gray mustache; very frank, off-hand, and agreeable. In politics he is a Tory, and very conservative.”[[66]] James certainly had no reason to complain of his reception by the best of our own literary men of that day.
It is an evidence of the fact that James was admired and his ability appreciated by other authors, that he was suspected by no less a person than William Harrison Ainsworth of being the writer of Jane Eyre. I have before me an autograph letter from Ainsworth to James (November 14, 1849), in which he says: “Anything I can do for you at any time you know you may command, and I shall only be too happy in the opportunity of making kindly mention in the N. M. M. of your Dark Scenes of History. The times are not propitious to us veterans and literature generally has within the last two years suffered a tremendous depreciation.*** Do you know I took it into my head that you were the author of ‘Jane Eyre,’ but I have altered my opinions since I read a portion of ‘Shirley.’ Currer Bell, whoever he or she may be, has certainly got some of your ‘trick’ *** but ‘Shirley’ has again perplexed me.”
Robert Louis Stevenson had a modified fondness for James, which is expressed in a letter written by him from Saranac, February, 1888, to E. L. Burlingame. He says:
“Will you send me (from the library) some of the works of my dear old G. P. R. James? With the following especially I desire to make or to renew acquaintance: The Songster, The Gipsey, The Convict, The Stepmother, The Gentleman of the Old School, The Robber. Excusez du peu. This sudden return to an ancient favourite hangs upon an accident. The Franklin County Library contains two works of his, The Cavalier and Morley Ernstein. I read the first with indescribable amusement—it was worse than I had feared, and yet somehow engaging; the second (to my surprise) was better than I had dared to hope; a good, honest, dull, interesting tale, with a genuine old-fashioned talent in the invention when not strained, and a genuine old-fashioned feeling for the English language. This experience awoke appetite, and you see I have taken steps to stay it.