Truly this gives us a beautiful insight into their home-life, and Hawthorne himself could not have written a more accurate eulogium. As intimated in the last chapter, we all make our way through life by correcting our daily trespasses, and Hawthorne was no exception to it; but as a mental analysis of this man at his best Mrs. Hawthorne’s statement deserves a lasting recognition.
“THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES”
It was not until early frosts and shortening days drove Hawthorne within doors that he again took up his writing, but who can tell how long he had been dreaming over his subject? Within five months, or by the last week of January, “The House of the Seven Gables” was ready for the press. There is no such house in Salem, exactly as he describes it; but an odd, antiquated-looking structure at No. 54 Turner Street is supposed to have served him for the suggestion of it. The name is picturesque and well suited to introduce the reader to a homely suburban romance.
The subject of the story goes back to the witchcraft period, and its active principle is a wizard’s curse, which descends from one generation to another, until it is finally removed by the marriage of a descendant of the injured party to a descendant of the guilty one. Woven together with this, there is an exposition of mesmerism, or, as it is now called, Christian Science, with its good and evil features.
Each of Hawthorne’s larger romances has a distinct style and quality of its own, apart from the fine individualized style of the author. Lathrop makes an excellent remark in regard to “The House of the Seven Gables,” that the perfection of its art seems to stand between the reader and his subject. It resembles in this respect those Dutch paintings whose enamelled surface seems like a barrier to prevent the spectator from entering the scenes which they represent. It would be a mistake to consider this a fault, but one cannot help noticing the accuracy with which the subordinate details of the plot are elaborated. Is it possible that this is connected in a way with the rarefied atmosphere of Lenox, in which distant objects appear so sharply defined?
“The House of the Seven Gables” might be symbolized by two paintings, in the first of which Hepzibah Pyncheon stands as the central figure, her face turned upward in a silent prayer for justice, her brother Clifford, with his head bowed helplessly, at one side, and the judge, with his chronic smile of satisfaction, behind Clifford; on the other side the keen-eyed Holgrave would appear, sympathetically watching the progress of events, with Phoebe Pyncheon at his left hand. Old Uncle Banner and little Ned Higgins might fill in the background. In the second picture the stricken judge would be found in a large old-fashioned arm-chair, with Clifford and Hepzibah flying through a doorway to the right, while Phoebe and Holgrave, the one happy and the other startled, enter on the left.
Hepzibah, not Phoebe, is the true heroine of the romance,—or at least its central figure. Nowhere do we look more deeply into Hawthorne’s nature than through this sympathetic portrait of the cross-looking old maid, whose only inheritance is the House of the Seven Gables, in which she has lived many years, poor, solitary, friendless, with a disgrace upon her family, only sustained by the hope that she may yet be a help and comfort to her unfortunate brother. The jury before whom Clifford was tried believed him to be guilty, but his sister never would believe it. She lives for him and suffers with him. Hawthorne does not mitigate the unpleasantness of her appearance, but he instructs us that there is a divine spark glowing within. Very pitiful is her attempt to support the enfeebled brother by keeping a candy store; but noble and heroic is her resistance to the designs of her tyrannical cousin. It is her intrepidity that effects the crisis of the drama.
Both Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon are examples of what fine portraiture Hawthorne could accomplish in exceptional or abnormal personalities, without ever descending to caricature. Judge Pyncheon has been criticised as being too much of a stage villain, but the same might be alleged of Shakespeare’s (or Fletcher’s) Richard III. What is he, in effect, but a Richard III. reduced to private life? Moreover, his habit of smiling is an individual trait which gives him a certain distinction of his own. Usually,
Faces ever blandly smiling
Are victims of their own beguiling.
But Judge Pyncheon is a candidate for the governorship, and among the more mercenary class of politicians smiling often becomes a habit for the sake of popularity. Hawthorne might have added something to the judge’s personale by representing him with a droll wit, like James Fiske, Jr., or some others that we have known, and he might have exposed more of his internal reflections; but he serves as a fair example of the hard, grasping, hypocritical type of Yankee. We see only one side of him, but there are men, and women too, who only have one side to their characters.