It has been affirmed that Hawthorne made use of the Honorable Mr. Upham, the excellent historian of Salem witchcraft, as a model for Judge Pyncheon, and that this was done in revenge for Mr. Upham’s inimical influence in regard to the Salem surveyorship. It is impossible, at this date, to disentangle the snarl of Hawthorne’s political relations in regard to that office, but Upham had been a member of Congress and was perhaps as influential a Whig as any in the city. If Hawthorne was removed through his instrumentality, he performed our author a service, which neither of them could have realized at the time. Hawthorne, however, had a strong precedent in his favor in this instance; namely, Shakespeare’s caricature of Sir Thomas Luce, as Justice Shallow in “The Merry Wives of Windsor”; but there is no reason why we should think better or worse of Mr. Upham on this account.
Phoebe Pyncheon is an ideal character, the type of youthful New England womanhood, and the most charming of all Hawthorne’s feminine creations. Protected by the shield of her own innocence, she leaves her country home from the same undefined impulse by which birds fly north in spring, and accomplishes her destiny where she might have least expected to meet with it. She fills the whole book with her sunny brightness, and like many a young woman at her age she seems more like a spirit than a character. Her maidenly dignity repels analysis, and Hawthorne himself extends a wise deference to his own creation.
The future of a great nation depends more on its young women than upon its laws or its statesmen.
In regard to Holgrave, we have already said somewhat; but he is so lifelike that it seems as if he must have been studied from one of the younger members of the Brook Farm association; perhaps the one of whom Emerson tells us, {Footnote: Lecture on Brook Farm.} that he spent his leisure hours in playing with the children, but had “so subtle a mind” that he was always consulted whenever important business was on foot. He is visible to our mental perspective as a rather slender man, above medium height, with keen hazel eyes, a long nose, and long legs, and quick and lively in his movements. Phoebe has a more symmetrical figure, bluish-gray eyes, a complexion slightly browned from going without her hat, luxuriant chestnut-brown hair, always quiet and graceful. We have no doubt that Holgrave made a worthy husband for her, and that he occasionally took a hand in public affairs.
Judge Pyncheon’s duplicity is revealed to Holgrave by the medium of a daguerreotype. Men or women who are actors in real life should avoid being photographed, for the camera is pretty sure to penetrate their hypocrisy, and expose them to the world as they actually are. Every photograph album is to a certain extent a rogues’ gallery, in which our faults, peculiarities, and perhaps vices are ruthlessly portrayed for the student of human nature. If a merchant were to have all his customers photographed, he would soon learn to distinguish those who were not much to be trusted.
Notice also Hawthorne’s eye for color. When Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe are about to leave the seven-gabled house for the last time, “A plain, but handsome dark-green barouche” is drawn to the door. This is evidently his idea of a fine equipage; and it happens that the background of Raphael’s “Pope Julius” is of this same half-invisible green, and harmonizes so well with the Pope’s figure that few realize its coloring.
The plot of this picturesque story is the most ingenious of Hawthorne’s life, but sufficiently probable throughout to answer the purpose of a romance, and it is the only one of Hawthorne’s larger works which ends happily. It was brought out by Ticknor & Company at Easter 1850,—less than ten weeks after it was finished; but we think of the House of the Seven Gables as standing empty, deserted and forlorn.
In December Emerson had written to Hawthorne concerning a new magazine in which he and Lowell were interested, and if Hawthorne would only give it his support its success could not be questioned. What Hawthorne replied to this invitation has never been discovered, but he had seen too many such periodicals go to wreck to feel much confidence in this enterprise. {Footnote: J. Hawthorne, i. 381.} It is of more importance now that Emerson should have addressed him as “My dear Hawthorne,” for such cordial friendliness was rare in “the poet of the pines.” Mrs. Alcott once remarked that Emerson never spoke to her husband otherwise than as “Mr. Alcott,” and it is far from likely that he ever spoke to Hawthorne differently from this. The conventionalities of letter-writing run back to a period when gentlemen addressed one another—and perhaps felt so too—in a more friendly manner than they do at present.
Works of fiction and sentimental poetry stir up a class of readers which no other literature seems to reach, and Hawthorne was soon inundated with letters from unknown, and perhaps unknowable, admirers; but the most remarkable came from a man named Pyncheon, who asserted that his grandfather had been a judge in Salem, and who was highly indignant at the use which Hawthorne had made of his name. {Footnote: Conway, 135.} This shows how difficult it is for a writer of fiction or a biographer to escape giving offence. The lightning is sure to strike somewhere.
“THE SNOW IMAGE”