Hawthorne was more than most writers influenced by environment; the situations and circumstances under which his work was produced often determined its tone and color, while the persons, localities, and occurrences observed by his alert senses in the real world about him were skilfully wrought into his romance. His residence in Berkshire affected not only the books written there, but some subsequently produced, and the scenery of this loveliest corner of New England supplied the setting for many of his tales. Some of the best passages of his "American Note-Books" are records of his observations in this region,—sundry scenes, characters, and incidents being afterward literally transcribed therefrom into his fiction,—while a few of his shorter stories seem to have been suggested by legends once current in Berkshire. It passes, therefore, that for us the greatest charm of this realm of delights is that all its beauties—the grandeur of its mountains, the enchantment of its valleys, the glamour of its autumn woods, the sheen of its lakelets, the sapphire of its skies—serve to bring us into closer sympathy with Hawthorne, to whom these beauties were once a familiar vision.
He first came to Berkshire in the summer of 1838. For thirteen years he had bravely "waited for the world to know" him. His "Twice-Told Tales" had brought him little fame or money, but they had procured him the friendship of the Peabodys, and it would appear that he and the lovely Sophia already loved each other. In a letter to her sister Elizabeth, written early in the summer, Sophia says, "Hawthorne came one morning for a take-leave call, looking radiant. He said he was not going to tell any one, not even his mother, where he should be for the next months; he thought he should change his name, so that if he died no one would be able to find his gravestone. We asked him to keep a journal while he was gone. He at first said he would not write anything, but finally concluded it would suit very well for hints for future stories." It was from his journal of these months of mysterious retirement that, forty years later, the gentle Sophia—then his widow—transcribed those pages of the "Note-Books" which contain the account of his sojourn in upper Berkshire and of his observations and meditations there. How far the journal furnished "hints for future stories" the literary world well knows.
A few days after this "take-leave call" we find Hawthorne at Pittsfield, where his Berkshire saunterings (and ours) fitly began. We follow him northward along a curving valley hemmed by mountains that slope upward to the azure; on the right rise the rugged Hoosacs in
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"Wave-like walls that block the sky With tints of gold and mists of blue;" |
on the left loom the darkly-wooded domes of the Taconics above the bright upland pastures, while before us grand old "Graylock" uprears his head "shaggy with primeval forest,"—his gigantic shape forming the culmination of the superb landscape. Hawthorne's superlative pleasure of beholding this grandeur and beauty from the driver's seat of a stage and being regaled at the same time by the converse of the driver is denied to us, but we enjoy quite as much as did Hawthorne the little "love-pats" and passages of a newly-wedded pair of our fellow-passengers. The stage has disappeared, the driver and the high-stepping steeds which served him "in wheel and in whoa" have given place to the engineer and the locomotive; the changes of the half-century since Hawthorne journeyed here have well-nigh overturned the world; only the eternal beauty of these hills and the bewraying demeanor of the newly-married remain evermore unchanged.
Hawthorne at North Adams
At North Adams, which the magician, "liking indifferent well, made his head-quarters," we have lodgings near the place of his on the Main Street and in the domicile of one who, as a lad of fourteen years, had known Hawthorne during his stay here. Apparently he did not attempt to carry out his plan of concealing his identity; he certainly was known to some of the villagers as the author of "Twice-Told Tales," and a descendant of one of Hawthorne's "seven doctors of the place" recalls his delight on being told that the "Whig Tavern boarder" was the creator of "The Gentle Boy;" and he remembers his subsequent and consequent worshipful espionage of the wonderful being. To this espionage we are indebted for some edifying details of Hawthorne's sojourn in upper Berkshire. The world has known few handsomer men than Hawthorne was at this period of his life,—he had been styled Oberon at college,—and our informant recollects him as "the most brilliantly handsome person he ever beheld," tall, dark, with an expressive mobile face and a lustrous eye which held something "indescribably more than keenness" in its quick glances. (Charles Reade said Hawthorne's eye was "like a violet with a soul in it.") As remembered here, his expression was often abstracted, sometimes despondent. He would sit for hours at a time on the broad porch of the old "North Adams House," or in a corner of the bar-room, silently smoking and apparently oblivious to his surroundings, yet, as we know, vigilant to note the oddities of character and opinion he encountered. It is certain that he did not drink immoderately at this time. There were a few persons—not the model men of the community—to whom he occasionally unbent and whom he admitted to a sort of comradeship, which, as his diary shows, often became confessionary upon their part. Characters of his FictionWith these he held prolonged converse upon the tavern porch,—his part in the conversations being mainly suggestions calculated to elicit the whimsical conceits or experiences of his companions,—sitting the while in the posture of the venerable custom-house officials, described in the sketch introductory to the "Scarlet Letter," with "chair tipped on its hind legs" and his feet elevated against a pillar of the porch. Among those remembered to have been thus favored was Captain C——, called Captain Gavett in the "Note-Books," who dispensed metaphysics and maple sugar from the tavern steps, and a jolly blacksmith named Wetherel, described by Hawthorne as "big in the paunch and enormous in the rear," who came regularly to the bar for his stimulant. Another was the "lath-like, round-backed, rough-bearded, thin-visaged" stage-driver, Platt, whom Hawthorne honors as "a friend of mine" in the diary, and whose acquaintance he made during the ride from Pittsfield. In later years Platt's pride in having known Hawthorne eclipsed even his sense of distinction in being "the first and only man to drive an ox-team to the top of Graylock, sir." He had once been employed to haul the materials for an observatory up that mountain's steep inclines. Of the other "hangers-on" who were wont to infest the bar-room and porch fifty years ago and whom Hawthorne depicts in his journal and his fiction, few of the present generation of loungers in the place have ever heard. Orrin ——, the sportive widower whose peccadilloes are hinted at in the "Note-Books," is remembered by older residents of the town, and the "fellow who refused to pay six dollars for the coffin in which his wife was buried" may still be named as the personification of meanness. The maimed and dissolute Daniel Haines—nicknamed "Black Hawk"—was then a familiar figure in the village streets, and his unique history and appearance could not escape the notice of the great romancer nor be soon forgotten by the towns-people. As Hawthorne says, "he had slid down by degrees from law to the soap-vat." Once a reputable lawyer, his bibulous habits and an accident—his hand being "torn away by the devilish grip of a steam-engine"—had so reduced him that at the time Hawthorne saw him he maintained himself by boiling soap and practising phrenology. It is remembered that he used to "feel of bumps" for the price of a drink, and that, Hawthorne's head being submitted to his manipulation, he gravely assured the tavern company, "This man was created to shine as a bank president," and then privately advised the landlord to "make that chap pay in advance for his board." A resident tells us that this dirty and often drunken Haines used to make biweekly visits to his father's house, with a cart drawn by disreputable-looking dogs, to receive fat in exchange for soap. The novelist touches this odd character many times in his journal, and utilizes it in the romance of "Ethan Brand," where it is the "Lawyer Giles, the elderly ragamuffin," who, with the rest of the lazy regiment from the village tavern, came in response to the summons of the "boy Joe" to see poor Brand returned from his long search after the Unpardonable Sin. This "boy Joe," son of "Bertram the lime-burner," was also a bar-room character, noted here by Hawthorne, but obviously for a different use than that made of him in "Ethan Brand,"—a reference to him in the "Note-Books" being supplemented by this memorandum: "take this boy as the germ of a tavern-haunter, a country roué, to spend a wild and brutal youth, ten years of his prime in prison and his old age in the poor-house." This sketch may have been written in the spirit of prophecy, so exactly has the life of one bar-room boy coincided with Hawthorne's outline; the career of another lad whom he here saw and possibly had in mind was happier.
Characters and Scenes
A modern hotel has replaced the "Whig Tavern" of Hawthorne's time, and a new set of habitués now frequent its bar-room; another generation of fat men has succeeded the individuals whose breadth of back was a marvel to the novelist, and in the increased population of the place the "many obese" would no longer provoke comment. The lapsing decades have expanded the pretty and busy factory-village he found into a prettier and busier factory-city without materially changing its prevailing air. The vigorous young city has not wholly out-grown the "hollow vale" walled in by towering mountains; the aspect of its grand environment is therefore essentially unaltered, and it chances that there is scarcely a spot, in or about the town, which received the notice of Hawthorne which may not still be identified. It is our crowning pleasure in the resplendent autumn days to follow his thoughtful step and dreamy vision through town and country-side to the spots he frequented and described, thus sharing, in a way, his companionship and beholding through his eyes the beauties which he has depicted of mountain and vale, forest and stream. On the summit of a hill in the village cemetery, where white gravestones gleam amid the evergreens, the grave of a child at whose burial Hawthorne assisted is pointed out by one who was present with him. The well-known author-divine Washington Gladden, sometime preached in a near-by church. The ever-varying phases of the heights which look down upon the town—the wondrous play of light and shade upon the great sweeps of foliage which clothe the mountain-sides, the shadows chasing each other along the slopes and changing from side to side as the day declines, until the vale lies in twilight while the near summits are gilded with sunset gold, the exquisite cloud-effects as the fleecy masses drift above the ridges or cling to the higher peaks—were a never-failing source of pleasure to Hawthorne, as they are to the loiterer of this day. Every shifting of the point of view as we stroll in the town reveals a new aspect of its mountain ramparts and arouses fresh delight. Hawthorne thought the village itself most beautiful when clouds deeply shaded the mountains while sunshine flooded the valley and, by contrast, made streets and houses a bright, rich gold.