Books: Hawthorne and His Circle
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Julian Hawthorne >> Hawthorne and His Circle
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Poor, dingy old Jerdan purported to be himself a literary man, though
the only thing of his that I ever heard of was a work in four
pretentious volumes of "wretched twaddle"--as my father called
them--which he published under the title of My Autobiography. It
contained a long array of renowned names, with passages appended of
perfectly empty and conventional comment.
But other men crossed our path who had much sounder claims to renown
in literature; among them Samuel Warren, author of half a dozen books,
two of which are still sometimes heard of--_The Diary of a Late
Physician_ and _Ten Thousand a Year_. He lived upon the reputation
which these brought him, though they were published, the first as long
ago as 1830 and the other only ten years later. Like many other
authors, he fancied himself capable of things far better than belonged
to his true metier; and among the books in my father's library is one
called _The Moral and Intellectual Development of the Present Age_--a
thin volume, despite its portentous and thundering title--it carries
the gloss, in Warren's handwriting, "the fruit of many a long year's
reflection." So does every light comedian imagine that he can play
Hamlet. Of Warren himself I barely recall a slight, light figure with
a sharp nose and a manner lacking in repose; indeed, he was very much
like a light comedian in light comedy, eager to hold the centre of the
stage, full of small movements and remarks, and--which more interested
us children--with a gift for turning himself into other people by
slight contortions of countenance and alterations of voice. The
histrionic abilities of Dickens probably affected the social antics of
many writers at this epoch. Warren also told stories in a vivacious
and engaging manner, though, as they were about things and people out
of the sphere of his younger auditors, I remember only the way of the
telling, not what was told. I recalled, later, his anecdotes of Kit
North, who was a friend of his, on account of the contrast between the
stalwart proportions of that old worthy and the diminutive physique of
the novelist; they must have looked, together, like a bear and a
monkey. Warren was born in Wales, though whether of Welsh ancestry I
know not.
When we saw him he was only a trifle over five-and-forty years of age,
so his famous books must have been written when he was hardly more
than a boy.
As for Layard, eminent in his time for his work in Nineveh and
Babylon, and afterwards as a statesman, he did not, I think, come to
Rock Park, nor am I sure that I ever saw him. And yet it seems to me
that I have the picture in my mind of a vigorous, frank, agreeable
personage who was he; not a large man, still less a handsome one, but
full of life, manliness, and honest English simplicity. He was at this
time, like so many of his countrymen, very anxious concerning the
Crimean War, then in its first stages, and vehemently opposed to the
policy which had brought it about, for, up to that time, England and
Russia had been on friendly terms, and Layard could see no promising
or useful future for the Turk. My father shared his views, and he
wrote the following passage in commenting upon the general European
situation of that day and the prospects for England. It has never been
printed, because it stood only for the sentiment of the moment, but
may be opportunely quoted now that the aspect of European politics
shows symptoms of soon undergoing vital changes. "The truth is," wrote
my father, "there is a spirit lacking in England which we in America
do not lack; and for the want of it she will have to resign a foremost
position among the nations, even if there were not enough other
circumstances to compel her to do so. Her good qualities are getting
out of date; at all events, there should be something added to them in
the present stage of the world." England has a good deal changed since
those words were written, and the changes have probably been mainly
for the better, though all the important ones have caused our old
mother discomfort and embarrassment. The medicine of a new age, the
subtle infiltration of anti-insular ideas, the slow emergence of the
democracy have given her many qualms, but they are wholesome ones. Her
best and most cultivated minds are now on the side of progress,
instead of holding by the past, and, should the pinch come, these may
avail to save her better than martinet generals or unwieldy fleets.
The "spirit lacking" in her in 1855 may, perhaps, be found in them.
Whether the spirit in question be as conspicuous with us as it used to
be is another matter.
Henry Bright was still our most frequent visitor, and he brought us
the news and gossip of the world. It was in 1855 that Millais married
the lady who had been Mrs. Ruskin. English society was much fluttered
by this event, and many of Ruskin's friends cut him for a time in
consequence of it. Ruskin was a man of a rare type, not readily
understood in England, where a man is expected, in the fundamental
qualities of his nature at least, to be like everybody else. There are
two noted characters in history with whom, in some respects, he might
be compared, Isaac Newton being one and Abelard the other. All three
were men in whom, owing to causes either natural or accidental, the
intellect was able to absorb all the energies of the nature. The
intellect thus acquired extraordinary power and brilliance, and
appropriated to itself, in a sort of image, as it were, the qualities
which no longer possessed manifestation on the material plane. Nothing
out of the way would, therefore, be noticed, unless or until some
combination of circumstances should bring the exceptional condition
into every-day light. This happened with Ruskin, and he was, of
course, unable to regard the matter in the same light as his critics
did. He viewed his wife's disinclination towards him by the light of
mere cold logic; and the reason his friends were alienated from him
was, not that her grounds of objection to him were justifiable, but
that Ruskin (according to the common report of the time, as quoted by
Mr. Bright) did not see why he and she and Millais should discontinue
their life in common as before. Neither Millais nor Mrs. Ruskin would,
of course, accede to this proposition, and the divorce was accordingly
obtained. Ruskin intended simply to show magnanimity, and in the
course of years this was recognized and he was forgiven, just as we
forgive a person for being color-blind. In our present stage of
civilization we must, in certain matters, follow strict convention on
peril of ostracism, and nothing is less readily condoned in a man's
conduct than any suspicion of complaisance. I did not see either
Ruskin or Millais until 1879 or 1880, of which beholding I will speak
when the time comes.
But we had with us for a short time a famous and charming woman of
genius, who made me for a season forget my infatuation for the
beautiful Ella Rogers. This was Charlotte Cushman. The acquaintance
then begun was renewed in Italy, and maintained till the end of her
life. Such is the power of the spiritual in nature and character to
dominate and even render invisible the physical, that I was
astonished, in after years, to hear Charlotte referred to as a woman
of plain or unattractive features. To me, won from the first by the
expression, the voice, the sphere, the warmth, strength, and nobility
of her presence, she had always seemed one of the handsomest as well
as most delightful of women. She was in her fortieth year, but she had
already announced her purpose of retiring from the stage. Some of her
best work was done in the following twenty years. Critics might call
her face plain, or ugly, if they chose, but there was no doubt that
its range of expression was vast and poignant, that it could reflect
with immense energy the thoughts of the mind, and could radiate the
very soul of tragedy. Her figure was tall and superb and her carriage
stately without any stiffness, and appalling though she was as Lady
Macbeth or Meg Merrilies, in our little drawing-room she was only
simple, sincere, gentle, and winning. Born actress though she was, her
horizon was by no means restricted to things histrionic; she talked
well on many subjects, and was at no loss for means to entertain even
so small and inexperienced a person as myself. I had never seen a
theatre, and did not know what an actress was, but I loved her, and
she was good to me. It was not the interest of the stories she told
me, so much as the personal influence that went with them, that
entranced me. I was sensible of her kindness, and of the hearty
good-will with which she bent her great and gracious self to the task
of making me happy. That wonderful array of tiny charms on her
watch-chain was beautiful and absorbing, owing less to anything
intrinsic in themselves than to some sparkling and lovable
communication from their wearer. If a woman be only large enough and
vigorous enough to begin with, the stage seems to develop her as
nothing else could--to bring out the best in her. It was perhaps the
deep and wide well of human sympathy in Charlotte Cushman that was at
the bottom of her success in her profession, though, of course, she
was greatly aided by her mental and physical gifts. I suppose there
may be women now capable of being actresses as great as she was, but
the audience to call forth their latent powers and ambition seems,
just at present, to be lacking.
Our social diversions at Rock Park were interrupted, at about this
period, by the whooping-cough, which seized upon all of us together,
and I well remember my father almost climbing up the wall of the room
in some of his paroxysms; but he treated it all as a joke, and was
always ready to laugh as soon as he got through coughing. It left no
ill effects except upon my mother, who had bronchial trouble which, as
I have intimated, finally led to the breaking-up of our household. She
was not made for England.
IX
Two New England consciences--Inexhaustible faith and energy--Deep and
abiding love of England--"How the Water Comes Down at Lodore"--"He
took an' he let go"--Naked mountains--The unsentimental little
quadruped--The human element in things sticks--The coasts of
England--A string of sleepy donkeys--Unutterable boy-thoughts--Grins
and chuckles like an ogress--Hideous maternal parody--The adorable
inverted bell-glass--Strange things happen in the world--An ominous
clouding of the water--Something the world has never
known--Overweening security--An admonition not to climb too high--How
vice may become virtue by repetition--Corporal Blair's
chest--Black-Bottle Cardigan--Called to Lisbon.
Emerson, as a matter of principle, was rather averse from travel,
though he made the trip to England twice; but he fortified his theory
by his practice of searching out great men rather than historic or
picturesque places. Ruskin's Modern Painters had not been written when
Emerson first left home, and I doubt if he read it at any time. He
found his mountain scenery in Carlyle and his lakes and vales
elsewhere among agreeable people. My father's conscience worked in a
different way; he thought himself under obligations to see whatever in
the way of towns, ruins, cathedrals, and scenery was accounted worthy
a foreigner's attention; but I think he would have enjoyed seeing them
much more had that feeling of obligation not been imposed upon him.
Set sights, as he often remarked, wearied him, just because they were
set; things that he happened upon unpremeditatedly, especially if they
were not described in guide-books, pleased him more and tired him
less. It can hardly be affirmed, however, that he would have missed
the set sights if he could have done so, and no doubt he was glad,
after the job was done, that he had done it. And he was greatly helped
along by the inexhaustible faith and energy in such matters of his
wife; she shrank from no enterprise, and seemed always in precisely
the right mood to appreciate whatever she beheld. She could go day
after day to a picture-gallery, and stay all day long; she would make
herself as familiar with churches, castles, and cathedrals as she was
with her own house; she would wander interminably and delightedly
about old towns and cities, or gaze with never-waning joy upon lakes
and mountains, and my father, accompanying her, was, in a measure,
recuperated and strengthened by her enthusiasm. In the end, as is
evidenced by Our Old Home and The Marble Faun, he got a good deal out
of Europe. On the other hand, he seemed to think himself justified in
avoiding persons as much as he decently might, even the most
distinguished; and if he had not been a consul, and a writer of books
that had been read, I doubt if he would have formed any acquaintances
during his foreign residence, and he would thereby have missed one of
the greatest and most enduring pleasures of memory that he took back
with him. For no one cared more for a friend, or was more stimulated
and emancipated by one, than he. It may have been that he had passed
the age of youthful buoyancy, of appetite for novelties; that he had
begun to lack initiative. "I have seen many specimens of mankind," he
wrote down, in a mood of depression, in one of his note-books, "but
come to the conclusion that there is little variety among them all."
That was scarcely a full thought, and he would never have let it pass
in one of his considered books. He made and published many other
remarks on similar subjects of quite an opposite tenor, and these more
truly represented his true feeling. But he did flag a little, once in
a while, and the deep and abiding love of England which was his final
sentiment had somewhat the appearance of having been forced upon him
against his inclination. We may surmise that he feared disappointment
more than he craved gratification.
[IMAGE: FRANCIS BANNOCH]
From Liverpool we explored the strangeness of the land in all
directions. Bennoch or Bright sometimes took off my father alone;
sometimes my father and mother would go with me, leaving my sisters at
home with the governess. Once in a while we all went together, as, for
example, to the Isle of Man or to Rhyl. So far as practicable, we
children were made acquainted with the literature of places we were to
visit before going there. Thus, before journeying to the Lakes and
Scotland, I had by heart a good deal of Wordsworth, Southey, Burns,
and Walter Scott, and was able, standing amid the lovely uproar of
Lodore, to shout out the story of how the water comes down there; and,
again, on the shores of Loch Katrine, at sunset, after spending a long
hour on the little white beach opposite Ellen's Isle, I ran along the
road in advance of my parents, and, climbing a cliff, saw the breadth
of the lake below me, golden under the sunset clouds, and very aptly
recited, as they came up, Sir Walter's descriptive verse:
"One burnished sheet of living gold,
Loch Katrine lay, beneath him rolled!"
But I was not always so well attuned to the environment. I had got
hold of a hook and line at some hotel on the Lakes, and the old
passion for fishing, which had remained latent since Lenox days for
lack of opportunity, returned upon me with great virulence. So, one
day, when we had set out in a row-boat to visit Rob Roy's cave, I
requested, on arriving there, to be permitted to stay in the boat,
moored at the foot of the cliff, while the others climbed up into the
cave, and, as soon as they had disappeared, I pulled out my line, with
a dried-up worm on the hook, and cast it over the side. I wanted to
see the cave, but I wanted to catch a fish more. Up to that time, I
think, I had caught nothing in all our pilgrimages. If ever Providence
is going to give me success (I said to myself, devoutly), let it be
now! Accordingly, just before the others came back, I felt a strong
pull on my line and hauled in amain. In a moment the fish, which may
have been nine inches long, but which seemed to me leviathan himself,
broke the surface, wriggling this way and that vigorously; but that
was the extent to which my prayer was granted, for, in the words of a
rustic fisherman who related his own experience to me long afterwards,
"Just as I was a-goin' to land 'im, sir, he took an' he let go!" My
fish not only took and let go, but he carried off the hook with him.
I remember wandering with my father through a grassy old church-yard
in search of Wordsworth's grave, which we found at last, looking quite
as simple as his own most severely unadorned pastoral; but I had not
attained as yet to the region of sentiment which makes such things
impressive. The bare mountains, the blue lakes, and the gray ruins
filled me with riotous intoxication. The North of England and Scotch
mountains were much more effective in their nakedness than the wooded
hills I had seen in Berkshire of Massachusetts, and their contours
were more sharply modelled and various. They were just large enough
to make their ascent seem easy until you undertook it, then those
seemingly moderate slopes lengthened out unaccountably. The day we
reached the hotel at the base of Helvellyn, I started, nothing
doubting, to climb to its summit before supper; the weather was clear,
the top looked close at hand, and I felt great surprise that the young
gentleman mentioned in Scott's poem ("I climbed the dark brow of the
mighty Helvellyn," etc.) should have allowed himself to be lost. But
after a breathless struggle of fifteen or twenty minutes, finding
myself apparently no nearer my goal than at first, I thought
differently. Mr. Bright told my father, by-the-way, that the legend
of the fidelity of the dead adventurer's little dog, "who scared the
hill-fox and the raven away," was far from being in accordance with
the prosaic facts. This unsentimental little quadruped had, in truth,
eaten up a large part of her master by the time his remains were
discovered, and had, furthermore, brought into the world a litter of
pups. Well, nothing can deprive us of the poem; but it is wholesome to
face realities once in a while.
Unless one have a vein of Ruskin in him, one does not recollect
scenery, however enchanting, with the same particularity as persons.
It is the human element in things that sticks to us. Scenes are more
punctually recalled in proportion as they are steeped in historic or
personal interest. The thatched cottages of Burns and of Shakespeare
stand clear in my memory; I recall our ramble over the battlements of
Carlisle, where imprisoned Queen Mary had walked three centuries
before; I remember the dark stain on the floor of the dark room in
which one of her lovers was slain; I can see the gray towers of
Warwick rising above the green trees and reflected in the still water;
and, entering the keep of the castle, I behold myself again trying on
the ponderous helmet of the gigantic Guy, and climbing into his
monstrous porridge-pot. But vain would be the attempt to marshal
before my mind's eye the glorious pageantry of the Trosachs, though,
at the time of its actual revelation, it certainly seemed to make a
far more vivid impression. The delight and exhilaration which such
magnificence inspired are easily summoned back, but not the incarnate
features of them. Wild nature takes us out of ourselves and refreshes
us; but she does not reveal her secret to us, or ally herself with
anything in us less deep than the abstract soul--which also is beyond
our reach.
I am not sure that my father did not like the seaside sojourns as well
as anything else, apart from the historical connections; for the
spirits of many seafaring forefathers murmured in his heart. But he
did not so much care for the soft, yielding, brown sands on which the
sea-waves broke. The coasts to which he had been used in his youth
were either rocky or firm as a macadamized road. Nor was he beguiled
into forgetting the tedium of walking over them, as his companion was,
by the fascination of the shells and sea curiosities to be picked up
on them. Many a mile have I trotted along beside him or behind him,
gathering these treasures, while he strode forward, abstracted, with
his gaze fixed towards the long ridge of the horizon. The sands at
Rhyl, near which Milton's friend was said to have been lost, were like
a rolling prairie; at low tide the white fringe of the surf could
scarcely be descried at their outermost verge, yet within a few
hours it would come tumbling back, flowing in between the higher
levels, flooding and brimming and overcoming, till it broke at our
feet once more. Behind us rose the tumultuous curves and peaks of the
Welsh hills; before us, but invisible across the Irish Channel, the
black coast of rainy Ireland. One night, during a gale, a ship came
ashore, so far out that it still seemed, in the morning, to be at sea,
except for its motionlessness, and the drenched and draggled crew came
straggling in--or some of them. At Southport the beach was narrower
and the little sea-side settlement larger and livelier; a string of
sleepy donkeys always waited there, with the rout of ragged and
naughty little boys with sticks to thrash them into a perfunctory and
reluctant gallop for their riders. There was always one boy, larger
and also naughtier than the rest, who thrashed the thrashers and took
their pennies away from them. The prevailing occupation of the
children at these places, as on all civilized shores, apparently, was
the building of sand-mountains and the digging of pits with their
little wooden spades. One day an elderly gentleman, with a square,
ruddy face, edged with gray whiskers, who had stood observing my
labors in this kind for a long time, stepped up to me as I paused, and
said, with a sort of amused seriousness, "You'll do something when you
grow up, my little lad; your hill is bigger than any of the others'."
He nodded kindly to me and walked off, and I sat down beside my
mountain and watched the tide come up and level it, thinking
unutterable boy-thoughts.
The only approach to sea-side cliffs that we saw was at Whitby, on the
Yorkshire coast, where the abbey of St. Hilda stood, after whom the
American maiden in The Marble Faun was named. But the German Ocean was
bleak and cold, and my experiences in it were even more harrowing than
elsewhere; I can imagine nothing more dispiriting to a small boy than
to be dragged down over a harsh beach in an old-fashioned British
bathing-machine, its damp floor covered with gritty sand, with a tiny
window too high up for him to look out of; undressing in the cold
draughtiness and trying to hang up his clothes on pegs too high for
him to reach; being tossed from side to side, and forward and
backward, meanwhile, by the irregular jerking and swaying of the
dismal contrivance, drawn by the amphibious horses of the region;
until at last he hears the waves begin to dash against it, and it
comes to a pause in a depth which he feels must be fathomless. Then
comes a thumping at the door, and he knows that the bathing-woman is
hungrily awaiting his issuing forth. Nothing else is so terrible in
the world--nothing even in Alice in Wonderland--to a small, naked,
shivering boy as the British bathing-woman. There she stands,
waist-deep in the swelling brine; she grins and chuckles like an
ogress; her red, grasping hands stretch forth like the tentacles of an
octopus; she seizes her victim in an irresistible embrace, and with
horrid glee plunges him head-under the advancing wave. Ere he can
fetch his breath to scream, down again he goes, and yet again. The
frigid, heavy water stings his cowering body; he has swallowed quarts
of it; his foot has come in contact with a crab or a starfish; before
him rolls the tumultuous expanse of desolation, surging forward to
take his life; behind him are the rickety steps of the bathing-
machine, which, but now a chamber of torture, has become his
sole haven of refuge. Buffeted by the billows, he makes shift at last
frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp
towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have
fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy
socks. At the moment he is attempting to wriggle himself into his
trousers the horse is hitched-to again, and the jerky and jolty
journey back up the beach begins. If the hair of a boy of ten could
turn white in a single morning, there would be many a hoary-headed
youngster in British watering-places. John Leech, in Punch, used to
make pictures of the experiences I have outlined, and I studied them
with deep attention and sympathy. The artist, too, must have suffered
from the sea-ogresses in his youth, else he could not have portrayed
the outrage so vividly. The mock-cheerfulness and hideous maternal
parody of their "Come, my little man!" has no parallel in life or
fiction. Nevertheless, such is the fortunate recuperative faculty of
boyhood that day after day I would forget the horrors of that hour,
and be happy in climbing over the decayed chalk acclivities of Whitby,
picking up the fossil shells that nestle there. Yonder on my table, as
I write, lies a coiled ammonite found there; it had been there ten
thousand years or ages before I detached it from its bed, and, for
aught I know, my remotest posterity may use it, as I have done, for a
paper-weight. Thanks to eternal justice, the bathing-machines and the
bathing-women will have gone to their place long ere then!
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