Books: Hawthorne and His Circle

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My father had given me a book called The Aquarium, written by Philip
Henry Gosse (father of the present poet, essayist, and critic),
illustrated with pictures of sea-anemones and other marine creatures
done from his own drawings in color, and so well done that nothing
which has been done since in the way of color-reproductions surpasses
them. It was delightfully written, and I absorbed it into my very
soul, and my dreams by night and longings by day were for an aquarium
of my own. At last--I think this was at Southport--a glass jar was
given me; it was an inverted bell-glass, mounted on a wooden stand,
and it cost ten shillings. I wonder if men often love their wives or
children with the adoring tenderness that I lavished upon that
bell-glass and its contents! I got sand and covered the bottom; I
found two jagged stones and leaned them against each other on the
sand; I gathered fronds of ulva latissima; I persuaded a boatman to
bring me a bucket of salt-water from beyond the line of breakers, and
I poured it carefully into the jar. During the next twenty-four hours
I waited impatiently for the water to settle and clear; then I began
to introduce the living inmates. I collected prawns and crabs and
sea-snails, and a tiny sole or two, a couple of inches long, and by
good chance I found a small sepiola, or cuttle-fish, as big as a
beetle, which burrowed in the sand and changed color magically from
dark brown to faintest buff. I also had a pair of soldier-crabs, which
fought each other continually. When the sunlight fell on my aquarium,
I saw the silver bubbles of oxygen form on the green fronds of the
sea-weed; the little snails crawled along the sides of the glass,
sweeping out their tiny, scythelike tongues at every step; the prawns
hovered in the shade of the stones or darted back and forward light as
thoughts; the soles scuffled over the surface of the sand or hid
themselves in it from the stalking, felonious crabs. But I had no
sea-anemones; they are not found on sandy coasts, and without
sea-anemones my felicity could not be complete.

But strange things happen in this world occasionally, good as well as
bad. There came up a heavy storm, and the next morning, walking with
my father on the beach, strewn with deep-sea flotsam and jetsam, we
came upon the mast of a ship, water-logged till it had the weight of
iron; it might have been, as my father remarked, a relic of the
Spanish Armada. And it was covered from end to end with the rarest and
most beautiful species of sea-anemones!

This was fairy-land come true. I chipped off a handkerchiefful of the
best specimens, wishing I could take them all, and carried them to my
aquarium. I deposited them, each in a coign of vantage, and in the
course of an hour or two they had swelled out their tinted bodies and
expanded their lovely tentacles, and the cup of my joy was full. This
prosperity continued for near a week, during which I remained with my
nose against the glass, as the street boys of Liverpool held theirs
against the windows of pastry-cooks' shops. At length I noticed an
ominous clouding of the water, which, as Mr. Gosse had forewarned me,
signified disaster of some sort, and, searching for the cause, I
finally discovered the body of the little sepiola, which had died
without being missed, and was contaminating with his decay the purity
of the aquarium. The water must be changed at once. I sent out the
servant for a fresh bucketful from the sea, while I poured the
polluted liquid from the jar.

Presently the bucket of water was brought in. It was unusually clear.
I filled the jar with it, and then, as bedtime was near, I left the
aquarium to settle down to business again. The next morning I hastened
to it in my night-gown, and was confronted by a ghastly spectacle. The
crabs lay dead on the bottom, stomachs upward; the prawns hung
lifeless and white from the rocks; the soldier-crabs were motionless,
half out of their shells; the sea-anemones had contracted themselves
into buttons, and most of them had dropped from their perches. Death
had been rampant during the night; but what could be the cause?

A sudden suspicion caused me to put a finger in the water and apply it
to my tongue. It was not salt-water at all, but had been taken fresh
from the cistern. That traitress servant-girl, to save her indolence a
few steps, had destroyed my aquarium!

I was too heart-broken to think of killing her; but she had killed
something in me which does not readily grow again. My trust in my
fellow-creatures was as shrunken and inanimate as the sea-anemones.
We left Southport soon after, and that was my last aquarium.

Let us turn to lighter matters. I accompanied my father and mother on
that pilgrimage to Old Boston which is described in Our Old Home. The
world does not know that it is to my presence on the little steamer on
the trip down the level river, through the Lincolnshire fens, with
nothing but the three-hundred-foot tower of St. Botolph's Church, in
the extreme distance, to relieve the tedium of a twenty-four-mile
journey made at the rate of never more than six miles per hour--it is
not known, I say, that to that circumstance is due my father's
description of the only incident which enlivened the way--the tragedy,
namely, of the duck family. For it was that tragedy which stood out
clearest in my memory, and when I learned, in Concord, that my father
was preparing his paper about Old Boston for the Atlantic Monthly, I
besought him to insert an account of the episode. The duck and her
five ducklings had probably seen the steamer many times before, and
had acquired a contempt for its rate of progression, imagining that it
would always be easy to escape from it. But, somehow, in their
overweening security, they lingered on this occasion a little too
long, and we succeeded in running them down. Even then, as my father
notes, it was only one of them that was carried under; but the shock
to the nerves of the other youngsters must have stunted their growth,
and the old bird cannot but have suffered tortures from anxiety and
remorse.

The sadness caused by this event, added to the chilliness of the
sea-wind which blew against us all the way down the river, rendered my
first impressions of the ancient town, which had given its name to the
one I was born in, somewhat gloomy. But the next morning it
brightened up, and our own spirits were correspondingly improved;
insomuch that I struck my head a violent blow against the stone roof
of the topmost pinnacle of St. Botolph's tower, such was the zeal of
my ascent into it. All this happened two years after the aquarium, in
1857, when I was older and wiser, but had not yet outgrown the
ambition to climb to the top of all high places; this bump may have
been an admonition not to climb too high. We went down and strayed
into Mr. Porter's little book-shop, and he transformed himself into a
new and more genial proprietor of a virtuoso's collection, and showed
us treasures, some of which his predecessor in Mosses from an Old
Manse might not have despised. I have never since then heard of his
portrait in crayon of the youthful Sterne; it would be worth a good
deal to any latter-day publisher of his works in a de luxe edition. As
for the green tassel from the bed of Queen Mary, in Holyrood House,
there is a passage in my father's description of it in his journal
which, out of regard, doubtless, for the feelings of Mr. Porter, he
forbore to quote in his published article; but as the good old
gentleman (unless he has lived to be more than one hundred and twenty
years old) must have gone to the place where treasures are
indestructible, I will reproduce it now. "This tassel," says my
father, "Mr. Porter told us (with a quiet chuckle and humorous
self-gratulation), he had personally stolen, and really, for my part,
though I hope I would not have done it myself, I thought it no sin in
him--such valuables being attracted by a natural magnetism towards
such a man. He obeys, in stealing them, a higher law than he breaks. I
should like to know precisely what portion of his rich and rare
collection he has obtained in a similar manner. But far be it from me
to speak unkindly or sneeringly of the good man; for he showed us
great kindness, and obliged us so much the more by being greatly and
evidently pleased with the trouble that he took on our behalf." It may
be added that each new stealing enhances the value of all the previous
ones, and therefore creates an obligation to steal yet more. Thus
does an act which would, standing by itself, be criminal, become a
virtue if often enough repeated.

I am not arranging this narrative in chronological sequence; but I
think it was in this year that we went to Manchester to see the
exposition. The town itself was unlovely; but, as we had Italy in
prospect, it was deemed expedient to accustom ourselves in some
measure to the companionship of works of art, and the exhibition
professed to contain an exceptionally fine and catholic collection of
them. My father made a thorough study of them, going to learn and not
to judge, and he learned much, though not quite to believe in Turner
or to like the old masters. For my own part, when not taken on these
expeditions, I busied myself with the building of a kite six feet
high, of engineer's cambric, with a face painted on it, and used to go
out and fly it on a vacant lot in the rear of our lodgings,
accompanied by a large portion of the unoccupied population of
Manchester. The kite broke its string one day, and I saw it descend
over the roofs of a remote slum region towards the south, and I never
recaptured it. But my chief energies were devoted to acquiring the art
of fencing with the small-sword from one Corporal Blair, of the Fourth
Dragoon Guards--a regiment which had distinguished itself in the
Crimean War. The corporal was a magnificent-looking creature, and he
was as admirable inwardly as outwardly--the model of an English
non-commissioned officer. He used to come to our lodgings in his short
scarlet jacket and black trousers, and my father once asked him,
remarking the extraordinary prominence of his chest, what kind of
padding was used to produce so impressive a contour. "There's nothing
here but my linen, sir," answered the corporal, modestly, and blushing
a good deal; a fact which I, having often taken my lessons at the
barracks, in the private quarters of the corporal, where he permitted
himself to appear in his shirt-sleeves, already knew. My experience of
the British army not being so large as that of some other persons, I
am unable to say whether there were many other soldiers in it fit to
be compared with Blair; but my acquaintance with mankind in general
would lead me to infer that there could not have been then, and that
there are still less of such to-day. An army of six--footers like him,
with his intelligence, instincts of discipline, capacity and
expertness, physical strength and activity, and personal courage,
would easily account for more than all of England's warlike renown and
success; the puzzle is, how to account for anything but disaster
without them--though, to be sure, other armies might be equally
lacking in Blairs. He was well educated, modest, and moral; he was a
married man, with a wife who was the model of a soldier's consort, and
two or three little sons, all of them experts with the foils and the
broadsword. It was against the regulations of the service for
privates or non-commissioned officers to have families, and, when
Blair's connubial condition became known to the authorities, he was
degraded in rank from sergeant to corporal, though he wore the
Balaklava medal; for he had taken part in that immortal charge, and I
only wish I could recall the story of it as he told it to me. His
regiment had been under the command of Lord Cardigan--"Black-Bottle
Cardigan," as he was nicknamed in the army, on account of the
well-known (real or apocryphal) incident. It was my good--fortune,
by-the-way, once to see this eminent captain. I was taking my lesson
at the barracks, when Blair told me that his lordship was expected to
visit them that afternoon. The hour appointed was three o'clock.
Punctually at three o'clock a carriage drove rapidly through the gates
of the barracks, and the guard turned out on the run and lined up to
salute the noble occupant. But, much to their disgust, the occupant
turned out to be some one else, not meriting a salute. The men
returned to the guard-room feeling as men do when they have been
betrayed into exertion and enthusiasm for nothing. However, in about
ten minutes more, another carriage drove up, and out came the guard
again and ranged themselves smartly, to please the eye of their
martinet commander, when lo! they had again been deceived. Again they
retired with dark looks, not being at all in a mood to recognize the
humor of the situation. This same thing actually occurred twice more,
by which time it was near four o'clock, and the men were wellnigh
mutinous, and it became evident that, for some reason, Cardigan had
been prevented from coming. Such being the case, the approach of still
another carriage attracted no attention whatever, until it came to a
half-pause, and I saw, thrust out of the window, a stern, dark,
warlike, soldierly face, full of surprise and indignation--and this
was Cardigan himself. The unhappy guard tumbled over themselves in
vain efforts to get into form; it was too late, and the haughty and
hot-tempered commander drove on without his salute. Blair, not being
on guard duty, had no part in this catastrophe, but I well remember
his unaffected sorrow over it. He was a grave man, though of an
equable and cheerful temper, and he felt his comrades' misfortune as
his own. But I never heard that any casualties occurred in consequence
of the mishap.

I have left two years of our English sojourn unaccounted for. In the
summer of 1855, my father nearly made up his mind to resign his
consulship (since it had become hardly worth keeping from the money
point of view), and, after making a visit to Italy, going back to
Concord. This plan seemed the more advisable, because my mother's
lungs could not endure the English climate. But while he was weighing
the matter, John O'Sullivan wrote from Lisbon, urgently inviting my
mother and sisters to come out and spend a few months with him and his
family there. The Lisbon climate was a specific for bronchial disease;
my father could complete his term, and we could go to Italy the
following year. There was only one objection to this--it involved the
parting of my father from my mother, a thing which had never before
happened. But it did not take him long to decide that it would be a
good thing for her, and, therefore, in the long run, for him. Each
loved the other unselfishly, and had the courage of such love.
Liverpool without my mother would be a dismal trial for him to face;
Lisbon without my father would be tenfold an exile for her. But they
made up their minds, each for the other's sake, to undergo the
separation, and accordingly, in the autumn of the year, she and my
sisters sailed from Southampton, and my father and I went back to
Liverpool. How we fared there shall be told in the next chapter.

X

If there were boarding-houses in paradise--Blodgett, the delight of
mankind--Solomon foresaw her--A withering retort--A modest, puny poise
about her--Hidden thoughts derived from Mother Eve and Grecian
Helen--The feminine council that ruled the Yankee captains--Bonds of
fraternity, double-riveted and copper-fastened--Through the
looking-glass--Men only of the manliest sort--The
lady-paramount--Hands which were true works of art--Retained his
dignity without putting it on--Sighed heavily over my
efforts--Unctuous M. Huguenin--"From dawn to eve I fell"--The
multum-in-parvo machine--"Beauty and the Beast"--Frank
Channing--"Blood-and water!"--A lapful of Irish stew.

It was observed a little way back that English boarding-houses were
much like other boarding-houses in the civilized world. The rule is
proved by the exception of Mrs. Blodgett's establishment. There never
was such another; there never will be; it was unique. It has vanished
from earth long since; but if there were boarding-houses in paradise,
I should certainly expect it to be found again there. Who was Mrs.
Blodgett? Save that she was a widow of the British middle class, I
doubt if any one of her boarders knew. She had once been rich, and had
lived at Gibraltar. I have often meditated with fruitless longing
about what manner of man Mr. Blodgett could have been. He must have
been, like the Emperor Titus, the delight of mankind in his day. He
was a man, we must surmise, whose charms and virtues were such that
his wife, having felt the bliss and privilege of knowing and living
with him, registered a vow over his bier that she would devote her
future career to the attempt to make others as happy as he had made
her; that she would serve others as faithfully and generously as she
had served him. It was a lofty and beautiful conception, for she must
have perceived that only in that way could she keep his blessed spirit
near her; that the little heaven she would make in Duke Street,
Liverpool, would attract him from the kindred heaven above; that he
would choose to hover, invisible, above her plenteous table, inhaling
the grateful aromas that arose from it as from a savory sacrifice,
basking in the smiles and sympathizing in the satisfaction of the
fortunate guests, triumphing in their recognition of his beloved
consort as a queen among women. One might almost fancy that the steam
arising from the portly soup-tureen assumed as it arose something
suggesting a human form; that from its airy and fragrant mistiness a
shadowy countenance beamed down upon the good lady in black, with the
white cap, who ladled out the delicious compound to her waiting
devotees. The murmur of the tea-urn would seem to fashion itself into
airy accents, syllabling, "Mary, thy Blodgett is here!" His genial
spirit would preside over her labors in the kitchen, suggesting ever
more delightsome dishes and delicate desserts. He would warn her
against undesirable inmates and intractable servants, and would
inspire her tradesmen to serve her with the choicest comestibles and
to temper their bills to the unprotected widow. At night he would
bless her lonely pillow with peace, and would gently rouse her in the
morning to a new day of beneficences.

Mrs. Blodgett was about five feet four inches high, and may have
weighed twelve stone; into such limits were her virtues packed. She
was perhaps in the neighborhood of her fiftieth year; her dark hair
was threaded with honorable gray. Her countenance was rotund and
ruddy; it was the flower of kindness and hospitality in full bloom;
but there was also power in the thick eyebrows and in the massy
substance of the chin--of the chins, indeed, for here, as in other
gifts, nature had been generous with her. There was shrewdness and
discernment in the good-nature of her eyes; she knew human nature,
although no one judged it with more charity than she. Her old men were
her brothers, her young men were her sons, all children were her
children. Solomon foresaw her in the most engaging of his Proverbs.
Her maid-servants arose at six in the morning and called her blessed,
for though her rule was strict it was just and loving. She was at
once the mistress and the friend of her household; no Yankee captain
so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic so cold as
not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in black, with
a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of Liverpool;
in her more active moments--though she was always active--she added a
white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere where she was
needed; she was never anywhere where she could be dispensed with.
Wherever she went she brought comfort and a cheerful but not restless
animation. Her boarders were busy men, but it was always with an
effort that they wrenched themselves from her breakfast-table, and
they sat down to dinner as one man. She made them happy, but she
would not spoil them. "You're a pretty young man!" she said, severely,
to complacent Mr. Crane, when, one morning, he came late to breakfast.
"I always knew that," returned he, reaching self-satisfiedly for the
toast-rack. "Well, I'm sure your glass never told you so!" was the
withering retort. Mr. Crane did not lift his neck so high after that.
The grin that went round the table was too crushingly unanimous.

Mrs. Blodgett was helped in her duties by her niece, Miss Maria, and
by her sister, Miss Williams. Miss Maria was a little wisp of a
woman; I do not know her age then, but I think, were she alive today,
she would confess to about eighty-three. She wore ringlets, after the
fashion of the early nineteenth-century books of beauty. Her face was
thin and narrow, and ordinarily pale; but when Miss Maria had been a
little while in conversation with one or more of the gallant Yankee
captains you might see in the upper corner of each cheek a slight
touch of red. For though I would not call the little lady
coquettish--that is too coarse and obvious a word--yet there was in
her that inalienable consciousness of maidenhood, that sentiment, at
once of attraction and of recoil, towards creatures of the opposite
sex, that gentle hope of pleasing man, that secret emotion of being
pleased by him, that tremor at the idea of being desired, and that
flush at the thought of being desirable, which, I suppose, may animate
the mystic sensibilities of spinsterhood. She was anything but
aggressive and confident, yet there was a modest, puny poise about
her; she was like a plant that has always lived in a narrow, city
flower-pot, at a window too seldom visited by the sun, which has never
known the freedom of the rain, but has been skimpingly watered out of
a toy watering-pot; which has never so much as conceived of the daring
and voluptuous charms of its remote sisters of the forest and garden,
but has cherished its rudimentary perfume and its incipient tints in a
light reflected from brick walls and in the thin, stale atmosphere of
rear sitting-rooms. Yet it knows that it is a flower, and that it
might, somehow, fulfil its destiny and be beautiful. So Miss Maria
had, no doubt, hidden thoughts remotely derived from Mother Eve and
from Grecian Helen; she was aware of the potentiality in herself of
all virgin privileges and powers, and assumed thereupon her own little
dignity. Never but once did I see a masculine arm round Miss Maria's
trig, stiff little waist, and that was at Christmas-time, when there
were sprigs of mistletoe over every doorway; but, mistletoe or not,
the owner of that arm, if he did succeed in ravishing a kiss, got his
ears smartly boxed the next moment. I don't know precisely what was
Miss Maria's function in the economy of the household; I can fancy her
setting the table, and adding touches of neatness and prettiness;
dusting the ornaments and fine china on the shelves of the whatnot;
straightening the frames of the pictures on the walls; and, in her
less romantic moments, hemming towels or sheets, or putting up
preserved fruits. I know she was always amiable and obliging and that
everybody loved her.

Miss Williams was a good deal the elder of her sister, and was of a
clear white pallor and an aged delicacy and shyness that were very
captivating. She had judgment and a clear, dispassionate brain, and I
presume she acted the part in the little firm of a sort of court of
appeals and final adviser and referee. She talked little and had
little to do with outward affairs, but she sat observant and
penetrating and formed conclusions in her mind. There had been no
brother of The Blodgett to induce her to change her maidenly state,
but I think there must have been a quiet, touching romance somewhere
hidden in the shadows of the previous forty or fifty years. She
admired and delighted in her energetic, practical sister as much as
the latter adored her for her serenity and wisdom. There was between
them an intimacy, confidence, and mutual understanding that were
charming to behold. When the blessed Blodgett had died, one can
imagine the vital support and consolation which Miss Williams had been
able to afford to her afflicted sister. Each of them seemed, in some
way, to explain and enlarge one's conception of the other. Widely
different as they appeared outwardly, there was a true sisterly
likeness deep down in them. Such was the feminine council that ruled
the destinies of the Yankee captains and of their consul.

These captains and this consul formed nine-tenths of the population of
the house, and such other denizens as it had were at least Americans.
I never learned the cause of this predilection for representatives of
the great republic and for the seafaring variety of them in
particular. Be that as it might (and it is an interesting inquiry in
itself), it can be readily understood that it worked out well as a
business idea. There were no quarrels or heart-burnings among the
jolly occupants of Mrs. Blodgett's table; first, because they were all
Americans in the country of their hereditary enemies, and, secondly,
because they were all men of the same calling, and that calling the
sea. The bonds of fraternity between them were double-riveted and
copper-fastened. Thus all who had experienced the Blodgett regime
proclaimed its excellence far and wide, and the number of applicants
always exceeded the accommodations; in fact, during this year 1855-56,
our hostess was compelled to buy the house adjoining her own, and I
had the rare delight of watching every stroke of work done by the
carpenters and bricklayers who had the job of cutting a doorway
through the wall from the old house to the new one. There was
something magical and adventurous in stepping through that opening for
the first time--crossing a boundary which had maintained itself so
long. Probably the sensation resembled that which Alice afterwards
experienced when she stepped through the looking-glass into the room
on the other side. The additional accommodations were speedily filled;
but after the first fascination had worn off nobody regarded the new
house as comparable with the old one, and the people who roomed in it
were looked down upon by their associates of the original dwelling.
They were, I believe, as much alike as two houses could be, and that
is saying much in this age, but the feeling was different, and the
feeling is everything if you have a soul.

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