Books: Hawthorne and His Circle

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This mood, we see, is far more gentle and sympathetic than the former
one; there is sunshine within as well as without; and, indeed, I
remember with what glee my father took part in the frolic, as well as
looked on at it; he laughed and pelted and was pelted; he walked down
the Corso and back again; he drove to and fro in a carriage; he
mounted to Mr. Motley's balcony and took long shots at the crowd
below. The sombre spirit of criticism had ceased, for a time, to haunt
him.

[IMAGE: WILLIAM WETMORE STORY]

We went quite often to the studio of William Story, whom my father had
slightly known in Salem before he became a voluntary exile from
America. Mr. Story was at this time a small, wiry, nervous personage,
smiling easily, but as much through nervousness as from any inner
source or outward provocation of mirth, and as he smiled he would
stroke his cheeks, which were covered with a short, brown beard, with
the fingers and thumb of his right hand, while wrinkles would appear
round his bright, brown eyes. "He looks thin and worn already," wrote
my father; "a little bald and a very little gray, but as vivid as when
I saw him last; he cannot, methinks, be over thirty-seven." He was
thirty-nine in 1858. "The great difficulty with him, I think, is a too
facile power," my father goes on; "he would do better things if it
were more difficult for him to do merely good ones. Then, too, his
sensibility is too quick; being easily touched by his own thoughts, he
cannot estimate what is required to touch a colder and duller person,
and so stops short of the adequate expression." He commented on the
vein of melancholy beneath the sparkle of his surface, as if, in the
midst of prosperity, he was conscious of a "deadly shadow gliding
close behind." Boys of twelve are not troubled with insight, unless of
that unconscious, intuitive kind that tells them that a person is
likeable, or the reverse, no matter what the person may do or say. I
liked Mr. Story, and thought him as light of spirit as he seemed; not
that he was not often earnest enough in his talks with my father, to
whom he was wont to apply himself with a sort of intensity, suggesting
ideas, and watching, with his nervous smile, my father's reception of
them; plunging into deep matters, beyond my comprehension, dwelling
there a few minutes, and then emerging again with a sparkle of wit; he
was certainly very witty, and the wit was native and original, not
memorized. When he got into the current of drollery, he would, as it
were, set himself afire by his own sallies, and soar to astonishing
heights, which had an irresistible contagion for the hearers; and he
would sometimes, sitting at a table with pen and paper at hand,
illustrate his whimsicalities with lightning sketches of immense
cleverness, considering their impromptu character. I have preserved a
sheet of letter-paper covered with such drawings. The conversation had
got upon Byron, whom Mr. Story chose to ridicule; as he talked, he
drew a head of "Byron as he thought he was," followed by one of "Byron
as he was," and by another of "Byron as he might have been," showing a
very pronounced negro type. Then he made a portrait of "Ada, sole
daughter of my house and heart," and wrote under it, "Thy face was like
thy mother's, my fair child!" a hideous, simpering miss, with a snub
nose and a wooden mouth--"A poet's dream!" He also showed the
appearance of the Falls of Terni, "as described by Byron," and added
studies of infant phenomena, mother's darlings, a Presidential
candidate, and other absurdities, accompanying it all with a running
comment and imaginative improvisations which had the charm of genius
in them, and made us ache with laughter, young and old alike. Such a
man, nervous, high-strung, of fine perceptions and sensibilities, must
inevitably pass through rapid and extreme alternations of feeling;
and, no doubt, an hour after that laughing seance of ours, Mr. Story
was plunged deep in melancholy. Yet surely his premonitions of evil
were unfulfilled; Story lived long and was never other than fortunate.
Perhaps he was unable to produce works commensurate with his
conceptions; but unhappiness from such a cause is of a noble sort, and
better than most ordinary felicities.

I remember very well the statue of Cleopatra while yet in the clay.
There she sat in the centre of the large, empty studio, pondering on
Augustus and on the asp. The hue of the clay added a charm to the
figure which even the pure marble has not quite maintained. Story said
that he never was present while the cast of one of his statues was
being made; he could not endure the sight of the workmen throwing the
handfuls of plaster at the delicate clay. Cleopatra was substantially
finished, but Story was unwilling to let her go, and had no end of
doubts as to the handling of minor details. The hand that rests on her
knee--should the forefinger and thumb meet or be separated? If they
were separated, it meant the relaxation of despair; if they met, she
was still meditating defiance or revenge. After canvassing the
question at great length with my father, he decided that they should
meet; but when I saw the marble statue in the Metropolitan Museum the
other day I noticed that they were separated. In the end the artist
had preferred despair. Such things indicate the man's character, and,
perhaps, explain his failure to reach the great heights of art. He
could not trust a great idea to manage itself, but sought subtler
expression through small touches, and thus, finally, lost the feeling
of the larger inspiration. A little more of the calm, Greek spirit
would have done him good.

He had many projects for other statues, which he would build up in
fancy before my father and discuss with him. His words and gestures
made the ideas he described seem actual and present, but he seldom got
them into marble; he probably found, upon trial, that they did not
belong to sculpture. He had the ambition to make marble speak not its
own language merely, but those of painting and of poetry likewise; and
when this proved impossible he was unhappy and out of conceit with
himself, On the other hand, he did good work in poetry and in prose;
but neither did these content him. After all, my father's observation
hit the mark; things came too easy to him. Goethe speaks the word for
him:

"Wer nie sein Brod mit thranen ass,
Er kennt euch nicht, ihr ewige Machte!"

XVI

Drilled in Roman history--Lovely figures made of light and
morning--What superb figures!--The breath and strength of immeasurable
antiquity--Treasures coming direct from dead hands into mine--A
pleasant sound of coolness and refreshment--Receptacles of death now
dedicated to life--The Borghese is a forest of Ardennes--Profound and
important communings--A smiling deceiver--Of an early-rising
habit--Hauling in on my slack--A miniature cabinet magically made
Titanic--"If I had a murder on my conscience"--None can tell the
secret origin of his thoughts--A singularly beautiful young woman--She
actually ripped the man open--No leagues of chivalry needed in Rome--A
resident army--Five foot six--Corsets and padding--She was wounded in
the house of her friends.

We children had been drilled in Roman history, from Romulus to Caesar,
and we could, and frequently did, repeat by heart the Lays of Ancient
Rome by Macaulay, which were at that period better known, perhaps,
than they are now. Consequently, everything in Rome had a certain
degree of meaning for us, and gave us a pleasure in addition to the
intrinsic beauty or charm that belonged thereto. Our imagination
thronged the Capitol with senators; saw in the Roman Forum the
contentions of the tribunes and the patricians; heard the populus
Romanus roar in the Coliseum; beheld the splendid processions of
victory wind cityward through the Arch of Titus; saw Caesar lie
bleeding at the base of Pompey's statue; pondered over the fatal
precipice of the Tarpeian Rock; luxuriated in the hollow spaces of the
Baths of Caracalla; lost ourselves in gorgeous reveries in the palace
of the Caesars, and haunted the yellow stream of Tiber, beneath which
lay hidden precious treasures and forgotten secrets. And we were no
less captivated by the galleries and churches, which contained the
preserved relics of the great old times, and were in themselves so
beautiful. My taste for blackened old pictures and faded frescoes was,
indeed, even more undeveloped than my father's; but I liked the
brilliant reproductions in mosaic at St. Peter's and certain
individual works in various places. I formed a romantic attachment for
the alleged Beatrice Cenci of Guido, or of some other artist, and was
very sorry that she should be so unhappy, though, of course, I was
ignorant of the occasion of her low spirits. But I liked much better
Guide's large design of Aurora, partly because I had long been
familiar with it on the head-board of my mother's bedstead. Before her
marriage she had bought a set of bedroom furniture, and had painted it
a dull gold color, and on this surface she had drawn in fine black
lines the outlines of several classical subjects, most of them from
Flaxman; but in the space mentioned she had executed an outline of
this glorious work of the Italian artist. I knew every line of the
composition thoroughly; and, by-the-way, I doubt if a truer, more
inspired copy of the picture was ever produced by anybody. But the
color had to be supplied by the observer's imagination; now, for the
first time, I saw the hues as laid on by the original painter. In
spite of time, they were pure and exquisite beyond description; these
lovely figures seemed made of light and morning. Another favorite
picture of mine was the same artist's "Michael Overcoming the Evil
One," and I even had the sense to like the painting better than the
mosaic copy. Raphael's "Transfiguration" I also knew well from the old
engraving of it that used to hang on our parlor wall from my earliest
recollections; it still hangs yonder. But I never cared for this
picture; it was too complicated and ingenious--it needed too much
co-operation from the observer's mind. Besides, I had never seen a boy
with anything approaching the muscular development of the epileptic
youth in the centre. The thing in the picture that I most approved of
was the end of the log in the little pool, in the foreground; it
looked true to life.

But my delight in the statues was endless. It seems to me that I knew
personally every statue and group in the Vatican and in the Capitol.
Again and again, either with my parents, or with Eddy, or even alone,
I would pass the warders at the doors and enter those interminable
galleries, and look and look at those quiet, stained-marble effigies.
My early studies of Flaxman had, in a measure, educated me towards
appreciation of them. I never tired of them, as I did of the
Cleopatras and the Greek Slaves. What superb figures! What power and
grace and fleetness and athletic loins! The divine, severe Minerva,
musing under the shadow of her awful helmet; the athlete with the
strigil, resting so lightly on his tireless feet; the royal Apollo,
disdaining his own victory; the Venus, half shrinking from the
exquisiteness of her own beauty; the swaying poise of the Discobulus,
caught forever as he drew his breath for the throw; the smooth-limbed,
brooding Antinous; the terrible Laocoon, which fascinated me, though
it always repelled me, too; the austere simplicity of the Dying
Gladiator's stoop to death--the most human of all the great statues;
the heads of heroic Miltiades, of Antony, of solitary Cassar, of
indifferent Augustus; the tranquil indolence of mighty Nile, clambered
over by his many children--these, and a hundred others, spoke to me
out of their immortal silence. I can conceive of no finer discipline
for a boy; I emulated while I adored them. Power, repose, beauty,
nobility, were in their message: "Do you, too, possess limbs and
shoulders like ours!" they said to me; "such a bearing, such a spirit
within!" I cannot overestimate even the physical good they did me; it
was from them that I gained the inspiration for bodily development and
for all athletic exercise which has, since then, helped me over many a
rough passage in the path of life. But they also awoke higher
ambitions and conferred finer benefits.

From these excursions into the ideal I would return to out-of-doors
with another inexhaustible zest. That ardent, blue Roman sky and
penetrating, soft sunshine filled me with life and joy. The breath
and strength of immeasurable antiquity emanated from those massive
ruins, which time could deface but never conquer. Emerald lizards
basked on the hot walls; flowers grew in the old crevices; butterflies
floated round them; they were haunted by spirits of heroes. There is
nothing else to be compared with the private, intimate, human, yet
sublimated affection which these antique monuments wrought in me. They
were my mighty brothers, condescending to my boyish thoughts and
fancies, smiling upon me, welcoming me, conscious of my love for them.
Each ruin had its separate individuality for me, so that to-day I must
play with the Coliseum, to-morrow with the Forum, or the far-ranging
arches of the Aqueduct, or the Temple of Vesta. Always, too, my eyes
were alert for treasures in the old Roman soil, coming, as it seemed,
direct from the dead hands of the vanished people into mine. I valued
the scraps that I picked up thus more than anything to be bought in
shops or seen in museums. These bits of tinted marble had felt the
touch of real Romans; their feet had trodden on them, on them their
arms had rested, their hands had grasped them. Two thousand years had
dulled the polish of their surfaces; I took them to the stone-workers,
who made them glow and bloom again--yellow, red, black, green, white.
They were good-natured but careless men, those marble-polishers, and
would sometimes lose my precious relics, and when I called for them
would say, every day, "Domane--domane," or try to put me off with some
substitute--as if a boy could be deceived in such a matter! I once
found in the neighborhood of a recent excavation a semi-transparent
tourmaline of a cool green hue when held to the light; it had once
been set in the ring of some Roman beauty. It had, from long abiding
in the earth, that wonderful iridescent surface which ancient glass
acquires. Rose, my sister, picked up out of a rubbish heap a little
bronze statuette, hardly three inches high, but, as experts said, of
the best artistic period. Such things made our Roman history books
seem like a tale of yesterday, or they transported us back across the
centuries, so that we trod in the footsteps of those who had been but
a moment before us.

In those warm days, after our walks and explorations, Eddy and I, and
little Hubert, who sometimes was permitted to accompany us, though we
deemed him hardly in our class, would greatly solace ourselves with
the clear and gurgling fountains which everywhere in Rome flow forth
into their marble and moss-grown basins with a pleasant sound of
coolness and refreshment. Rome without her fountains would not be
Rome; every memory of her includes them. In the streets, in the
piazzas, in the wide pleasaunces and gardens, the fountains allure us
onward, and comfort us for our weariness. In the Piazza d' Espagna,
at the foot of the famous steps, was that great, boat-shaped fountain
whose affluent waters cool the air which broods over the wide, white
stairway; and not far away is the mighty Trevi, with its turmoil of
obstreperous figures swarming round bragging Neptune, and its cataract
of innumerable rills welling forth and plunging downward by devious
ways to meet at last in the great basin, forever agitated with baby
waves lapping against the margins. These, and many similar elaborate
structures, are for the delight of the eye; but there are scores of
modest fountains, at the corners of the ways, in shady or in sunny
places, formed of an ancient sarcophagus receiving the everlasting
tribute of two open-mouthed lion-heads, or other devices, whose
arching outgush splashes into the receptacle made to hold death, but
now immortally dedicated to the refreshment of life. It was at these
minor fountains that we quenched our boyish thirst, each drinking at
the mouth of a spout; and when we discovered that by stopping up one
spout with our thumb the other would discharge with double force, we
played roguish tricks on each other, deluging each other at unawares
with unmanageable gushes of water, till we were forced to declare a
mutual truce of honor. But what delicious draughts did we suck in from
those lion-mouths into our own; never elsewhere did water seem so
sweet and revivifying. And then we would peer into the transparent
depths of the old sarcophagus, with its fringes of green, silky moss
waving slightly with the movement of the water, and fish out
tiny-spired water-shells; or dip in them the bits of ancient marbles
we had collected on our walk, to see the hues revive to their former
splendor. Many-fountained Rome ought to be a cure for wine-bibbers;
yet I never saw an Italian drink at these springs; they would rather
quaff the thin red and white wines that are sold for a few baiocchi at
the inns.

The Pincian Hill and the adjoining grounds of the Borghese Palace came
at length to be our favorite haunts. The Borghese is a delectable
spot, as my father remarks in one of those passages in his diary which
was afterwards expanded into the art-picture of his romance. "Broad
carriageways," he says, "and wood-paths wander beneath long vistas of
sheltering boughs; there are ilex-trees, ancient and sombre, which, in
the long peace of their lifetime, have assumed attitudes of indolent
repose; and stone-pines that look like green islands in the air, so
high above earth are they, and connected with it by such a slender
length of stem; and cypresses, resembling dark flames of huge,
funereal candles. These wooded lawns are more beautiful than English
park scenery; all the more beautiful for the air of neglect about
them, as if not much care of men were bestowed upon them, though
enough to keep wildness from growing into deformity, and to make the
whole scene like nature idealized--the woodland scenes the poet
dreamed of--a forest of Ardennes, for instance. These lawns and gentle
valleys are beautiful, moreover, with fountains flashing into marble
basins, or gushing like natural cascades from rough rocks; with bits
of architecture, as pillared porticos, arches, columns, of marble or
granite, with a touch of artful ruin on them; and, indeed, the pillars
and fragments seem to be remnants of antiquity, though put together
anew, hundreds of years old, perhaps, even in their present form, for
weeds and flowers grow out of the chinks and cluster on the tops of
arches and porticos. There are altars, too, with old Roman
inscriptions on them. Statues stand here and there among the trees, in
solitude, or in a long range, lifted high on pedestals, moss-grown,
some of them shattered, all grown gray with the corrosion of the
atmosphere. In the midst of these sunny and shadowy tracts rises the
stately front of the villa, adorned with statues in niches, with
busts, and ornamented architecture blossoming in stone-work. Take
away the malaria, and it might be a very happy place."

[IMAGE: PENCIL SKETCHES IN ITALY, BY MRS. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE]

Here was a playground for boys of imaginative but not too destructive
proclivities, such as the world hardly furnishes elsewhere. But much
of my enjoyment of it I ascribe to my friend Eddy. My conversation
with no person since then has rivalled the profundity and importance
of my communings with his sympathetic soul. We not only discussed our
future destinies and philosophical convictions, but we located in
these delicious retreats the various worlds which we purposed to
explore and inhabit during the next few hundred years. Here we passed
through by anticipation all our future experiences. Sometimes we were
accompanied by other boys; but then our visits lost their distinction;
we merely had good times in the ordinary way of boys; we were robber
barons, intrenched in our strongholds, and attacked by other robbers;
or we ran races, or held other trials of strength and activity, or we
set snares for the bright-colored fishes which lurked in some of the
fountains. The grounds were occasionally invaded by gangs of Italian
boys, between whom and ourselves existed an irreconcilable feud. We
could easily thrash them in the Anglo-Saxon manner, with nature's
weapons; but they would ambush us and assail us with stones; and once
one of them struck at me with a knife, which was prevented from
entering my side only by the stout leather belt which I chanced to
wear. We denounced these assassins to the smiling custode of the
grounds, and he promised, smilingly, to bar the entrance to them
thenceforth; but he was a smiling deceiver; our enemies came just the
same. After all, we would have regretted their absence; they added the
touch of peril to our chronic romance which made it perfect. It is
forty-four years since then. Are there any other Borghese Gardens to
come for me in the future, I wonder? There was a rough pathway along
the banks of the Tiber, extending up the stream for two or three
miles, as far as the Ponte Molle, where the corktrees grew, and
farther, for aught I know. This was a favorite walk of mine, because
of the fragments of antique marbles to be found there, and also the
shells which so mysteriously abounded along the margin, as shown by
the learned conchological author hereinbefore cited. And, being of an
early rising habit, it was my wont to get up long before breakfast and
tramp up and down along the river for an hour or two, thinking, I
suppose, as I gazed upon the turbulent flood, of brave Horatius
disdainfully escaping from the serried hosts of Lars Porsena and false
Sextus, or of Caesar and Cassius buffeting the torrent on a "dare,"
and with lusty sinews flinging it aside. There were also lovely
effects of dawn upon the dome of St. Peter's, and the redoubtable mass
of St. Angelo, with its sword-sheathing angel. Moreover, sunrise, at
twelve years of age, is an exhilarating and congenial phenomenon. And
I painted my experiences in colors so attractive that our Ada Shepard
was inflamed with the idea of accompanying me on my rambles. She was a
child in heart, though so mature in intellect, and her spirit was
valiant, though her flesh was comparatively infirm. It was my custom
to set out about five o'clock in the morning, and Miss Shepard
promised to be ready at that hour. But after keeping awake most of the
night in order not to fail of the appointment, she fell asleep and
dreamed only of getting up; and, after waiting for her for near an
hour, I went without her. She was much mortified at her failure, and
suggested a plan to insure her punctuality, in which I readily agreed
to collaborate. When she went to bed she attached a piece of string to
one of her toes, the other end of the filament being carried
underneath doors and along passages to my own room. I was instructed
to haul in on my slack at the proper hour; and this I accordingly did,
with good-will, and was at once made conscious that I had caught
something, not only by the resistance which my efforts encountered,
but by the sound of cries of feminine distress and supplication, heard
in the distance. However, my companion appeared in due season, and we
took our walk, which, she declared, fulfilled all the anticipations which
my reports had led her to form.

Nevertheless, I cannot remember that we ever again made the expedition
together; it is a mistake to try to repeat a perfect joy.

It seems to me that I must have been a pretty constant visitor at St.
Peter's. The stiff, heavy, leathern curtain which protects the
entrance having been strenuously pushed aside (always with remembrance
of Corinne's impossible act of grace and courtesy in holding it aside
with one hand for Lord Neville), the glorious interior expanded,
mildly radiant, before me. As has been the case with so many other
observers, the real magnitude of the spectacle did not at first affect
me; the character of the decoration and detail prevented the
impression of greatness; it was only after many times traversing that
illimitable pavement, and after frequent comparisons with ordinary
human measurements of the aerial heights of those arches and that
dome, that one conies to understand, by a sort of logical compulsion,
how immense it all is. It is a miniature cabinet magically made
titanic; but the magic which could transform inches into roods could
not correspondingly enlarge the innate character of the ornament; so
that, instead of making the miniature appear truly vast, it only makes
us seem unnaturally small. Still, after all criticisms, St. Peter's
remains one of the most delightful places in the world; its sweet
sumptuousness and imperial harmonies seem somehow to enter into us and
make us harmonious, rich, and sweet. The air that we inhale is just
touched with the spirit of incense, and mellowed as with the still
memories of the summers of five hundred years ago. The glistening
surfaces of the colored marbles, dimmed with faint, fragrant mists,
and glorified with long slants of brooding sunshine, soothe the eye
like materialized music; and the soft twinkle of the candles on the
altars, seen in daylight, has a jewel-like charm. As I look back upon
it, however, and contrast it with the cathedrals of England, the total
influence upon the mind of St. Peter's seems to me voluptuous rather
than religious. It is a human palace of art more than a shrine of the
Almighty. A prince might make love to a princess there without feeling
guilty of profanation. St. Peter himself, sitting there in his chair,
with his highly polished toe advanced, is a doll for us to play with.
On one occasion I was in the church with my father, and the great nave
was thronged with people and lined with soldiers, and down the midst
went slowly a gorgeous procession, with Pope Pio Nono borne aloft,
swayingly, the triple crown upon his head. He blessed the crowd, as
he passed along, with outstretched hand. One can never forget such a
spectacle; but I was not nearly so much impressed in a religious sense
as when, forty years later, I stood in the portals of a Mohammedan
mosque in Central India and saw a thousand turbaned Moslems prostrate
themselves with their foreheads in the dust before a voice which
proclaimed the presence of the awful, unseen God.

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