Books: Our Old Home
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Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Our Old Home
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Another day--in truth, many other days--I sought out Poets' Corner, and
found a sign-board and pointed finger, directing the visitor to it, on
the corner house of a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey.
The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south transept, and it is
used, on ordinary occasions, as the only free mode of access to the
building. It is no spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing
through which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly keeps out an
exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself in a dim nook of the Abbey,
with the busts of poets gazing at you from the otherwise bare stone-work
of the walls. Great poets, too; for Ben Jenson is right behind the door,
and Spenser's tablet is next, and Butler's on the same side of the
transept, and Milton's (whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to
one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and sadder than that)
is close by, and a profile-medallion of Gray beneath it. A window high
aloft sheds down a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured
marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover the three walls of
the nook up to an elevation of about twenty feet above the pavement. It
seemed to me that I had always been familiar with the spot. Enjoying a
humble intimacy--and how much of my life had else been a dreary
solitude!--with many of its inhabitants, I could not feel myself a
stranger there. It was delightful to be among them. There was a genial
awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly presences about me; and I
was glad, moreover, at finding so many of them there together, in fit
companionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all reconciled now,
whatever distant generations, whatever personal hostility or other
miserable impediment, had divided them far asunder while they lived.
I have never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, nor
have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary presence of other famous
dead people. A poet's ghost is the only one that survives for his
fellow-mortals, after his bones are in the dust,--and be not ghostly, but
cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in the chillest atmosphere of
life. What other fame is worth aspiring for? Or, let me speak it more
boldly, what other long-enduring fame can exist? We neither remember nor
care anything for the past, except as the poet has made it intelligibly
noble and sublime to our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have no
substance; they flit ineffectually about the darkened stage where they
performed their momentary parts, save when the poet has thrown his own
creative soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than ever they
were able to manifest to mankind while they dwelt in the body. And
therefore--though he cunningly disguises himself in their armor, their
robes of state, or kingly purple--it is not the statesman, the warrior,
or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have
fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe all that they now are or
have,--a name!
In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been betrayed into a flight
above or beyond the customary level that best agrees with me; but it
represents fairly enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets'
Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres of kings and great
people. They are magnificent even now, and must have been inconceivably
so when the marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and the
statues retained the brilliant colors with which they were originally
painted, and the shrines their rich gilding, of which the sunlight still
shows a glimmer or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished
with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the Abbey presents few
memorials of personages whom we care to remember. The shrine of Edward
the Confessor has a certain interest, because it was so long held in
religious reverence, and because the very dust that settled upon it was
formerly worth gold. The helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at
Agincourt, and now suspended above his tomb, are memorable objects, but
more for Shakespeare's sake than the victor's own. Rank has been the
general passport to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap as
dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, indeed (and it is too
characteristic of the right English spirit not to be mentioned), one or
two gigantic statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely to
the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly in their marble
chairs among forgotten kings and queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of
the earlier monuments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are what
chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison is buried among the men
of rank; not on the plea of his literary fame, however, but because he
was connected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Secretary of
State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from
Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is
now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly
filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date.
Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the walls, and wondered how
the requisite hospitality can be shown to poets of our own and the
succeeding ages. There is hardly a foot of space left, although room has
lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full-length statue of
Campbell. At best, only a little portion of the Abbey is dedicated to
poets, literary men, musical composers, and others of the gentle artist
breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity men of other pursuits
have thought it decent to intrude themselves. Methinks the tuneful
throng, being at home here, should recollect how they were treated in
their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking askance at nobles and
official personages, however worthy of honorable intercourse elsewhere.
Yet it shows aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's regard
and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary eminence in comparison
with other modes of greatness,--this dimly lighted corner (nor even that
quietly to themselves) in the vast minster, the walls of which are
sheathed and hidden under marble that has been wasted upon the
illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it may not be worth while to quarrel
with the world on this account; for, to confess the very truth, their own
little nook contains more than one poet whose memory is kept alive by his
monument, instead of imbuing the senseless stone with a spiritual
immortality,--men of whom you do not ask, "Where is he?" but, "Why is he
here?" I estimate that all the literary people who really make an
essential part of one's inner life, including the period since English
literature first existed, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and
quaff their draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's broad, horizontal
tombstone. These divinest poets consecrate the spot, and throw a
reflected glory over the humblest of their companions. And as for the
latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long outgrown the
characteristic jealousies and morbid sensibilities of their craft, and
have found out the little value (probably not amounting to sixpence in
immortal currency) of the posthumous renown which they once aspired to
win. It would be a poor compliment to a dead poet to fancy him leaning
out of the sky and snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise.
Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion that those who have
bequeathed us the inheritance of an undying song would fain be conscious
of its endless reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would
delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their names emblazoned in such
a treasure-place of great memories as Westminster Abbey. There are some
men, at all events,--true and tender poets, moreover, and fully deserving
of the honor,--whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a little while
about Poets' Corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis among
their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for
applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but
scantily supply; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt
upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two
beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now,
if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in the midst of the
old poets whom he admired and loved; though there is hardly a man among
the authors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of Englishmen would
be less likely to place there. He deserves it, however, if not for his
verse (the value of which I do not estimate, never having been able to
read it), yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured poetry, the
inscrutable happiness of his touch, working soft miracles by a
life-process like the growth of grass and flowers. As with all such
gentle writers, his page sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation,
but, the next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and buried it
out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, Heaven be praised, few
English celebrities whom I chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by
their decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) I will
conclude this rambling article by sketching my first interview with Leigh
Hunt.
He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very plain and shabby little
house, in a contiguous range of others like it, with no prospect but that
of an ugly village street, and certainly nothing to gratify his craving
for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slatternly maid-servant
opened the door for us, and he himself stood in the entry, a beautiful
and venerable old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, tall
and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all over, and the gentlest
and most naturally courteous manner. He ushered us into his little
study, or parlor, or both,--a very forlorn room, with poor paper-hangings
and carpet, few books, no pictures that I remember, and an awful lack of
upholstery. I touch distinctly upon these external blemishes and this
nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth mentioning in a sketch
of other remarkable persons, but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a
faculty of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if Fortune,
did him as much wrong in not supplying them as in withholding a
sufficiency of vital breath from ordinary men. All kinds of mild
magnificence, tempered by his taste, would have become him well; but he
had not the grim dignity that assumes nakedness as the better robe.
I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a
finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression,
nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's face in this
respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I
discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles
many; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected
to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the
tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew
more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age;
sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his
sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of
youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never
witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since;
and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it
difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament,--youth
or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me so
agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the natural
growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference to
rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that the nicest observer
could not detect the application of it.
His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied
their visible language like music. He appeared to be exceedingly
appreciative of whatever was passing among those who surrounded him, and
especially of the vicissitudes in the consciousness of the person to whom
he happened to be addressing himself at the moment. I felt that no
effect upon my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however transitory,
in myself, escaped his notice, though not from any positive vigilance on
his part, but because his faculty of observation was so penetrative and
delicate; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to discern always
a ripple on his mobile face, responsive to any slightest breeze that
passed over the inner reservoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to
extend to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of feeling, and
within a certain depth, you might spare yourself the trouble of
utterance, because he already knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a
little more than you would have spoken. His figure was full of gentle
movement, though, somehow, without disturbing its quietude; and as he
talked, he kept folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many ways a
fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel pleasure or pain, though
scarcely capable, I should imagine, of a passionate experience in either
direction. There was not am English trait in him from head to foot,
morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, or stout, brandy or
port-wine, entered not at all into his composition. In his earlier life,
he appears to have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, and
of a tendency to fling himself into the rough struggle of humanity on the
liberal side. It would be taking too much upon myself to affirm that
this was merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual, and that
he never could have hit a downright blow, and was altogether an
unsuitable person to receive one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in
his peacefulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion merely from
what I saw, it would have occurred to me that his main deficiency was a
lack of grit. Though anything but a timid man, the combative and
defensive elements were not prominently developed in his character, and
could have been made available only when he put an unnatural force upon
his instincts. It was on this account, and also because of the fineness
of his nature generally, that the English appreciated him no better, and
left this sweet and delicate poet poor, and with scanty laurels in his
declining age.
It was not, I think, from his American blood that Leigh Hunt derived
either his amiability or his peaceful inclinations; at least, I do not
see how we can reasonably claim the former quality as a national
characteristic, though the latter might have been fairly inherited from
his ancestors on the mother's side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But
the kind of excellence that distinguished him--his fineness, subtilty,
and grace--was that which the richest cultivation has heretofore tended
to develop in the happier examples of American genius, and which (though
I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future intellectual
advancement may make general among us. His person, at all events, was
thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his manners;
for we are the best as well as the worst mannered people in the world.
Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired
sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much
in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In
response to all that we ventured to express about his writings (and, for
my part, I went quite to the extent of my conscience, which was a long
way, and there left the matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily
were with me), his face shone, and he manifested great delight, with a
perfect, and yet delicate, frankness for which I loved him. He could not
tell us, he said, the happiness that such appreciation gave him; it
always took him by surprise, he remarked, for--perhaps because he cleaned
his own boots, and performed other little ordinary offices for himself--
he never had been conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. And
then he smiled, making himself and all the poor little parlor about him
beautiful thereby. It is usually the hardest thing in the world to
praise a man to his face; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with such
gracious satisfaction (feeling it to be sympathy, not vulgar praise),
that the only difficulty was to keep the enthusiasm of the moment within
the limit of permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up while we
were talking; the rain poured, the lightning flashed, and the thunder
broke; but I hope, and have great pleasure in believing, that it was a
sunny hour for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice that he
most favorably inclined his ear, but to those of my companions. Women
are the fit ministers at such a shrine.
He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping
his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient
for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness
had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature,
gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which
results from power; for beauty, like woman, its human representative,
dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the
strong. I imagine that Leigh Bunt may have been more beautiful when I
met him, both in person and character, than in his earlier days. As a
young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but
not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I
rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most confident and
cheering anticipations in respect to a future life; and there were
abundant proofs, throughout our interview, of an unrepining spirit,
resignation, quiet, relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were
denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had to enjoy, and piety,
and hope shining onward into the dusk,--all of which gave a reverential
cast to the feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that he could
have had one full draught of prosperity before he died. As a matter of
artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a
beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of
elaborate upholstery and minute elegances about him, and a succession of
tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night.
I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness in
Leigh Haunt's character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this
nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an
infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone.
At our leave-taking he grasped me warmly by both hands, and seemed as
much interested in our whole party as if he had known us for years. All
this was genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his heart,
which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and rare varieties, not acorns,
but a true heart, nevertheless. Several years afterwards I met him for
the last time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken down by
infirmities; and my final recollection of the beautiful old man presents
him arm in arm with, nay, if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported
by, another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel-name, since he has a
week-day one for his personal occasions, I will venture to speak. It was
Barry Cornwall, whose kind introduction had first made me known to Leigh
Hunt.
OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY.
Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, I often turned aside from
the prosperous thoroughfares (where the edifices, the shops, and the
bustling crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I was familiar
in my own country), and went designedly astray among precincts that
reminded me of some of Dickens's grimiest pages. There I caught glimpses
of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively new to my
observation, a sort of sombre phantasmagoric spectacle, exceedingly
undelightful to behold, yet involving a singular interest and even
fascination in its ugliness.
Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the world, being the
symbolic accompaniment of the foul incrustation which began to settle
over and bedim all earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple;
ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have chiefly been engaged
in a desperate and unavailing struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of
a poverty-stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on our side of
the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its own limits, and is
inconceivable everywhere beyond them. We enjoy the great advantage, that
the brightness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything clean that
the sun shines upon, converting the larger portion of our impurities into
transitory dust which the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the
damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with all surfaces (unless
continually and painfully cleansed) in the chill moisture of the English
air. Then the all-pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled
with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hovering overhead,
descending, and alighting on pavements and rich architectural fronts, on
the snowy muslin of the ladies, and the gentlemen's starched collars and
shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half-mourning garb.
It is beyond the resources of Wealth to keep the smut away from its
premises or its own fingers' ends; and as for Poverty, it surrenders
itself to the dark influence without a struggle. Along with disastrous
circumstances, pinching need, adversity so lengthened out as to
constitute the rule of life, there comes a certain chill depression of
the spirits which seems especially to shudder at cold water. In view of
so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient Deluge not merely as
an insulated phenomenon, but as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge
that nothing less than such a general washing-day could suffice to
cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and material dirt.
Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are numerous in the
vicinity of these poor streets, and are set off with the magnificence of
gilded door-posts, tarnished by contact with the unclean customers who
haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old shaving-mugs, or
broken-nosed teapots, or ally such makeshift receptacle, to get a little
poison or madness for their parents, who deserve no better requital at
their hands for having engendered them. Inconceivably sluttish women
enter at noonday and stand at the counter among boon-companions of both
sexes, stirring up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaffing
off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, they lounge there
continually, drinking till they are drunken,--drinking as long as they
have a half-penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for a
sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets so as to enable them to
be drunken again. Most of these establishments have a significant
advertisement of "Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their
customers in the interval between one intoxication and the next. I never
could find it in my heart, however, utterly to condemn these sad
revellers, and should certainly wait till I had some better consolation
to offer before depriving them of their dram of gin, though death itself
were in the glass; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery
stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both
their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions,
even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their
present misery. The temperance-reformers unquestionably derive their
commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully
into its counsels. All may not be lost, though those good men fail.
Pawnbrokers' establishments, distinguished by the mystic symbol of the
three golden balls, were conveniently accessible; though what personal
property these wretched people could possess, capable of being estimated
in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for a loan, was a problem
that still perplexes me. Old clothesmen, likewise, dwelt hard by, and
hung out ancient garments to dangle in the wind. There were butchers'
shops, too, of a class adapted to the neighborhood, presenting no such
generously fattened carcasses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the
market, no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no dead hogs or muttons
ornamented with carved bas-reliefs of fat on their ribs and shoulders, in
a peculiarly British style of art,--not these, but bits and gobbets of
lean meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and stringy morsels,
bare bones smitten away from joints by the cleaver, tripe, liver,
bullocks' feet, or whatever else was cheapest and divisible into the
smallest lots. I am afraid that even such delicacies came to many of
their tables hardly oftener than Christmas. In the windows of other
little shops you saw half a dozen wizened herrings, some eggs in a
basket, looking so dingily antique that your imagination smelt them,
fly-speckled biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers of
tobacco. Now and then a sturdy milk-woman passed by with a wooden yoke
over her shoulders, supporting a pail on either side, filled with a
whitish fluid, the composition of which was water and chalk and the milk
of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor thing! but could
scarcely make it rich or wholesome, spending her life in some close
city-nook and pasturing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a
donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers full of vegetables,
and departing with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and
street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a
girl might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a man
whisper something mysterious about wonderfully cheap cigars. And yet I
remember seeing female hucksters in those regions, with their wares on
the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats right in the carriage-way,
pretending to sell half-decayed oranges and apples, toffy, Ormskirk
cakes, combs, and cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and
little plates of oysters,--knitting patiently all day long, and removing
their undiminished stock in trade at nightfall. All indispensable
importations from other quarters of the town were on a remarkably
diminutive scale: for example, the wealthier inhabitants purchased their
coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the poorer ones by the peck-measure.
It was a curious and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart
happened to pass through the street and drop a handful or two of its
burden in the mud, to see half a dozen women and children scrambling for
the treasure-trove, like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some
spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention a commodity of
boiled snails (for such they appeared to me, though probably a marine
production) which used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, as an
article of cheap nutriment.
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