Books: Memories of Hawthorne

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How wonderfully it is arranged, that in the very person who most
imperiously demands absolute beauty and perfection (for so does Mr.
Hawthorne), in this very person is found the subtlest and widest
appreciation of human shortcomings, and the pleadings of weakness and
failure. In "Blithedale" I think one feels this tender humanity. It
will come out more and more.

Shall I tell you where I am? I am sitting in our acacia grove, on the
hill, with a few pines near enough for me to hear their oceanic
murmur. It is only necessary for me to shut my eyes, to hear every
variety of water sounds. The pine gives me the long, majestic swell
and retreat of the sea waves; the birch, the silvery tinkle of a
pebbly brook; the acacia, the soft fall of a cascade; and all mingled
together, a sound of many waters most refreshing to the sense. I thank
heaven that we possess a hilltop. No amount of plains could compete
with the value of this. To look down on the world actually is typical
of looking down spiritually, and so it is good. Una and Julian are
wandering around; Una having been reading to Julian. Rosebud is
asleep. Oh, she enjoys a summer day so much! This morning I set her
down on the green grass. Without looking at me, the happiest smile
began to dawn over her face; and then she suddenly waved her hands
like wings, and set forth. To fall down seemed a new joy. Julian
undertook to be her escort. It was a charming picture--the two figures
grouped together; the fair little blue-eyed face turned up to the
great brown, loving eyes, and all sorts of dulcet sounds responding to
one another. I could not help smiling to read in your letter that you
would have a rug spread for her. I should as soon think of keeping an
untamed bird on a rug as baby. I assure you that since she has had the
use of her feet she does not pause in the race of life. . . . It is good
to see such an expression of immense satisfaction as dwells upon her
face. Most lovingly your child,

SOPHIECHEN.

September 19.

MY DEAR MOTHER,--On Friday Mr. Hawthorne returned from nearly a three
weeks' visit to the Isles of Shoals. I did not tell you about it while
he was there, because your heart is so tender I knew you would have no
peace, and you would all the time be thinking that he was separated
from us by water. But here he is, looking in splendid health, all safe
and sound. General Pierce, and some other dignitaries with their
wives, met Mr. Hawthorne for a day or two; and the rest of the time he
had all to himself. I must tell you a story, by which you will be
enabled to see into political slander. An officer of the army,
resident at Baltimore, told the editor of a paper friendly to General
Pierce, that while in Mexico General Pierce was at a gambling-table
with another officer; and, a squabble ensuing, this officer struck
General Pierce in the face, and that the General took it without a
word. He told the editor also that the officer who offered this insult
was in California, making it difficult to have a word from him upon
the subject. The editor, in perplexity, sent the paragraph to General
Pierce, who was at a loss how to prove the utter falsity of the whole
story. But, behold, the next thing which he laid his hand upon, on his
table, was a letter postmarked "California." He opened it, and it was
from the very officer who was said to have insulted him so foully, and
was an expression of the highest admiration and respect, and
congratulations upon his present position. This was an unanswerable
denial; and so he sent the letter to Baltimore. This story, fabricated
out of nothing but malice, was meant to injure in two ways, by proving
him a gambler, and also pusillanimous. The slanderous officer will
probably cease to be one, as I believe falsehood is not considered a
military grace.

Mr. Hawthorne went to Brunswick, having been cordially invited by the
President of the College. He met his classmates there. On account of
the heavy rains he was detained so many hours on his way thither that
he did not arrive till noon of the day, and thus providentially
escaped hearing himself orated and poetized about in the morning.
Brunswick was so full that he had to go to Bath to sleep; and there he
had funny adventures, some old sea-captains insisting upon considering
him a brother, and calling him all the time "Cap'n Hathorne." At the
Isles of Shoals he had the ocean all to himself; but when he wished to
see human beings, he found Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter very pleasant. Mrs.
Thaxter sent Una a necklace of native shells with a gold and coral
clasp, Julian a plume made of white owl feathers, and Rosebud a most
exquisite wreath of sea-moss upon a card. I kept a journal for my
husband, according to his express injunction. The children missed
papa miserably, and I could not bear the trial very well. I could not
eat, sitting opposite his empty chair at table, and I lost several
pounds of flesh.

To-day, when baby waked from a nap of four hours and a half, she
called for the first time, "Mamma!" I ran up, and she was smiling like
a constellation of stars. She mourned after papa a great deal, and
sometimes would hold a long discourse about him, pointing all the
while at the portrait. One day a neighbor sent me, to cheer my
loneliness, the most superb bouquet of rare and costly rosebuds that I
ever saw. I put them in the Study, in a pretty champagne-glass [the
tall, old-fashioned kind], and they filled the room with fragrance. I
tended them very carefully; but they bloomed too fully at last. Yet
just at that moment, the lady gave me a fresh supply--the very day
before Mr. Hawthorne's return; and on that bright Friday afternoon I
put the vase of delicious rosebuds, and a beautiful China plate of
peaches and grapes, and a basket of splendid golden Porter apples on
his table; and we opened the western door [leading from the Study to
the lawn] and let in a flood of sunsetting. Apollo's "beautiful
disdain" seemed kindled anew. Endymion smiled richly in his dream of
Diana. Lake Como was wrapped in golden mist. The divine form in the
Transfiguration floated in light. I thought it would be a pity if Mr.
Hawthorne did not come that moment. As I thought this, I heard the
railroad-coach--and he was here. He looked, to be sure, as he wrote in
one of his letters, "twice the man he was." Dear little Una went to
the village with the mail-bag, just before it was time to expect her
father, and I told her I hoped she would drive home with him. She met
him, caught a glance, and he was gone. It surprised me that her sense
of duty prevented her from turning back at once. I asked her why she
did not, as the letters were not of so much importance, since papa had
come. "Oh," said she, "I did not know but it would be wrong to go back
only because I wanted to." At last she came. She entered the Study in
a very quiet way (apparently), received his loving greeting, and then,
taking off her hat, sat down at my feet to look at him, and hear him.
When she went to bed, she said, "Oh, mamma, my head has tingled so,
ever since I saw papa, that I could hardly bear the pain! Do not tell
him, for it might trouble him." Was it not sweet and heroic in her to
keep so quiet for two hours? This is a good specimen of Una's powers
of self-sacrifice. It has sometimes made me wish to weep over her
delicious tears.

Sunday, October 24, 1852.

MY DEAREST MOTHER,--To-day we all went into the woods above and behind
our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and
dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of
sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to
see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and
Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace.
My husband, at full length on the carpet of withered pine, presented
no hindrance to the tides of divine life that are ready to flow
through us, if we will. There are no Words to describe such enjoyment;
but you can understand it well. It is the highest wisdom, I think, to
sometimes do nothing; but only keep still, and reverently be happy,
and receptive of the great omnipresence. How studiously we mortals
keep it out of our eternal business. There should be no business at
least once a week. I rather think it is the best proof that Moses was
inspired that he instituted a Sabbath of rest from labor. God needs
not, but man needs, rest.

Sunset. I left you to go out again and join my husband on the hilltop,
while the children's voices kept us advised of their welfare somewhere
about the place. My husband and I sat on a terrace on the side of the
hill, both looking off upon the tranquil horizon, beginning to be
veiled with a dim blue haze. Una ran up, calling out that Mr. Hosmer
wished to see papa and mamma. So we descended, and met the old
gentleman on a lower terrace, where I invited him to sit on the green
sofa; and we grouped about him. Julian at first went rushing through
our ranks like a young Olympian exercising heroic games, and finally
extended himself on the grass to listen to the palaver. Mr. Hosmer
began with the Great Daniel [Webster], who died at three o'clock this
morning. He expressed admiration of him, as we all did; and I thought
his death an immense loss. Mr. Hosmer was very glad that he died in
the fullness of his power of mind, and not sunken in the socket. He
discoursed upon the massive grandeur of his speeches, his wonderful
letters, and of all that was mighty in him. Also of his shortcomings
and their retribution. You would have liked to have heard Mr. Hosmer
glorify John Adams--even his appearance. He said that at eighty-three
(when he sat near him every Sunday at church) he was a "perfect
beauty;" that his cheeks were as unwrinkled as a girl's, and as fair
and white, and his head was a noble crown; and that any woman would
fall in love with him. So we talked of great men, till I came in to
watch baby's sleep. She soon waked, all smiles and love; and then Mr.
Hawthorne and Mr. Hosmer came in, still upon the theme of great men.
Mr. Hosmer thought Oliver Cromwell greatest of all, I believe. Una and
I made you a wreath of richly tinted oak leaves to-day, and when I go
to Newton I will take it. I wish you could hear her repeat poetry in
her dulcet, touching tones. I never heard any one repeat poetry so
much to my mind.

Evening. Mr. Hawthorne is drawn forcibly out of doors by the moon's
rays, they are so clear and superb to-night. He looked out and sighed,
for he did not really want to go; but he felt under a moral necessity.
I walk out in him, being mamma and nurse [Rosebud was still up]. When
you write to Mr. Plumly, bless him for me for the mantle [his gift to
Mrs. Peabody] and his beautiful, refreshing letter about it. I had a
great mind to write to him myself of his appreciation of you and of my
husband. What a noble, lovely person he is!

Your child, SOPHY.

April 14, 1853.

My husband went off in a dark rain this morning, on his way to
Washington. Mary Herne called to baby to come and take care of her
dolly, who was upon the floor in the kitchen. Rose rushed in a
breakneck manner across the parlor, exclaiming as if in the utmost
maternal distress, "Oh, mershy, mershy!" and rescued Dolly from her
peril. She was quite happy and still in the kitchen; and then I heard
her shout, "I like it--I like it motch!" I asked Mary what it was that
baby liked so "motch." When Mary got up to investigate, she found baby
in the closet at the molasses jug, still crying, "I like it--I like it
motch!" She was very much diverted by our consternation; and when, at
tea-time, I was speaking of it, she burst into inextinguishable
laughter; and as soon as she could speak, said, "I glad! Was ever such
a mischief?" Twice to-day she began to go into the Study for "papa
take her." I sent Julian to the village at five, and he returned in a
pouring rain. His sack kept him dry, but he thought he was soaked to
the skin because his nose was wet. He brought a letter from Charlotte
Bridge, inclosing two notes to my husband from Mr. Bridge. To-day I
found nothing in the post-office but Mr. Emerson. He walked along with
me and said he had a letter from Mr. Synge [whom Hawthorne met, later,
in England], an attache of the British Legation, asking for an
autograph of Mr. Hawthorne. Grandpapa, baby, and I sat in the parlor
in the afternoon, and baby was in the highest spirits, and conversed
for the first time in the most facetious manner, casting side glances,
and laughing with a great pretense of being vastly amused, and of
superior insight into the bearing of things.

April 19. The great day of the Concord fight. I was awakened by
cannon and the ringing of bells. The cannon thundered all around the
welkin, in a very grand, stately, and leisurely manner. I read the
history of the day to the children. What made the morning beautiful
and springlike to me was a letter which Julian brought from my
husband.

April 21. A day like a dulcimer. It was so charming to rake and plant
and prune that I remained out a long time, and tore my hands nicely.

Julian requested to go and take a quiet walk in the woods, and
returned just as I was becoming anxious about him, shouting, with a
sweet-brier bush which he had pulled up by the roots in the wood. I
took a spade, and dug a great cave, and planted it beneath his western
window; and I am sure it must grow for him, for he sent sunshine down
into the earth from his eyes upon the roots while I was setting it
out.

The stage-coach drove up and brought me Mrs. S. G. Ward and Sarah
Clarke. Mrs. Ward was cruelly disappointed not to see Mr. Hawthorne;
and I told her that he would probably tear his hair when he came back
and found what he had lost. "Tell him," said she, "that I tore out all
mine." She was splendid and radiant beyond my power to tell; dressed
in rich green and a rose-colored bonnet, and her beautiful hair
curling round her wonderful face. I do not believe there is another
such woman in the world. When she had stepped from the house, Julian
begged me to run after her, and tell her she must go to England
[whither the family now expected to journey]; and with the most
enchanting grace she laughed, and said, "Tell him I certainly shall!"

Sunday. At ten, my little flock gathered [Mrs. Hawthorne taught
reading, geography, drawing, etc., to several children besides her
own, for love, and gave them Sunday-school lessons also]; and I read
them the story of Balaam's ass, and about the death of Moses. They
were much afflicted that Moses was not allowed to go to the Promised
Land. I read that he looked down from Mount Pisgah and saw Canaan and
the City of Palms, and showed them my Cuban sketch of a palm,
describing exactly how they looked and grew; and the vision of the
City of Palms became very beautiful to them. Poor little Mary Ellen
felt ill, but she was so interested that I could not persuade her to
go home.

April 26. I met Mr. Rockwood Hoar, who congratulated us upon our
expected residence in England, which he said was "the only place fit
to live in out of America."

April 29. A neighbor came yesterday with an English white rose, and
set out the tree for me. He said it was for Rosebud. We are getting
to look quite nice, but all will look black and bare to my husband,
after being at the South. Baby is filled with joy to be out in such
lovely weather, and makes no hesitation to take the heaviest tools,
and dig and rake and hoe. She will not come in even to drink her milk.
Some documents came this morning from the State Department, relating
to the Consulate at Liverpool. The peach-trees are all in bloom, and
the cherry-trees also. I looked about, as I sat down in our pine
grove, and tried to bear my husband's absence but it is desolation
without him. This is the sweetest place--I really cannot bear to leave
it. My scholars drew flowers, this morning. Mr. Emerson and Ellery
Charming passed along; and Mr. Emerson asked Julian to go with the
children to Fairy Land [in Walden woods]. He went, in a state of
ecstatic bliss. He brought me home, in a basket, cowslips, anemones,
and violets.

In June the voyage to England, as Hawthorne was appointed Consul at
Liverpool by President Pierce, was undertaken, and pleasantly
accomplished.

Hawthorne's "English Note-Books," as well as the elaborated papers
that make up "Our Old Home," disclose something of his daily life in
England during his consulship; but it was in the rapid, familiar
letters of my mother to her family that his life was most freely
narrated. I have preserved these letters, and shall give extracts from
them in the pages that follow, prefacing and interpolating a few
girlish memories of my father and of the places in which I saw him,
although they are trivial and meagre in incident. He died the day
before my thirteenth birthday, and as my existence had begun at a time
when his quiet life was invaded (if we may use that term in connection
with a welcome guest) by fame, with its attendant activity in the
outside world, my intercourse with him was both juvenile and brief. In
England, he mingled more than ever before with the members of literary
and fashionable society. I, who in 1853 was but two years old, had to
be satisfied with a glance and a smile, which were so much less than
he had been able to give to my brother and sister in their happier
childhood days, for they had enjoyed hours of his companionship as a
constant pastime. I was, moreover, much younger than the others, and
was never allowed to grow, as I wished, out of the appellations of
Rosebud, Baby, and Bab (as my father always called me), and all the
infantine thought which those pet names imply. I longed myself to
hear the splendidly grotesque fairy tales, sprung from his delicious
jollity of imagination, which Una and Julian had reveled in when our
father had been at leisure in Lenox and Concord; and the various
frolics about which I received appetizing hints as I grew into
girlhood made me seem to myself a stranger who had come too late. But
a stranger at Hawthorne's side could be very happy, and, whatever my
losses, I knew myself to be rich.

In the early years of our stay in England his personality was most
radiant. His face was sunny, his aspect that of shining elegance.
There was the perpetual gleam of a glad smile on his mouth and in his
eyes. His eyes were either a light gray or a violet blue, according to
his mood. His hair was brown and waved loosely (I take it very hard
when people ask me if it was at all red!), and his complexion was as
clear and luminous as his mother's, who was the most beautiful woman
some people have ever seen. He was tall, and with as little
superfluous flesh and as much sturdy vigor as a young athlete; for his
mode of life was always athletic, simple, and abstemious. He leaned
his head a little to one side, often, in a position indicating alert
rest, such as we find in many Greek statues,--so different from the
straight, dogged pose of a Roman emperor. He was very apt to make an
assent with an upward movement of the head, a comfortable h'm-m, and a
half-smile. Sympathetic he was, indeed, and warm with the fire that
never goes out in great natures. He had much dignity; so much that
persons in his own country sometimes thought him shy and reticent to
the verge of morbidness. But it was merely the gentlemanliness of the
man, who was jocund with no one but his intimate friends, and never
fierce except with rascals, as I observed on one or two occasions.
Those who thought him too silent were bores whom he desired not to
attract. Those who thought him unphilosophical (and some philosophers
thought that) were not artists, and could not analyze his work. Those
who knew him for a man and a friend were manly and salubrious of soul
themselves. They have given plenty of testimony as to the
good-fellowship of a nature which could be so silent at will.

He was usually reserved, but he was ready for action all the time. His
full, smooth lips, sensitive as a child's, would tell a student of
facial lines how vivid was his life, though absolutely under his cool
command. He was a delightful companion even when little was said,
because his eyes spoke with a sort of apprehension of your thought, so
that you felt that your expression of face was a clear record for him,
and that words would have been a sort of anticlimax. His companionship
was exquisitely restful, since it was instinctively sympathetic. He
did not need to exert himself to know you deeply, and he saw all the
good in you there was to know; and the weakness and the wrong of any
heart he weighed as nicely in the balance of tender mercy as we could
do in pity for ourselves. I always felt a great awe of him, a
tremendous sense of his power. His large eyes, liquid with blue and
white light and deep with dark shadows, told me even when I was very
young that he was in some respects different from other people. He
could be most tender in outward action, but he never threw such action
away. He knew swine under the cleverest disguise. I speak of outward
acts of tenderness. As for his spirit, it was always arousing mine,
or any one's, and acting towards one's spiritual being invisibly and
silently, but with gentle earnestness. He evinced by it either a
sternly sweet dignity of tolerance, or an approbation generous as a
broad meadow, or a sadly glanced, adverse comment that lashed one's
inner consciousness with remorse. He was meditative, as all those are
who care that the world is full of sorrow and sin, but cheerful, as
those are who have the character and genius to see the finite beauty
and perfection in the world, which are sent to the true-hearted as
indications of heaven. He could be full of cheer, and at the same
time never lose the solemnity of a perception of the Infinite,--that
familiar fact which we, so many of us, have ceased to fear, but which
the greatest men so remember and reverence. He never became wholly
merged in fun, however gay the games in which he joined with us
children; just as a man of refinement who has been in war never quite
throws aside the dignity of the sorrow which he has seen. He might
seem, at a superficial glance, to be the merriest of us all, but on
second thoughts he was not. Of course, there were times when it was
very evident to me that my father was as comfortable and happy as he
cared to be. When he stood upon the hearth-rug, before the snapping,
blushing English fire (always poked into a blaze towards evening, as
he was about to enter the parlor),--when he stood there with his hands
clasped behind him, swaying from side to side in a way peculiar to
him, and which recalled the many sea-swayed ancestors of his who had
kept their feet on rolling decks, then he was a picture of benevolent
pleasure. Perhaps, for this moment, the soldier from the battlefields
of the soul ceased to remember scenes of cruelty and agony. He swayed
from side to side, and raised himself on his toes, and creaked his
slippered heels jocosely, and smiled upon me, and lost himself in
agreeable musings. He was very courteous, entirely sincere, and quiet
with fixed principles as a great machine with consistent movement. He
treated children handsomely; harshness was not in him to be subdued,
and scorn of anything that was honestly developing would have seemed
to him blasphemy. He stooped to my intelligence, and rejoiced it. We
were usually a silent couple when off for a walk together, or when we
met by chance in the household. I suppose that we were seeing which
could outdo the other at "holding the tongue." But still, our
intercourse, as I remarked before, might be complete. I knew him very
well indeed,--' his power, his supremacy of honesty, his wealth of
refinement. And he, I was fully aware, could see through me as easily
as if I were a soul in one of his own books.

Even as a child, knowing that he could not think me a remunerative
companion, I realized how remarkable it was that in all his being
there was not an atom of the poison of contempt. If he did not love
stupidity, he forgave it. If he was strong with analysis and the
rejection of all sham and wrong, his hand was ready to grasp s any
hand, because it was a human creature's, whose destiny was a part of
every destiny--even Christ's. This sympathy, which caused the choice
he had made of his character-studies, and brought many confessions to
his judgment from bewildered men and women, was with him so entire
that it showed itself in the little things of existence, as a whole
garden-path is noble with the nature of the rose that stands blooming
there.

His aspect avoided, as did that of his art, which exactly reproduced
his character, anything like self-conscious picturesqueness. It is
pleasant to have the object of our regard unconscious of himself. He
had a way of ignoring, while observing automatically, all accessories,
which reminded us that his soul was ever awake, and waiting to be made
free of earthly things and common ideas.

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